Blow

For our two-part season finale, we are unpacking movies about two men who smuggled cocaine for the Medellin Cartel into the states, largely by air. In our first episode, we dive into Ted Demme’s Blow (2001), starring Johnny Depp as small-town boy turned infamous drug smuggler, George Jung. How accurate was Depp’s portrayal of Jung? What details about his life did Hollywood dramatize or leave out? Listen now to learn about the true story of the man who played a pivotal role in the cocaine boom of the 1970s and 1980s, exploring his relationships, rise to power, and downfall.

Primary Source:
Porter, Bruce. BLOW: How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellín Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All. St. Martin’s Griffen (2015).

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Chapters

• 0:13 Criminal Adaptations
• 11:20 George Jung and the Cocaine Chronicles
• 20:53 George Jung's Drug Trafficking Adventures
• 27:37 George's Cocaine Smuggling Escapades
• 42:06 Family Betrayal and Redemption
• 56:20 The Legacy of Ted Demme
• 1:03:28 George Jung's Early Years and Smuggling
• 1:09:39 Drug Trafficking Network Expands
• 1:20:20 Cocaine Smuggling Ventures Begin
• 1:31:25 The Fall of George Jung
• 1:43:34 Escape, Smuggling, and Betrayal
• 1:58:43 George Jung's Criminal Career and Legacy
• 2:10:54 Fact vs. Fiction in "Blow" Adaptation
• 2:18:50 Tom Cruise's Role in Criminal Adaptations

Transcript

Ashley: 0:14

Welcome to Criminal Adaptations, the show where we take a look at some of your favorite movies and the true crime stories that inspired them. I'm Ashley. I'm a clinical psychologist and forensic evaluator in the state of Oregon.

Remi: 0:27

And I'm Remy. I spent over a decade working in the film and television industry in Los Angeles, California.

Ashley: 0:33

Welcome back everyone and thank you for joining us for I can't believe I'm saying this our season three finale episode. Well, we always do a two-parter for our finale, so this is part one, remy. What are we going to be tackling both today and just over the next two weeks?

Remi: 0:57

Today we will be delving into the interesting and intriguing world of professional drug smuggling with the films Blow and American Made. These are two drug smugglers that did runs for the Medellin cartel and Pablo Escobar, and it should be a crazy story between the two of them.

Ashley: 1:11

And for these episodes we're going to be really focusing on the life of these two specific drug smugglers. Pablo Escobar is bound to come up. I know he does in Blow. I'm not sure if he does in American Made. I'm sure he will. But if you want to learn more about Pablo Escobar's side of the story, we're not really going to be talking much into that. As we talked about at the end of last episode, it's just too much to tackle and there really isn't a great movie that has been made about him.

Remi: 1:40

Unfortunately there is not, but maybe someday we will tackle the Netflix series Narcos. But that is still a ways away and probably a pretty big undertaking for Ashley to cover Pablo Escobar's entire life and for me to cover that entire series. So for now we are going to be focusing on his underlings I guess you would call them who helped him get his illegal substances into the States.

Ashley: 2:08

Remy, what is your experience with the movie Blow starring Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz before today?

Remi: 2:15

I have seen this movie a bunch of times. I really like this movie. I first saw it when I was 18, I think One of my friends in Florida showed me it and I was a huge Johnny Depp fan at the time and I just thought it was a really crazy kick-ass story. I really liked drug movies back then Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, trainspotting, that sort of thing and I have revisited this movie several times, but not in many years before this podcast. But I did remember a lot of what happened in the film. It left a big impression. I still really like this movie and I still recommend it for anyone interested out there.

Ashley: 2:56

I have only seen Blow Once, and it was a very, very long time ago, so I don't really remember anything about the movie other than that it was starring Johnny Depp as George Young, and that was it. I didn't even remember it had Penelope Cruz in it until I got the book that the movie is based on and she is on the cover.

Remi: 3:14

This is probably one of the few films that we have covered that while I was watching the film in preparation for the podcast, I was writing out the scenes before they even happened. I know this movie very, very well and I'm really excited to talk about it today. Had you ever heard of the true story that this film is based on? Because I know I hadn't.

Ashley: 3:35

I think I just knew that it was based on a true story, but that was it. I didn't know anything about this guy's life and going into reading the book, since I didn't remember much about the movie. All I really knew is he was part of Pablo Escobar's drug smuggling team and he brought a lot of coke to America, but I didn't know how he did it and how much of it he brought in and made during his actually rather brief stint as a cocaine smuggler.

Remi: 4:04

And believe it or not. I don't know much at all about the true story. I've seen this movie many times but never took it upon myself to Google the true story behind it. I have only seen one picture of the real George Jung, and it's the picture shown at the very end of this movie. So I am very intrigued to find out how much of this is accurate and what parts were left out for the film adaptation.

Ashley: 4:29

And what I will say for anyone who is interested in learning more, because I had to, as usual, cut down my part and cut out some details that weren't really as pertinent to the story as a whole. I highly recommend the book Below that this movie is based on. I'm pretty sure the author worked extensively with George himself when writing this, so it is incredibly detailed. There's a lot of interesting tidbits in there about really what the cocaine industry was like at the time and how George and Escobar and other players really transformed it.

Remi: 5:07

Well, with that should we get into this true story of George Jung and his massive cocaine smuggling empire.

Ashley: 5:15

It is that time.

Remi: 5:17

Blow is a 2001 biographical film written by David McKenna and Nick Cassavetes, directed by Ted Demme and starring Johnny Depp, penelope Cruz, paul Rubens and Ray Liotta. Director Ted Demme first began his career directing stand-up comedy specials such as Lock and Load and no Cure for Cancer with comedian Dennis Leary back in the mid-90s. And in case you've never heard of Dennis Leary, here is a little sample.

Ashley: 5:58

Ah, yes, I have heard that lovely, lovely tune.

Remi: 6:01

It's a classic it really is. During that time Leary gifted Demi a copy of Bruce Porter's 1993 book Blow how a small-town boy made $100 million with the Medellin cocaine cartel and lost it all. That is a mouthful of a title.

Ashley: 6:18

And that is the book I read for my portion.

Remi: 6:21

After reading the story, demi became enthralled by the classic tale of a young man searching for the American dream through his involvement in the drug trade and felt that the narrative would make a riveting adaptation for the silver screen. After optioning the rights, both Demi and Leary met with the book's protagonist, george Jung, at the Otisville Correctional Institution in New York, where he was serving out a sentence on drug charges. Demi spent the next six hours with Jung, laughing, crying and learning all about George's life. After their meeting, demi stated I feel sorrier for him now than I ever did. George knows he played the highest risk poker game of all time. He gambled his life and he lost. Sometime later, jung's book also found its way into the hands of screenwriter David McKenna, who also wrote such other true crime films as American History X and Bully, which we will be covering on our show at some point.

Ashley: 7:20

Not only will we be covering them both sometime, we'll be covering them both next season.

Remi: 7:26

Perfect timing then, after devouring the entire book in just two days, mckenna called up film producer Mary Parent and asked who do I have to screw to do this movie? Mary soon responded Ted Demme and Dennis Leary. Wasting no time at all, mckenna sought out Demme and Leary and was soon hired on and began developing the script for the next two years, becoming close with George in the process. Unfortunately, due to creative disagreements with the third act, mckenna was later replaced by Nick Cassavetes, who we previously covered for his work on Alpha Dog. It all comes full circle. Blow also happened to be the very first time that Nick Cassavetes had ever been hired to write anything and was only offered the job because Cassavetes' friend, mike DeLuca, had recently been promoted to the head of New Line Cinema. After a bit of encouragement, cassavetes agreed to work on the screenplay and in no time at all he was being flown out to Otisville to speak with George in person. Time at all he was being flown out to Otisville to speak with George in person. Cassavetes spent three days interviewing George, but it wasn't until they began discussing their daughters that Cassavetes truly uncovered the emotional core to the story that he wanted to build from. Cassavetes went on to finish the script in a single pass before turning it in, which is pretty impressive or careless, depending on how you look at it.

Remi: 8:52

Former pirate lord of the Caribbean Sea, johnny Depp, who had already been involved with the project since the initial draft of the script, would later read the revised screenplay and found the newer approach to be an interesting angle for this type of drug genre film. Depp was additionally attracted to the challenge of making George feel more like a flawed human being who is as much of a victim as anybody else. Depp admitted that he felt a responsibility as an actor to the character, especially since it was based on a man who actually exists. Depp stated that it certainly places a very intense kind of responsibility, because you want to do your best job you can for him, you want to do him justice and you want him to be proud of it. To prepare for the role, depp interviewed the real George Jung, who seemed very available for all the interviews for this film, and the two spoke for two days, where Jung was able to spill his entire life to death in an exceptionally short amount of time.

Ashley: 9:54

He was in prison during all of this, so I think his schedule was pretty wide open.

Remi: 10:00

But it seems like they all had limitations, like none of them were given unrestricted access, like everyone that I did research on seems like they had two or three days tops and then that was it, no more after that, and I don't know the reasoning behind that. Maybe it was a scheduling thing with the people involved with the production, but all of this seemed like they had a short deadline in order to get everything they could out of George.

Ashley: 10:26

I'm sure trying to get visitation into the prison for this also made things incredibly challenging. It's not like he could just put on all these Hollywood people on his visitation list and they could just come in with their videotapes and whatever else every time they want. They probably had to make it so there was like specific rooms that they could meet in that could be manned by guards, and they had to all go through these intense background checks. The warden probably had to sign off on it because he was in federal prison. That means the federal government was involved, so there would have been a lot of tape.

Remi: 11:00

Knowing how many hoops you need to jump through at times just to do some of your evaluations, that actually makes a lot of sense.

Ashley: 11:08

There's no way they had Johnny Depp just stroll through the prison and sit down in a visitation cafeteria with everyone. That would have caused complete chaos.

Remi: 11:19

Very true. Depp described Jung as a guy who's been rotting away in prison for a number of years, has realized his mistakes and paid his debt to society. How do you feel about that, ashley?

Ashley: 11:31

This one's tough because he was arrested many, many times before.

Remi: 11:37

So many times.

Ashley: 11:42

Many times before this long stint that ended up getting him the most time and all those other times I mean he was facing 20 plus years each time and basically got off with a slap on the wrist. So he had ample opportunity to turn his life around and didn't. On the other hand, I think the mandatory sentencing laws for drugs, especially something like marijuana, they're so so, so, so high and it just ends up backlogging the system with these non-violent drug offenders.

Remi: 12:11

I do think a big part of his sentence has to do with how he was arrested the very last time, but we'll get into that when we're closer to that part of the story. Much of Depp's dialogue in the film was completely improvised, including the line we're gonna need a bigger boat, which was originally a quote from the 1970 film Jaws. Rachel Griffiths, who plays George's mother, ermein Jung, is actually five years younger than her co-star, johnny Depp, while Ray Liotta, who plays George's father, fred, was only eight years older than Depp. Coincidentally, ray Liotta and Rachel Griffiths both share the same birthday of December 18th.

Ashley: 12:52

Ray Liotta looks way older than eight years.

Remi: 12:57

Ray Liotta looks like he lived a harder life. He definitely looks a little worse for wear or did at the time of this filming. Of course, he has passed away. Very big fan of Ray Liotta and I honestly wish he had done more stuff like this. I think he does a great job. At the time, Penelope Cruz, who originally began her career as an actress in Spain, had just begun her transition into English-speaking American films and as a result, she did not participate in many in-depth interviews for Blow, largely due to the fact that she still hadn't quite mastered the English language.

Ashley: 13:32

We've actually been on a little Penelope Cruz kick. This week we watched Vanilla Sky and also the Spanish film that Vanilla Sky was adapted from, where Penelope Cruz plays the exact same character with the exact same name.

Remi: 13:47

The Spanish film is called Open your Eyes, which I think was much better than Vanilla Sky. But Vanilla Sky actually came out the same year as this one did, and prior to this I think she had one American film the year before, but before that it was all Spanish films. Self-described picky eater, paul Rubens, aka Pee Wee Herman, recalls first thinking God, I hope he has good food. After being invited over to Ted Demme's home to discuss a potential role in the film. At the time, Rubens was being considered for a different part and had to get a tan in order to look Colombian, before eventually being recast as Derek for real, which I think was a good choice.

Ashley: 14:32

Yeah, he cannot pass as Colombian.

Remi: 14:35

I assume he would have played George's friend, but I couldn't see that at all. Paul Rubens does not look Colombian even slightly. Rubens did receive some criticism from anti-drug companies for accepting a role in the film, since he had previously done an anti-crack public service announcement as Pee Wee Herman several years prior.

Pee-Wee Herman: 15:00

This is crack Rock cocaine. It isn't glamorous or cool or kid stuff. It's the most addictive kind of cocaine and it can kill you. What's really bad is nobody knows how much it takes, so every time you use it you risk dying.

Ashley: 15:21

Man, nothing is funnier than anti-drug campaigns. Most of them are so ridiculous. They've gotten better now. Now they're actually kind of scary, but back in the day they were just absurd.

Remi: 15:35

It always makes me think of this Is your Brain on Drugs, where they cracked the eggs into the frying pan and they were frying, and then they did another version of that commercial where they did the this Is your Brain on Drugs. She cracked the egg and then she began destroying the entire kitchen Like this is your family on drugs.

