Billy Corben: Money, Murder, Miami (Director of "? Cowboys" and "The U")

Malice Intended
Malice Intended Members Posts: 50
edited January 2010 in Lights, Camera, Action!
My Interview with Billy Corben:

http://wp.me/pCDnm-1u0
Billy Corben: Money, Murder, Miami Pt. 1

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By Malice Intended

Filmmaker Billy Corben talks with the dizzying enthusiasm of a child prodigy whose mind processes information at light speed. It’s no surprise that his films hum along with that same sense of immediacy and kinetic energy. Such qualities have made ? Cowboys, ? Cowboys 2 and ESPN film’s The U among the most popular documentaries of recent memory. His company, Rakontur,continues in the aggressively entertaining tradition established by those works.

Planet Ill recently sat down with Mr. Corben and discussed his filmmaking style and his vision for Rakontur. His fierce loyalty to South Florida and keen understanding of the fascination the general public has with the seedy side of life was evident. He also displayed a single-minded fearlessness in the way he brings that side of South Florida to the larger public. The world of Billy Corben moves at a breathless pace. Blink and you’ll miss it.

Planet Ill: Tell us a bit about Rakontur.

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Billy Corben: Rakontur is a Miami Beach based content creation company, so far specializing in non fiction content inspired by where we are, South Florida. Pretty much all of our projects so far have reflected some particular Miami-centric characters and storylines. Almost all of them have some sort of ties to the state of Florida, where we live.

Planet Ill: So you would definitely say that the spirit of South Florida informs your work.

Billy Corben: Positively. There’s no dearth of really exciting, eccentric, crazy, wild, dangerous, sexy, cool, characters and stories that have either never been told before or that are under explored and really deserve to be out there in the public’s eye. What’s so great about the city of Miami and the stories that we tell, it’s an international city, so even though I might sound kind of provincial in terms of what I’m talking about here we have an international city that’s of interest to people all over the world, that people all over the world come to. It’s the kind of city that, you say Miami, before Michael Moore made Roger & Me nobody knew what the f**k Flint Michigan was.

For the entire interview, visit us at Planet Ill: http://wp.me/pCDnm-1u0

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  • Malice Intended
    Malice Intended Members Posts: 50
    edited January 2010
    Part 2:

    http://planetill.com/2010/01/billy-corben-money-murder-miami-pt-2/
    Billy Corben: Money Murder Miami Pt. 2

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    By Malice Intended

    Planet Ill: The Miami University football program was rejuvenated in the midst of the ? wars that were raging in the streets of Miami at the time. Do you think any of that energy influenced what was happening on the football field being that the players came from those neighborhoods?

    Billy Corben: No doubt. In terms of the community and what was going on in the streets, on the team and then specifically on the football field. First of all, you have ? wars, so you have a certain energy and a certain edginess, a certain sense of danger about the whole town that definitely affected the players. I’ll tell you this right now, they used to say that the student parking lot at the University of Miami looked like the lot at Prestige Motors, which was exactly what it sounded like: a car dealership for very high end expensive European imported cars.

    That was because a lot of the children of the ? kingpins and the ? cowboys were attending Miami University. Of course the most expensive private school in the south. So for starters, you had these kids in the families of the ? cowboys attending school along with the University of Miami football players. Of course the university of Miami football players were by and large not of the socioeconomic status that those students were because they were rolling in dough, obviously.

    A lot of these kids came from some pretty tough neighborhoods in Miami, which brings up another interesting element of your question which is the fact that the city of Miami at the time…let me put it to you this way: people always like to use the term “melting ? ” when they talk about the city of Miami. I rarely if ever refer to it as a “melting ? ”. The more appropriate metaphor is it’s like a TV dinner and sometimes the peas fall over the wall into the mash potatoes, you know what I mean? It’s a very ghettoized neighborhood.

    Come visit us at Planet Ill to read the rest: http://planetill.com/2010/01/billy-corben-money-murder-miami-pt-2/