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Photograph: (Image Courtesy: The New York Times)
In ‘Pusherman: Frank Lucas & The True Story of American Gangster’, director Legs McNeil explores the real-life story behind Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas, casting doubt on the Hollywood version portrayed in Ridley Scott’s 2007 film American Gangster. The documentary, which premiered on Tubi on 24 June and is distributed by MVD Entertainment, takes aim at the myths surrounding Lucas’ legacy—particularly those popularised by the film.
McNeil said that a quote from Nixon’s former domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman — about deliberately linking Black Americans with heroin and hippies with marijuana to criminalise both groups — helped frame his approach to the film. He said it resonated with him, recalling how he was targeted as a teenager for attending anti-war protests.
The documentary sees McNeil team up with journalist Mark Jacobson, whose 2000 article in New York magazine inspired American Gangster. Together, they challenge the accuracy of the film. Jacobson, who had interviewed Lucas extensively, claimed much of the movie was fabricated. McNeil echoed the sentiment, saying while he found the film entertaining, Denzel Washington was “too pretty” for the role and didn’t match Lucas’ gritty persona.
Jacobson and screenwriter Steve Zailian were both credited on the film, but in Pusherman, Jacobson walks viewers through what he believes was the real Lucas story—one that’s far less glamorous than what was portrayed on screen. Lucas’ infamous claim of smuggling heroin into the U.S. inside coffins of dead soldiers from Vietnam is revisited. While many doubted it, Jacobson said he learned from Goodfellas writer Nicholas Pileggi that the method was indeed real.
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McNeil, a longtime friend of Jacobson’s, said it was their decades-long conversations that pushed him to make his first film. He recalled Jacobson telling him the true details of his time with Lucas, prompting McNeil to finally read the original article and declare, “This will make a great movie.”
Best known for co-founding PUNK magazine and co-authoring Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, McNeil said his interest always lay in stories, not music journalism. He admitted he disliked writing about music, opting instead for powerful human stories — from the crack epidemic in rural America to, most recently, the opioid crisis, had he still been in the field.
The documentary also features Richie Roberts, the real-life detective portrayed by Russell Crowe in American Gangster, who offers his own critiques of the film’s representation of events and characters.
McNeil, who moved to New York in the mid-1970s, reminisced about the gritty reality of the city at the time — heroin users passed out in doorways, and drug dealers operating from upper-floor windows. He said his own experiences with opioids as a child, after receiving morphine during a leg operation, left him with a lifelong aversion to such drugs.
McNeil’s Next Target: The True Story Behind the Wonderland Murders
Pusherman closes with a light-hearted yet telling moment: an animated elderly Lucas in a wheelchair stealing beer mugs from a bar. McNeil remarked that even after earning millions during his peak, Lucas still couldn’t resist petty theft — a habit, he believed, that always lingered.
Next up, McNeil is turning his attention to another drug-fuelled story: the 1981 Wonderland Avenue murders in Los Angeles, which were previously dramatised in the 2003 film Wonderland starring Val Kilmer. McNeil promised to apply the same no-nonsense approach: “I’m just going to tell the real story.”