Remi: 15:52

This is your work on drugs, until the entire kitchen was just destroyed and it's probably one of the most unintentionally funny drug PSAs I've ever seen. Rubens would later comment that it's not my first movie snorting fake coke. You know, don't forget my work in the classic film Cheech and Chong Nice Dreams. Unfortunately, rubens was unable to meet with the real-life Derek Foreal, whose name is Richard Boreal. Blow also marks the feature film debut of American Horror Story alum Emma Roberts, who was nine years old at the time of filming. Although she attended the premiere, emma Roberts has admitted that she never actually saw the movie until about six years after its release, which is appropriate, I would say. And finally, for the cocaine scenes in the film, actors were given the choice of either snorting milk powder or vitamin B, which just sounds simply terrible, if you ask me. Well, with that, should we dive into Ted Demme's Blow?

Ashley: 16:57

Let's do it.

Remi: 17:16

Our story begins in the cocaine fields of Columbia, as we watch the entire production process for the drug, from plant to powder, before being shipped off in mass quantities, while the opening credits roll. While the opening credits roll.

Ashley: 17:28

This is explained in detail in the book, how it's done generally. It's not enough that your average Joe would be able to do it, but it was very, very interesting.

Remi: 17:43

From what it looked like in the movie. They pick the plants and then, like, soak the plants and then dry them out, or something along that I couldn't really understand everything that was going on, but yeah, it shows how they do the whole thing.

Remi: 17:52

The drugs are then flown to a private airstrip somewhere in America where George Jung, played by Johnny Depp, is eagerly awaiting its arrival. After doing a bump to test out the product with a few of his associates in a back room, we flash back to George's childhood. George grew up in Wayland, massachusetts, along with his best friend, tuna. George's father, fred Jung, played by Ray Liotta, ran a plumbing and heating company where he had three trucks and ten employees. George idolized his father growing up and, even though Fred had to work hard to support his family, he never neglected making time for his son. Though Fred did everything he could for his family, financially, often working 14-hour days, seven days a week, it was never enough for George's mother, irmine, played by Rachel Griffith, who repeatedly left Fred and abandoned George due to the family's money problems before inevitably returning.

Remi: 18:49

This led to a strained relationship between George and his mother while he was growing up. In the end, fred wasn't able to keep his business afloat and the family had to declare bankruptcy as a result. But even in times of hardship, fred always made sure to stay positive and optimistic whenever he was with George. After watching his father struggle to make ends meet for so many years, george concluded that he never wanted to be poor and in order to achieve that, he needed to get as far away from Massachusetts as he possibly could as soon as possible. Several years later, during the summer of 1968, george and his childhood friend, tuna, being played by Ethan Suplee, move out to Manhattan Beach, california, with a total of $300 between the two of them. After moving into a small one-bedroom apartment on the beach, george and Tuna quickly fall into the Bohemian Beach party scene, where George first falls for a stewardess named Barbara Buckley, played by Run La La Run's Franca Potente. I don't know if I said that right, but I hope I did because she's a great actress.

Remi: 19:54

George, barbara and Tuna start spending all day, every day, getting high and smoking weed on the beach, until Tuna has the bright idea that they should start selling weed for themselves instead of getting a normal job. Barbara is supportive of the idea, so introduces George and Tuna to her good friend, derek Foreal, who just so happened to own the very first male hair salon in all of Southern California and is being played here by Paul Rubens. After ushering the boys into a more private area in the back of his salon, derek presents them with a staggeringly large amount of marijuana, and though the quantity is much more than George and Tuna had intended, they nevertheless still agree to take the drugs. What the fuck is that it's? Your pot. Wow, that's more than we had in mind.

Bobcat Goldthwait: 20:49

I don't nickel and dime you want it or not, we'll take it.

Remi: 20:54

I love Paul Reubens in this film.

Ashley: 20:56

It's hard to remember, as I was reading this, that this was all taking place in like the 70s at least most of it 70s and 80s but the outfits and the hairstyles really drill that home. It's a good visual.

Remi: 21:09

The costumes and wigs in this movie are definitely on point, I must say. Anyway, george and Tuna's drug dealing venture turns out to be exceedingly lucrative and they are soon paid a visit by their old friend from Boston, kevin Dooley, played by Max Perlick, who is out west vacationing while on a break from his East Coast college. Who is out west vacationing while on a break from his East Coast college, utterly stupefied by the quality of his friend's product, dooley proposes that they would all make a fortune if they could ever find a way to sell George and Tuna's weed back east. Never one to miss an opportunity. George devises a plan with Derek for real to begin trafficking 100 pounds of marijuana weekly from LA to Boston, which would then be sold at an increased price of $500 per pound. Though Derek is nervous about such an aggressive expansion, he does eventually agree to be George's partner in his latest business venture. Within no time, barbara begins transporting large quantities of marijuana concealed in her checked luggage during her weekly flights to Boston, without fear of being searched due to her job as a stewardess. My how times have changed. Though their latest trafficking endeavor is successful, dooley is also constantly running out of product before the next shipment can arrive. To fulfill their customer's growing demand, george concludes that they will need to start purchasing even larger quantities of product directly from Mexico.

Remi: 22:40

George, tuna, barbara and Derek all take a trip down to Puerto Vallarta, mexico, soon after, in search for a new drug connection. The group intends on achieving this by literally walking around the beach and asking any stranger they come upon if they know where they can get some pot. This does eventually work somehow, and George is brought to a secluded ranch outside of town by a pair of shady Mexican men. Upon their arrival, george exhibits the men's hefty harvest of marijuana and, much to their surprise, george makes an offer to purchase their entire inventory, then return in a week with a plane to transport the product back to the United States. True to his word, george and Dooley steal a small aircraft plane and return to Mexico within the week along with $75,000 in cash to pay for the marijuana. I have a question on this. They steal the plane. Is this something that they did in real life? Because the movie doesn't go into it much at all and I couldn't tell where they were stealing the plane from, but it seems like stealing a plane would be really hard.

Ashley: 23:46

I'm glad you asked because I did omit this part. So when things were getting started, he wasn't stealing planes. He actually, like found a pilot who chartered a plane under like a dummy corporation account. At some point after that he realized it would be cheaper to quote unquote borrow airplanes. He knew about these hangars where people who owned private planes would store them and they were essentially unmanned and unchecked during weekends and holidays. So he would go in, steal these airplanes, fly them for several flights and then put them back at like a Santa Monica runway and then do another one. And he took about 15 planes this way. But it wasn't this initial flight, it was a little bit after. It was still in Mexico when they were just doing pot, but it wasn't the first one. But yeah, he did.

Remi: 24:36

That is fascinating to me. You'd think one of the pilots would show up on the weekday and be like where did all my fuel go?

Ashley: 24:43

He wouldn't even return them to the same spots. He would always return them to the same place in California because that was where he was living, and then they would just take other ones from different hangars that they knew of. But they never got caught. And really the only downside of this plan was that when you're taking these airplanes he had no way of knowing if there was any mechanical issues or if they were serviced regularly. But from what the book says, there was only one time where that became a problem and he crashed and had to like scrounge everything up in the plane. He had all the maps of Mexico, all the money, all the leftover pot and like just book it before the cops came.

Remi: 25:22

I cannot believe that wasn't included in the movie. Wow, but all right, that is good to know. By 1970, george and Barbara have earned enough money to purchase a beautiful home overlooking the coast of Acapulco, mexico, and are soon engaged to be married. Not long after, george's time in the lap of luxury comes to an abrupt halt, however, in 1972, when George is arrested in Chicago for possession of 660 pounds of marijuana with the intent to distribute. That is a lot of weed. During his trial, george comes across as exceptionally cavalier as he delivers the following statement to the judge in court your Honor, I'd like to say a few words to the court, if I may.

Pee-Wee Herman: 26:08

Well, you're gonna have to stop slouching and stand up to address this court, sir All right.

Johnny Depp as George Jung: 26:13

Well, in all honesty, I don't feel that what I've done is a crime and I think it's illogical and irresponsible for you to sentence me to prison. Because, when you think about it, what did I really do? I crossed an imaginary line with a bunch of plants. I mean, you say I'm an outlaw, you say I'm a thief, but where's the Christmas dinner for the people on relief? Huh, you say you're looking for someone who's never weak but always strong, to gather flowers constantly, whether you were right or wrong, someone to open each and every door. But it ain't me, babe. Huh, no, no, no, it ain't me, babe.

Ashley: 26:52

It ain't me you're looking for, babe you follow. Yeah, so he did do this kind of speech at his sentencing hearing, not for his bail hearing, but yeah, he accepted a plea deal and it was for way less time than he should have gotten based on mandatory minimum requirements and went off about how he didn't do anything wrong, which pissed off the judge Not a lot, though, because she only tacked on an extra year.

Remi: 27:14

Well, george is sentenced to five years in prison, with the possibility of parole in two years.

Remi: 27:20

But unfortunately, barbara reveals that she may not be alive long enough to see George's release, as she has been secretly dying of cancer.

Remi: 27:29

Devastated, george skips out on bail in Chicago and faithfully stays by Barbara's side until she passes A year later. Now, a fugitive from the law, george returns home to Massachusetts to visit his parents, but the prior revelation that her son is a convicted drug dealer has not gone over well with his mother, irmine, who calls the police on George. During his visit, george is arrested and sent to the Federal Correctional Institute of Danbury, connecticut, where he is introduced to his new cellmate, diego Delgado, played by Jordi Mola. Diego is originally from Colombia and is serving out his sentence for stealing cars, but plans on being released in just nine more months. In an is serving out his sentence for stealing cars, but plans on being released in just nine more months. In an effort to reduce his sentence, george volunteers as an inmate teacher for the prison's GED program and, as an added incentive, george offers to spend half of the semester teaching his incarcerated students how to smuggle drugs, with the caveat that they will need to still graduate.

Ashley: 28:36

I'm also so glad you included this and was banking that you would, because it's one of the things I removed. But this is all true. He was assigned as a teacher in this initial group that he agreed to teach all about drug smuggling. They were a bunch of convicted pimps and in this prison it was a minimum security, so most of it was like white collar crimes ex-mafia guys who had worked their way through the system. But a lot of these guys they couldn't read and were not interested at all in schooling. And George knew that it would look good for the parole board if he could get all these people successfully through the GED program. So basically, when they told him fuck off, I don't care about US history he offered them this trade that if they listened to him and studied and passed the GED, or at least tried, then he would teach them everything he knew.

Remi: 29:23

So it plays out pretty much exactly how it did in the film. All right.

Ashley: 29:27

And in the book it says that he was extremely successful at teaching all of these cohorts and that people generally were proud of their accomplishments and rightfully so.

Remi: 29:40

Partially due to their forced proximity together, george and Diego inevitably grow close over time and soon begin plotting out a brand new drug dealing venture together for when they are released.

Remi: 29:51

One key change in this latest enhanced business model is that, rather than smuggling marijuana, they will instead be switching over to the latest drug craze sweeping the nation cocaine.

Remi: 30:03

After 16 months of imprisonment, george is finally granted parole in 1976, then immediately flies out to Cartagena, colombia, to meet back up with Diego the very same day as his release. Once in Colombia, diego introduces George to his business associate, cesar, to discuss the details of their new business arrangement. Despite some initial tension between Cesar and George, an agreement is soon reached for George to perform a trial run involving the smuggling of 15 kilos of cocaine back into the United States, stored in a hidden compartment in George's checked luggage. Despite being searched by customs on his way back into the country, george does successfully complete his task, officially launching George's business partnership with the Colombian cartel. After wisely coming to the conclusion that flying on commercial airlines with mass quantities of cocaine was far too risky, george enlists the services of an American pilot who owns his own private aircraft and agrees to make the next run for the Colombians at the modest fee of just $2 million. Originally I thought this character was Tom Cruise's character from American Made, but it is not the same person.

Ashley: 31:20

That would have just been an amazing link between these two stories, because I don't think these guys actually I'm like 99.999% positive. These guys never met or knew anything about each other, but it would have been great if they did and they were essentially doing very similar things.

Remi: 31:39

Pablo had a lot of different people doing his runs for him from what I've gathered, and George was one of many, but George may have been one of the first. After the meeting, diego asks George to pick up 50 kilos of cocaine for him at a nearby motel, while Diego deals with his hysterical girlfriend who locked herself in the bathroom. When George arrives at the motel, he is greeted by a room full of menacing Colombians who have no idea who George is and respond by sticking the barrel of a loaded gun directly down George's throat.

Ashley: 32:15

So in reality George did have to pick up these kilos for Diego, whose name is changed for the movie, but it wasn't because Diego was dealing with his distraught girlfriend, it was because he didn't get arrested trying to cross the border from Canada into the States. But like, got out of the car before his like pickup man was supposed to get him out, freaked out and just kind of ran and was off the grid for a couple weeks.

Remi: 32:40

That comes up in a second actually, so I'm glad you mentioned that because it comes into play in just a moment. It is revealed that the men have been kept waiting for nearly three weeks now for Diego to come and pick up the product, so are none too happy about George being sent to make the deal in place of Diego. After issuing a warning, the Colombians hurl George two full duffel bags stuffed with cocaine and say that he has one week to return with the cash. And say that he has one week to return with the cash. One specific condition of George's parole is that he must live with his parents after his release. So, following George's tense interaction with the Columbians, george returns home to Boston where he eagerly awaits Diego's phone call. Unfortunately, diego is delayed after being arrested back in Colombia, leaving George with an ungodly amount of cocaine, along with a fast-approaching week-long deadline from the Colombians to boot.

Ashley: 33:38

He does end up getting arrested in Colombia, but it's a little bit later than all of this, but it's still the same. They're just trying to mush in a lot of details into a coherent story where they're still kind of including most of it.

