Samstag, 7. Mai 2016

Reisig and Taylor Photography / Embodiment / Tupac Shakur


Artists Chris Reisig and Leeza Taylor, whose creative and life partnership spans nearly 25 years, continue their exploration of the photographic medium with each new body of work. 
Their art practice reflects the life they have forged together, their children and the friends that are adsorbed into the family. 

Like many of REISIG AND TAYLOR' collaborative projects, the physical and emotional
landscape of their own domestic space, becomes the point of departure for their artistic vision. 

In the series Naked, REISIG AND TAYLOR use lenticular photography to document a circle of family friends over the course of 10 years within their Los Angeles home. 

The subjects as well as the process engage the viewer. The portraits become a study of a youthful generation’s often irreverent, self-possessed comfort with their physical selves 
in front of a lens and their unraveling of the boundaries between privacy and publicity, intimacy and friendship. 

The images of REISIG AND TAYLOR succeed in reinterpreting the singular, handmade prints of photography’s earliest history while utilizing twenty first century technology.

They bring their mastery of traditional darkroom techniques and computer generated image making to the labor intensive, digital application of lenticular printing first developed in the 1940s. 

REISIG AND TAYLOR marry tradition with the contemporary to create images with the uncanny ability to reveal secrets hidden in plain sight. The resulting prints challenge the cutting edge while retaining a classicism that is lush and seductive.








Tupac Shakur / Musical / Story behind 96 / Outlaw






The call came in on the radio just after 11:15 p.m.: Shots had been fired near the intersection of Flamingo and Koval, with possible victims. Several vehicles had made a U-turn on Flamingo and headed west. The bicycle officer who made the call from the Maxim hotel began trailing the cars, but was too far behind to catch them. He could, however, see them turn left onto Las Vegas Boulevard.

Chris Carroll was a sergeant on the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s bike patrol unit on the Strip. The 12 officers under his command rode in pairs, but Carroll was riding solo when he got the call that night, September 7, 1996. Traffic on the Strip is always slow-moving on a Saturday evening, but it was especially thick in the aftermath of Mike Tyson’s first-round technical knockout of Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand a few hours earlier. And, now, somewhere in the midst of all those vehicles was a caravan of cars, one of them perhaps carrying the shooter.

Carroll rode north to intercept them. “I’m thinking, ‘How am I going to stop these cars?’” Carroll says. “Usually on bikes, we used whistles and things like that, or we could call for a vehicle to help us. But as I’m riding toward them, I’m thinking, ‘These guys are on the run, there’s multiple cars and I’m heading nose-to-nose with them.’”

*****

The details surrounding Tupac Shakur’s death have been recounted dozens of times in the nearly 18 years since the night he was shot in Las Vegas. Newspaper and magazine articles, books, documentaries and websites have recapped, analyzed, scrutinized and commodified the rapper and actor’s unsolved murder, ranging from sober accounts to wild-eyed conspiracy theories. There are even those who still hold onto the belief that Shakur is not really dead, with reports over the years having him living in Cuba, New Zealand, Tasmania or rural Pennsylvania.

When Shakur died six days after the shooting, at age 25, he was swiftly elevated from star to legend. In this trajectory, he joined other celebrities who died in their prime: James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain. The premise of what might have been captures the imagination; and the intensity of what was never quite lets go.

John Singleton, who directed Shakur in the 1993 movie Poetic Justice, has co-written and will direct a feature film about the controversial hip-hop star, with production scheduled for later this year, and a Tupac-inspired musical, Holler If You Hear Me, is set to open on Broadway on June 19. But even with all the attention given to Shakur’s life and death, there remains one account of the night of the shooting that has not been heard before: from the police officer who was first on the scene.

The songs of Tupac Shakur will be used as material for a new Broadway musical, scheduled to debut in the 2013-2014 season. Holler If Ya Hear Me will be co-produced by the late rapper's mother, Afeni Shakur.

"Tupac was a prophet and I want everyone to see that," director Kenny Leon told Broadway.com. Although Shakur "is not a character" in the production, his music will be used to tell a "present-day" story, written by Todd Kreidler.

