Marc Levin and MR. UNTOUCHABLE: The Unmasking of an Infamous American Gangster

By Terry Keefe

If you lived in New York in the 70s and read the tabloids on even a semi-regular basis, you knew who Nicky Barnes was. A gangster with a compulsion for self-promotion, he reveled in rubbing the noses of law enforcement in the fact that they seemingly couldn’t convict him. Alternately known as Mr. Untouchable and the Black Godfather, Barnes was the first prominent African-American drug lord who ran his own family, dubbed the Council, separate from the oversight of the Italian mafia. Filmmaker Marc Levin remembers the public image of Barnes well from that period, as he was in his young 20s during Barnes’ salad days, and even went uptown to party at one of the gangster’s predominantly African-American clubs on one occasion. Elaborates Levin, “I went to Hubba Hubba, a club of Nicky’s, because I wanted to see some real nightlife. I had long hair and was the only white person there. They thought I was DEA and threw me up against the wall. I never thought I would make it out alive.”




[The Infamous New York Times Magazine cover that gained Nicky Barnes more publicity than he probably wanted, in retrospect.]


Many years later, Levin was approached by former criminologist-turned-producer Mary-Jane Robinson with the idea of directing a film on Barnes, and he was immediately intrigued, although he knew the prospects for getting a interview with Barnes himself were slim. That’s because Nicky Barnes ultimately turned on the Council and entered the Witness Protection Program, and he hadn’t been seen in over a decade. Plus there was still a one million dollar hit on his head. “Mary-Jane had the idea of doing the film without Nicky. She had good law enforcement contacts and I thought that this could be fun. But we still made repeated attempts to reach Nicky,” says Levin. The filmmakers had a draft of what would become Mr. Untouchable pretty well shaped when they received word that Nicky Barnes wanted to see some of the types of films Levin had made in the past. “I sent him Slam (Levin’s Sundance-winning film about slam poetry), and I didn’t realize that Nicky had previously won some kind of prison poetry contest.” Then another event happened which helped seal the participation of Barnes in Mr. Untouchable. Barnes had obtained a draft of the script for American Gangster, which focuses on Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas, a bitter rival of Barnes back in the day. The portrait of Barnes in Gangster was not seen as particularly accurate or flattering to the former Black Godfather. Explains Levin, “He went off on how Hollywood was so full of bullshit. He couldn’t stomach Frank Lucas having the last word, with Denzel Washington playing him, and Cuba Gooding Jr. playing Nicky as kind of a pimp clown. You could tell, that for all of Nicky’s caution, this was a battle over legacy.” Levin would eventually meet Barnes in a hotel in middle America, but without any commitment from his subject that he would go on film. Levin was able to win Barnes’ trust though and the resulting interview is an unprecedented achievement in documentary access, the equivalent of a sit down with the Al Capone of the 70s.

There has been concern from the law enforcement community, amongst others, that Mr. Untouchable could inspire young people to follow the path of Nicky Barnes. This is something that clearly concerned Levin as well, but the Barnes he unmasks is not someone you’d want to be. At the end of the day, he’s a guy who had it all but is now forced to hide his identity and always look over his shoulder. He’s also now well into his 70s, but still fighting all the battles of the past as if they were yesterday. Says Levin, “I feel from the screenings we’ve had with younger people, the fact that he was a snitch is something that you can’t get beyond with them. He was ‘the Man,’ but he betrayed his own brothers and he’s such an egomaniac. The movie could offer a teachable moment to young people. Nicky Barnes can’t show his face. We gave him a stage, but he still can’t walk down the street he grew up on.”