Remi: 33:52

The movie does not say why Diego was arrested, so it is interesting to learn the other side of that story. I would assume this is that situation. They're just moving the timeline.

Ashley: 34:04

No, when he's arrested in Columbia, that's later Columbia, that's later this part he was in, actually, yeah, this part. He had been deported to Columbia after his initial arrest and release from prison and started making his way back and was in Canada and was trying to get into the States to pick up this pot and or this cocaine and freaked out as the car he was in was approaching customs and fled, and so it took him a bit to like get back into the States by foot and then make it to a place where he was safe enough to call George.

Remi: 34:40

Thinking on his feet. George flies out to Hollywood, california, three days later to meet with his old friend Derek Foreal and discuss a potential West Coast distribution arrangement.

Bobcat Goldthwait: 34:52

As Bobcat Goldthwait tests the cocaine's purity, what I'm doing here is measuring the purity. Pure coke it melts away at about 185, 190 degrees, at about a hundred and eighty, five hundred ninety degrees. Cutting agents they melt away at about a hundred. And quality product well, that's. That's melting it around 140, 130, good, 140 years, yes, 150. Fuck me running 160. Jesus Christ, 170. 180. 100. 187. Where did you get this stuff Columbia, columbia. Oh uh, Do you mind if I do a line? Yeah, go ahead.

Ashley: 35:58

This scene is also depicted in the book, with a different dealer, but the whole him testing it and realizing how pure it is and just being like holy shit.

Remi: 36:08

And I love Bobcat Goldthwait in this scene. He is a old school, 90s comic, I guess you could describe him as and he is the perfect casting for this small role.

Ashley: 36:20

Well and remember, this is the first time Colombian cocaine had been introduced really to the States. So on the West Coast, where cocaine was being used by mostly, like the Hollywood scene, the elite and crowds of that sort, they were used to cocaine but they were used to it being cut with a lot of different stuff and being a third, pure as it was, that George was bringing in.

Remi: 36:46

I don't think the movie does a good job of really explaining that cocaine was just hitting the scene at this time, like it was not a really big popular drug and this is kind of when it first began to build up interest among the public.

Ashley: 37:05

Because there was really no way to transport it in. All of the cartel's smugglers were from Colombia, so they didn't speak English and they didn't feel comfortable kind of expanding the market all across the US until people like George and other people that came after him were willing to do that for them.

Remi: 37:27

Despite Derek's initial trepidations, he still agrees to the offer and goes on to triumphantly sell out of all the cocaine in just 36 hours. That is insane. Three days later, george arrives back in Miami with $1.35 million in cash for the Colombians. Impressed with George's initiative, along with the lightning-fast turnaround he was able to pull off, george is escorted back to Medellin, colombia, for a one-on-one meeting with the man himself, pablo Escobar. Upon their arrival, george is greeted by Diego, who is naturally curious about who had helped George sell all of the cocaine so quickly.

Remi: 38:10

But George remains tight-lipped about his California connection. During George's meeting with Pablo Escobar, the two men agree on a mutually beneficial business arrangement where George will begin regularly trafficking Pablo's cocaine from Colombia into the United States. In no time at all. Cocaine's popularity spreads like a scatterbomb across America, earning George and Diego millions upon millions of dollars in illicit drug money. George even alleges that if anyone in the United States had snorted cocaine during the late 70s and early 80s, there was an 85% chance that it had originally come from George and Pablo's operation. Talk about cornering the market, geez.

Ashley: 38:57

I mean, it was huge. His takeaway was at this point approaching if it wasn't at that at least a million per week, and that's just what he was taking away, and that's a fraction of what the cartel was making. So I believe it that at this time he was responsible for a large majority of the cocaine that was in the States.

Remi: 39:21

Well, one downside to continuously raking in such an epic amount of physical cash was that, before long, george and Diego began running out of places to store their endless supply of money. Under Pablo's recommendation, george and Diego began keeping their finances in a bank located in Panama, rather than attempting to launder the money back into the States at a 40% loss. Sometime later, diego gets married and during the celebration, george is entranced by a smoking hot Colombian woman named Mirtha, played by Penelope Cruz, who also happens to be his other business associate, caesar's fiancée. That doesn't stop George, however, from making a move on Mertha, leading to an affair which inevitably breaks up her and Caesar's engagement. Mertha and George are instead married not long after, and she soon becomes pregnant, yet still refuses to kick her cocaine habit Like seriously. She's railing lines with an eight-month pregnant belly in one scene.

Remi: 40:26

It's hard to watch. When George's parents finally pay the happy couple a visit for the first time, fred and Irmine are both equally flabbergasted by the luxurious lifestyle that their son is now able to afford. Mertha gives gives Ermine a tour of their lavish mansion, while George and Fred walk the grounds outside and have a drink together. I also just want to say Myrtha and Ermine are crazy names for people. I've never heard those names in my life. Apologies if your name is Myrtha or Ermine. During their father-son reunion, fred bluntly states that he knows full well that George's fortune had not come from any sort of legal enterprise, but will continue to turn a blind eye as his son is happy. I know what you're up to.

Pee-Wee Herman: 41:17

Not everything, but I get the picture and I don't care.

Johnny Depp as George Jung: 41:23

I don't like it. It's not what I would have chosen for you.

Pee-Wee Herman: 41:29

But it's your life, it's got nothing to do with me. I couldn't stop you if I wanted to, could I? Probably not.

Ashley: 41:41

No wanted to? Could I Probably not. No, At this point in his life, George was not being discreet about his wealth, so it would be extremely obvious to anyone who knew him, especially anyone that knew he was arrested previously and sent to federal prison for trafficking large amounts of marijuana that any sort of income he was making was not through legal means.

Remi: 42:07

Denial can be an extremely powerful thing, but I respect the fact that this father saw through any thinly veiled bullshit that George was trying to pull. During this meeting, fred seems like he's a good dad in supporting his kid and knows that his kid is gonna do what he wants, despite what he says. So all he can do is love him.

Ashley: 42:30

And supporting his kid just by like being there and loving him, not by like supporting him in the way of like helping him in any way.

Remi: 42:39

Yes, there is a key difference there. He is being a loyal father the way you are supposed to be, and not in the regard that he is actually contributing to the negative things that George is doing in his life. As time rolls on, diego becomes increasingly irritated that George has still not disclosed the name of his California connection. This animosity comes to a head in a Miami Beach motel room when Diego continuously berates George during a large drug deal with several armed men. Tensions continue to rise until George is accidentally shot amidst all the hoopla, yet still manages to smooth things over and finish the deal in the end.

Remi: 43:23

After this altercation, george finally reveals to Diego that the name of his California connection is none other than Derek for real. Within a few months, diego relocates to a small island in the Bahamas where he purchases several acres of land along with a private airstrip to utilize for his own drug runs. Moving forward, turns out old Diego had always intended to cut George out of their business partnership by going directly through George's California connection for distribution as soon as the opportunity had presented itself. Infuriated by Diego's betrayal, george catches the first boat he can out to Diego's island to confront his former partner face to face you fucked me, I did not yeah you did.

Johnny Depp as George Jung: 44:15

You went behind my back, you cut me out, you fucked me, me no. Never, George Never. I talked to Derek. Well maybe you're right. Maybe I did betray you a little bit.

Remi: 44:54

George reacts by pulling a gun on Diego, which isn't loaded. So Diego's men drag George out to the beach and proceed to savagely beat him within an inch of his life. When George arrives back home that evening, broken, swollen and covered in bloody bruises, he makes a heartfelt vow to his wife Murtha, promising to quit the drug game once and for all. We then flash forward to the chaotic day when George and Martha welcomed their very first child together into the world. Though George has managed to stay out of the cocaine business, his cocaine consumption, on the other hand, has seemingly skyrocketed to over five grams a day. In fact, during his daughter's delivery, george is so coked out that he suffers from a heart attack right there in the delivery room. This event is what finally convinces George to give up drugs and alcohol for the sake of his newborn daughter.

Remi: 45:52

For the next several years, george stays clean and sober while simultaneously being a loving father to his daughter Christina, played by Itty Bitty Child actress Emma Roberts in her very first role. For George's 38th birthday party, mirtha invites a few of George's old drug partners to come and celebrate. Derek, for real, is one of the many unexpected guests in attendance that night, and the two finally bury the hatchet and make amends after Derek reveals that Diego had cut Derek out of the business too in the end. George's biggest birthday surprise, however, arrives shortly after, when the party is raided by the DEA and his daughter, christina, is placed into protective custody. During his interrogation, george agrees to sign a statement taking sole responsibility for any cocaine found on the premises in exchange for his daughter's release from custody.

Ashley: 46:48

I cut this out, but he did say when he was arrested at this time that he was the only one that knew the cocaine was going to be there and everyone else had no idea. Because he really didn't want any of his friends or acquaintances to be arrested. Because he really didn't want any of his friends or acquaintances to be arrested.

Remi: 47:03

After posting bail, george pays his parents a final visit to say goodbye before fleeing the country. Unfortunately, when George arrives back in Panama to begin cashing out his millions of dollars for his life as a fugitive, he is informed that the bank has undergone a nationalization and that all of his funds have been appropriated by the Panamanian government. This is something I had never heard of before, but is a thing. Apparently, unable to flee without his nest egg, george is forced to return home, penniless to face the consequences. To make matters worse, mirtha is callously resentful towards George due to the drastically rapid decline in her standard of living and often belittles George, with little regard for their daughter's well-being. The couple's turmoil continues to escalate until one evening when Mertha causes a scene while George and her are driving in his convertible, resulting in them being pulled over by the police and leading to George's arrest after Murtha flees from the vehicle in hysterics. Three years later, murtha visits George in prison a week before his release and coldly breaks the news that she will be divorcing him and taking full custody of their daughter Christina. Upon his release, george tries to reconnect with Christina on her way home from school one afternoon, but she is unreceptive towards her father's attempts at mending their fractured relationship, george continues to persist until Christina reluctantly agrees to allow George to walk her home from school that day. George continues to accompany his daughter to and from school every day for the remainder of the week and even discusses the possibility of regaining custody of Christina, despite George currently being unable to even afford child support.

Remi: 48:50

Desperate, broke and with few other options, george makes the fateful decision to carry out one final drug run so that he can earn enough money to move him and Christina out to California. During the deal, everything goes exactly according to plan and seems like business as usual. George and his cohorts test out the product in a dimly lit back room as George expresses excitement and optimism towards the promising new start for his life with Christina. Moments later, george is arrested yet again by the FBI and DEA in a sting operation that had been carefully orchestrated due to the cooperation of many of George's former business associates. In the end, george is sentenced to 60 years in prison as the culmination of his lifetime of crime. Time of crime. While serving out his sentence, george gets news from his lawyer, played by the film's director Ted Demme, that George's father, fred's, health has been deteriorating as of late and he will likely pass away in the near future. Unable to arrange a visit, george records his father a farewell message as his last chance to say goodbye.

Johnny Depp as George Jung: 50:01

Hello Dad. You know I remember a lifetime ago I was about three and a half feet tall, weighing all of 60 pounds, but every inch of sun, those Saturday mornings going to work with my dad and we'd climb into that big green truck. I thought that truck was the biggest truck in the universe, pop. I remember how important the job we did was. If it weren't for us, people would freeze to death, I thought you were the strongest man in the world.

Ashley: 50:46

In the book it has the entire letter that George read to his dad. It was a lot longer than this, but they really did compact a full two-page letter and recording into this scene. A lot of the beginning and end paragraphs are a lot of the exact same words, and then otherwise it just kind of squishes together a lot of the different points he made.

Remi: 51:11

Well, according to the director's commentary, the tape that George Jung records for his father during the scene is from a transcript of the tape from the real George Jung, who had recorded a tape under similar circumstances. Years later, christina finally visits her father in prison and they make amends, only for George to soon realize that it was all just a fantasy and he is still alone in the prison courtyard. Before the closing credits, we learn that at the time of this film's release, george Jung was serving out his sentence at Otisville Federal Correctional Institute until 2015,. And Christina Sunshine Jung had still not visited her father. And that is Ted Demme's blow. What do you think, ashley?

Ashley: 52:06

first, I don't like how they end with like christina hasn't visited her dad. Okay, so no one can know what it was like being the daughter of this man, except for the daughter of this man. So whether she chose to make amends with her father or not, that is a decision that is completely hers and hers alone and deserves zero judgment for whatever she chose to do. Other than that, I loved all the clips you showed. I think they did a really good job of depicting the intensity of all of these situations and all of the relationships with all of these characters, and also the time and culture that all of this was happening.

Remi: 52:37

Commenting about the ending scene with George and his daughter. When I watched this movie as a teenager, for whatever reason, this scene got to me and I would start crying, and it happened pretty consistently when I watched this movie during this scene. And this is when I watched the film as a younger man in my teens, early 20s, and then I didn't watch the film for many years, as I've said, and when I rewatched the film, the scene that had me tearing up was his message to his father, instead of the ending scene, and I don't know if that's something that comes with age, but I think when I was younger, the thought of living your life and then, at the end, having nothing really got to me.

Remi: 53:21

And this time, watching as an adult living your life and knowing you made these mistakes but knowing that people still love you, is what got to me Something along those lines, but I don't know. The father stuff got to me a lot more in this go around than it had originally.

Ashley: 53:38

If I were the director, I would have ended it there, because that really did happen. He couldn't, for different reasons, say goodbye to his dad who was dying of cancer, and there's a little note that I'll have in my portion when I talk about this. But I think of all of this whole story, that that part in the book and that scene in the movie is really the one that hits the hardest. So I think they should have just ended it there and then done a little update.