Holler If Ya Hear Me reportedly centres on the story of two childhood friends, "struggling to reconcile the challenges and realities of their daily lives with their hopes, dreams and ambitions". 
It is not set in any of the places most closely associated with Shakur – New York, his birthplace; California, his longtime home; or Las Vegas, where he was murdered in 1996. Instead, Leon and Kreidler are telling the contemporary tale "of a midwestern industrial city" such as Detroit or Cleveland.
Last week, the Hollywood Walk of Fame announced that Shakur, just 25 when he died, would receive a posthumous star on the landmark LA street, honouring his career. The rapper's albums have sold more than 75m copies.

Rolling Stones / BY DANIEL KREPS November 30, 2015

Eight months after director John Singleton parted ways with the Tupac Shakur biopic – and just a month after his replacement Carl Franklin quietly stepped away from the film – producers have recruited another director to helm the long-in-the-works movie. 
Music video vet Benny Boom will now take over the project that's working with an incredibly tight deadline: If the film doesn't go into production by year's end, 2Pac's big screen music rights will revert back to the rapper's mother Afeni Shakur, The Hollywood Reporter writes.

Tupac Shakur Tupac Shakur Video Director Seeking Funds for Rapper Biopic »
"I am blessed with the opportunity of a lifetime," Boom wrote on Instagram next to a photo of the rapper. "Telling the story of this revolutionary, artist, visionary, genius, soldier! I will make him proud and uphold the legacy." The filmmaker has previously directed videos by Nicki Minaj ("Beez in the Trap"), Busta Rhymes ("Touch It"), Lil Wayne, Keyshia Cole, 50 Cent and many more, as well as the 2009 film Next Day Air.


Despite the success of Straight Outta Compton, a film that proved that a hip-hop biopic could thrive at the box office, production on the Shakur film has slowed due to creative differences and ongoing lawsuits. 
The film was originally scheduled to begin production in June with Singleton as director, but despite a finished script, the biopic was put "on hold." That was followed soon after by Singleton's loud exit.

"The reason I am not making this picture is because the people involved aren't really respectful of the legacy of Tupac Amaru Shakur," Singleton wrote in April. 
"They have no true love for 'Pac so this movie will not be made with love, and that's why my ass isn't involved! If Tupac knew what was going on he'd ride on all these fools and take it to the streets...but I won't do that. I'll just make my own project." Singleton then promised to spearhead his own 2Pac film.

Out of Time and House of Cards director Carl Franklin was then tasked with reining the Shakur biopic, but he left the project last month after a pair of producers filed a $10 million breach of contract lawsuit against the production company Morgan Creek.








                                                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                                                      

Reisig and Taylor Photography / California / Collage / Design by Andreas Penno

Reisig and Taylor Photography
Stage 8, Booth 703

Los Angeles, CA

reisigandtaylor@gmail.com
REISIGANDTAYLOR.COM

TWO THINGS REMAIN CONSTANT ABOUT REISIG AND TAYLOR PHOTOGRAPHY: AN INFATUATION WITH LIGHT, ALL KINDS OF LIGHT, THE WAY IT PLAYS OFF SURFACES, SEARS PAST OBJECTS, THROUGH FABRICS AND BOUNCES AROUND NATURE, WHETHER WE SUPPLY IT OURSELVES OR FIND IT ON SIGHT, UTILIZING, CONTROLLING AND CAPTURING LIGHT AND ITS ABSENCE, IS PHOTOGRAPHY. SECONDLY, WE HAVE A PASSION FOR OUR WORK THAT IS CONTAGIOUS AND THE SHARED EFFECT CAN BE SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OR GESTURE, OR CAPTURED MOVEMENT OF OUR SUBJECTS. CHRIS REISIG AND LEEZA TAYLOR HAVE A SUCCESSFUL PHOTOGRAPHY BUSINESS FOR TWENTY TWO YEARS NOW. WE TRAVEL AND EXPLORE AND HAVE MADE THOUSANDS OF PHOTOGRAPHS, AND NOW DIMENSION 2.4 PRESENTS US WITH AN EXPLORATION OF THE FAMILIAR IN AN UNEXPECTED VISUAL DYNAMIC. ALL ASPECTS OF THESE IMAGES AND THEIR PRODUCTION ARE IN HOUSE, LITERALLY.





