Smuggler’s Blues

Jan. 14, 2006 | In 1982 Richard Stratton was convicted of operating a Continuing Criminal Enterprise under the kingpin statute of New York State. For over 10 years he had been running an international drug smuggling operation, bringing tons of marijuana and hashish into the United States and arranging for its distribution. How does one become an international drug smuggler? For Stratton it was a fluke, a chance encounter south of the border in 1964. But what kept Stratton coming back for more was the challenge, the adrenaline rush, and the belief that one day he could take his experiences and put them all into a book.

After his conviction, Stratton got his chance. His eight-year stint in prison afforded him plenty of time to write “Smack Goddess,” a novel based on the life of notorious drug dealer Frin Mullin, which was published upon his release in 1990. Since then, Stratton has worked as a consultant for the TV show “Oz,” co-written and produced the award-winning feature film “Slam,” and the Emmy Award-winning “Thug Life in D.C.,” and created the Showtime series “Street Time.” His first job after prison was working for Barbara Kopple, the Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, who hired him to write a treatment for a film about Mike Tyson. Kopple kept him on as a field producer once the project got underway. “I remember running around from phone booth to phone booth,” Stratton says, “setting up interviews, coordinating camera crews, organizing transportation logistics, and thinking, I can do this; this isn’t so different from running a smuggling operation.”

Late last year, a selection of Stratton’s best nonfiction work, which originally appeared in such magazines as GQ, Esquire and Details, was collected in an anthology called “Altered States of America.” The subjects covered range from in-depth profiles of Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson to exposés of the CIA’s covert LSD experiments, and the FBI’s complicity in a series of New York Mafia hits in the 1980s.

Salon caught up with Stratton, now 60, at his studio apartment in Chelsea, where he stays when he has business in New York. The apartment is windowless except for a skylight, high over Stratton’s desk. The bookshelves are lined with tomes about cannabis and crime. On the walls hang various movie posters from projects Stratton has worked on. Stratton himself, wearing black nylon jogging pants and a black tee, sits at his desk in a wooden swivel chair, sipping Earl Grey. He has the elegant, brushed-back hair of a TV preacher and the solid build of a wrestler.