Blow: A Look At the Rise and Fall of "Coke Star" George "Boston George" Jung
Ted Demme's 2001 film Blow, starring Johnny Depp, recounts the life and times of drug kingpin George "Boston George" Jung
In 2001, director Ted Demme released Blow, a crime drama starring Johnny Depp.
The film received mixed reviews. Critics implied that the film borrowed heavily from iconic 90s crime flicks like Goodfellas and Boogie Nights. Depp’s co-star, Penelope Cruz, was even nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress for her performance.
Despite this, the film has retained a loyal fanbase, mostly due to Depp’s portrayal of George Jung, the real-life drug kingpin Blow is based on.
In preparation for the film, Depp did extensive research, even interviewing Jung in prison. He became so intimate with the character he portrayed that he ended up improvising many of the lines in the film’s final cut.
Plot
Blow follows Jung’s rise and fall as an American narcotics trafficker from the start of his career in the 1960s until today.
Jung first got involved in the drug trade in 1967 when, during a meeting with a childhood friend in California, he realized that there was a lot of money to be made smuggling marijuana from across the California-Mexico border to friends on the East Coast.
With the help of his girlfriend, who worked as a flight attendant, Jung began smuggling drugs in luggage on commercial flights. Before long, he’d expanded his enterprise using private planes, which allowed him to transfer much larger payloads.
Only two years later, Jung was arrested in Chicago for trying to import 660 pounds of marijuana to the United States.
For a moment, it seemed that his illegal operation had come to an end–until he met his new cellmate, an experienced drug trafficker with connections to the Medellín Cartel.
Upon their release from prison in 1976, Jung and his cellmate started working with infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Before long, the pair had made hundreds of millions of dollars–and cemented their place as Escobar’s number one US importer.
Fact vs Fiction
In reality, Jung was arrested and sentenced to prison several times throughout his life.
However, the climax of Blow focuses on one culminating incident. In 1994, following months of surveillance, a joint FBI/DEA team raided Jung’s home on Nauset Beach in Massachusetts.
Jung tried to skip bail and flee to Colombia, along with his wife and one-year-old daughter–but a friend he contacted to pilot the flight for him turned out to be a DEA informant, and turned Jung in.
The film embellishes the event by setting the raid on Jung’s birthday and adding a subplot about Jung’s marital conflicts, but the real-life events have plenty of drama in their own right.
In an interview with PBS Frontline, Jung recalled the raid on his home:
“That was the end of it–all coming down, house of cards… There was only, like, three or four ounces of coke there, and the police thought that a huge load had been flown in and the house was full of kilos of cocaine and money. And they'd been watching and waiting for so long they got tired, and when we were in there, they came busting in, and they didn't find what they wanted to find. They were highly disappointed, but there was still enough to arrest everybody, you know, and the last I saw was my daughter, who was only a year old, being taken away by a police officer.”
The film closes with Jung reflecting on his life. He seems to regret disappointing so many of the people who loved him, especially his daughter, and laments his obsession with material wealth.
The Real George Jung
The real story of George Jung is not such a closed book.
To start with, his story didn’t end in prison–he was actually able to have his sentence reduced to twenty years by providing information on his old business associates.
Jung’s sentence was then further reduced in exchange for his participation in a substance abuse program and good behavior in prison, allowing him to be released in 2014.
George was arrested one final time, in 2016, for a probation violation, and moved to a halfway house.
But, perhaps the most glaring difference between the real-life Jung and Depp’s portrayal is George’s feelings regarding his involvement in the drug trade.
At least publicly, Jung never expressed any real sense of regret. Selling cocaine gave him a life of wealth and luxury that he had longed for since he was a child, watching his father struggle to manage a small business.
He was constantly surrounded by expensive cars, five-star dinners, and beautiful women–the life of a rock or movie star. In Jung’s own words, he was a “Coke Star.”
When pressed by reporters, Jung still refused to acknowledge that there was anything unethical about selling imported drugs. In his eyes, he was just supplying an existing demand–it was the American people who were wrong to want cocaine in the first place.
Even after witnessing Pablo Escobar execute a man in cold blood, Jung’s greatest quarrel with the drug lord was that he had a “Neanderthal Ideology.”
“He didn't understand supply and demand… if you flood the country with cocaine, the price is going to go down.”
George Jung died while under hospice care for liver and kidney damage in 2021.
Sources:
Beugg, Elizabeth. “George Jung, Real-Life Subject of “Blow,” Explains Why He First Thought Johnny Depp Shouldn’t Star.” The Hollywood Reporter, 7 Aug. 2018, www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/george-jung-real-life-subject-blow-explains-why-he-first-thought-johnny-depp-shouldnt-star-1132991/.
Bowie, Desiree. “The Rise and Fall of George Jung: The Real-Life Subject of “Blow.”” HowStuffWorks, 1 Mar. 2024, history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/george-jung.htm
“Interviews - George Jung.” Www.pbs.org, PBS Frontline, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/interviews/jung.html.
Seelye, Katharine. “George Jung, Who Made Millions Smuggling Cocaine, Dies at 78.” New York Times, 9 May 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/05/09/us/george-jung-dead.html.
Serena, Katie. “How a Boston-Born Drug Trafficker Became One of Pablo Escobar’s Most Trusted Smugglers.” All That’s Interesting, 3 Apr. 2018, allthatsinteresting.com/george-jung.