Joanne Brig­gs

A lo­cal movie with the name Dole in the ti­tle may sug­gest that it's about the re­put­ed drug lord from Pi­paro.

But El­lis Brig­gs, pro­duc­er of the film, says it is not about the man named Chadee who was con­vict­ed and hung for the Jan­u­ary 10, 1994 mur­ders of Deo, Rook­min, Hamil­ton and Mon­i­ca Ba­boolal.

Oth­er char­ac­ters in the film in­clude the King broth­ers (artistes Squeezy Rankin' and Mar­lon Ash­er), Joey (Keron Car­dinez) and Nyah (played by sea­soned ac­tor Reynold Siew­dass).

Any­one fol­low­ing the crime head­lines in the 80s and 90s would as­so­ciate the last two with the names Rami­ah and Naim re­spec­tive­ly–one a Chadee as­so­ciate, the oth­er who held El So­cor­ro in his grips.

"It's not based on the 1990s Dole Chadee. It's a con­tem­po­rary sto­ry which hap­pens to be in­volved in a fa­mil­iar sto­ry," Brig­gs said. "It is pulled from ac­tu­al events but it is a fic­tion­al sto­ry."

From the trail­er that ap­peared on Face­book, Adesh Sama­roo, act­ing as the lead char­ac­ter Dole, demon­strat­ed how tor­tu­ous he could be if some­one turned against him.

But Brig­gs soft­ened the im­age of the hard­ened man when he ex­plained that he is not that cru­el.

"It's not a grit­ty gang­ster flick. It is a ro­man­tic ac­tion thriller. It is about a drug lord who falls in love with a la­dy at­tached to a drug lord," Brig­gs said.

"This part of the sto­ry is his rise."

But he has al­ready re­ceived strange phone calls, ask­ing why he is do­ing a sto­ry on Dole Chadee.

Why do it then?

"Why not?" he replied.

Con­sid­er Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la's God­fa­ther tril­o­gy based on the best­seller by Mario Pu­zo. Pu­zo's book on the Cor­leone fam­i­ly is based on sto­ries he heard about the mafia while he was a mag­a­zine writer.

Then there's Mar­tin Scors­ese's Good­fel­las based on the non-fic­tion book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pi­leg­gi. The film nar­rates the rise and fall of Luc­ch­ese crime fam­i­ly as­so­ciate Hen­ry Hill and his friends over a pe­ri­od from 1955 to 1980.

Al­so, Bri­an de Pal­ma's Scar­face that was writ­ten by Oliv­er Stone. The film tells the sto­ry of Cuban refugee Tony Mon­tana who ar­rives in 1980s Mi­a­mi with noth­ing and ris­es to be­come a pow­er­ful drug king­pin.

And there's Car­l­i­to's Way, al­so di­rect­ed by De Pal­ma. It is based on the nov­el writ­ten by Judge Ed­win Tor­res.

The film fol­lows the life of Car­l­i­to Brig­ante af­ter he is re­leased from prison and vows to go straight and re­tire. But he is dragged in­to the same crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties that got him im­pris­oned in the first place.

What these four films have in com­mon are the strong char­ac­ters, the vi­o­lence as­so­ci­at­ed with the dark side and a femme fa­tale who pulls at the heart­strings of the tough lead char­ac­ter. They were al­so block­busters.

As far as Brig­gs is con­cerned, Dole has these el­e­ments. Writ­ten by Tim­o­thy Teemal, the screen­play was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed for a US/UK team who want­ed to de­vel­op a movie in keep­ing with the mafia/crime dra­ma genre. How­ev­er, the project fell apart and Teemal ap­proached El­lis in 2012 to do the movie.

"Look­ing at the whole in­dus­try, the film has to com­mer­cial­ly vi­able. It has to be about what peo­ple want to see–not about two dou­bles and a so­lo, not about a so­ca star," Brig­gs said. "The film fes­ti­val mod­el is not fea­si­ble. It has not worked. We bring film­mak­ers to pat each oth­er's backs and noth­ing hap­pens. "

Al­though, two lo­cal films com­ing out of this year's T&T film fes­ti­val were shown at Dig­i­cel Imax.

"If you have an el­e­ment to grip the au­di­ence, the film will work. We should get a cin­e­ma board to cre­ate a stan­dard for lo­cal film, look­ing at pro­duc­tion qual­i­ty. The onus is on us (the film pro­duc­ers, di­rec­tors and screen­writ­ers) to make fea­si­ble sto­ries," he added. "If Wel­come to War­lock (the 2013 movie by Jef­frey Al­leyne) had good pro­duc­tion qual­i­ty, that would have been a box of­fice hit. It's time this coun­try put out a re­al film out there."