Michael Miller Photography / Los Angeles / Tupac Shakur Photography / Story


Michael Miller, the famed music photographer who captured iconic photos of Eazy-E, Tupac, Snoop Dogg, NWA, and some of the most iconic Stussy advertising campaigns of the late 1980s and '90s, will 
be exhibiting West Coast Hip-Hop: A History in Pictures at FIFTY24SF Gallery in San Francisco this weekend, April 27—28. The show coincides with Miller signing copies of his new book, West Coast Hip-Hop: A History in Pictures at the gallery on Saturday, April 2
From the gallery:
FIFTY24SF Gallery, in association with Upper Playground, are pleased to announce West Coast Hip-Hop: A History in Pictures, a special two-day exhibition and book signing featuring the iconic hip-hop photos of Los Angeles photographer, Michael Miller. 
The exhibition opens Friday, April 27, 2012, followed by a special book signing of Miller’s West Coast Hip-Hop: A History in Pictures on Saturday, April 28 from 2—4pm.


Michael Miller’s photographs capture a unique era of West Coast culture, combining the emerging genres of gangster rap, skateboard culture, Los Angeles street culture, and the iconic 
personalities who help turn West Coast rap into a global phenomenon. Capturing intimate portraits of hip-hop legends 2pac, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, Cypress Hill, as well as iconic advertising 
campaigns with street fashion giant, Stussy, Michael Miller photographs hearken back to a pivotal moment in history where he took rap, surf, skate, punk, and street fashion fused into one image. 
The Los Angeles-based photographer has worked in the entertainment and music industry for over 25 years, with a portfolio of over 300 major record covers, iconic supermodels of the ‘90s, and some of the biggest names in rap and jazz.



Influenced by the techniques of Peter Lindberg, Paulo Roversi and Javier Vallhonrat, Miller has developed a unique method of cross-processing film and different chemical baths for his black and
white photographs. A graduate of UCLA with a B.A. in Film and Television, Miller moved to Paris and met top agent Rene Bosne. With Bosne’s mentorship, Miller began to shoot photographs, gradually
gaining jobs shooting models for John Casablancas’ agency. After moving to Barcelona to shoot campaigns fro Cacharel Paris, Miller returned to Los Angeles in 1988 to shoot for Herb Ritts’ agency,
Visages. Gaining recognition within the fashion industry, the music world took notice, and by the end of 1988, Miller photographed his first rapper, Arabian Prince.
For West Coast Hip-Hop: A History in Pictures at FIFTY24SF Gallery, Michael Miller will be presenting a series of his iconic early 1990?s hip-hop photographs, including numerous
photos of 2pac, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, Snoop Dogg, Warren G, as well as photos of unique historical perspectives on Los Angeles street culture. Coinciding with Miller’s exhibition, we will have famed
San Francisco musicians, Tommy Guerrero and ORB DJing the opening on Friday, April 27, 2012. On Saturday, April 28, from 2—4PM, Miller will be signing copies of his West Coast Hip-Hop: A History in Pictures at our FIFTY24SF Gallery.



Danny Clinch / Streets / Photography / Tupac Amaru Shakur

 "This is 1993," Clinch remembers. "Rolling Stone calls and gives me this photo shoot. I was told it was going to run a quarter page. It was one of my first RS assignments and in my mind I said, 'I'm going to shoot this as a Rolling Stone cover in my mind.' I was just dreaming.

"Tupac showed up and was very cool. I've done a lot of hip-hop. A lot of the musicians would come with sometimes 20 people, but at least five or six people would come to your studio and make themselves comfortable. Tupac showed up with one guy and they came up to my studio. He was really professional and he was very excited to be photographed for Rolling Stone. He understood the magnitude of that since it's not just a hip-hop magazine. It's the gold standard. He was really into it.

"At one point he was changing up his clothes so we'd have some options. I saw his tattoos and said, 'Hey, can I get a couple without your shirt on?' He said, 'Sure.' I shot a couple like that. The shoot wasn't really that long. I felt like we got it. We shot there and on the roof of my studio. Then three years later, the inevitable happened and it actually ran on the cover of Rolling Stone.

 Talking about your upcoming book, what are some of your favorite images from that?

I like the pairing of things. There’s a pairing that has Jay Z on one side and Tony Bennett on the other and why would those two be together? Because they’re both super interesting people who are owning it. There’s a new image of Tupac that I have in there—if it has been published, it hasn’t been published a bunch—so I’m excited about that. There’s some great Tom Waits [photos] in there. There are some Neil Young photos that I love.

Bruce Springsteen wrote the foreword to the book which is super exciting for me. There’s some good Springsteen photos in there as well. The way it’s broken up, it’s not only live concert stuff, it’s backstage stuff, hanging out, relationships that have taken me ten years to build that I love. Being on the road with Radiohead on the back of a ferry going over to Liberty State park are things you can’t really get unless you have spent a lot of time and invested in a lot of time in a good relationship with people so that they trust you.