Remi: 54:04

I understand what they were trying to do, with him doing this last drug run to start a new life with his daughter and everything. But I do think that the heart of the story is between George and his father. It is tragic what happened to George and his daughter's relationship, but I really do think George and Fred's relationship is the core heart of the story.

Ashley: 54:28

And it also links back to what you said in the first paragraph, how he idolized his dad and how hard he worked to provide for his family, and it just never seemed to be enough. And that's when he kind of decided, like I'm not going to be in this situation, I'm never going to want for anything.

Remi: 54:46

It was his motivation to do all of this was his father, and I think maybe the last run was for his daughter, but from the beginning I think his father made a bigger impact on him than anyone else in his life.

Ashley: 55:02

Well, after watching it now for the first time in several years, and with this microscope, what did you think about the movie?

Remi: 55:10

I still really think this film is great. I think that this is a film that kind of went under the radar when it was released. It was not very successful. It has since gained a cult following. But I appreciate this film in a new light than I did as a young man and I think as a young man I almost thought it was cool, like what this guy was doing. He became a millionaire, he's flying around, he's got girls and drugs and guns and going to crazy places and all this shit, and as an adult I realized that those things are not things that you should be thrilled about. Basically, these are parts of a story that is a tragic tale. In the end, it's not something that you should watch this movie and be like. I want to be like George. This is a warning story, in my opinion, for people who will go to any means for success and how that can basically leave you with nothing in the end if you push it too far. But are you ready to get into some of the release info from below?

Ashley: 56:18

Yeah, let's get into it. This is always my favorite part.

Remi: 56:21

After the film's production, ted Demme and Johnny Depp both unsuccessfully campaigned for George Chung's release. During an interview, depp stated We've all investigated the possibilities of going before whomever we have to and talking to them about George. We talked to some people in the FBI. It is possible to take up arms in that fight and maybe even get some kind of good news out of it. But the amount of red tape and stacks and files and papers is unbelievable. It's staggering really. The rules and regulations and everything. It's pretty amazing.

Ashley: 56:57

No shit, johnny Depp, it's the federal government he's like. But I'm really famous and I like this guy. You sure you can't let him out.

Remi: 57:05

I think that was his logic. Yeah, I'm famous, Could you do this for me? No, All right. That was the end of his effort. According to Ted Demme, George Jung was eventually shown a finished version of the film and was shocked at just how accurately his story had been portrayed. This is something that not a lot of inmates get to do. Actually, A lot of inmates who have a film based on their life never are allowed to see it while they are in prison, so he was very lucky to be given that opportunity To promote the film. Pocket-sized rectangular mirrors were distributed during advanced screenings, but the promotional items drew criticism for appearing to promote cocaine use. At least they weren't handing out razor blades.

Remi: 57:51

Blow was released in North America on April 6, 2001 and performed below expectations at the box office. With a budget of roughly $53 million, the film went on to earn slightly under that amount at the domestic box office. With a budget of roughly $53 million, the film went on to earn slightly under that amount at the domestic box office, but did manage to bring in another $30 million internationally, ending in a total gross of around $83 million. Blow currently holds an approval rating of 55% on Rotten Tomatoes, with a critical consensus that reads with elements that seem borrowed from movies like Goodfellas and Boogie Nights. Blow has pretty much been there, done that, despite another excellent performance from Johnny Depp. It also becomes too sentimental in the end.

Ashley: 58:37

I'm really shocked it's that low. I thought this was a generally well-regarded movie. I guess it does kind of play to like the cult classic feel of it, but I had no idea that critics didn't really like this.

Remi: 58:50

I was surprised, too, by the negative critical response to this movie. I thought this was one of those films that may not have done well financially, but the critics would have still liked. But apparently not, and the too sentimental in the end thing, I don't know. I don't agree with that. One actor who wasn't praised for her performance, however, was none other than Penelope Cruz, who appeared in a total of three.

Remi: 59:16

American films in 2001,. Blow Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Vanilla Sky. Blow Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Vanilla Sky. Cruise was subsequently nominated for Worst Actress of the Year at the Golden Raspberry Awards for all three performances.

Ashley: 59:31

That's not fair. She is in her early transition to American films. She's learning the acting industry in America and probably learning to speak English and everyone is just dogging on her. And she's like good in Vanilla Sky, she's fine.

Remi: 59:50

I do think she did a better job in the Spanish version of Vanilla Sky called Open your Eyes, but I think she did fine in this movie. I think that Penelope Cruz excels at being crazy. She was crazy in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, she was crazy in this movie and I prefer her doing that sort of thing and I think she's great at that. I do think that her performance in Vanilla Sky is weaker than the Spanish version of the film but again, according to my research, she was 26, 27 when she was learning English and that is the exact same age she was when she was making all of these movies. So I think that we should cut her some slack. And worst actress, golden Raspberry fuck off. That's ridiculous.

Ashley: 1:00:37

I'm also glad she stuck with it, because the last movie we saw her in was Ferrari and she was phenomenal.

Remi: 1:00:43

Oh, she stole the show in that one. She was the best actor in that entire film. She has gotten better with age. I think she has really, really grown into her own here. And on a final, more somber note, less than a year after Blow's release, director Ted Demme collapsed and died of a heart attack while playing a celebrity basketball game on January 14, 2002. It was later revealed that cocaine had been discovered in Demme's system during an autopsy and may have been a contributing factor in his demise. And that was Ted Demme's Blow.

Ashley: 1:01:20

That is really sad. Ted Demme's Blow, that is really sad. Earlier I was going to ask you what this director had done since, and it sounds like his career was cut short.

Remi: 1:01:30

He is also the, I believe, cousin of director Jonathan Demme, but I was not too familiar with Ted Demme's other work, but I think he did a magnificent job with this film and I think it is really unfortunate that he passed away so soon after its release. I think this guy could have continued to grow as a director and continue making better and better films throughout the rest of his life, and it is very sad that this happened.

Ashley: 1:01:57

Well, with that, are you ready to hear the true story of Blow and George Jung?

Remi: 1:02:04

Oh, yes, I am.

Ashley: 1:02:20

George Jung was born in Weymouth, massachusetts, a small coastal town about 20 miles south of Boston, on August 6th 1942. His parents, fred and Ermin, met in 1930. Fred worked in the oil heating business, which provided a steady income for his family For many years. He owned three trucks and had several employees and a long list of customers. Unfortunately, he developed a gambling addiction and lost so much money at the racetrack that he had to sell off his entire fleet During World War II. He worked a defense job in a Navy shipyard and saved enough to buy a small oil truck which he used to secure a contract with an oil company in Boston. Although he maintained a comfortable lifestyle for his family, he never regained the income he was originally making, which caused stress in his marriage. Fred also had an older brother who came back from the war as a high-paying commander, secured an engineering job with the state and was very generous with his money. Irma never let Fred forget how much she respected Uncle George, even going as far as naming her only son after him.

Remi: 1:03:24

That is very interesting and 100% not in the film.

Ashley: 1:03:29

George Jung was a hyperactive, well-behaved kid. He was popular in high school, played on several sports teams and had a penance for adventure and fast driving. Despite his shiny exterior, his home life wasn't easy. Due to frequent arguments between his parents, which almost always involved finances and how Irvine longed for more. Stress mounted during his junior year when Fred had a stroke that he never fully recovered from. From then on, he worked part-time as a superintendent in a cemetery.

Ashley: 1:03:57

By his senior year, george's grades were so bad that he was at risk of not getting into college, but he remedied this and made the dean's list by the end of the year. He graduated high school in 1961 and enrolled at the University of Southern Mississippi in the fall of 1962. Despite his academic accomplishments, he was suspended before the end of the year after he and a friend got a hold of a corporate credit card and offered it to students who wanted to make long-distance phone calls at $5 a call. For the next two years he worked as a bricklayer's assistant, never feeling personally or professionally fulfilled. In the winter of 1965, the 23-year-old and his high school friend Tuna packed all their belongings and drove cross-country to see if they could make a life for themselves in sunny California.

Remi: 1:04:44

I would hate to have the nickname Tuna. I just want to throw that out there.

Ashley: 1:04:49

George took a few classes at Long Beach College, worked construction and spent his free time on the beach picking up women, since just about everyone he knew was involved in the drug business in some way, either as consumers or retailers. It wasn't long before he was using marijuana and LSD every day. On the weekends, he and Tuna traveled to Mexico. That is until Tuna disappeared during an acid trip. He didn't see his friend again until a trip home in 1970 and never learned what really happened.

Remi: 1:05:19

What he just vanished on acid one evening.

Ashley: 1:05:23

In Mexico. George said the last time he saw him he was just walking down the train tracks and then he saw him like four years later and Tuna was just like I've just been inside, scared.

Remi: 1:05:33

They left their friend in Mexico wandering down train tracks on acid and didn't like search the entire town for him, I guess yeah. Well, shit.

Ashley: 1:05:44

George dabbled in marijuana dealings shortly after he landed in California, but he started getting more into it in the fall of 1967. Realizing he needed a bigger supplier to keep up with the high demand, he became friendly with ex-Marine turned hairdresser Richard Burrill. Richard owned the first unisex hair salon in LA, was well known in the drug scene and became George's supplier. Now that George had all the weed he could ever want, he decided to go into business with Frank Shea, a high school friend who lived in a college town back in Massachusetts where weed was selling for six times more per kilo compared to what it was going for on the West Coast.

Remi: 1:06:23

This is the character Dooley in the film. I would assume.

Ashley: 1:06:26

Yeah, it definitely was. I thought that when you said his name I was like, oh, this is another character's name. They changed, but it's very clear who it's supposed to be. Shortly after George received a draft notice for the Vietnam War, With the help of his uncle, he secured a coveted spot in the California branch of the National Guard. While this theoretically should have saved him from deployment, it didn't, since it was all hands on deck for the Vietnam War. In a state of panic, George called a lawyer friend in San Francisco who instructed him to check into a hotel with five pounds of pot and wait to get busted by the police. While this sounds ill-advised, the lawyer was certain that he would be able to work his magic to get a probation deal, but the arrest would result in George being kicked out of the military, and this is exactly how it went down.

Remi: 1:07:15

So he purposefully got caught with drugs in order to avoid getting sent to Vietnam.

Ashley: 1:07:20

Yeah, he knew it would get him kicked out of the military, so he did it.

Remi: 1:07:23

Not a bad idea, I must say.

Ashley: 1:07:25

Having successfully avoided Uncle Sam's calling, george put his pot smuggling plan into action. At the time, he was dating a flight attendant for Transworld Airlines who could bring as much luggage as she wanted on each flight. This method was used until George decided he wanted to transfer more than 20 kilos per shipment, which is why he rented an RV, stuffed it with 275 pounds of pot and began making non-stop cross-country trips.

Remi: 1:07:54

Drug smuggling used to be so simple.

Ashley: 1:07:57

Yeah, just stuff it in a suitcase and be on your way.

Remi: 1:08:00

Yeah, it's insane that this is the way that things were done back then.

Ashley: 1:08:06

After the RV got involved, he was making anywhere between $5,000 to $10,000 per week for the next five to six months. While he was happy with this profit, he started to calculate how much more money he could be making if he cut out his supplier and bought the weed straight from growers in Mexico. George deduced that the easiest way to smuggle drugs into the country was via air. At this time, charter companies weren't asking too many questions, there wasn't a standardized air monitoring system and it was easy to fly below radar ranges when needed. The plan became this Fly to Mexico, load up the pot, land the plane in one of the dozen or so unpopulated dry lake beds in Southern California and drive the load back to Manhattan Beach to prepare for cross-country transportation.

Remi: 1:08:54

So they didn't even have a landing strip, they were just landing in the desert and dry lake bed.

Ashley: 1:09:01

Yeah, in spots where they knew it was a low likelihood that someone would stumble upon this.

Remi: 1:09:06

Did it mention anything about how they found their Mexican weed dealers?

Ashley: 1:09:12

I'm getting to that.

Remi: 1:09:13

Okay.

Ashley: 1:09:14

Learning to fly was the easiest part. After just one month and 30 hours of instruction, george was qualified to fly solo. What that's all it takes, I think, to just fly one of those like little planes. It would take longer if you wanted to like operate like a commercial airline.

Remi: 1:09:31

I would not feel comfortable flying a plane after that short of amount of time.

Ashley: 1:09:35

Yeah, you probably do need a little bit more training now, and rightfully so. It's a plane. By this time he had already built up a tight collection of dependable friends and associates, five or six of whom accompanied him to Puerto Vallarta in the summer of 1968. The group spoke minimal Spanish and had no idea how to go about finding a pot connection. For the first few weeks they wandered beaches, hotels and bars, chatting up strangers and leaving subtle suggestions that they wanted to talk to someone about buying marijuana. After about a month, george was introduced to Ramon Morano and his boss, sanchez. Ramon grew up in Puerto Vallarta. At a young age he started transporting large harvests of marijuana I'm talking 500 to 600 kilos down to the city from grow operations in the Hills. During the first meeting with George, sanchez agreed to front him 300 kilos to sell in the states, only taking payment after everything was sold, since George had little equity after a month of unpaid vacation.

Remi: 1:10:36

But they had known each other in some regard before this. This seems insane to front that much to someone who you really didn't know.

Ashley: 1:10:44

No, these are the people that just picked him up on the street.

Remi: 1:10:47

That is how the film makes it seem as well, and that just seems so crazy to me that someone you didn't know would trust you to go to another country and return with the money like that. But I guess it's true.

