Thursday, August 21, 2014

Looking For Johnny


Who is Johnny Oceans?

Mickey Munday, last of the Cocaine Cowboys reveals the terrifying truth about this enigmatic smuggler turned agent, in grammy award-winner Robin Klein's investigative documentary, Looking For Johnny, shot on location in Miami, FL.

Johnny Oceans, the hero of Pirates by Greg Cummings, is partly based on a real-life Floridian smuggler. In 2010, while big game fishing on the Kenyan coast with the author, the real Johnny Oceans revealed confidential matter about his past, some of which was incorporated into the novel. Only he and the author know what is fact and what is fiction. 

Seeking to capitalise on the abstruseness of the character, and inspired by a piece in The Flamingo Sun, filmmaker Robin Klein (who won a Grammy Award for Rock and Roll Circus) flew to Miami in June 2014 to make a short documentary, interviewing some of the people who knew Oceans. 

In the 1980s Mickey Munday helped smuggle $2 billion worth of cocaine into South Florida for the Medellin Cartel. He became famous after the release of Cocaine Cowboys (2006) directed by Billy Corben. 

In Klein's documentary Munday speaks openly about his association with the former smuggler, claiming only to have known of Johnny Oceans. "He's a ghost, and I like that. Sometimes a ghost bumps into a ghost."

But nothing is quite what it seems...