How did your relationship with Radiohead start?

I met Radiohead when they first came to America with the "Creep" single. We were going to do a shoot together and they were really happy with the photos. So when they were coming to town, they would call me and we would hang out and I would shoot photos, whether it was social or I had an assignment. I think it’s important that you’re choosy about what photos you publish, that you make sure everybody’s comfortable. Some people enjoy trying to get the scandalous photos out there and putting people in compromising positions but that’s just not my style.

What would you say your style is instead?

It’s photograph as a document, on the more artistic side of things. A portrait can be really powerful but I also like to pull back and show atmosphere, capture a moment that makes it real. It’s not flashy, it’s soulful and authentic. You hear those words all the time but it feels right to me.

Recently you shot Ringo for John Varvatos. Can you talk a little about that experience?

This is my twentieth campaign with him. John is a huge lover of music. Rock 'n' roll has certainly influenced his brand. We had shot Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Green Day, Jimmy Page, Eric Carr Jr. and then KISS—where do you go from there? This year we went to the Grammys and John reconnected with Ringo. I think he was wearing something of John's and we were like, 'Man, we got to try for Ringo.’We reached out to his manager and publicist and they were onboard. We built the campaign around Ring's charity, Peace Rocks. Certainly Ringo doesn’t need the money, he wanted to be able to help support his charity and bring attention to it. He’s super psyched to be on board. He was quoted as saying that he’s always wanted to be a male model.

The cool thing about the John Varvatos stuff is that it’s one of those things that’s helped me transition into filmmaking. I’ve been making films since the early 90s like that documentary on Ben Harper, but I decided to venture into filmmaking and when I started the John Varvatos campaign. I started to bring my Bolex camera. I said to John, 'If you don’t mind, I’m just going to shoot some b-roll stuff that I can put up on my website,' and he was like, 'Yeah, sure.' It turned into now that we really think about the campaign not only from a still aspect but also from a film standpoint for me as a director.





Montag, 8. Februar 2016

Notorious B.I.G / Who killed Biggie Smallz / Case / Journalism

Published October / 2000 / Writer Jan Golab / Who killed Biggie Smallz ? 



It was L.A.’s boldest gangland killing of the decade. On March 9, 1997, Notorious B.I.G. (aka Biggie Smalls, whose legal name was Christopher Wallace) was gunned down while he was leaving a star-studded Vibe magazine party after the Soul Train Music Awards. As hundreds of revelers poured into the streets, Biggie’s caravan entourage rolled out of the parking garage of the Petersen Automotive Museum in the mid-Wilshire district. The famed gangsta rapper, a former New Jersey crack dealer, was sitting in the shotgun seat of a green Chevy Suburban. Rap mogul Sean “Puffy” Combs was riding in the vehicle ahead of him.

When the cars stopped at a traffic light, a dark Chevy Impala pulled up alongside Biggie’s ride. The driver, a black male in a suit and bow tie, rolled down his window and fired seven shots from a blue steel 9mm semi-automatic into the green SUV’s front passenger door. Four of the bullets hit their mark. Biggie, 24, was pronounced dead less than an hour later, shortly after he arrived at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

A member of LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division elite, Poole was one of the first detectives on the special Rampart task force. His work led to the arrest of officer Rafael Perez, the rogue cop whose confessions later triggered the worst scandal in LAPD history. But Poole charges that Chief Parks suppressed his early report on troubles in the Rampart Division, and that Parks and top LAPD brass refused to adequately investigate dirty cops, even when obvious clues pointed to them.

That reluctance to get to the bottom of police corruption, Poole says in his lawsuit, hampered his investigation of the Biggie Smalls murder. When he began turning up clues that pointed to involvement by David Mack, an LAPD officer and friend of Perez serving time for an armed bank robbery, he was prevented from aggressively pursuing the investigation.

Poole’s lawsuit has already made waves in Los Angeles. Days after he filed it, his attorney, Leo Terrell, presented his case at a hearing of the police commission, where he demanded Chief Parks’ resignation. Parks issued a statement denying the allegations.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, which has been conducting grand jury hearings on Rampart, called Poole in for more interviews. Prosecutors also filed court papers charging that the LAPD had intentionally hindered the criminal case against four officers in the first Rampart trial, which started last week. Echoing charges made by Poole, the court papers stated that LAPD detectives have failed to conduct thorough investigations and failed to turn over vital information to prosecutors, causing the exclusion of at least five prosecution witnesses. And in a development the DA’s office insists is unrelated, the head of its Rampart prosecution team, Dan Murphy, resigned from that post, citing health concerns.

