Dangerous truths unearthed in Julian Rubinstein’s The Holly

Behind the book and Oscar long-listed doc is a gnarly journalism yarn

Fans of podcasts can check out my conversation with Julian here.

Certain bylines to my credit and the way I tell yarns get people to thinking that I lead an über-edgy journalism life. In fact, 90 percent of the risk I face is online. My life is on the line only every once in a long while.

And I am not especially brave in the face of real threats.

Among my reporter circle are some folks who do have the life that my civilian friends think I lead. The old-school homie Tony Olmos, whom you’ve read about, has been high among them. But no one whom I know gets into the thick of edgy storytelling more effortlessly than this week’s Sojourn guest, Julian Rubinstein. His new documentary The Holly plays out along the edges of urban violence in Denver, Colorado—Julian’s hometown. Where The Holly—also an acclaimed book from 2022—takes us will put you in mind of The Wire, but it’s not fiction.

Julian Rubinstein

I first met Julian when he was a staff writer at Bob Guccione, Jr.’s Gear magazine, having come out of a gig at Sports Illustrated. This was prior to his first hit, The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber. We ran around turn-of-the-millennium NYC, reveling in the last great period of American magazine journalism. So much fun was had that we were both divorced by the epoch’s close.

And Julian did the first read on my memoir. Even before Dave Eggers laid eyes on my copy, Julian gave me his insights, encouragement and critique. Which was huge.

It may not be fair to say that everything Julian Rubinstein has done before The Holly stands in the project’s shadows, but what he’s done here is very advanced storytelling. I first consumed The Holly on my phone, pre-release, and the damn thing was riveting. Two TV viewings later, I still find myself sucked in.

As I started reporting, it kind of became more and more heavy and big about really not just structural stuff, but corruption—but in ways that started to show how the criminal element is embedded in the power structure of our governments and our systems and cities today.

Donnell Alexander Today we have on the Sojourn one of my great friends in journalism and life, Julian Rubenstein, an adventurer and a guy who's been telling an amazing story in a really complicated way.

Thanks for coming on.

Julian Rubinstein I’m so psyched to be here.

DA Now, when you first told me about it, and correct me if I'm wrong, it was like 2014 and we were at that journalism conference in Berkeley.

JR Yeah, we were trying to remember if it was 2014 or 15, but it was one of those years and that was toward the beginning of what was ultimately, you know, really an eight year journey for the book and the documentary that's playing now.

DA Let me tell you this straight away. When you told me about it, I thought it sounded like trouble. (Laughter) I thought no good can come of this.

Was I wrong or right?

JR Well, I mean, you were right and wrong, I guess you could say. But yeah, I remember, I literally can remember being out there with you in that beautiful sun. And I was like, thank God I'm out here in Berkeley and in the sun and kind of just recuperating from what was already such a stressful project— partly because of the increasing danger that I was feeling because the reporting I was doing.

That was this investigative journalism symposium by the Logan Foundation. And John Logan (prayer hands) bless him, was one of the first big donors to get me going on the project and a believer. And that's why I was at the symposium. He invited me.

And it was great to be there and be out of Denver, where I just feel like I'm living in Moscow. Like, looking out my window afraid of what might come to get me because of who I was dealing with.

And by the way, it was.

People ask me all the time, Was it as dangerous as you thought? Or didn't you know going in—and we'll get into it in a second—but obviously it's a story involving gang violence, crime, a lot of powerful interests. But what I didn't realize at the beginning was just how connected all of these people who were dangerous were to more powerful people, including elected officials. And because of (the connections), police sort of had this feeling of impunity.

And that was when I started to feel even more in danger, because I felt like these guys are not even afraid to come after me.

DA Let's go back. What did you have to show John Logan back then?

JR I am trying to remember, because it was pretty early on.

I got a book contract to do this book called The Holly, Five Bullets, One Gun and the Struggle to Save an American Neighborhood. I took a deal with Farrar Straus, I was excited. I ended up moving home to Denver where I grew up.

From the beginning, I was interested in a potential documentary, but I didn't sort of know right away. And this is what I'm trying to remember, if the symposium was probably in 2015 that I was at.

DA That was the one where they dropped The Panama Papers on the last day.

JR Yes, that's right.

