"In a dusty backyard 30 minutes south of Miami, would-be MMA stars leave the streets behind to test their pain threshold in a brutal, bareknuckle fight club where the only thing flowing faster than the adrenaline is the blood. And as a no-holds-barred new documentary makes clear, at the center of it is the toughest fighter of all, the hulking, tattoo-covered goliath known as Dada 5000." - MAXIM magazine
Featuring insider interviews with famous players in the club scene as well as key informants in Gatien's high-profile trial, Billy Corben's (Cocaine Cowboys) exuberant documentary aims to set the record straight about Gatien's life as it charts his rise and fall against the transformation of New York, offering a wild ride through a now-closed chapter in the history of the city's nightlife.
In 1979, the US Customs Service reported that 87% of all marijuana seizures in the US were made in the South Florida area. Due to the region's 5,000 miles of coast and coastal waterways and close proximity to the Caribbean and Latin America, South Florida was a pot smuggler's paradise. In sharp contrast to the brazenly violent cocaine cowboys of the 1980's, Miami's marijuana smugglers were cooler, calmer, and for the most part, nonviolent. SQUARE GROUPER paints a vivid portrait of Miami's pot smuggling culture in the 1970s and 1980s through three of the city's most colorful stories.