Ashley: 1:11:01

As a sign of good faith, george offered to sell an additional 100 kilos for Sanchez, with him not taking any cut at the prevailing price in the US.

Remi: 1:11:10

In the film. His sign of good faith is the price of the marijuana is originally, I believe, $60,000 and he gives them 75 as just a bonus.

Ashley: 1:11:23

Okay, yeah. So here he was, like I'll sell the 300 kilos, take my cut, I'll sell an additional 100 for you and you get 100% of it. But still they had no way of ensuring that these strangers that they picked up off the street would return.

Remi: 1:11:39

Yeah, what is to stop George from just not returning and literally keeping all of it? I understand he's trying to get a business going in this situation, but he could be just some American asshole and takes all of this pot and never returns.

Ashley: 1:11:55

Well, because he did return, a relationship was formed and George's crew moved to Puerto Vallarta after the first smuggling trip in early 1969. It only took a year for the increased stress and wealth to start negatively impacting the group. The first to go was Sanchez. One night, like Tuna, he also had a bad LSD trip, barricaded himself in George's house and started firing off random gunshots to keep police at bay.

Remi: 1:12:21

These guys should not be taking acid.

Ashley: 1:12:24

Ramon took over after his boss was checked into a psychiatric facility. After a sketchy interaction with local law enforcement, George decided it was time to set up shop elsewhere, prompting a move to another city where Ramon had connections Mazatlan. Everything went smoothly for a few months until someone spotted one of George's associates burying 300 kilos in a hole, often used to store it until his plane could pick it up. Since he hadn't thought to bribe the Mazatlan police to look the other way beforehand, George found himself in a precarious legal situation when he went to pick up the stash.

Remi: 1:13:01

I feel like he can still bribe his way out of it.

Ashley: 1:13:04

Well, he was given two options Get a lawyer and challenge the arrest in court, which could take up to three years, or buy his way out of this mess for $50,000, half of which would go to the court judge. Since George needed a few days to get the money to Mazatlan the officer, let him stay at his house in the meantime.

Remi: 1:13:22

This is not typical.

Ashley: 1:13:24

It's Mexico, man, lawless land. $25,000 was transported a few days later, but before the arrest arrived, a federal prosecutor from Mexico City turned up out of the blue and decided to make an example out of George to show President Nixon that Mexico was doing more than they were getting credit for when it came to targeting drug smuggling operations.

Remi: 1:13:47

It is also crazy to me that this was occurring during the Nixon administration.

Ashley: 1:13:52

Nixon, and then next is Reagan. So George was doing all this at a time when the presidents were really cracking down on drugs.

Remi: 1:14:01

Yeah, didn't Reagan start the war on drugs?

Ashley: 1:14:03

Oh, yes, he did. As a result, George was told he would probably need to spend about three months in prison before the prearranged deal could proceed. This stint ended up being beneficial for him in the end, since he made a new connection with ties to the Mexican mafia, Manuel Perez. After they were both released from prison a few months later, the pair became 50-50 partners. Compared to Ramon, Manuel had more access to growers, meaning George needed to find more planes and pilots to keep up with the increased demand for business. He began contracting with Cliff Guttersrud, who supplied him pilots for free and leased the planes through a Manhattan Beach dummy corporation. He used this pilot for a bit and then this is when he brought in what I was telling you about earlier stealing the planes for a bit. So that's where we are at this point in time.

Remi: 1:14:54

Okay, they didn't include any pilots in the marijuana stuff in the movie besides George and Dooley.

Ashley: 1:15:00

In September 1972, george was in Chicago to broker a deal with someone who offered him $45,000 for 600 pounds of marijuana. The plan was to transfer the stash between two limos in the basement of a Playboy club under the guise that George was a fashion photographer selling camera equipment. Little did he know, the prospective buyer tried to sell heroin to an undercover officer three weeks earlier and agreed to keep them apprised of the pot deal in exchange for consideration of a lighter sentence. That night, two DEA officers arrested George and charged him with possession with intent to distribute. Instead of answering for his crimes, he just flew back to LA to continue his operation as soon as he posted bail two days later.

Ashley: 1:15:47

A little over a year later, george returned to Boston to meet with a contact that would result in a major increase in volume to his business, netting him close to a million dollars annually.

Ashley: 1:15:59

Another plus side was this side was going to handle the transportation and distribution side in the US, meaning George just needed to oversee the Mexican end of things.

Ashley: 1:16:09

Since this meant he would be out of the country for the foreseeable future, he decided to say goodbye to the parents he hadn't seen in nearly two years In an attempt to limit his risk of being caught.

Ashley: 1:16:19

He didn't tell anyone he was coming and approached the house through the backyard. It's unclear if he noticed that his mom kept sneaking off to the back bedroom while he was catching up with his parents, but around 10 pm the agent assigned to his bail-jumping case got a phone call informing him of the fugitive's whereabouts. Now it hasn't been confirmed who tipped off the feds to George's visit. But the trooper who arrested him did say the call was not from a woman, meaning his mother probably alerted another family member, such as Uncle George, the retired US Navy commander, who then called the authorities. George accepted a plea deal in exchange for three years in prison. He ended up being sentenced to four, since he went on and on about how he didn't do anything wrong when asked if he had anything to say during his sentencing hearing and that's the video you played for us earlier, remy.

Remi: 1:17:11

Which goes about as well as you would expect.

Ashley: 1:17:14

He arrived at Danbury Federal Correctional Institution, a low-security prison in Connecticut, in April 1974. Similar to how he spent his prison time in Mexico, he got right to building connections, some of which included a fellow drug smuggler with a lucrative prison job as the warden's office clerk, a member of the Irish Mafia who controlled the kitchen, and 24-year-old Carlos Leder. Carlos arrived at Danbury about one month after George to serve a two-year sentence for car theft.

Remi: 1:17:47

This is Diego.

Ashley: 1:17:48

This is Diego. Carlos's father left Germany in the late 1920s to set up a construction business in Colombia. His parents divorced when he was four years old and he was raised by his mother, who ran a small boarding house in a poor, violent part of Medellin.

Remi: 1:18:04

So he was half German, half Colombian.

Ashley: 1:18:07

I think so. Yes, because his dad came from Germany.

Remi: 1:18:09

Okay, because the actor who portrays Diego in the film has strikingly blue eyes and at first I thought it was a white actor playing the role, but no, he is actually a Spanish actor, and that even makes more sense if he was someone who was supposed to be half German and half Colombian.

Ashley: 1:18:28

Yes, and later I'll get more into this, but he does end up making his way back to Germany years and years later because of his dad's nationality. So I'm yeah, you're right, he's half German and half Colombian. When Carlos was a teenager, his mom moved most of her children to Queens, but Carlos's oldest brother stayed behind to run a family owned car dealership, which at some point became a cover for Medellin's automotive smuggling industry, which I didn't even know was a thing.

Remi: 1:18:57

So they were like smuggling cars into America.

Ashley: 1:19:00

No, they were smuggling cars from America into Medellin, I think.

Remi: 1:19:04

Why.

Ashley: 1:19:05

I'm not really sure. I skimmed over this part in the book so I'm not really sure where things were being smuggled from. Basically, it was for money. They were getting cars cheaply and selling them at higher prices elsewhere.

Remi: 1:19:18

I'd never heard of car smuggling like this. That's fascinating to me.

Ashley: 1:19:23

So how did George and Carlos cross paths at Danbury and began making plans for their cocaine empire? I'll let George tell the story himself.

George Jung: 1:19:38

Carl Slater from Columbia. And Carl was in there for shipping, stealing cars and shipping them to South America. All right, not cocaine. But yet he asked me what am I doing here? And I told him I was flying pot out of Mexico. And he said do you know anything about cocaine? And I didn't. And he said you know, it costs $60,000 a kilo. Then the wheels in my head began to spin, like you know, at high velocity and I said you know what, I know how to get that out of there.

Remi: 1:20:21

That is the first time I have ever seen the real George Jung in action, other than the photo at the end of Blow, and first reaction looks nothing like Johnny Depp whatsoever and he looks like he's not fully with it after doing so much to his body for all those years.

Ashley: 1:20:42

He's very old in this clip and he is having significant health problems.

Remi: 1:20:47

Understandably so.

Ashley: 1:20:49

And I'll include not a photo of him when he's this old, but a younger photo on our Instagram page at Criminal Adaptations. And even in his younger years he did not resemble Johnny Depp, so I'm sure he was thrilled when he had Johnny Depp when Johnny Depp was at his peak in like heartthrobness.

Remi: 1:21:08

This was like top-level Johnny Depp times, like he was probably the coolest best he had ever been around this time. So, yeah, I'd be pretty psyched if he was playing me in a movie at that time.

Ashley: 1:21:19

I'd be pretty psyched if he was playing me in a movie at that time, by the mid-1970s, there was no Medellin cocaine cartel, but it would soon grow to become the most lucrative and deadly criminal empire in the world. Additionally, cocaine hadn't taken off yet and was primarily only used by rock stars, the wealthy and the pop art crowd. However, by 1985, the Medellin cartel netted between $40 and $50 billion per year, making it the sixth largest private enterprise in the Fortune 500, all thanks to the ruthless leader, pablo Escobar.

Remi: 1:21:54

The amount of money that drug dealers and drug cartels manage to rake in is mind-boggling to me. Managed to rake in is mind-boggling to me.

Ashley: 1:22:02

At the time of Carlos and George's meeting, the cartel really only transported cocaine to areas with large Colombian populations like Miami and New York City. What they really needed was someone with a West Coast connection, someone they could trust, with access to a reliable distribution network someone like George Jung to a reliable distribution network, someone like George Young. 32-year-old George was released on parole six months early in 1975. Since he refused to spend six months in a halfway house, he was required to live with his parents for the first 12 months of his 30-month parole period. He was miserable at home and missed the fast life, but he had few options since Carlos was going to be in prison for at least six more months and was facing deportation. In early 1976, he got the telegram he had been waiting for, in addition to a Medellin phone number. It read Weather beautiful, please come down, your friend Carlos. Since George was on parole, he decided it would be safer to send someone to Medellin in his place to meet with Carlos and his connections. He settled on his good friend and fellow marijuana trafficker, frank Shea.

Ashley: 1:23:10

Frank flew to Colombia in mid-March 1976 and was ecstatic about what he learned. Although George wanted flights to start right away, the Columbians were understandably hesitant to front an unknown white man hundreds of kilos. The next day, carlos laid out the plan George would buy 15 hard-shelled suitcases, have two couriers take them to Antigua, a Caribbean island where successful drug runs had already been achieved, and check into a hotel. Once there, carlos would replace the suitcases with identical ones that had the inner linings removed and were replaced with one kilo each, resulting in an expected net profit of $750,000. The couriers needed to be pretty tan women who weren't afraid or uneasy about what they were doing. The contents of their luggage should also resemble something someone would need for a Caribbean vacation.

Ashley: 1:24:07

The two lucky ladies who carried off the plan without a hitch were his girlfriend and her best friend. I am shocked they excluded this from the movie. After the goods landed in Boston, george delivered 10 kilos to a member of the cartel and sold the other five himself. He quickly found a dealer who replaced the five kilos with $250,000 within a week. This proved that he could handle high volumes, but he wanted a pilot who could handle much, much larger loads. In July 1976, george met Barry Kane, a lawyer whose business was in a decline, had his commercial pilot license and a plane and was more than happy to become a drug smuggler.

Remi: 1:24:47

This has to be the guy in the movie.

Ashley: 1:24:49

Perhaps he had several flyers, but this is the main one that he was working with when he was with Carlos. So if that's how it's portrayed in the movie, then it's this guy. Okay. George and Carlos met in Toronto to talk details on October 1976. The plan was for Barry to fly to a ranch outside of Medellin and take off the next day. For this first run they would be paid a total of $3 million $10,000 per kilo.

Remi: 1:25:15

This is the guy.

Ashley: 1:25:17

George would be given some cocaine to sell, but most would be delivered to other dealers working for the cartel. Barry foresaw a few potential problems. First, he did not want to land in Florida, as that was where the DEA expected drugs to be smuggled into. Instead, he proposed stopping in the Bahamas, landing in North Carolina and handing the stash off to George and Carlos, who could then transport it to Miami. The second problem involved the fuel capacity of Barry's plane. He estimated it would take $50,000 to install covert fuel expanders and other high-tech devices to ensure safe travel. Carlos wrote him a check on the spot and the group went their separate ways to get everything ready for their first run their separate ways to get everything ready for their first run.

Remi: 1:26:04

In the film, the pilot is also required to give the cartel photos and addresses of all of his family members, just in case he decided to fly off with their drugs. It's an extra incentive for him to not do that.

Ashley: 1:26:17

I omitted this, but at some point before this first run happened, carlos told George that the cartel was uneasy with having this guy fly. So he basically told Barry what you have to do is Carlos has to come in to your house, see photos of your family, and then we can do this. And Barry was like, okay.

Remi: 1:26:37

Because that's one of the most messed up things about the Medellin cartel is they would go after your family. They would go after women, children didn't matter.

Ashley: 1:26:46

Soon after, carlos' behavior became increasingly erratic and unpredictable. In addition to the check that he gave Barry bouncing, he wasn't keeping in as close of contact with George as much and even got arrested. Contact with George as much and even got arrested. After he was released he instructed George to pick up 50 kilos for him in Miami, but he got stalled trying to cross the Canadian border back to the States. Rather than becoming angry or just taking the drugs for himself, george took this as an opportunity to show the Colombians that he could unload the product on his own. He only knew one person who could sell that amount of cocaine Richard Burrill. Five days later he flew back to Miami with over $2 million. This rapid turnaround caught the cartel's attention and they urged him to move to Miami as soon as possible so they could have him transport 50 to 100,000 kilos to the West Coast each week.

