Drug Cartels | Inside Miami’s Drug Wars with Hotel Cocaine | 4

0:06I'm David Brown and this is Business Wars.

0:29If you were looking to party during Miami's disco era, there was one place you had to get into. The hottest pleasure palace in Miami, no, the whole damn world, was a place that made Studio 54 look like a church picnic. The Mutiny Club. The club at Miami's Mutiny Hotel was one of the hottest spots in town in the late 70s and early 80s. And it also happened to be the epicenter of Miami's drug wars. In our three-part Wondery Plus exclusive series, Drug Cartels, we explored Columbia's underworld, where top dogs like Pablo Escobar took no prisoners in a fierce turf war for market supremacy. And now, we're taking a trip down to Coconut Grove to see the Mutiny Hotel in its heyday.

1:15That's the setting of the new MGM Plus series, Hotel Cocaine, which explores Miami's drug wars through the eyes of the Cuban exiles who built the scene in the 1970s. The show follows the Mutiny Club manager, Roman Comte, a Cuban who escaped Fidel Castro's takeover to start a new life in Miami. But when a DEA agent comes knocking at the mutiny for information on Roman's estranged brother, one of the biggest drug lords in the game, things get complicated. Today, we're joined by Chris Brancato, the creator and showrunner of Hotel Cocaine. Chris shares the real stories that inspired Hotel Cocaine and how the drug trade transformed Miami in the 20th century.

1:57Later, we'll hear from the stars of Hotel Cocaine, Danny Pino and Mark Feuerstein. Danny plays the hotel club manager, Roman Comte, and Mark plays the eccentric hotel owner, Burton Greenberg. Together, they'll take us behind the scenes of the making of Hotel Cocaine and what inspired their own performances. All that's coming up on a very special episode of Business Wars.

2:22When planning for your future, you want someone with a history of keeping their word year after year. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has been a trusted name in the industry. But that isn't just a number. It's experience that matters. It's 160 years of promises held, helping generations retire with confidence, protect their loved ones, and plan for whatever comes next. Whether you're looking for life insurance, employee benefits, or retirement income solutions, when your future is on the line, you want history on your side. And believe me, Pacific Life has been there, always there through changing times, always focused on your needs.

3:01Ready to secure your tomorrow? Ask a financial professional how Pacific Life can help you feel prepared for what's next. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona. because with Pacific Life, you're not just planning for the future, you're partnering with trusted experience. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. It's a great time to apply for an Apple Card. You'll love earning unlimited daily cash on every purchase. That includes 3 % daily cash when you buy the latest iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch at Apple. Through this special referral offer, when you get a new Apple Card, you can earn bonus daily cash.

3:43To qualify, you must apply at apple.co slash getdailycash. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch. Offer may not be available elsewhere. Terms and limitations apply.

4:03My guest is Chris Brancato, a writer and showrunner responsible for some of TV's most gripping crime dramas, like Narcos and The Godfather of Harlem, and his latest series, Hotel Cocaine on MGM Plus, explores Miami's drug wars in the late 70s. Chris, welcome to Business Wars. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. First off, congratulations on the show. It is absolutely fantastic. I know you previously wrote Narcos, which followed the cartel wars in Columbia. Now you've got a show on the Miami drug wars. What got you interested in this part of life? I've always been fascinated by crime dramas, the high stakes that are immediately involved when you're playing a game that could mean fabulous riches or death or jail.

4:51And so for me, that makes compelling drama. Those are the shows I like to watch myself. And what's interesting about my career in television is for a long time, you had to write sort of CBS, NBC stuff, which had to be four quadrant. It had to please everybody. It couldn't offend anybody. And then over the last dozen years or so, what with cable and the advent of streaming, suddenly the audience, you know, there are 500 channels now and there's more niche programming. And that allowed me then to, beginning with Netflix, to go do Narcos in Colombia. And an open space evolved. And so suddenly I'm the, you know, somebody I was interviewed by called me the Dick Wolf of drug dramas, which I'm not so sure that's a wonderful comic.