With Dole, Brig­gs in­tends to go all out. Con­sid­er­ing a bud­get of $12 mil­lion, it would in­clude shoot­ing at lo­ca­tions that re­flect the in­ter­na­tion­al per­cep­tion that a Caribbean drug lord has a sprawl­ing sea­side prop­er­ty. Ba­co­let, To­ba­go may be the lo­cale for Dole's home. Car chas­es are al­so planned. The film will take one month for pro­duc­tion and two weeks in post-pro­duc­tion.

When this is fin­ished, more projects are lined up. Next is The Fly­ing Squad which sounds like a biopic of the crime­buster Ran­dolph Bur­roughs. And again Brig­gs says there may be sim­i­lar­i­ties but it is not about him. Fol­low­ing that is a ro­mance ti­tled Last Flight Out.

"I want to be known as a good film mak­er. It is not about the au­dio vi­su­al ex­pe­ri­ence but an emo­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence," he said.

Churn­ing out as many good movies as pos­si­ble is al­so part of for­mu­la. He con­sid­ers the lo­cal film in­dus­try should work on a mod­el dif­fer­ent from the Hol­ly­wood pre­scrip­tion. The Bol­ly­wood (In­dia) and Nol­ly­wood (Nige­ria) mod­els, he said, are more T&T's speed.

"You have to cre­ate that en­vi­ron­ment of good movies. Short movies are a waste of time. It's ei­ther a film or a TV se­ries. That is the on­ly way. The Film Com­pa­ny should sit down with TV sta­tions to find a plat­form for this to work," Brig­gs said.

Pound the alarm

In 2012, Brig­gs' name sur­faced as the man ac­cused of stiff-end­ing hip-hop maven Nik­ki Mi­naj. He was ac­cused of re­ceiv­ing mon­ey for ser­vices he did not ren­der when Mi­naj came to Trinidad to pro­duce the mu­sic video for her hit Pound the Alarm.

Three years lat­er, he main­tains he did noth­ing wrong.

Brig­gs said the terms and con­di­tions were agreed to but the pro­duc­tion man­ag­er (name called) said his prices were too high.

"In the Unit­ed States the hourly rates are US$400-US$450. I charged US$300. I tried to get a stan­dard and they agreed to it. But the pro­duc­tion man­ag­er tied to cut costs and she tried to bul­ly me.

"They said mon­ey was sent but noth­ing was sent. There should have been a pa­per trail.

"Even the TT Film Com­pa­ny man­ag­er (name called) got in­volved and told me that I was over­charg­ing. I was not go­ing to be bul­lied be­cause of an in­ter­ac­tion be­tween these two peo­ple.

"If we had an agree­ment, I was will­ing to make ad­just­ments but not bul­lied and gang­stered. Nik­ki did not know what was go­ing on.

"It cre­at­ed a prob­lem. It pre­vent­ed me from get­ting work. Peo­ple like the nice guy but I am try­ing to build a busi­ness. It's hard be­cause you can­not please every­body–what do I ac­cept and what do I not ac­cept?"

About El­lis Brig­gs

Brig­gs' ca­reer in film mak­ing was in­spired in 1980s by watch­ing Ho­race James who worked at the State me­dia com­pa­ny TTT (Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion) and pro­duced the Play of the Month Se­ries.

Be­fore that, he met Pene­lope Spencer who ran a the­atre work­shop at Barataria Ju­nior Sec­ondary and it was there he fell in love with the the­atre and the arts. At Mal­ick Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive, he met Tim Cu­pid, a so­cial stud­ies teacher who pro­duced To­wards Broad­er Hori­zons, a recre­ation of Caribbean his­to­ry. "I de­cid­ed to get more se­ri­ous in the ear­ly 90s," Brig­gs said.

He com­plet­ed a course New York Film Acad­e­my. There­after, he worked with Unicef, he was al­so head of the Tem­po net­work in Trinidad. He worked with the New Zealand gov­ern­ment that sup­port­ed a pro­duc­tion fund­ed by the Eu­ro­pean Ed­u­ca­tion De­vel­op­ment fund. That pro­duc­tion fea­tured writ­ers around the world. He al­so pro­duced mu­sic videos for French artistes.