Ashley: 1:27:38

In May 1977, george, carlos and Carlos' wife Jamel moved into a Miami apartment together. Two weeks after the move he started making regular trips to LA. His routine rarely changed. He flew to California, stayed at Richard's for a few days while the goods were offloaded, went back to Miami and took home his cut of $50,000. To keep up with his fast-paced lifestyle. He began using more and more of his own product and started chartering his own flights, since he was gaining too many suitcases to take on commercial ones.

Remi: 1:28:11

There's the old, notorious BIG saying never get high on your own supply.

Ashley: 1:28:16

I think the reason why he did it is he just had so much fucking money that he was just like fuck it, I need energy. He had no time to sleep. Basically, the only time he was sleeping was on the flights to and from these places.

Remi: 1:28:29

He was on a lot of flights, though. Let's be fair.

Ashley: 1:28:37

Throughout this time, Carlos badgered George for information about his elusive West Coast dealer, but George kept the identities of both men secret from the other as he was worried they would team up to get a bigger cut. He finally agreed to introduce the two by the end of July, a decision he would later regret. While George was flying coast to coast, Carlos dove headfirst into plans to create a cocaine transportation compound in the Bahamas, something he wanted to do since he learned the island didn't yet have an extradition treaty with the US. He settled on the island of Norman Cay and immediately began negotiations to purchase a large amount of acreage, which included an airstrip and hotel, under the pretenses of developing the property for tourism.

Ashley: 1:29:18

George thought the 28-year-old's obsession with building a Bahaman cocaine empire was ridiculous, but he didn't have the heart to tell him. So as Carlos grew closer to settling the land deal, George started to wonder whether he was being left out in some way from the LA-Miami transactions. Not only was he speaking to Carlos less and less, but the cocaine he was now being given was second rate, meaning Richard couldn't sell as much and certainly not at the same price he was used to. His concerns briefly abated when Barry gave word that his plane was finally ready to start. The runs of 250 kilos, that is so much cocaine. I just did the math, folks, and that's about 550 pounds of cocaine.

Remi: 1:30:02

I have no words. That's fucking crazy.

Ashley: 1:30:04

George was also calmed by the fact that at this point he had more money than he knew what to do with about $10 million in cash stored in the walls, floors, air ducts and AC units in a safe house in Massachusetts. Soon after, carlos urged George to visit Norman Kaye to see what all the excitement was about. During the trip, he talked at length about his plans to buy up all the houses to get rid of the residents, vaguely alluding to murder if anyone refused. He also seemed to think that he could just pay off the prime minister and basically do anything he wanted. It was clear to George that Carlos had changed and that the partnership and friendship was coming close to an end.

Ashley: 1:30:45

While all this was going down, george flew to New York City to drop off some cocaine to Humberto Hoyas, a relative of Carlos' wife, a close associate of Pablo Escobar and controller of a large portion of the cocaine market on the Upper East Side. Upon touching down, he was picked up by Humberto's wife, maria, and her 24-year-old sister, mirtha Calderon. Mirtha's father was a member of the Cuban army and after Castro came to power, her mother brought her two daughters to Chicago and married a man connected to the Italian mob At age 15 and 16, mirtha married a Vietnam soldier, had a daughter named Claire and moved to New York City. After the short-lived marriage failed, george and Mirtha had an immediate connection, so much so that she called off her wedding to someone George had worked with during his early days of suitcase pot smuggling.

Remi: 1:31:37

Wait. So this woman started with the Italian mob and then graduated to the Mexican cartel.

Ashley: 1:31:44

So the sister married Humberto, who was Pablo's like one of his right-hand men. So, yeah, by the end of the year the couple lived in Cape Cod and eloped in Canada. This union proved to be personally and professionally beneficial to George. Through Humberto, he was given a new wholesaler in Manhattan, which he needed, since he could no longer rely on Richard. He also still had many East Coast connections from his marijuana days. Getting his supply from Humberto meant he had to work in some capacity as a dealer, which he didn't like, since he was making less and putting himself at greater risk.

Remi: 1:32:22

When you say dealer, like street level dealer type stuff, or what level is this? I picture with this type of drug empire he would be pretty high up.

Ashley: 1:32:32

Basically, carlos was the one that was responsible getting it from Colombia into the States, which is what George wanted to do. After that it would be distributed across people within the Colombian cartel. Humberto was one of those people. He would then give the stash to George, who would then give it to low-level dealers to distribute, and then they would probably give it to lower ones. But he was still in that dealer pipeline and he wanted to be in the transportation and transportation only. That's where the money really was.

Remi: 1:33:04

And far less risk, I would assume.

Ashley: 1:33:05

Yeah, because you have to get higher and higher, higher, higher up to even get to him. Although George, like I said, desperately wanted back in the transportation side of things, carlos had a lock on that. Now, through Humberto, george learned Carlos completed his Norman Kaye plan by the end of 1977. Shortly after the new year. He had employees, a fleet of boats and a number of airplanes, one of which was being operated by his old pal Barry Kane. Wherever George went, he was bombarded with talks about Carlos, how well he was doing, how big he was getting and how much he screwed George over. He became so fed up that he went to confront his former partner, only to be told that there was only room for one drug kingpin at Norman Kaye.

Remi: 1:33:52

So this was the scene that we played a clip from.

Ashley: 1:33:56

Yes, it was that George basically went and was like we were supposed to be partners. What's happening? Yada, yada, yada, and Carlos was like sorry, not sorry, this is my empire. Now I don't know if he ended up getting assaulted.

Remi: 1:34:12

Carlos was surrounded by bodyguards that had guns, so I'm not exactly what went down on that side of things, but that scene in the movie you showed is this I just couldn't imagine being George walking up to Carlos or Diego, literally outgunned on the guy's own territory like this, like you are going into the enemy's zone and confronting him like this. It's amazing to me that he wasn't killed.

Ashley: 1:34:41

Especially because, how I read it is he was fucking pissed because Carlos wasn't only pushing him out of the transportation business, but he was stealing the men that George recruited.

Remi: 1:34:52

Even in the film George pulls a gun on him. It's not loaded. But I don't understand why Diego slash Carlos didn't kill George in this situation.

Ashley: 1:35:03

Despite his business woes, his life with Mirtha was fairly smooth and their happiness only mounted when she learned she was pregnant in January 1978. That spring George hired two new pilots and was back in the transportation business. To make up for lost income, he refused to take home anything less than $1 million per trip. Christina Sunshine Jung was born in late July 1978.

Ashley: 1:35:29

By this time George's cocaine habit was completely out of control.

Ashley: 1:35:33

He was snorting on average 5 grams per day, and sometimes up to 15. When the family was in the car to take their newborn baby home, george had a heart attack and left against medical advice as soon as he was able. On the plus side, his health scare and newfound fatherhood did prompt him to cut back on his cocaine use, but, unlike how it is depicted in the movie, it did not prompt him to stop selling and transporting cocaine. Since he now had about $3 million in cash lying around, he hired someone to transport a jet full of money to Panama City each month so it could be deposited in an offshore account. With business looking up, george decided it was finally time to meet the head honcho, pablo Escobar. In the fall of 1978, he flew to Escobar's ranch in Medellin and had a rather uneventful weekend with him. That is until Pablo shot a man in the chest right in front of George just minutes before his departing flight. After learning he was an informant and then looked at George and suggested a steakhouse for dinner.

Remi: 1:36:39

This happens in the film and it happens at the very beginning of their meeting. Pablo kills a man basically on his way up to speak with George and explains the situation to George afterwards.

Ashley: 1:36:52

I feel like it would be so much more nerve-wracking for this to happen at the beginning of your trip versus the end.

Remi: 1:36:58

I think that's why they changed it for the film. If you saw someone literally murder a man seconds before your business meeting with them, you would be terrified for the rest of the time, I assume.

Ashley: 1:37:11

I tried really, really hard to find a clip of the real George Jung talking about this. But in the several interviews where they asked him about it because it is depicted in Blow, like you said, and it is in the book that George worked with the author to write but despite that, each time they asked him he just either brushed it off or flat out said whatever happened between me and Pablo Escobar is between me and Pablo Escobar. He refused to talk about it on camera.

Remi: 1:37:41

We are really going to have to bite the bullet someday and do Narcos and a Pablo Escobar season finale. I feel like it will come eventually. It's still probably a ways off, but there is so much there, there's so much story there. It would be fascinating.

Ashley: 1:37:56

The summer of 1980 was the beginning of the end for George. Although he cut back on excess spending and put most of his income into offshore accounts, a local cop from the Capes started questioning how he could afford all those fancy cars and lavish parties, prompting him to call the Massachusetts State Police for help at the beginning of August. In response, the agency sent an undercover trooper posing as a man named Bill Smith to investigate.

Remi: 1:38:24

Yeah, Bill Smith, the most normal name in the world.

Ashley: 1:38:26

I thought that when I wrote it, I'm like wow, that is such.

Remi: 1:38:30

It's the most generic undercover name I've ever heard.

Ashley: 1:38:34

It's like so generic at the point that if you meet anyone named Bill Smith you're like there's no way that's really your name. Seriously, I've never met a Bill Smith and if I did, I would assume it's an undercover cop. The agent drove to a private beach near George's house and posted up for a few hours. Finally, george stuck his head out of the window and asked Bill if he wouldn't mind pulling in his catamaran, since it was about to be high tide. After the favor, bill got to talking with George and claimed to be at the beach alone because his wife just died. Moved by the story, george continued getting to know Bill the next day and shared his suspicions that Bill was actually a dope dealer. He didn't believe Bill when told that wasn't the case and proceeded to tell the undercover agent that he worked in the cocaine business and could make Bill a very, very wealthy man. Before long, Bill was driving George and his family on all sorts of errands and agreed to watch their house while George and Martha went on a two-month trip to Columbia. They returned on October 13, 1980, with several people Bill hadn't seen before, including Richard Burrill, who George made up with after Carlos screwed him over too. George was in high spirits and shared that he was throwing a party that night, complete with booze and a pound of cocaine.

Ashley: 1:39:53

At this time, law enforcement had a strict buy or bust policy. This meant if a police officer came across someone in possession of drugs, the only way it could be overlooked was if there was an intent to get deeper into the organization. But they would still have to buy the entire stash right then to prevent it from getting onto the streets. Since the Massachusetts Police Department didn't have enough cash for the purchase, they had no choice but to arrest George that night. The plan was for the officers surrounding the house to enter five minutes after. Bill signaled them by going outside to grab a bottle of champagne from his trunk as soon as the cocaine came into view. Although Bill did everything according to plan, no one came. He couldn't keep his anxiety at bay by 2 am, so he pulled out his gun and told everyone they were under arrest. What George and Martha laughed, thinking it was all a joke, until the rest of the agency stormed in a few seconds later.

Remi: 1:40:54

Lucky for him, it was a few seconds later. Could you imagine him just standing there for like 10-15 minutes? Could you imagine him just standing there for like?

Ashley: 1:41:01

10-15 minutes. A few months before this arrest, the government created strict minimum sentencing laws for cocaine possession, which meant George was facing 10 years without the possibility of parole. After he was bailed out, the Jung family packed a few bags and made a run for it. George stopped to say goodbye to his parents, since he knew he wasn't going to be seeing them for a while. They wished him luck but told him to never come back, since they could no longer handle the stress he was putting them through. This was the last time he ever saw them.

Ashley: 1:41:31

The Jones family changed their appearance and settled in a neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale that was well below their means. Mertha did not take well to life on the lam. Before long she was drinking heavily and smoking crack. One night she even fell asleep with a candle burning, the flame of which set fire to the curtains and burned the house down. While the family barely escaped with their lives, they lost all their belongings, including their receipts with the bank number to Georgia's Panama City account. Desperate for cash, he found another pilot and secured a trip transporting 500 kilos While in Colombia. To seal the deal, an interpreter cornered George and said he wanted him to meet some people who had their own dope to sell to, george decided it probably wouldn't be wise to cross Escobar. So he immediately told the four men who were waiting back in his hotel room. Shortly after they returned with the interpreter and chucked him off the balcony.

Ashley: 1:42:27

Back at home, george and Mirtha fought non-stop. They had a particularly violent argument driving home from a party one night, during which they were pulled over by local police. As soon as the cops approached the car, she started screaming about how George was a drug smuggler with an active warrant out of Massachusetts. Two days later George signed extradition papers. Murtha too was arrested on a fugitive warrant and extradited. In October 1981, george and Murtha were sentenced to 13 months in jail. You're probably wondering how he got just over a year when the mandatory minimum sentence for the amount of cocaine he had was 10. Well, his lawyers successfully argued that the mandatory sentencing law was constitutionally vague. So the prosecution offered a substantially reduced sentence, which meant the couple would be released after a few days with good behavior credits.

Remi: 1:43:21

That is insane.

Ashley: 1:43:22

This guy has real good lawyers.

Remi: 1:43:25

He had a lot of luck up until the very end.

