GO SEE SQUARE GROUPER TONIGHT

The new documentary Square Grouper charts the marijuana boom in 1970s and 80s South Florida by focusing on a triptych of smuggling operations. Salty dog slang from the dispatch days of Carl Hiaasen, the title refers to bales of grass thrown overboard by traders at risk.

Similar black market subject matter was explored by the filmmakers, Alfred Spellman and Billy Corben of Miami-based production house Rakontur, in the engrossing 2006 hit doc Cocaine Cowboys. (A fictional HBO series inspired by the film is in the works.) More recently, Rakontur drew the well-to-do ire of the University of Miami with The U, a smashing ESPN tell-all featuring players and coaches from the college’s infamous Black Bart football dynasty. (Disclosure: I went there. I like the team and doc. I do not like sports.)

Grouper‘s premiering at SXSW tonight, and we have an exclusive clip from the film’s segment on the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church. This translates, in late night Friday-speak, to vintage footage of seven-year-olds puffing huge doobs for Christ.

A deep pocketed, primarily white group of fundamentalist Christians belonging to a master church-cum-weed depot in Jamaica, the Coptics believe heartily in smoking weed day and night at their plush mansion on Star Island, the upscale neighborhood later inhabited by Shaq and Rambo. As detailed here, the Coptics’ leader was an ex jamhead who called himself Brother Louv, he of the appearance oft-associated in popular media with enlightened pederasts, and Bonnie Prince Billy. After being incorporated on the island in ’75, trouble arose when the church refused to relocate on government orders, intensifying into IRS and criminal charges following ties to pot busts weighing in the multi tons. Louv retorted: “Does the Catholic Church—St. Peter’s or whatever it is here—go out and buy three quarts of wine for next Sunday, or does it buy 100 cases?” In a 60 Minutes segment at the source of the clip, Dan Rather referred to the Coptics’ smuggling acumen as a “turpentined cat.” (The aforementioned 60 Minutes expose is available in full below: it features Rather at his most Gatsby fighting symptoms of a contact buzz, and a Coptic phone book ad awesomely preceded by one for Vans.)

A point of relevance that Square Grouper will no doubt capitalize on is that, unlike the Coptics’ decrying of homosexuality and handjobs, their belief in the legalization and benefits of pot is now shared by much of the Sunshine State.

HUNTER STEPHENSON
Click here for SXSW showings of Square Grouper, and here for general showings.