DA For investigative journalists like us, it's easily looked up. But please go on.

JR I must have had some kind of sample scenes, or something. It wasn't a lot. But I also remember having a long conversation with him.

I was living with my mom for a couple years at the beginning of this, because what happened was, I got the book deal, started reporting the book, and I moved home because I was like, Whoa, this story is way too complicated and fast moving for me to just be trying to report it from New York and fly home. Once I realized that I was also going to try to do a documentary, I was like, I don't have any money and any money I have is already spent like now or later.

I remember that I was on the phone with John and telling him all about it. At the end of the call, he tells me he's giving me a good donation, which really I needed so bad at the time. And I was so excited and happy, I was like jumping up and down in my bedroom. I went out, I told my mom and everything.

It’s just amazing how you can be in these situations and your life is just so tenuous. You know, where you're really kind of onto something big, but it's early on.

And there's not a lot of people who are going to really put in money at that time. That's the thing.

I was just really needing some funds to continue because there are some scenes in the film that I actually had to film myself, but I was smart enough to know that I didn't want to be the DP—or cinematographer—on my documentary because I'm not a trained cinematographer and I wanted it to look good. I wanted it to play in theaters like it's doing now. So I needed some money to be able to hire a few people, just to be able to cover the things that I needed to cover was the biggest expense at the beginning.

DA Hey, let's act like nobody knows anything about Terrence (Roberts) and tell us about him and the story as it plays out.

JR Totally. And in all likelihood they don't know about him.

Basically, I grew up in Denver, but I was living in New York. I always have been a journalist my whole career. You and I, we met in New York. We then saw each other a lot in LA, too, or in Northern California as well.

DA I think you were at Gear, with my ex-wife.

JR Yeah, was that when we met?

DA Yeah.

JR Now-defunct magazine that Bob Guccione, Jr. started. He had some good people there for a couple years.

DA He was dating the Sex and the City woman. What's her name? The New York Observer writer, Carrie Bradshaw character.

JR Bob was dating her?

DA Yeah, I smoked a joint with her at a party.

(Laughter)

JR All I can say is that was for sure the scene that he was in and he did date a lot.

DA Oh: Candace Bushnell.

JR Is that her name? We were all in our office and everything was all over there in The Meatpacking District. Big area at the time.

So I'm in New York thinking… well, I always was wondering, would I ever find a story in Denver? I'd been a journalist my whole career, grew up in Denver. I'm like, Oh, it'd be great, so I always check the news and all that and still had family and friends in Denver and read this story one day in the New York Times about a shooting involving a prominent activist who had shot someone at his own peace rally. And he was a well-known anti-violence activist who used to be a gang member, who grew up in this neighborhood that appeared to be gentrifying and just had a lot going on. And I was like, Whoa, this is like a pretty deep story with a lot going on. I guess I, it took me a couple months actually to get it all together.

I reached Terrence. He was out on bond. He was facing life in prison for this shooting. And anyway, I get out there and I managed to talk to him. And that was the first thing that drew me in big time because Terrence is an unbelievable character and person.

I should say that, at the beginning, I really didn't know what to think of him. All I knew was whatever he was saying to me, which included some pretty wild things. I mean, he believed he was attacked by police informants who had wanted him out of his position because of their connection to powerful people and entities in Denver. And he was sort of standing in the way maybe of some of these development projects. He also had become a vocal critic of the police for various tactics they were using in the anti-gang effort.

Anyway, I start. I realized that he was a great story. In fact, I briefly had a couple of conversations with my editor at The New Yorker and finally we got to this point we were kicking this thing around and I was trying to figure out if I would do a story for them.

They were even interested as well, I think you know I really only like big stories that I'm going to write it long and do all that. And of course The New Yorker is a great place for that. But in this case, I was kind of like… I can't even figure it out; they kept wanting me to try to find a certain angle. To me, there were so many important things, from gentrification, of course, just like social justice, the history of this neighborhood, which was fascinating. One of the most interesting neighborhoods in Denver, and it became a civil rights movement center and then became like this home of the first Bloods gang in Denver. Terrence was a third generation resident of the community.