5:39I was going to ask, do you like that? Dick has two yachts and I have a rowboat, but other than that, it's all good. Well, on Business Wars, we've been looking into the Medellin and Cali cartels of Colombia and the bloodshed that resulted there, especially during the 80s and 90s. I'm curious how Colombia wound up as the dominant player of the cartel world in the first place. I mean, people in this new series, obviously, you're focused on Cuba, Miami. But how did Colombia become such a place? Well, there are a couple of reasons for that. First of all, the plant itself, the cocoa plant, is native to Bolivia.

6:18And for a long time, the plant was processed into cocaine in Chile. But at a certain point, it migrated to Colombia for a couple of reasons. Colombia has vast coastlines on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides. Distribution. Yes. The ability to get it to the United States by boat was a factor. Also, Colombia has very dense jungles and places where the illicit production of the leaf to the base, to the powder, can be effectuated. So not only that, a kind of weak government structure at the time that led to an inability of law enforcement to stop them from doing it. And then, of course, the vast wealth that it generated allowed the cartel players to essentially hire their own armies.

7:06I think I was told that during the early late late 70s, early 80s, it's literally like the Colombian military had three fighter planes. And so the narcos outstripped them in wealth, outstripped them in weaponry. So how did Escobar become the one who rose to power here, do you think? Escobar was a street thug and someone who was involved in smuggling cigarettes, liquor. He was kind of small time and the circumstances developed that, oh, this new drug suddenly emerges, which had very little popularity in the 60s. I mean, it was always around since it was invented. But the fact is, the appetite for cocaine as it grew in the 70s in the United States, Escobar saw an opportunity.

7:59And through a number of, you know, almost reptilian, clever means, he took advantage of that. He realized that there were different cocaine producing groups within the Medellin area. And he essentially formed a collective where they would ship their cocaine to the United States en masse through a number of very clever means, you know, boat, plane, eventually submarines. They were packed within product, you know, like you'd open an avocado and there's a ball of cocaine in there. And you can't tell the avocado skin's been. Yeah, right. So very, very clever in that regard. So he forms a kind of collective amongst like-minded groups.

8:42It's also thought that there was a family, the Ochoas, who were also of the Medellin area, who may have even superseded Escobar in terms of their power. They were rich landowners. They had horse farms. They were also big players in the Medellin cartel. At one point, Escobar is in prison, and yet he still manages to run his operation. He was very, very, again, like clever, like an animal. As the United States started to clamp down on the Colombian government about this influx of cocaine, now Escobar, through violence and intimidation, which was always his way, began what amounted to a war against the Colombian government.

9:24So he played dirty is the point. And ultimately, the pressure from the United States, the United States money that was coming into combat, people like Escobar led to him surrendering on his own terms. He built a prison to his own specifications, and it was staffed with guards who he hired. It was basically a luxury or semi-luxury hotel that doubled as a prison. And that was the deal he made with the Colombian government, who he had brought to its knees through his bombing campaign and through the generalized violence. He was also viewed in the Medellin area as a bit of a Robin Hood figure. He built barrios for the poor.

10:06He created soccer fields all over the place so that the local populace in Medellin were quite supportive of him. Mm-hmm. But La Catedral was a place where, again, nice if you can build your own prison. Kelly and Medellin were both massive organizations involved in the drug trade, but they approached the business differently. Each had its own way of thinking about the cocaine trade. Could you say a little bit more about how they approached selling their product? Escobar was a brute. He used bombings, intimidation, kidnapping, assassination to achieve his ends. And the Rodriguez or Oweiler brothers in Talley had an entirely different operation, selling just as much cocaine, but they bribed government officials.

10:55They poured their money into Rexall drug chains and all sorts of other legitimate businesses. They played it on the down low. They weren't ostentatious. They eventually got caught too. But basically, the two cartels played it a different way. And really stemming from those two central leaders, Escobar, a street thug, and Newell as more cultured and sophisticated. I want to fast forward now into Hotel Cocaine and how that informed the way that you approached this. I read somewhere that you thought of this hotel as kind of Casablanca on cocaine or something like that. Could you say more about what you meant by that?

