Ferguson docudrama more like 'crockudrama'

I have always found Billie Holiday to be positively rapturous. Those soulful eyes, that raven-hair, those stunning features and that voice – that sultry, lilting voice. Her haunting renditions of songs like "Summertime," "Gloomy Sunday," "Tenderly" and so many others still make my heart soar.

But Holiday's most courageous artistic accomplishment by far was her dark, ominous performance of the trailblazing song "Strange Fruit." I say trailblazing because – unlike today when every performer thinks they have something incredibly important to say through their "art" – the idea of an entertainer using her music for such striking social commentary in Holiday's time was unheard of. And for a black woman to raise her voice in order to raise awareness of a topic as taboo as the lynching of African-Americans in the old South required a level of daring and personal risk that today's vapid stars, eager to cash in on the controversial story of the day, can't even fathom.

The newest "star" to try to cash in on a high-profile tragedy is documentary filmmaker – and Michael Moore protégé – Jason Pollock, who borrows from the title of the Holiday classic by naming his film "Stranger Fruit." Pollock's so-called exposé on the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, opened to much fanfare at the South By Southwest Film Festival this past weekend. By fanfare, I mean manufactured hype.

I should make it clear that I haven't seen Pollock's docudrama in its entirety yet. My tie-die shirt and hemp sandals were at the dry cleaner so I skipped SXSW this year.

But I have seen the clip the alt-left media is buzzing over and calling the movie's "big reveal."

It is, quite literally, much ado about nothing.

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Pollack, who narrates the film with a sinister whisper, takes us through a grainy video from the Ferguson market showing Brown entering the store about 11 hours before he was famously accused of robbing the same market, a robbery that led to his confrontation with Police Officer Darren Wilson and, ultimately, to Brown's own death. Pollack feigns shock at what he witnesses in the video, which, using nothing more than raw conjecture and the tearful confirmation of Brown's grieving mother, he concludes to be evidence that Brown did not, in fact, commit a robbery.

Instead, Pollack wildly speculates that what we are seeing is – are you ready for this? – Brown trading drugs for merchandise in an exchange with the store's clerks. Pollack then surmises that Brown left a box of cigarillo's the clerks had bartered for the drugs in the care of those same clerks behind the counter. Brown, he would have us believe, returned for the smokes the next day and – a-ha – the innocent misunderstanding takes shape from there. At the end of the clip, Pollack exclaims, "Mike did not rob the store."

Heavens to Murgatroyd!

What a crock. What a crockumentary.

That's the smoking gun?! Michael Brown wasn't a robber he was a drug dealer?

In fact, Mr. Pollack, if you're right, he was both.

Let's accept, for a moment, your fanciful interpretation of the store video. Let's say it was drugs that Brown traded for cigarillos.

Under Missouri law, distributing any illicit drug – including marijuana – is a felony even if you don't except anything of value for the drugs. That's Brown's first crime under your scenario. Then he takes possession, however briefly, of the cigarillos that the clerks allegedly traded – which were the property of the store owner, not the clerks. That's Brown's second crime, receiving stolen property. He then goes back to collect his ill-gotten booty the next day and uses brute force against the store owner to effectuate his escape with the stolen property. That's Brown's third crime in your wide-eyed tale, strong-arm robbery.

Under your flight of fancy, Mr. Pollack, Brown is guilty of more crimes than the police ever accused him of. So, epic fail in trying once again to make Brown into the martyred victim. But high marks for imagination and feigned indignation.

Here's my big reveal: None of it matters. Even under your farfetched scenario, the only thing that matters is what Darren Wilson believed. Remember, it wasn't until Wilson saw Brown hand his accomplice the cigarillos that he recognized Brown from the description of the robbery at the Ferguson market. But that didn't even matter. Wilson stopped Brown and his accomplice for walking down the middle of the roadway, and he shot and killed Brown because Brown pummeled Wilson, tried to strip him of his service revolver and then charged him again with murder in his eyes. The only reason the robbery matters at all is because it explains Brown's motive in attacking Officer Wilson.

The reason that this so-called "never-before-seen-video" has not been aired on TV is because it is meaningless and without evidentiary value. And it is not "never-before-seen-video." The police, prosecutors and federal agents who investigated the encounter and who all determined Wilson to have acted properly all saw the video, and they too concluded it was meritless.

The fact that this snippet is the closest thing that you can find to O.J.'s famous glove foretells what a mockery your film must be.

But here's the most offensive thing about your film, Mr. Pollack: The name.

How dare you invoke the name of Billie Holiday's definitive masterpiece employing art to expose racial atrocities to peddle your pathetic attempt to lionize Brown. The strange fruit in Billie's song are murdered black men hanging by their necks like bulbs from a poplar tree. For you to try to hang Michael Brown next to those men using a new false narrative of "dopeman, not robber" to replace the now debunked "hands up, don't shoot" myth is the strangest fruit of all.

While Billie made my heart soar, you, Mr. Pollack, merely make my heart sore.