Anyway, I was like, I’ve got to do a book. So I did a book proposal. And really, all of these things were in play about what really happened, as well as like the development of this neighborhood. And then as I started reporting, it kind of even became more and more heavy and big about really kind of not just structural stuff, but corruption—but in ways that started to show how the criminal element is embedded in the power structure of our governments and our systems and cities today.

And of course, it was like, I was seeing stuff that Terrence and I started calling it “the urban war industrial complex.” So there was not just the criminal justice industrial complex, but this was an element of that that really showed a lot about how and why violence was happening in the city and who was who. It was really fascinating and a little bit scary to some degree, just because of the players—once I started to realize who they were—and realizing how up the food chain they were, in terms of how they're being referred to, or their place in the city. What it was really: the stakes got higher and higher and it just kept going, you know?

DA At this point, like I said, I thought this was a bad idea. Are you thinking that you're paranoid? Are you fearful? What's your state of mind while you're trying to grab all the information, gather the reporting?

JR So by the way, you might tell me, did you think I was paranoid?

DA No, no.

JK Okay, then it wasn't paranoid. There's other problems. What I will say is that I seriously stopped talking to other people in Denver because I would try to tell a couple people what I was dealing with and what I was finding and people didn't even believe me. Literally. I mean it is pretty wild.

DA I was gonna say, it's a pretty unbelievable story.

JK It's unbelievable, the stuff that I was finding and putting together. And so for me, the challenge is, I wasn't actually thinking I was paranoid. I was sure I wasn't because I was like in the middle of it. But what I was afraid of and going back to when we saw each other in Berkeley was like, How am I going to pull this off? Because like it was a mountain to climb. I didn't have a newsroom or, like, three editors and four reporters working for me, you know?

One of the things that was really disillusioning as a journalist was realizing how problematic the local media coverage was and why it was. That includes one reporter covering the story for the biggest news station in Denver, 9 News. Turned out to be the wife of a very problematic ATF agent in the middle of this problematic story that I was looking at. And no one was talking about that.

We talk about problems with funding in media. We talk about the changes in the media and how journalism is suffering because of that. We're not talking about how law enforcement is literally infiltrating the media and putting tools of law enforcement into media conglomerates or companies and using them to cover stories in a way that maybe is favorable to them. That doesn't get a lot of attention.

I've reported this. It's been out in the book. This woman has been named. It's in the book. I wasn’t actually able to get that into the movie. There's other things about the media in the film. Both of these are very narrative told. They're not polemics. It's a narrative story. The book is a multi-generational story. And the film is like a kind of an end-to-end, almost edge-of-your-seat kind of a crime thriller in a way. It's the third act of the book.

So I stuck to narrative, but a lot of these things are in there. I know that a lot of people come away feeling like they see the city and even the country in a very different way.

DA I can see that. This is kind of the nuts and bolts thing that I'm concerned with: How are you teasing out the book and the movie simultaneously? That seems like a really tough trick.

JR As I'm developing the project and working on it? The good thing was about the reporting side of it, they actually played together hand in hand, right? Because when I'm reporting is pretty much the gathering information, the talking to people. And sure, it was an extra cost and kind of hassle to be filming it. But I'm just there, right? I'm gathering, whatever I'm taking in could be used for either project. So that very much nicely overlapped.

People say, because I haven't made a film before, Oh my God, it must be such a challenge. I've done a lot of narrative storytelling as a journalist. People thought it'd be so hard, and it's not easy; don't get me wrong, writing a book is hard as hell, doing a movie is hard as hell. But the hardest thing was fundraising, and I'm serious.

First of all, as a journalist, typically in print we're not exactly fundraising. Typically, we're trying to get a story. And if we get one, we're paid not well. We're paid, we might try to get an extra grand or something. But a movie, half a million is almost a baseline, like bottom level. So I'm thinking, how am I going to raise half a million dollars?

And the other reason is, I mentioned the urban war industrial complex. I talk about this in the book and it's kind of highlighted to some degree in the film. It really kind of points out what you might call the nonprofit industrial complex. You have these huge foundations and nonprofits and cities that are kind of like almost in lockstep with what other funders, leaders, elected officials, developers, often law enforcement want. And what was going on in that neighborhood was absolutely like everyone was on board in the city. They had all the big entities and funders.

