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BLOW
INTRODUCTION
I arrived in New York City late, somewhere around 11.30pm, from Europe. With just enough jet lag
to keep my peepers wide open for one too many hours - my brain crowded with the
threat of Mr Sun's arrival, knowing that soon he'd nudge me out of my snooze and
into the world. I shut my eyes tight with the hope that he might be tardy.
Woke up the following morning - or rather, a couple of hours later - with a very
prompt Mr Sun stabbing through the black protection of my eyelids. The rotten
bastard had found me.
I pitched and tossed and turned and spun - doing my best to avoid him - until I
just couldn't take it anymore I forced the heavy lids up and open and stared the
eyeballs straight into the beastly light. I dunked my face into the pot of hot
coffee and dove out the window and thus began the day. Things to do... Up Awake
Onward. Forward.
I made my way downtown to St Mark's Place to a bookstore of the low-down, the
lowbrow, the bohemian, the subterranean-counterculture-drop-out types. My
mission - to get my paws on some fine literature suitable for... well, you'll
find out. First and foremost, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by the good doctor
himself, Dr Hunter S Thompson - a must for anyone and everyone... especially
anyone in need of a serious excursion from their four walls. Second on the list,
Tarantula by Bob Dylan - we need say nothing about him or his genius. Third,
Kerouac - anything at all by ol'Jack... On The Road being the Bible. And why not
throw in a little taste of Burroughs and Ginsberg while I'm at it.
I was taking these fine books to prison, to Otisville Federal Correctional
Institution, to be specific. I was to meet up with one George Jung, a guest of
said facility, Federal Inmate #19225-004.
The ride upstate took a coupla' few hours - I used this time to get through the
several thousand questions that swirled inside my head, destined to be received
by Mr Jung. I pondered the answers and then threw them out of the window as I
arrived at the prison.
A thick comfort of snow lay on the ground - the sun still pointed in my
direction - I found myself standing outside the fence of a bland-looking
institution with the benign fa硤e
of any Department of Motor Vehicles. And that's exactly what the place felt like
inside... that is, until the first set of steel doors. Loaded down with many
packets of filterless Camels for Federal Inmate #19225-004, the books purchased
on my earlier mission and a pocketful of change for the soda pop machine (one of
the very few luxuries allowed at visiting time), I was taken through the
congested maze of inmates and their wives, children, lawyers and guards to a
small room surrounded by reinforced glass, more steel doors, more buzzing, more
clanging, etc. Within a minute or two of waiting in my fishbowl I was introduced
to Inmate #19225-004. He stepped up with e crooked half-smile, deep squinted
eyes and the weathered, broken, damaged soul of a pirate who'd seen too many
days at sea. We greeted each other casually, if a bit warily, and within three
minutes - and from then on, he was George and it was as if we'd known each other
for a thousand years... or more.
For the next several hours we talked intensely... him doing most of it. I
listened and watched him like a hawk Spewing tale after tale, esoteric analogies,
fact after fact, each one topping the previous. He was generous, he was gentle,
he was hilarious, he was heartbreaking, he was all too human - a kind of outcast
Zen Master who'd grabbed hold of life by the short and curlies and swung it
around for all it was worth. Life, then, snuck up on him and bit him hard on the
ass.
Among the many amazing wisdoms that George so generously shared with me, there
is one in particular that haunts my thoughts constantly: 'One is the number and
two is the one'. The most frightening thought of all is that I'm pretty sure I
know what he means.
It's very rare in life that any person opens up their heart and soul to you with
unlimited access to their most profound thoughts, dreams, fears, regrets,
intimacies... even more rare when you've just met that person and, because of
the obvious predicament, it's highly unlikely that you will be spending too much
time with them in the near future. So for this and more, I owe a great debt of
gratitude to George. And also for the honour of meeting him, knowing him,
learning him and learning from him. All of this, along with the opportunity to
portray George, was made possible courtesy of Ted Demme and Nick Cassavetes, who
were the guys who had the nuts to take the bail and run with it in the first
place.
I was asked to write an introduction to a book - a book that I know nothing
about. They tell me it's a book of photographs and that these photographs were
taken on the set of Blow. I don't know how to write about that. What I do know
is, anything that happened on the set of that film only happened because of
George... so I wrote about him. And although he was the one major ingredient
that was physically missing from our set, his strength, his energy and his
spirit was omnipresent.
To the Federal Government, George Jung is nothing more that a whooper stack of
papers shoved into a filing cabinet collecting dust, another notch on their belt.
To Otisville Federal Correctional Institute, he is merely inmate #19225-004.
To his daughter Kristina, he is the father that she was never given the
possibility of knowing or loving.
To me, he is not a number, he's not a convict, and he's not a criminal. He's a
great man whose wisdom and knowledge, unfortunately, was greatly overshadowed by
the choices and mistakes he made all those years ago when he hadn't even had
time to brush himself off from the conditioning wrought upon him by his parents.
As I write these words and as you read them, George is almost definitely sitting
on his bunk in a 4 x 8 foot cell, dreaming of the day that he, too, can be
standing outside the fence of that bland-looking institution, far away from the
clanging, buzzing steel doors of the inside...a thick comfort of snow on the
ground, the sun pointed in his direction...Up. Awake. Onward. Forward.
May the wind always be at your back And the sun upon your face And the wings of
destiny to carry you aloft To dance with the stars...
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Alice in Wonderland
The Rum Diary
Rango
