The 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys is a lot like the drug itself: fast-paced, fun, and addictive. Naturally, after the film came out, ardent fans were left jonesing for more of Jon Roberts, Mickey Munday, Griselda Blanco, and the rest of the yay-smuggling crew – which led to 2008’s excellent sequel, Cocaine Cowboys II. But coke being coke, people still needed more. Now, filmmakers Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman are dropping a definitive Cocaine Cowboys Remix in 2011, along with a Cessna-load of wild, only-in-South Florida flicks. They recently stopped by the Townhouse hotel on a crisp Miami afternoon to talk about the five new projects their company, Rakontur, has slated for the new year, and how our very own Steve Lewis is involved (of course).

Limelight "Cocaine Cowboys is this micro-macro story of Jon Roberts set against the transformation of Miami. Limelight is Peter’s Gatien’s rise and fall set against the transformation of New York City. [Peter’s daughter and filmmaker] Jen Gatien had just finished working on Chelsea on the Rocks with Abel Ferrara. She’d seen Cocaine Cowboys and called us and said she wanted to help with this project. The story is fascinating and Jen was willing to…she could have just followed her dad around with a video camera. There’s a precedent for children of subjects to do that. So Alfred said we need final cut and complete editorial control, and she said fine. We interviewed Steve Lewis. Peter and Steve have some sort of beef, though they were both very coy about it in the movie. I’m sure Steve will write about it in BlackBook when the movie comes out."

Square Grouper "Square Grouper is about the bales of marijuana that washed ashore in south Florida in the 1970s. So people would be lying there sunbathing or be out fishing, and all of a sudden these big bales of marijuana would float up. It’s kind of a prequel to Cocaine Cowboys, but it’s got more of a Jimmy Buffet vibe instead of the Jan Hammer 80s vibe. Lots of earth tones, dark oranges, very red-necky. We could have dubbed it Square Grouper: Before the Colombians Came to Town, because everything is kind of mellow, just before the cocaine started coming in. The Colombians had a pipeline already. Mickey Munday, the pilot from Cocaine Cowboys , sort of tipped us off to this. He’d think he was flying in bales of marijuana from Colombia and inside there would be a kilo or two of cocaine. Free samples. He wouldn’t even know, and soon it was all cocaine."

Dawgfight "This is our backyard fighting documentary. Kimbo Slice started out fighting in Southwest Miami Dade in unsanctioned backyard fights. The guy who was his bodyguard started videotaping these fights. Imagine what Kimbo’s bodyguard looks like, but bigger than him with fists like cinder blocks, but real nice guy. But Kimbo’s management never distributed them because they didn't want people from the neighborhood competing with them. Once Kimbo started touring, the boduguard left Kimbo’s entourage and became sort of the Don King of Miami backyard fighting, promoting these unsanctioned backyard fights. They have to be seen to be believed. Just bare-knuckled raw. We followed them for a year and a half and shot four backyard fight events. And the final event when our main character goes pro and fights at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in front of thousands – from a hundred people in the backyard to thousands at the Hard Rock - that’s our big Rocky ending. It ends with the Florida commissioner of boxing lecturing all the fighters against these unsanctioned backyard fights. You can’t plan shit like this. If you wrote it no one would believe us. The reel that’s online is just from the first fight event that we went to, it’s not even a fifth of what’s in the final cut."

Cocaine Cowboys Remix "Not Cocaine Cowboys II, which is on Showtime now. The first cut of Cocaine Cowboys was four hours, so it came down to flipping coins to see what we would cut and what we would keep…until we had an epiphany: These are two completely different movies. One is about Jon Roberts and Mickey Monday and the smuggling, the other is about the murder and Griselda and the hit men. So with that premise we decided to make one sort of seminal one, Cocaine Cowboys, and if it caught on, we had the material for the sequel, which is what happened. And this remix is the stuff that ended up on the editing room floor because it didn’t quite fit. Not because it wasn’t good, but because we ran out of time. We get emails all the time from die-hard fans of the first two asking for more, so this is for those people. It’s not a director's cut, it’s a remix. There’s hours of new material. We changed picture, audio, packaging. It’s Cocaine Cowboys, the untold stories. We’re also doing a photo book with MTV Books and developing an animated series with Pharell Williams called Miami Cowboys, about a family of drug smugglers in Miami."

ESPN Project (Untitled) "We did a doc last year for ESPN as part of their 30 for 30 series called The U about University of Miami football team in the 80’s, and we got re-hired by ESPN for this new one that looks at the intersection of money and sports in the last 20 years, and the recent epidemic of big stars going broke."