Hollywood has loved movies about drug dealers since “Scarface,” and if the dealer happens to be a clean-cut white teen? So much the better.
“It’s a story about family really, a single-parent family trying to survive against the odds in the face of abject poverty,” director Yann Demange told EW this week about his latest film “White Boy Rick.” “The film is trying to identify with a different point of view, people in the margins that are often talked about at the moment by people who don’t really know or understand what it means to be poor in America and try to survive as a family.”
Yet the real-life story of “White Boy Rick” is far deeper, as Rick, born as Richard Wershe Jr., was to a degree a creation of law enforcement. Recruited as an informant at the age of 14, with his father receiving the FBI’s money as the legal source of dirt, Rick was encouraged to participate in the drug trade of 1980s Detroit. However, after providing info that implicated police and family of the mayor in corruption, law enforcement cut ties with Rick, leaving him broke and adrift until he turned to the profession the FBI taught him. Caught with pounds of cocaine while still a teenager, Wershe was imprisoned for over almost thirty years and only this year was Rick granted parole and able to take his first steps out of prison as an adult.
As the real Rick tries to re-enter society, director Yann Demange will convey his exploits on film. Demange’s only previous feature is “’71,” but one, it’s phenomenal and two, that story of the Irish troubles displayed a talent for tension and urban complexity that should translate well to 1980s Detroit. Rick himself will be played by unknown Richie Merritt, with Matthew McConaughey as his father and the rest of the Wershe family played by Bel Powley, Bruce Dern, and Piper Laurie. Also in the ensemble are Jennifer Jason Leigh and Brian Tyree Henry.
“White Boy Rick” will be released by Sony on August 17, 2018.
#WhiteBoyRick starring @McConaughey. Trailer tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/v4Zso4FJhT
— The Playlist ? (@ThePlaylist) May 22, 2018