Sources say federal authorities could seek an indictment against Perez, since the 1999 immunity deal he cut with the DA in exchange for his testimony on the Rampart scandal won’t protect him from prosecution if the FBI turns up independent evidence against him. Attorneys for Perez and Mack deny the allegations.

His superiors also kept Poole from taking a harder look at David Mack and his friend, Rafael Perez. Like Gaines, Mack and Perez were living way too well for police officers. Their player lifestyles included fancy clothes, expensive cigars, nightclubs and frequent trips to Las Vegas. Mack was later arrested in December 1997 for the armed robbery of a Los Angeles bank. Mack’s two accomplices were never caught and the $722,000 stolen from the bank has never been recovered.

Investigators suspected that Mack’s buddy Perez might have had some involvement in the crime. (Perez admitted to partying in Las Vegas with Mack after the robbery but said he knew nothing about the crime.) The ensuing LAPD task force probe led to Perez’s arrest on charges of stealing cocaine evidence in August 1998. The Rampart scandal erupted a year later when Perez cut a deal for leniency and agreed to talk.



Meanwhile, Poole and his partner at Robbery-Homicide, Fred Miller, were given the Biggie Smalls case in April 1997, shortly after they started investigating Kevin Gaines. They pursued over 250 leads and interviewed dozens of witnesses, informants and Biggie associates. They began turning up clues that pointed to David Mack. But Poole charges that he was prevented from following these leads because of the LAPD’s reluctance to examine even a known dirty cop.

Mack’s apparent ties to Suge Knight were part of the puzzle. Many of Biggie’s associates believed the rapper was killed on orders from Knight, as retaliation for the September 1996 killing of Death Row’s star rapper Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas. Knight was also wounded in that shooting, which remains unsolved. Knight had been engaged in a long-running feud with New York rap mogul Puffy Combs. More than a dozen gangsters had died in this feud, including three of Knight’s “executives,” his bodyguard Jake “The Violator” Robles as well as, it was widely believed, Tupac.

While some speculated that the murder of Biggie Smalls, who was the top rapper on Puffy’s Bad Boy label, was the Death Row clan’s payback for Tupac’s slaying, another theory held that the killing was related to the ongoing conflict between the rival Crips and Bloods gangs. Some investigators believed these alternate theories could be connected, since Knight was a Mob Piru Blood, their investigation showed, and Combs had ties to LA’s Southside Crips.

As in most gangland disputes, drugs may also have been part of the mix. A cop who worked for Death Row security but was in fact an FBI task force undercover agent reported that “Los Angeles Crips and Bloods [including some who worked for Death Row] were transporting kilos of coke to the East Coast, buying them for $18,500 in LA and selling them for $26,000 in New York.” Numerous disputes had resulted in the course of this trade.

Another informant told the LAPD that Kevin Gaines and other LAPD officers “provided security for members of Death Row Records during various criminal activities. The officers accompanied the members during drug deals and acted as lookouts and advisors. The officers monitored police frequencies, assisted in choosing locations for drug transactions and gave information on police tactics.”

Mack had come to Poole’s attention when a Death Row insider identified him and Gaines as “confidants” of Knight. (An attorney for Knight disputes that the rap mogul, now in prison for a 1992 attack on two rappers, even knew Mack.) Poole learned that Mack had grown up in the same Compton neighborhood as Knight. He often sported the same fancy red suits as Knight. After Mack was arrested for the bank robbery in December 1997, he admitted to being a Blood, like Knight. Soon more clues surfaced that pointed to him playing a role in the Biggie killing.

Some witnesses reported the shooter’s car was a dark green Impala, while some said it was a black Impala. The most reliable witness, an Inglewood cop working security for Biggie who followed the car, described it as black. David Mack owned a black Chevy Impala.