I was kind of like, I literally did not even try to approach any of those people for funding. I mean, it would have been dangerous for me for them to know even what I was doing. And then on top of it, here I am, a white guy doing a story about a Black community and a Black main character who's accused and facing life in prison for attempted murder, shooting someone at his own peace rally. But I'm now finding things that might tell a different story. It's just a risky project for a lot of funders.

DA Well, clearly that worked out. I mean, I want to ask you about Adam McKay's involvement. But first, can you tell me about the racial aspect, how it's played out since the movie and the book have come out?

JR It's been really interesting. Most of my events I do with Terrence. By the way, I absolutely didn't know how he would feel about the movie or the book. I absolutely told him, because I'm a journalist. I had people give me flack about this in the doc world. “Why isn't Terrence a producer? Blah, blah, blah.” I couldn't win. Like, he should be a producer, he shouldn't be a producer.

Everything was against me. But ultimately, I was, of course, glad that Terrence embraced the story. It's not a puff piece by any stretch. Other people might not be able to embrace it. One of his strengths has always been that he's kind of like owned up to his stuff. He's got a lot of issues, but the story kind of uncovers a lot of truths about things that went down and how things work.

Basically, I ended up also being very careful to make sure to have a team around me that was even primarily African American. I mean, I had readers for the book who were black, both nationally and locally. Same on the movie producers. Adam McKay came on, of course, he's white. He brought some real Hollywood credibility to it. Obviously, a guy who's, I think, brilliant in his work. I was honored that he loved it so much and wanted to come on board and saw in it what I saw. And so he helped us, I think, get it marketed and ultimately we did, you know, it was picked up by Gravitas. It's on like, right now it's on Apple Plus and Prime. It's been on some others, but in any case, I think that all helped. He came on toward the end.

But the thing about the racial element in the aftermath, I was literally just on a panel in Washington DC at the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival and Symposium, it's called officially, and I was on a couple of panels. One of them was about best practices for doing a film about a sensitive racial subject and working with multiracial teams. So I was honored that this was held up as an example of how to do it.

I'll have to admit, I mean, it's been a lightning rod for many, many people. Frankly, I get pretty annoyed a lot of times when people call it controversial. I mean, to me it’s controversial among the people who are exposed as frauds, as problematic, as criminals. As you know, I was sued, threatened. Black people sued me. By the way, they were gang members. They claimed they weren't. They claimed a million things. They sued me for defamation. The case was not only won, but I also was on a panel at this film festival called “Investigative Filmmaking Under Fire, The Holly, A Case Study.” And I've just been asked to write about it for a film magazine about facing threats, falsehoods.

So there's been, in the aftermath, I've been threatened.

I mean, I've been, I'm actually in a Colorado state-funded protection program to protect from people who were working for the city of Denver.

And I might add—because if this gives a context for the problematic media reporting, and the problematic elected officials—these guys I'm talking about, the mayor of Denver — shared an office with them for five years. He won't talk about it. He won't see the movie. The last mayor of Denver won't see the movie, claimed he'd never heard of it or something, which is absurd. It got tons of coverage in Denver. I know he heard of it actually because of people I know who worked for him. He obviously heard of it.

So, you know how does it come out with the racial stuff? Yeah, a real mixed bag and if you look closely at who's criticizing it, suing it, what they're saying, and if it's true, you can kind of see a breakdown between people who are trying to pretend they're people they aren't or people who are trying to undermine the findings because they are in the spotlight.

Those are the people who are out there criticizing it.

DA I ask you just on a personal level, because last year l had a piece of reporting that resulted in death threats and lawsuit threats, you know just reams and reams of documents that I have to go through while I'm still trying to put out journalism and make a living, what kind of impact on your life— your physical self—does a project like this have?

JR Well, it's a real impact, without a doubt. And it's, of course, part of the reason that it's done. Let me be clear: The reason I was sued was to intimidate me into not releasing the film. It was to undermine the findings of the project and all that.

Of course, along with that part of what they try to do by threats and other intimidation is to damage your health, your finances, all of it. It has damaged my health. Fortunately, related to my finances, I had people, I had insurance thankfully on the movie. There was a deductible. Adam McKay stepped right up and said I'm gonna pay that deductible right away. Because I was going to my team saying we got to raise this money. He paid the deductible and then we had lawyers, great lawyers, working on it who literally saw it as an example of what must be defended in our society, because you can't have a healthy democracy when truth is put out and people who are frauds or exposed can sue you and destroy it successfully.