Ashley: 1:43:28

A few days later George and his family returned to Fort Lauderdale where he promptly resumed cocaine smuggling. In the fall of 1983, george agreed to do a favor for a down-and-out pilot who said he had some cocaine to sell. Unfortunately for George, he was arrested again, again since the pilot was working with the police. This was the last straw for Martha. She promptly moved the children to San Francisco to start a new life and to continue a drug and alcohol treatment program that she started in jail. When five-year-old Christina asked why Daddy wasn't coming, she was told he was in a hospital and paralyzed a story developed with the help of Martha's jail caseworker, because it would be much easier to tell that to a five-year-old than have to explain who her father was.

Remi: 1:44:12

I get it. That was what the caseworker suggested.

Ashley: 1:44:16

That is the story they came up with together that he's paralyzed.

Remi: 1:44:20

That is insane. That that is a caseworker actually helped contribute to that sort of story.

Ashley: 1:44:26

But if you put yourself in Martha's shoes, she knew she wanted to get out of this lifestyle and she knew she would have to explain to her daughter why, all of a sudden, her dad was no longer there. So what are her options? He's dead, he is a cocaine kingpin and have to explain what cocaine and drugs are or some sort of other story. And that's what they told. It was a way for her to tell her daughter don't worry, daddy's alive, but he can't come with us because he physically cannot and she's five.

Remi: 1:44:59

I don't know what would be more traumatic. They all seem like really bad options.

Ashley: 1:45:03

to tell your child it's a tough situation Mirtha was in, that's for sure. Yeah, Mirtha remained on the West Coast and has lived a low-profile life. All I could really find about her is she stayed sober and became a writer and a poet. As for Christina, she learned that her dad wasn't actually a hospitalized paraplegic when she was 22 years old. So I will say Mertha should have told her daughter the truth way sooner than 22.

Remi: 1:45:32

Yeah, the teen years seems like the time you would break that sort of news to someone but 22?. Wow, she really kept up that lie.

Ashley: 1:45:40

Father and daughter briefly reconciled in 2014, but, per George during a later interview, they did not sustain any sort of relationship. By 1982, the mandatory sentencing laws had been fixed. In addition to the cocaine charge, which carried a mandatory minimum of 20 years, george was charged with interstate transportation of a weapon in connection with a felony, since a gun was found in the trunk of his car. But since George is one of the luckiest men on the planet, the seized kilo of cocaine somehow went missing from the evidence storage locker.

Remi: 1:46:15

George has a guardian angel looking over him. That is what are the?

Ashley: 1:46:20

odds. That's why I don't really feel that bad for him, because he had so many opportunities to stop and he just didn't. As a result, george's lawyer threatened to call to the witness stand every single officer who had access to the cocaine to get to the bottom of what happened. Knowing that this would be a PR nightmare, the prosecution agreed to a compromise George would serve a little over three years, two of which would be at a minimum security camp, with the 18 months for the gun charge running concurrently. This was more than acceptable for George, as he decided he would try to escape the camp as soon as he got there.

Remi: 1:46:58

Just do the time, george, come on.

Ashley: 1:47:02

So why did he want to escape? Contrary to what the movie would have you believe, it wasn't because he wanted to see his sweet, sweet baby girl. It was because he was worried about his money in Panama, which he estimated to be around $68 million. So the plan was to do one more drug run, get enough money together to get down to Panama and list the help of whoever he needed, withdraw his fortune and retire somewhere abroad. George was at the minimum camp for six months before he just walked out of the unfenced yard on the night of February 13th 1985.

Remi: 1:47:40

Unfenced yard.

Ashley: 1:47:42

I'm not sure if they still have completely unfenced places, but yeah, back in the day if you were at a very minimum security work camp, it was just basically a prison in the middle of nowhere with no fences, because they trusted that people would stay, and most did. If they made it to that point, he only had a year and a half, and that's if he didn't get any sort of good behavior credit. So it would have been more for these people that make it this far. It's more hassle to run off than it is to just stick at this. Really, really, really easy, easy prison to do your time. You have so much freedom.

Remi: 1:48:21

Why did he think that he needed to get to his money so urgently?

Ashley: 1:48:25

That's not really explained.

Remi: 1:48:27

It seems like he could have done his time and then gone to Panama and gotten his money and been hunky dory.

Ashley: 1:48:34

My theory is dating back to early childhood. George is a man who is addicted to adrenaline and adventure and the thrill of it. And yeah, it would have been easy. He could have just sat there, gotten released, even if he was on parole, done the two to four years and then tried to find his money. But I think he was just so I don't want to say greedy, but like just so concerned with keeping up this persona that he had made for himself, and I do think he was addicted to the adrenaline that all of this gave him. Right away he called Humberto to line up the kilos for one last trip and learned everything should be ready in about two months.

Ashley: 1:49:21

In March, one month after his prison escape, a man by the name of Dale was released. George met Dale in prison and they struck up a friendship as they both lived in Fort Lauderdale and were involved in drug smuggling. Dale told him he could help George get access to planes and a landing field. As soon as he was released he introduced George to Leon Harbuck. Within a few weeks of meeting Leon, he called to say he found a couple of guys in the transportation business who seemed to have everything George needed. George agreed to meet Tom and Greg, along with whoever would be flying the load. At first George was a little uneasy, probably because the last two times he tried to work with people he didn't know resulted in prompt arrests. But his nerves dissipated as soon as he saw the pilot, cliff Guttersrud, the same pilot who flew marijuana for him and lived with him in Puerto Vallarta what felt like a lifetime ago.

Remi: 1:50:19

In the film it is his friend Dooley to what felt like a lifetime ago.

Ashley: 1:50:22

In the film it is his friend Dooley. Oh, so it would have been Barry. I see why they did that, because George had so many pilots. These were definitely the two that were the most prominent, because Cliff was kind of the first one and that was with him during the marijuana smuggling and Barry was the most prominent one during the cocaine smuggling.

Remi: 1:50:39

Dooley is the one that he did his very first drug run flight in the movie with. So it's like a full circle thing where it's the person he did his first one with it's also for the cocaine right. Yes, no, it was the marijuana in the movie is what they started off with.

Ashley: 1:50:56

Okay, then that is who this person is.

Remi: 1:50:59

Oh, okay.

Ashley: 1:51:00

It's one of his first. It's his first pilot.

Remi: 1:51:02

This guy was not a pilot. It was his friend that knew how to fly a plane, basically, but they may have combined this character with a pilot.

Ashley: 1:51:11

Gotcha okay. So yes, in real life George was flying for himself for a few trips and then he wanted someone who could fly a bigger plane with more experience and had access to more planes and pilots so he could make these trips more frequently. And that guy was Cliff. Okay, so it still really was the first pilot that George had, and one that had nothing to do with cocaine and they hadn't spoken in years and years and years. So it was just it was coming full circle for him.

Remi: 1:51:39

And it was happenstance in the film as well. He was not expecting to see his for him. And it was happenstance in the film as well he was not expecting to see his old friend.

Ashley: 1:51:44

And that is true. He was shocked to see Cliff. So how did this all come to be? Was it happenstance or was something else in play? Well, ronald Reagan's war on drugs was in full force by the spring of 1985, but the DEA hadn't put a dent in the cartel cocaine business. Most drug busts involved marijuana or teeny, tiny amounts of cocaine, at most a few kilos. This changed when a low-level dealer who made extra money cooperating with the police told two Fort Lauderdale police agents that he knew about an older man in the Everglades with ties to Columbia looking for some guys to help him transport a large amount of cocaine into the States. The informant introduced agents Tom and Greg to Leon Harbuck a few days later.

Ashley: 1:52:32

While deciding how to get involved, the agents realized their lack of resources was a potential problem. The Fort Lauderdale PD had acquired a few boats and some flashy cars from Drug Bus, but they didn't have any airplanes, much less the level of one they would need to pull off an undercover cocaine heist. So they put in a call to Mike McGannis at the local DEA office. As a DEA agent, mcmanus had access to a lot more resources, the most important of which were airplanes and pilots. Many of the pilots were doing penance for a bust or had done their prison time and were earning a living working on undercover stings. One of these pilots was George's former friend, cliff Guttersrud.

Ashley: 1:53:19

The three agents started to plan out a controlled delivery. Tom and George would pose as smugglers, organize the airlift and have the drugs flown in by their own pilot. Once everything landed in Fort Lauderdale, they would transport the load to a safe house guarded by hidden police. Their hope was to get a glimpse into how the Colombian cocaine cartel operated and penetrate the network by meeting with members living in Miami. Flashback to the meeting with George Although he kept it to himself that he recognized Cliff, cliff told the agents all about who George was. This could have posed a potential problem, since the DEA had a strict policy that whenever an agent ran across someone wanted by another jurisdiction, that person had to be arrested right away unless the jurisdiction signed off on keeping the fugitive free for the duration of the sting.

Ashley: 1:54:12

While the Massachusetts State Police were willing to go along with the plan, the Bureau of Prisons weren't too keen on keeping an escaped fugitive on the streets. They ultimately agreed to do so as long as the Fort Lauderdale Police Department kept close tabs on him. To do this, they decided to move everyone into a recently seized $750,000 yacht, under the guise that it belonged to Tom's dad. This worked for a while until Cliff brought home a woman who recognized the boat as the exact same one seized from her former husband. Meaning George had to be relocated to a hotel to protect their cover. What luck he just brings home this. Like rando, he met at a bar and she's like this is my ex-husband's yacht.

Remi: 1:55:00

Seriously, what are the odds? Husband's yacht.

Ashley: 1:55:01

Seriously, what are the odds? After three and a half months of planning, the plane took off on May 25th 1985 and returned a little after midnight. After that it was taken to the safe house to begin dealing with the transfer to the Columbians. However, these negotiations didn't go as planned, since the dealers couldn't come up with the full $1.2 million without being fronted some kilos to sell first. Since the DEA was afraid to risk losing the trail and allowing the cocaine to disappear at people's noses, they elected to arrest George. At 9am the next morning, three to four hundred kilos of cocaine were seized, making it the largest cocaine bust in the department's history. At the time, george was charged with two counts of importing and possession of cocaine with intent to distribute and two counts of conspiring with others to import and distribute. Each count held a possibility of 15 years in prison. His lawyer's defense strategy was to muddy the waters for the prosecution by stressing that George couldn't have pulled off the transport without the help of law enforcement, since he had just escaped prison and didn't have easy access to the resources he would need. The police got him the plane and the pilot, and they came very close to committing crimes themselves. The goal was to convince the prosecutor that this would be a long and expensive case to win. He succeeded in getting a deal that involved George pleading guilty to only one charge in exchange for a 15-year sentence. George was ready to sign the plea agreement until he learned the name of one man.

Ashley: 1:56:38

Two FBI agents were searching for Carlos Leder. Norman Kaye had become too hot for Carlos in the early 1980s, prompting him to return to Colombia, where he bought a ranch and built a resort. While there, he founded a paramilitary group whose focus was to retaliate against the kidnappings of cartel members and their families by militia groups, a cause he was interested in, since he was kidnapped for ransom and escaped after being shot in the leg. Shortly after he returned to Colombia, he also organized the Movimento Latino Nacional, a party that used Colombian nationalism as a guise for rallying against extraditing drug traffickers to the US. The FBI began gathering evidence about Carlos' activities and drug operation in the Bahamas in the late 1970s. In January 1981, he and 13 co-conspirators were indicted on a total of 39 counts for cocaine smuggling and tax evasion. Although the Colombian government signed arrest papers in September 1983, carlos was in hiding and couldn't be located.

Ashley: 1:57:46

George secretly met with the DEA every day for close to two weeks in 1986 and told them everything about his relationship and dealings with Carlos. After that, the focus of the meeting switched to discussing how George could be utilized to help capture his nemesis. To discussing how George could be utilized to help capture his nemesis. The initial plan was for George to fly to Colombia, make amends and trick Carlos into purchasing missiles that he would want to use for his paramilitary group. The problem was that it was no secret that George had been arrested, so the police would have to stage a fake escape attempt, something the FBI was not willing to go along with. In the end, this didn't matter, as Carlos was arrested on February 4th 1987 and became the first high-level drug trafficker extradited to the US.

Ashley: 1:58:36

The prevailing theory for how he was apprehended involved the cartel or Pablo Escobar himself providing a tip about his whereabouts. Since he had become quite a nuisance, George initially refused to testify against Carlos in open court. Helping catch him was one thing, but being labeled a rat was something else entirely. His mind changed in the spring of 1987 when he read an article in the Miami Herald that included a letter Carlos wrote to Vice President George Bush. In the letter, carlos said he would turn in everyone in his criminal network, which included hundreds of Colombians, and tell the government everything they wanted to know about Pablo Escobar. In return, he wanted to be released and promised to leave the country and never smuggle drugs again.

Remi: 1:59:23

He would not be alive for very long after his release.

Ashley: 1:59:27

Also, what a desperate, desperate attempt. I don't know how the Miami Herald got hold of this letter and published it. I'm very, very, very surprised they did. But yeah, I mean he was clearly desperate and was like what can I do? Maybe write the friggin vice president of the United States? I mean, why not? After reading this desperate attempt for freedom, george called Murtha, instructed her to use Humberto to get a message to Escobar about Carlos's letter and asked for permission to testify against him. Two days later George got Escobar's response.

Remi: 2:00:02

Fuck him Two days later George got Escobar's response. Fuck him, wow. He asked Pablo Escobar if he could testify against someone. That is nuts.

Ashley: 2:00:19

I mean, like you had just said, I think he was worried about if I do anything to piss off the all-powerful Medellin cartel. What's going to happen if I find myself in a prison where there's another member in here and I did something to piss off Pablo Escobar? If there's anyone in the world you didn't want to piss off, pablo Escobar is on the top of that list.