11:42Well, during the time that I was working on Narcos, there was an actor who was playing a Colombian policeman who spearheaded the effort to catch Escobar. His name is Maurice Comte. And he said, you know, my father was the general manager of the Mutiny Club and Hotel. And I said, what's that? And he said, well, it was the Studio 54 of Miami. It was a nexus point for huge narco traffickers, DEA, CIA, foreign dignitaries, movie stars, rock stars. The Eagles recorded an album at the mutiny. The Zeppelin was there all the time. It was just a moment in time kind of place. Anyway, I said, I'm kind of interested in that.

12:22You know, maybe write something up about it, which is usually a way I get people to never bother me again. Though I did find the idea interesting. It took almost four years, but I then received a document from him that kind of cleverly outlined a story that was his father's real life. Now, I felt the need to fictionalize certain aspects in order to create a kind of drive and energy to the series itself. But the minute I read it, I called him and I said, hey, you know, can I run with this? I like this. And he had called it North of Havana, which to me sort of says nothing. I mean, it's cool. But like I was like, no, no, it's got to be called Hotel Cocaine.

12:59It's say what it is in the title when you're in a 500-channel TV universe. Yeah, for sure. So I called MGM +, the president of which is Michael Wright, and I said, hey, I got an idea for you. You know, how about Casablanca on cocaine? I think I described it in three sentences, and he said, I'm in. Go for it. And so we slowly but surely worked the script, and I turned it in, and then he picks up the series, and here we are. Is it true that the Mutiny Club was sort of the basis for Scarface 1983? Yes. It was very famous as this nexus point of dealers and cops, et cetera. And so in Scarface, it was called the Babylon Club.

13:43Okay. And it's depicted, as you see one, there's a big shootout and a poor clown gets shot. Guy in a clown outfit gets shot. But then in the recent Netflix series Griselda, I'm sure they did a few scenes in what was the mutiny because Griselda was there from time to time. In our show, we decided to take the mutiny and really actually outdo Scarface and Griselda in terms of designing it as a pleasure palace that is a hyper real version of it, meaning it's really fun to be in there. There's never a bloody nose. Nobody ever goes out in a stretcher. We wanted to create the juxtaposition between the fun people were having within the club and the devastating violence that was happening to get the cocaine to those tables.

14:30And in a way, the club is this—it serves to protect that idea of the fun. You know what I'm talking about? There's a separation factor there that's really important, and yet it's also this nexus where everyone peacefully comes together, the DEA, the gangsters. It was literally like what you'd call a demilitarized zone, just to say the DEA and cops never arrested anybody in the mutiny because, frankly, it was a better source of information. So, for instance, they look at a corner table and that group over there that's cracking open$1 ,000 bottles of Dom, they just got a load in. So now let's go to where they're centered and let's go try to find that load.

15:11Oh, that group over there, they look like the dog ate their homework. Their load got caught. Like in The Godfather when cops are outside getting license plates outside Corley Ald's wedding. It was just a spot for information rather than arrest. Our guest is Chris Brancato. He's creator and showrunner for the new MGM Plus series, Hotel Cocaine. It's time for a short break. Stay with us.

15:35Black Friday is right around the corner. You know what that means, right? It's the perfect time to score huge deals on all things home at Wayfair's Black Friday sale. Starting October 30th, you can get up to 70 % off during Wayfair's Black Friday sale. All November long. Those warmer linens you need, that nice cookware set you've been wanting to upgrade to? Make it happen this fall season. Need extra seats for that big holiday dinner this year? Wayfair's got the perfect selection. Getting that guest bedroom set up for the cousins. Check out those linens and sheets. Some cheerful holiday towels for the guest bath, too.

16:13No hassle with Wayfair. Wayfair is part of our getting ready for the holiday ritual around our place. And with Wayfair's new loyalty program, you can get 5 % back on every item across Wayfair's family of brands. Fast and free shipping, members only sales, and a lot more. Don't miss out on early Black Friday deals. Head over to Wayfair.com right now to shop Wayfair's Black Friday deals for up to 70 % off. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Sale ends December 7th. Tell them David at Business Wars sent you. Oh, and happy holidays. As business owners and managers, you use software for your business every day.

