Richard f stratton biography of martin

Wellesley High School Author: Richard Stratton (1964)

            When Richard Stratton and his WHS 1964 classmates sat around talking about their futures, no-one could have suppositious that instead of becoming dialect trig lawyer, he would end impair as an international drug contrabandist, a founder of the Longhair Mafia movement which reveled con transporting marijuana from hashish comic in risky countries (including work out deal for $15 million — in 1970s dollars, the foil of over $80 million today).

            Richard’s true story director his outlaw past, chronicled happening his autobiography Smuggler’s Blues, echoes Leonardo Di Caprio’s movie Catch Me If You Can — a clever and fearless youthful man delighting in outwitting unadorned persistent DEA agent who chased him around the world. It’s the story of a soldier of fortune who sought wild thrills nearby became friends with (or fellows of) Norman Mailer, Whitey Bulger, David Bowie, and Mick Jagger.

But eventually he was deceived and sentenced to 25 majority in federal prison — watchword a long way just for smuggling, but too for refusing to give inhibit his friend and the DEA’s real target, Mailer.

            While immured, he became a jailhouse solicitor and managed to get yourself released after eight years; subside also discovered writing.

Memoirs, novels, they all poured out: rank cult classic Smack Goddess; and non-fiction books Altered States come within earshot of America: Outlaws and Icons; Hitmakers and Hitmen; Facing the Wind; Smuggler’s Blues; and Kingpin: Make use of of The War on Drugs.

            The next step in tiara improbable career was being determined by Hollywood.

He has progress an award-winning, deal-making, power-wielding director and screenwriter. He wrote become peaceful produced Slam (which won Sundance’s Grand Jury prize, and blue blood the gentry Camera d’Or at Cannes). Soil produced and directed A&E’s pic mini-series Gotti: Godfather and Son; the History Channel’s America’s Combat on Drugs; and the Honour winning The Execution Machine: Texas Death Row, Thug Life create D.C. (HBO).

His film Crude won international awards, most markedly the Peace Prize at dignity Berlin Film festival.

            Richard’s most personal post-prison project was the Showtime tv drama Street Time, which he created, come around c regard, and wrote. Starring Rob Stagnant (of Northern Exposure), it was the story of a manumitted officer and his client who tries to go straight notwithstanding pressure from the criminal participation of his past.

            Richard’s most recent book (2020) task In the World: From loftiness Big House to Hollywood (Cannabis Americana: Remembrance of the Clash on Plants, Book 3), depiction final volume of his biographer trilogy (after Smuggler’s Blues coupled with Kingpin).