Eyewitnesses identified the shooter as a bow-tied African American dressed in the conservative style favored by Black Muslims. Mack was a Muslim, but he didn’t match the composite drawing of the shooter made by witnesses. An informant had previously told investigators that Biggie’s killer might have a Middle Eastern name, possibly Amir. Investigators noticed that the first person who visited Mack in jail following the bank robbery happened to be a man named Amir Muhammad (also known as Harry Billups). The fact that Billups/Muhammad gave a false address and false Social Security number on the visitor form heightened their suspicions about him.

So did a 20-page police computer search on Muhammad, which turned up a string of eight prior addresses, all with no forwardings. These included addresses in Las Vegas and Eugene, Ore., where Mack and Muhammad went to college. Finally, the ID photo on Muhammad’s driver’s license (which also had a wrong address) looked like a possible match to the Biggie shooter composite made from two eyewitness accounts: a medium-skinned African American man with a long, angular face.

With all these pieces in front of him, Poole felt it was imperative to at least find Amir Muhammad and interview him. His superiors disagreed. They did not want to pursue a theory that pointed to a cop, he says. The bank robbery detectives who searched Mack’s residence discovered a large stash of guns and ammunition and a black Chevy Impala, as well as what they described as “a shrine” to Tupac Shakur at his house. Poole wanted to get a search warrant to seize Mack’s car and ammunition, which had been left behind by the bank robbery investigators, but he was not allowed to.

“They told me, ‘We’re not going to get involved in that.’ Their attitude was, ‘Mack had already gone down for bank robbery. Let’s not get involved in more controversy.'”


Former LAPD Deputy Chief Steve Downing, like many current and former officers, is appalled not only by Poole’s allegations, but a growing chorus of similar complaints. A class action whistleblower lawsuit against the LAPD has now been signed by as many as 109 plaintiffs, all of them cops who claim they were punished or harassed for trying to bring attention to officer misconduct. “Anytime you have leads in a case pointing to a cop,” says Downing. “it’s even more important that it be pursued to the absolute end. And you also have to ask the question: who else is involved? Have any other officers been infected by these activities?”

Indeed, Poole thought it was important to interview Muhammad because he suspected Mack was involved in other crimes besides the bank robbery, and the detective thought Mack’s old friend might have useful information. After he went to jail, Mack had attempted to arrange the murder of a girlfriend, a bank teller who helped him plan the bank robbery but then turned on him. He also told an inmate: “I can do my eight years and the money (nearly three-quarters of a million dollars, none of which has been recovered) will be waiting for me when I get out. I’ve got somebody investing it for me.” Whatever the LAPD might learn about David Mack from Muhammad would be useful, Poole reasoned. But the department, he says, didn’t want to learn anything.

So after conducting their initial computer search for Muhammad, which turned up the string of false addresses, the LAPD task force did not continue to look for him. “Nobody at LAPD made a real effort to find Billups (Muhammad),” he complains. “They didn’t pursue him aggressively the way they should have.” Instead, police investigators pursued other theories, but only half-heartedly. “We had hundreds of clues,” says Poole, “but we were constantly diverted by stupid clues that were nothing.”

Then there was Mack’s black Impala, the stockpile of ammunition at his house and even the shrine to Tupac, discovered by robbery detectives after Mack was arrested. More clues pointed to his friend Billups/Muhammad, including Muhammad’s resemblance to the composite drawing of the shooter, the informant’s tip that the shooter had a Middle Eastern name, possibly Amir, as well as the long train of false information Muhammad left in his wake.

There were inconsistencies in the evidence in the Biggie killing, Poole admits, as well as in the stories told by witnesses. Some thought the shooter was in his 20s, while Muhammad was in his late 30s at the time of the killing. Other informants suggested the killer was a member of the Southside Crips, not someone affiliated with Knight and the Bloods, and that Biggie was killed in a dispute over money. Even the informant who said the killer might be named Amir also listed Abraham and Ashmir as other possible names.

For his part, Amir Muhammad has vehemently denied playing a role in the killing. “I’m not a murderer, I’m a mortgage broker,” he told the Los Angeles Times when he finally surfaced earlier this year. But sources say he has yet to be interviewed by police. (His attorney did not return calls to Salon.)

Poole doesn’t claim he knows who killed Biggie Smalls. But he has firm ideas about which leads should have been followed. Based on his detective work, he says, Mack and Muhammad qualified as reasonable suspects who deserved to be investigated.

Some suspects in the Biggie killing were eliminated for good reason, like having alibis. According to Poole, Mack was dropped because he was a member of the Los Angeles Police Department. And investigators stopped looking for Amir Muhammad because of his ties to Mack.