Remi: 2:00:36

I'm just surprised that Pablo Escobar responded at all, let alone give him permission to cooperate with the police.

Ashley: 2:00:44

I mean he responded not directly to George, but through this transportation line that George had, because Humberto was, you know, one of his right-hand mans and because the prevailing theory is that Escobar and the cartel are the one that turned Carlos in. And then Carlos is now saying let me free and I'll tell you everything you want to know about every single person in this cartel, including the head, honcho himself. I'm not really surprised that he was like bury him.

Remi: 2:01:13

During George and Pablo's only meeting. In the film it is made clear that Pablo does not trust Carlos slash Diego because he just doesn't find him reliable. He's getting arrested for random things and, yeah, he does not trust Carlos from day one.

Ashley: 2:01:32

So I think that's why Pablo gave him the go ahead, because he probably really, really, really respected George by even going through the rigmarole to ask him for permission in the first place. Carlos' trial began in late November 1987. George was the opening witness for the prosecution. His testimony lasted several days and filled up 564 pages of court transcript. The defense strategy was to paint Carlos as a maligned and misunderstood businessman whose activities on Norman Kaye had nothing to do with cocaine and was all about making the island into a tourist resort. The defense didn't call Carlos or a single witness to the stand, which is wild because the defense basically, after it was turned to them, they didn't have any witnesses to call, so they were just like the defense rest. So this is seven months of the prosecution just laying out their case. But instead they concentrated their efforts on cross-examination to try to show the jury that everyone was lying about who Carlos really was. I imagine each cross-examination was really really long. The seven-month trial came to a close in mid-May 1988. Seven days later he was convicted on all 11 counts, of which he was charged and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole plus an additional 135 years. His sentence was reduced to 55 years after. He provided key testimony in helping convict a drug smuggler and former Panama dictator in 1992. Following his testimony, he was placed in witness protection and relocated to an undisclosed prison. He filed two failed appeals in 2005 and 2007 and was ultimately released on June 15, 2020.

Ashley: 2:03:25

He was extradited to Germany since he had citizenship there through his father. I'm not sure if he's still alive today, but according to declarations from his daughter, a primary reason for his release was a relapse in prostate cancer which was diagnosed years later. A charity in Germany agreed to pay for his treatment. All the major drug smugglers associated with George were arrested or, as was the case for Humberto, fled to Colombia In 1988, pilot Barry Kane was convicted of charges related to two drug flights he made for George and Carlos in 1977 and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Ashley: 2:04:04

Hairdresser-turned-drug kingpin Richard Baril pled guilty to cocaine distribution charges in 1989. He served two and a half years and moved to Mexico after he was released, which explains why Pee-wee Herman was unable to meet with him for the film. And if you want to learn about what happened to Pablo Escobar, you'll have to listen to our season finale in two weeks. And lastly, what about George Jung? Around Christmas 1987, he received a call from Martha and learned his father was dying of colon cancer. Although he got permission to leave prison to say goodbye, his sister said any sort of visit would not be good for their dad, since George caused the family enough heartache for one lifetime.

Remi: 2:04:46

Instead, an agent gave him a tape recorder so he could record his final goodbye.

Ashley: 2:05:02

Fred Jung died on April 26, 1988. Not long after George learned that, after the tape arrived, Fred took it out to his car where he could be alone and listened to it over and over and over. In exchange for his testimony against Carlos, George was released from prison without parole in 1989.

Remi: 2:05:24

Without parole.

Ashley: 2:05:26

Without parole. They said the testimony he gave was instrumental in convicting Carlos and that his debt to society had been paid.

Remi: 2:05:35

Wow, alright, I'm assuming something else happens then.

Ashley: 2:05:38

He returned to the Cape and got a job delivering fish to seafood restaurants with one of his former bodyguards. He re-entered the marijuana business with his former friend, ramon not long after. In 1994, he was caught importing several hundred pounds of marijuana and sentenced to 22 years in prison. He was released 20 years later, on July 2, 2014.

Remi: 2:06:07

prison. He was released 20 years later, on July 2nd 2014. So his longest stint in prison is because of a marijuana bust that he did much, much, much later in life.

Ashley: 2:06:13

Yes, so he was released from prison for the cocaine stuff in 1989. And five years later he was arrested for the marijuana.

Remi: 2:06:20

This guy does not know when to stop.

Ashley: 2:06:22

That's why I'm kind of like this is the last one. All of the other ones, it's like you could have just stopped. You could have just stopped this one. He was looking at a minimum of 20 years, a maximum of 60, and got out in four or five and then, just five years later, is arrested again.

Ashley: 2:06:42

That is insanity and just five years later, is arrested again. That is insanity. After his release in 2014, he was briefly jailed for a parole violation in 2016 and released to a halfway house in 2017. He remarried and was greeted with open arms when he returned to his hometown of Weymouth, Massachusetts. He died at the age of 78 on May 5th 2021, while receiving hospice care for liver and kidney failure. And that is the true story of Ted Demme's Blow. What do you think, Remy?

Remi: 2:07:12

I think they changed a lot and left a lot of stuff out and I think, per usual, there is a lot more to this story than they included in the film. There is a lot more to this story than they included in the film and, yeah, george is not this daughter-loving father guy who got sentenced to 60 years for one last drug run. There's a lot more to the story and he was someone who had so many opportunities to stop but just kept going Like why. I cannot understand that. I understand why the movie would change that information, because it makes the character far less sympathetic. But, yeah, I will never understand George's motivation behind just keeping this going relentlessly in the face of some very, very serious jail time and knowing that the feds are already watching you.

Ashley: 2:08:07

I just looked up the runtime for this movie and it's two hours. So I get why they had to compact a lot of things. I think the biggest deviation is obviously the entire end. They completely cut out that. He got a huge break and could have been out for the rest of his life in 1989. But what I think is that when he was released at that time he had never worked an honest job, he had never had a social security card, he had never had a checking account, he had never filed a tax return. So I think he was just like unsatisfied with earning a modest living when he knew how much he could be making from smuggling drugs, a crime that, by his account, he thought was victimless.

Remi: 2:08:52

Yes, but he could have done three years and sat on his ass for a while and then gone to Panama and cashed out $60 million and been a-OK. This guy had tons of opportunities to get out and still live a comfortable life, but kept going. I don't feel bad for him that at the very end he had exhausted all of his opportunities and ended up working a minimum wage job. As a result of it. I mean, yeah, that's what he should be doing. That's karma. It's insane. He got so many chances in the first place.

Ashley: 2:09:25

Yeah, I'm not saying I feel bad for him, I don't. He should have gotten out of the game even well before that last bust with Mirtha. He had plenty of opportunities, even before he lost the account numbers to his Panama account, to just be like. You know what I'm just going to do my parole, sit quietly and then, when I'm done, I'll take out my 10 million from my bank account and just live my life.

Remi: 2:09:50

Literally all he had to do was sit on his ass for a couple of years, and he couldn't do that.

Ashley: 2:09:56

Well, that leads us to our objection of the week. Your honor, I object, and why?

Remi: 2:10:02

is that, Mr Reed. Because it's devastating to my case. Overruled. Good call.

Ashley: 2:10:10

Remy, I'm going to let you kick this off, but before we do, a quick rundown for our viewers, our Objection of the Week is the most superfluous change that was made from the true story to the big screen, a change that was made that didn't have to be and doesn't really take away or add much to the movie. Remy, what is your pick?

Remi: 2:10:30

This one was actually kind of hard because they changed so many things and a lot of the changes drastically affected the story. So, with that in mind, the one thing that stuck out to me that I would say is the most unnecessary change. I can summarize in one word nationalism. The bank did not seize George's assets due to nationalism. Instead, george could not find his account number because his wife passed out and the number burned up in a fire because of a candle.

Ashley: 2:11:10

I will say that at some point later, while he is sitting in prison trying to decide whether to testify against Carlos or not, he did find his bank account and it was empty, but I couldn't find anything about how or why it had been emptied. I assume the government got a hold of it the United States government. That's my assumption.

Remi: 2:11:32

Even so, I think that's a big enough discrepancy in my book. So nationalism it is for me.

Ashley: 2:11:39

And I agree with you. I have a long list here, but as I was looking through it, I'm like none of these changes are something that I would say are obsolete. They're big changes that were made or omitted. Besides name changes, yeah, most'm assuming of why the names were changed here was for legality reasons. So what I am going with is when George and Martha are arrested and in the movie she flees from the car. In reality, when the police come to the door, she immediately yells he's a fugitive, he's wanted in Massachusetts, he smuggles drugs. Arrest him.

Remi: 2:12:25

This is my bad because that is what she does in the movie. That is my poor choice of wording, saying she fled from the car in hysterics. She did exit the car yelling he has cocaine, he's a drug smuggler, all of that sort of thing. So that is my bad for a poor use of the word.

Ashley: 2:12:47

Okay, then my second one was how they omitted that his father lost all of his fleet because he declared bankruptcy.

Remi: 2:12:58

He did declare bankruptcy in the movie, but there was no mention of the gambling addiction or any of that.

Ashley: 2:13:05

That's then it that they omitted that.

Remi: 2:13:08

Okay, that counts, I guess, but I'm still going with nationalism. That's my vote. Call me crazy.

Ashley: 2:13:14

Mine is weak, so you can take it.

Remi: 2:13:16

All right, nationalism wins yet again, as it always does, but that brings us to our finale portion of the podcast where we will deliver our verdict.

Narrator: 2:13:39

If the adaptation is mostly factual, but creative liberties were taken for the sake of entertainment, the film will be declared a mistrial. But if the film ultimately strays too far from the truth, then it will be condemned as guilty and sentenced to a life behind bars.

Remi: 2:13:56

Since I started things last time, I think you should start things this time, Miss Ashley think you should start things this time.

Ashley: 2:14:05

Miss Ashley, this one was pretty tough, especially because it's been stuck in my mind for weeks that I said guilty for all the money in the world, when I do still stand by my reasoning. But when I listened to it back and thought about it I'm not sure if I still agree, but that's a story for a different day. When I think about Blow and the story of George Jung, what I think happened here is the directors and writers had a lot of life to compact into a two hour movie and that translated into a lot of things being squished together and, even more so, a lot of things being omitted. This would be an easy mistrial for me if it wasn't for the end, where they just completely ignored the fact that he was released, basically with zero consequence, and then rearrested. But even with that, I think what was on the screen was a fair adaptation of this person's life experiences with cocaine smuggling. So for that I'm going to say mistrial.

Remi: 2:15:05

And I am also going with a mistrial on this one.

Remi: 2:15:10

The amount of random changes made is pretty staggering, but I think the biggest change happened when Nick Cassavetes became involved with the script.

Remi: 2:15:21

From my research, it seems that the original writer had a screenplay and, for whatever reason, they were not happy with the final act of the film, so they brought Nick Cassavetes in to change the final act.

Remi: 2:15:35

Nick Cassavetes met with George in prison and, from the interviews I read, nick Cassavetes does not like George Jung and thinks he's kind of a scumbag. But the one thing that they were able to connect on during their conversations was their daughters, and it is because of that, I think, that he altered the script to have this heartfelt daughter aspect to it, which I don't think was in the original script. I think this is something that Nick Cassavetes brought himself and, as a result, drastically changes a lot of the true events towards the end of the story and makes George a much more sympathetic character than I think he deserves to be. So because of all of that, I think that this film earns a mistrial, and it's surprising Again, I never did any of the research about the true story and all of this is new information to me and it makes me view the movie very differently, in all honesty.

Ashley: 2:16:30

And that's a really astute point that you have mentioned, because it really wasn't until you started talking about how George like fled from prison to be with his daughter that I moved from a not guilty verdict.

Remi: 2:16:45

And he stayed sober in the movie for his daughter which was not the case either and he continued to smuggle drugs basically nonstop. He never quit for his daughter's sake.

Ashley: 2:16:56

Even if that was how it was portrayed, I would still say not guilty, because even really up until that point in the movie everything was still pretty true to form, with things that I felt were changed or compacted, because I mean, this is like a 300 plus page book. You can't expect everything to be true to how it happened. Otherwise this would be a freaking five, six hour movie. So I get why they compacted characters, omitted some things just to make the movie flow. And until that point, especially especially until the very, very end, everything was still kind of following in a linear sequence. And then at that very end where things just kind of went off the rails, Okay, two mistrials.

Remi: 2:17:42

It is a agreement on both of our halves for this film, which is kind of a shame. I think a little less of this movie now, knowing the true story in all honesty, knowing the truth about George, but I kind of expected that. But what do we have coming next week, Ashley?

Ashley: 2:18:00

As we said at the beginning, this is part one of our two-part season finale about Pablo Escobar's United States cocaine smugglers and commercial airline pilot Barry Seale, who ditched his lucrative career to work for the man himself and flew a lot of cocaine into the States for Pablo Escobar.

Remi: 2:18:33

All I know about this film is it's Tom Cruise flying a plane covered in cocaine. I didn't even know the real person's name until you just said it now I didn't even know the real person's name until you just said it now.

Ashley: 2:18:51

Well, I'm really excited to see if Tom Cruise himself can save our two-part finale and get a not guilty verdict for the Medellin cocaine cartel.

Remi: 2:18:55

I'm pessimistic but hopeful.

Ashley: 2:18:58

In the meantime, please check out our Instagram and TikTok at Criminal Adaptations time. Please check out our Instagram and TikTok at criminal adaptations. Also, if you have a free moment, it would really help if you would like subscribe and review. It helps our algorithms and all that jazz.

Remi: 2:19:14

And until next time everyone court is adjourned.