16:54You use one piece of software to manage your customers, another to manage your employees, another to manage your finances, and the list goes on. You buy these pieces independently and hope they fit neatly together like a puzzle. and then you find out the hard way that they don't and you end up with a mess at the heart of your business operations. Does any of this sound familiar? Well, fortunately, Zoho offers a solution to this chaos. It's called Zoho One. Zoho One is a suite of around 50 pre-integrated business applications that fit together beautifully. So instead of dealing with disparate software from multiple vendors with multiple contracts and price points, You deal with one vendor, with all the pieces of the business software puzzle neatly put together, offered at a very attractive price.

17:42Now, if this sounds interesting to you, you've got to check out Zoho One at Zoho.one. That's Z-O-H-O dot O-N-E. With Zoho, you're not just licensing apps. You're licensing peace of mind.

18:06Hi, welcome back to Business Wars. Chris Brancato is the showrunner of the MGM Plus series Hotel Cocaine. Chris, how does the version of the Miami drug wars depicted in the series compare with what was actually happening on the ground in late 1970s? Well, it's fairly accurate to what was really going on. I think the Cuban Americans or the Cubans were the first to be successful at Coke importation in Miami because they had come post Castro. They had connections in Colombia and other Latin American countries. And so there was a little minor trade going on. But as the appetite for cocaine grew in the 70s and especially in the 80s, the Colombians said, why should we use Cubans as middlemen?

18:52Let's come there. Let's sell wholesale and retail. And so that led to competing factions, both Colombian, Cuban, other Latin groups, street gangs, Haitian street gangs, et cetera, all of which are depicted in retail cocaine, fighting for control of distribution from Colombia to Florida, fighting amongst themselves for dominance in various regions of Miami and Florida at large. And the most famous event that caught everybody's attention was the Dadeland Massacre, which was a shootout that happened right in broad daylight in a mall in Miami where two guys were killed. But basically, it had never before been seen that people come rolling out of a van and just spray the whole territory with gunfire.

19:42The murder rate in Miami climbed astronomically in 79, 80, 81, so much so that they needed to get trucks from Burger King, like refrigerated meat trucks to carry bodies around. There weren't enough ambulances. I mean, you go to Miami today, international city, you know, much less the, yes, it was a big city back in the 70s and 80s. I get it. But much smaller and a much, you know, more condensed feel, I suppose you could say. Is that vibe still there in Miami? I mean, when you go there, do you have a sense of what used to be? Well, I think in a large part, the cocaine profits fueled a boom in real estate and residential homes.

20:26And then people come to fill it. That said, we shot hotel cocaine in the Dominican Republic, which doubles for 70s Miami much better than Miami does. Why? Why? Because the drug profits that came in in the 70s and 80s in Miami built the skyline. Yeah, you say that early on in the series. Cocaine built this city, and it really got me to thinking. Yeah, it was in the early 80s. We were often reading headlines about, I think the Reagan administration was really pushing the idea that Miami was the epicenter. Almost every bank, federal bank in every corner of the country except for Florida, you know, was operating at a loss.

21:05It was kind of financial crisis under the gas prices and all that stuff. And the Federal Reserve in Florida had a$5 billion surplus. What do you know? Well, you know, so and also what happened was the drug money had to be invested somewhere. It had to be laundered. I was told by somebody in Miami that, you know, you'd go to a Giorgio Armani store that was run legitimately. And then right down the road, there'd be one that was run illegitimately, meaning you could get the Armani clothes for half the price because the dealers were just trying to launder their money. The cocaine was a shot in the arm for both the local economy, but also for the infrastructure of a city that has continued to grow ever since.

