Directed by: Legs McNeil
Featuring: Frank Lucas, Mark Jacobson, Richie Roberts, Fab Five Freddy, Darius James & Michael Daly
FRANK LUCAS AND THE TRUE STORY OF ‘AMERICAN GANGSTER’
Pusherman: Frank Lucas and the True Story of “American Gangster” the most notorious drug dealer in history.
PUSHERMAN is the real-life story on Harlem kingpin Frank Lucas — the infamous Harlem drug lord who built an empire by smuggling pure heroin from Southeast Asia’s “Golden Triangle” into the U.S. inside the coffins of dead GI’s flown back from Vietnam. Mark Jacobson wrote the original story for New York Magazine on which the hit movie “American Gangster” was based. The film is produced by Legs McNeil, award-winning best-selling author and film documentarian, with extra commentary by Daily News and New York Magazine crime writer, Michael Daly.
Pusherman will reveal the spectacular story of heroin and Vietnam and the cultural phenomena known as Blaxploitation films in the 1970’s. The ending reveals the epidemic of police corruption in New York City during the 1970’s– all the subjects and stories the $255 million grossing film, “American Gangster” left out.
The Team
Legs McNeil is the guy who named a movement, and then told the true story of how that movement came to be in ‘Please Kill Me; The Uncensored Oral History of Punk’ among several other books.
Burt Kearns is an award-winning producer, director, writer, journalist and author. Vanity Fair describes him as a “show business and pop culture savant.”
For more than 25 years, Leyla Naile Turkkan has channeled public relations as a catalyst for cultural advancement and social change. – from the groundbreaking protest rap of Public Enemy, through the Beastie Boys’ watershed Tibetan Freedom Concerts to leading media strategy for artist-activists such as KRS-One and Ice Cube.
Mark Jacobson is a writer and journalist based in Brooklyn, New York. He is known for his explorations of the seamy side of urban life and for his offbeat and witty take on popular culture.
Pusherman
FRANK LUCAS AND THE TRUE STORY OF ‘AMERICAN GANGSTER’
Premieres On 5/19/25
