In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, south Florida was a hotbed of smuggling, its thousands of miles of coastland making it impossible for law enforcement to police the entire area. A large percentage of the marijuana smuggled into the States came through this region, and the people responsible for bringing it in were anything but your typical drug runners. Square Grouper offers a look at some of these individuals, allowing them to tell their stories in their own words.

CRITIQUE

When you think of the drug trade in North America, images of bloodshed, death, and decadent lifestyles are likely to flit through your mind. That was the portrait filmmaker Billy Corben painted in his excellent 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys, but this take on similar subject matter is almost the flipside of that coin.

Here Corben offers a glimpse into a world in which everyone was laidback and cool, more or less just doing what they doing, not looking to bother or hurt anyone. Yes, these people were criminals, showing complete, utter disregard for the law, but there wasn’t a warlord among them. They fell somewhere between two-bit hoods peddling dime-bags and Tony Montana, the sort of people you almost never hear about in the press or “official” stories. The stories of the individuals featured here are often fascinating, and sometimes so damned bizarre they can’t be anything but true.

The movie is broken into three sections, and in each one Corben relies on either old news footage or testimony from the individuals involved--both the criminals and the law enforcement agents who hounded them. The first section is devoted to the Ethiopian Zion Optic Church (which involved neither Ethiopia nor Zion), a group of devout Christians who were patriarchal in the extreme, didn’t believe in birth control, oral sex or masturbation, and hated homosexuals with a passion. But they also loved their weed, using a verse from Genesis to fuel their argument that the use of marijuana was mandated by God.

Taking their cue form a Jamaican dealer named Keith Gordon (not the guy from Christine, Jaws 2, and Back to School), they established a huge pot farm on that island nation, one which eventually employed thousands of people and helped saved that country from economic ruin. They also turned a mansion (later owned by Rosie O’Donnell) on Miami Beach’s Star Island into a church, much to the dismay of their more conservative neighbors, who didn’t like the cloud of marijuana smoke that often hung over the neighborhood. The surviving members of the church (most of the men look like they’re members of the world’s oldest ZZ Top tribute band) are still indignant about all of this, swearing they were worshippers first and smokers second, and don’t see why they were persecuted and prosecuted (this despite the fact they allowed a 60 Minutes crew to tape them providing pot to prepubescent children).

The middle section covers a group of individuals who came to be known as the Black Tuna Gang, a bunch of (aside from the fact one of them once hawked Ginsu knives) nondescript white guys who took up smuggling to get their hands on the good stuff and make a few extra bucks. We’re talking guys who look like your dad, or your friends’ dads--the sort of guys who spend middle age getting fat and ignoring doctor’s orders to cut back on the salty foods. They had a good run for a while, but they eventually ran afoul of the DEA.

According to whose story you choose to believe, these guys either imported enough weed to make a profit of 100 million bucks or they only grossed something like a hundred grand apiece. Regardless, though, many of them eventually received jail sentences (including the longest purely pot-related sentence U.S. history) some people saw as extreme for individuals not charged with any sort of violent crime.

The final segment offers a look at Everglades City, a small fishing village of a couple hundred residents; the citizens all know one another, and most of them are related in one way or another. (As one interviewee puts it, he graduated high school with the same eleven people with whom he’d started first grade.) When it was founded, the community made ends meet through the fishing trade, but (and here’s the irony) government regulations eventually put everyone out of business. With nowhere else to turn, the people were forced to start working with the smugglers making night-drops in the Glades, fishing out bales of pot given the codename “square groupers.” Many of these individuals also ran afoul of the DEA, eventually serving a couple or three years for their offenses (although if they were fazed in any way by their incarceration, they don’t show it).

As I mentioned earlier, Square Grouper is told largely through the reminiscences of those involved. Corben never injects himself into the proceedings; if he asked any questions during filming, they’ve been edited out, leaving us with nothing but the words of those who lived these stories. That was absolutely the right way to go, as allowing these people to relate their own memories and thoughts makes real what at times seems too goofy to be true.

The middle section (which--and here’s my only real criticism of the movie--really needs its own feature, as the space it’s given here isn’t enough to do justice to the bizarre twists in its narrative) is by far the most conventional of the three, relatively speaking, playing out in a fashion closer to what you’d expect from a tale of drug runners and DEA agents. The other two, though, are just damned strange, almost like something out of a Carl Hiaasen novel. Hearing the church members relate their stories, during which they liken their persecution by the government to Christ’s persecution, makes for a hilarious experience, especially when their mercenary, duplicitous pilot enters the picture. Simply put, it’s great stuff.

The final section is equally great. To put it delicately, the insular nature of Everglades City has obviously had some effect on the local gene pool, and the terminally laidback nonchalance of the residents is inconceivable without actually witnessing it for yourself. And thanks to one particularly chatty individual, it’s now confirmed, as I’ve always suspected, that listening to Jimmy Buffet only leads to trouble.

As it turns out, the community’s descent into smuggling came after said individual heard Buffet’s “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” the lyrics of which make reference to running grass, playing on the radio one night and decided that if it was good enough for Jimmy (referred to by someone else as a “manatee-hugging sonofabitch”), it was good enough for Everglades City. (Lord only knows what would have happened to the town had “Why Don’t We Get Drunk (and Screw)” come on the radio instead.) Like the man said, you can’t make this stuff up.

THE VIDEO

Depending on the source, the quality of this disc’s 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer can vary wildly. The old news footage looks quite rough, but that’s to be expected. The interview segments, obviously shot on digital video, look much better, although there’s a slight softness (perhaps due to variations in lighting conditions) that creeps in from time to time. (Magnolia had originally announced a Blu-ray version, but this was cancelled a few weeks before the release date. I was initially upset, but now that I’ve seen the movie, I don’t think a high-def presentation would have been all that different in terms of quality.) 

THE AUDIO

The movie’s audio mix is nothing but dialogue and music (with some bleed from the latter being the only time the surrounds come into play), so there’s nothing showy about this disc’s Dolby Digital 5.1 track. The dialogue generally sounds fine, but at times it has to compete with the music, which is mixed just a little too loudly. An English Dolby Digital 2.0 track is also included; Spanish subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

The commentary by director Billy Corben and producer Lindsey Snell is a good one, giving historical background, offering more info on the participants, and covering how the movie’s structure evolved in the editing process.

Touring Ten Thousand Islands (5 minutes) is a short look at the geography of the Florida island chain.

Six deleted scenes (17 minutes) don’t really add much, although hearing some of the Ethiopian Zion Coptics discuss their arrests is good for a few extra laughs.

Scoring Square Grouper (3 minutes) is a brief chat with DJ Le Spam, who supplied the movie’s score.

Songs of Square Grouper (5 minutes) features input from Corben, Snell, DJ Le Spam, and Raiford Starke, an Everglades City resident hired to perform a couple songs written specifically for the movie.

Three music videos are also included. One is essentially the movie’s opening sequence, which is set to one of the movie’s two original songs; the second is a montage of footage from the movie set to the other of the original songs; the third is a montage of shots of the Ten Thousand Islands set to an extended selection from the movie’s score.

Closing things out is the movie’s theatrical trailer.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Corben struck gold with Cocaine Cowboys, and he’s pretty much done it again with this movie.