21:46You know, I was thinking, whatever happened to this infamous club? I mean, Burton Goldberg, the real name of the Burton Greenberg character, he sells it in 84 or something along those lines? Yeah. What happened was, you know, eventually, first of all, people started to recognize that the cocaine was a lethal and dangerous drug, especially with the crack epidemic that started in the early to mid 80s. Len Bias, the basketball player, died in 85. Now, all of a sudden, it wasn't such a fun, harmless drug. But meanwhile, you know, the mutiny, like any club, Studio 54 included, eventually kind of burns its wick out.

22:23And that's what happened at the mutiny. The dealers found new spots to go to or decided they didn't want to be recognized there. And all of a sudden the club, you know, became defunct. It still exists to this day. It's a far cry from what we depict on our show in terms of, you know, it's not super fun. I've been there. There's not some spectacular place where you can dance the night away. But once upon a time. Once upon a time, exactly. And then Burton Goldberg ended up selling the property to somebody else who had a difficult time reviving it. And he moved to California and became a doctor of alternative medicine.

22:58Wow. When you decided to tell this story, what were you hoping that audiences would take away from it? Well, first and foremost, my job is to entertain. It's funny, when I was making Narcos, I watched a Colombian series called El Patron del Mal, which was about Escobar. It was 66 episodes. So I sat down to watch one of them, and suddenly I'm on episode nine. And I thought to myself, wow, there's like an actual addictive quality to watching this guy's story. And I thought, we're only making, for the first season, ten Narcos episodes. Like, what if it has that addictive quality when you're watching it?

23:36which it apparently did because it's the only, by the way, I've had like 29 failures. So it's foolish to talk about, you know, pure success as a showrunner. But Narcos was this interesting one where it came out on August 31st, 2015. A few days later, I'm in the subway going into a friend's restaurant in downtown. And I hear people talking on the train about Narcos and they're loving it. And I'm like, wow, this is weird. I'm hearing them talk about my show and out of ear, you know, They don't know I have anything to do with it. I get to the restaurant. My friend who owns the restaurant says, you've got to come to this table.

24:10And he brings me over to a table and says, this is the guy who co-created Narcos. And everybody at the table had watched it. And this is one week in. So I thought to myself, oh, after all these years of failed shows, I guess this is what it's like to have a winner because everybody is talking about it. And since then, I've traveled all over the world doing panels about narcos and been asked some tough questions that have affected the way I developed hotel cocaine. How so? Well, somebody got up at one of the conferences, I think it was in Mexico City, and said, hey, you know, what do you think about the fact that you kind of glamorized Escobar and that people find themselves rooting for him in the show?

24:51And I said, well, part of that is due to the charisma of the actor Wagner Mora. Part of it is that we love to root for outlaws. But that certainly wasn't my intention. You know, watch the first two seasons. You see this guy ends up dead on a rooftop with his body filled with bullets. But it did make me sensitive from that point on to making sure that if I'm doing the kind of shows I like to watch, crime shows, drug dealer shows, et cetera, that I make sure that what the underlying message is. And look, I'm not doing a public service announcement. I'm trying to entertain you with an interesting story with great actors.

25:25But it is important to me that these things don't become advertisements to become a drug dealer or a drug user. So that, for instance, Hotel Cocaine has the log line, every pleasure has a price. And I think that's actually true. Chris Brancato, thanks so much for joining us on Business Wars. It's been great to have you. Thanks. Coming up, Hotel Cocaine actors Danny Pino and Mark Feuerstein share what it was like to play some of the Mutiny Hotel's most well-known characters. Stick around. Closing the books, getting your people paid, and bringing on new hires. Running a small or mid-sized business can be exciting and also a little chaotic.

26:07Workday Go makes simplifying your business, well, simple. Imagine all the important aspects of your company, HR, finance, and payroll, all on the AI platform. No more juggling multiple systems. No more worrying about growing too fast. Just the full power of Workday Go, helping small to mid-sized businesses like yours scale and run more smoothly. Think about what that means. Seamless onboarding for new team members, real-time insights at your fingertips, and payroll that works perfectly every single time so you can focus on the big picture and go after your big ambitions. And with Workday, you can activate quickly in as little as 30 to 60 business days.