While there has been no loud public outcry to solve the crime, friends and family of Biggie Smalls have expressed frustration over the lack of progress in the case.”I’m sick to my stomach over the way this case has been handled,” Voletta Wallace, the slain rapper’s mother, told the Los Angeles Times late last year. “There is a murderer out there laughing at my family and laughing at the cops. And it makes me furious. I’ve held my tongue for months now, but I’m fed up with the police just pussyfooting around.”

Jan Golab is an award-winning freelance journalist who has been writing about the LAPD for Los Angeles and other magazines since 1982. He is the author of "The Dark Side of the Force: A True Story of Corruption and Murder in the LAPD." He is working on a book on the LAPD Rampart scandal.












Sonntag, 27. September 2015

Ronin / Robert De Niro & Jean Reno / Film / Paris

Ronin

The ronin of Japanese legend were samurai whose lords were killed. Left with no leader to dedicate their lives to, they roamed the countryside, free-lancers for hire. The same definition would apply to the rough band of killers who assemble in a Paris bistro at the beginning of John Frankenheimer's “Ronin.” They're an international crew. From America comes Sam (Robert De Niro), who the others think is ex-CIA. From France, Vincent (Jean Reno). From Russia, Gregor (Stellan Skarsgard), who may be ex-KGB and is a computer expert. From England, Spence (Sean Bean), a munitions and bomb man. And there's another American, Larry (Skipp Sudduth), who is supposed to be a great driver but is too much of a showboat, choosing as he does to replicate the Diana death chase (actually, that's just the movie's in-joke, if it's a joke at all).

The movie is essentially bereft of a plot. There's an explanation at the end, but it's arbitrary and unnecessary. “Ronin” is really about characters, locations and behavior. Consider the elaborate opening setup in which Sam, the De Niro character, reconnoiters the bistro before going in. We assume he's going to attack those inside, but actually he's only attending a meeting of all the men that has been called by an IRA paymistress named Deidre (Natascha McElhone). “Why did you go around to the back?” she asks him. “I never walk into a place I don't know how to walk out of,” says De Niro, who spends most of the rest of the movie walking into places he doesn't know how to walk out of.

Frankenheimer milks that opening for 10 minutes of pure cinema. Once De Niro gets inside, the opening is revealed as just an exercise, but in a film like this you stay in the present, and don't ask questions (like, why hold the meeting in a public place?).

The IRA has assembled these five men to get a briefcase. We never learn what is in the briefcase. It's the perfect McGuffin, as defined by Hitchcock (something everyone cares about, although it doesn't matter what it is). My guess: Inside this briefcase is the briefcase from “Pulp Fiction.” The briefcase is in the possession of “five to eight men,” Deidre tells them, and the ronin set out to track them to Cannes, Nice and other attractive locations (an obligatory encounter in an ancient Roman arena is not overlooked). Every encounter leads to a violent bloodbath and a high-speed chase, so that in the real world the headlines would be screaming about streets in flames and dozens dead--but in a thriller of course, to be dead is to be forgotten.

I enjoyed the film on two levels: for its skill and its silliness. The actors are without exception convincing in their roles, and the action makes little sense. Consider the Stellan Skarsgard character, who is always popping out his laptop computer and following the progress of chase scenes with maps and what I guess are satellite photos. Why does he do this? To affirm to himself that elsewhere something is indeed happening, I think.

The best scene is one of the quieter ones, as De Niro's character gives instructions on how a bullet is to be removed from his side. “I once removed a guy's appendix with a grapefruit spoon,” he explains, and, more urgently: “Don't take it out unless you really got it.” The scene ends with a line that De Niro, against all odds, is able to deliver so that it is funny and touching at the same time: “You think you can stitch me up on your own? If you don't mind, I'm gonna pass out.” John Frankenheimer is known as a master of intelligent thrillers (“The Manchurian Candidate” (1962), “52 Pick-Up”), and his films almost always have a great look: There is a quality in the visuals that's hard to put your finger on, but that brings a presence to the locations, making them feel like more than backdrops.

Here, with a fine cast, he does what is essentially an entertaining exercise. The movie is not really about anything; if it were, it might have really amounted to something, since it comes pretty close anyway. The screenplay credits conceal the presence of hired hand David Mamet, who reportedly wrote most of the final draft, and who gives the dialogue a deadpan, professional sound. For a little more, maybe he would have thrown in a plot.