"If you were getting pot in the late '70s or early '80s in this part of the country, there's a good chance it may have been coming from these guys. You've got these guys who served decades in prison for marijuana, and now they're getting out into a world where it's legal everywhere."
"There was a lot of stuff out there that wasn't actually true. People get this idea of the mafia - the Capones and all that kind of stuff. That's all BS. Instead, he describes the Cornbread Mafia as a bunch of country boys just trying to make some money, farmers."
The Cornbread Mafia documentary, premiering at SXSW, examines a Kentucky-based marijuana operation that supplied much of the region during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Director Evan Mascagni transitioned from law school to filmmaking to tell this story, drawn to its intersection of culture and history. Central figure Joe Keith Bickett spent over 20 years in prison and seeks to correct misconceptions about the operation. The documentary highlights the irony of individuals serving decades for marijuana offenses while the drug is now legal in many places. Bickett emphasizes the operation was simply country farmers attempting to earn money, not the organized crime structure popular mythology suggests.
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