And there's this anti-SLAPP, I'll just say the anti-SLAPP statute exists in a lot of states now and it's what we used to successfully beat back this challenge.

DA Your first project, the one that got you into the movie realm, was The Ballad of the Risky Robber. And I know that was a protracted experience. Are there any elements of that experience that shaped how you did this one?

JR I was laughing to myself when you said protracted because at the time it seemed long, it was four years. This one’s more. So now it seems like a trifle by comparison.

As you probably remember, Johnny Depp bought the rights to that book. That book continues to do great. It's just a wild story of the kind of wild, wild “East” of Eastern Europe after the fall of communism and this terrible hockey goalie from Transylvania who comes into Hungary and ends up basically robbing banks in this sort of Robin Hood-style and kind of this political sort of statement that he was making.

The stories are pretty different. Of course, remembering that once you've gone through having done a book or something, it helps you when you're in the thick of another one to be like, I know I can get to the other side. I've done it before. So I think, honestly that's the biggest thing probably.

DA I just turned in a book proposal and I was super happy about how it turned out. I think it's gonna be accepted, and I just remembered, You are sprinting to get to the starting line. There's no celebration.

(Laughter)

JR Don't sprint too fast because you got a long road.

DA I'm going to let you go in a second, but I had Mike Wise on a little before you and Kevin Powell before and looking back to New York in the late 90’s and what a kind of amazing time that was. I'm not being super nostalgic when I say that, right?

JR That was like the Golden Age. I mean, think about the late 90’s in New York. I mean, it'll never be like that, right? There were so many parties—open bar—and all that tech money was still there. It’s crazy how quickly things change, cause I think 9-11 was the absolute end of that. But it was starting to erode before that.

DA You think so?

JR I think because the tech bubble was bursting.

DA Mmm, ok. You’re right.

JR Yeah, before, but without a doubt I remember, of course, being there after 9-11. I mean, talk about turning a light switch or something, and everything is different. But without a doubt, you were there at a great time. That was in the middle of my basically 20 years in New York. And that time in the late 90’s, there was just nothing like it. Even as you mentioned Gear, look at magazines now. That was a time when magazines were hiring. Online magazines starting and hiring people for real money! That's so far in the past. You almost forget it existed.

DA It was such a great window for me because I was in California, I had no business being there. If it wasn't for the Eggers thing, I never would have ended up at ESPN.

JR You were rocking it at ESPN. You had a sweet gig there. That was awesome.

DA That was a great time just to be there in that moment. I mean, it was a peak experience. We used to go to Madame X, right? Down on Houston. Those were amazingly lit times. And just from the pandemic, I feel like people don't party in bars the way they used to. Never mind the fact that you can't really live in New York anymore without being a rich person. And yeah, it felt like a privilege and some really good work came out of it, you know?

JR That's true. I was about to say that your great memoir Ghetto Celebrity—take out the “ghetto” during that time. That was like the prime time.

DA I had my going away party at ESPN. There was something current going on at Madame X and I had invited everyone from the office to it. And it was just a packed place. You remember, this is a two story bar, really big bar. And Eggers couldn't get in. (Laughter) Dave Eggers couldn't get in. It was a grand time. It went right to my head and I'm sure nothing bad happened from it. (Laughter)

Anything you want to say on the way out? You're Oscar long-listed, right?

JR We're long-listed for the Oscar, The Holly. I would just say, for anyone who hasn't seen it yet—most people probably haven't—you can stream it now on Prime or Apple Plus. And the book was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. That's, of course, available wherever books are.

There's more about it on thehollyfilm.com.

DA Yeah, and the book is worth it. I had the big copy out from the downtown LA library for the longest time. So, I apologize for that. There's a lot of stuff in the book, as always is the case, that isn't in the film.

JR The book was like, almost 10 documentaries. But it really enabled me to drill down on this incredible history over the decades of this neighborhood, which really contextualizes. I do some of that in the movie, but the book really enables it to really have that big arc of a story where you really see, because the reason I wanted to really do it was we see how these historic cycles keep repeating themselves. If we don't realize it or recognize it we have no chance to stop it.

DA I think that's why it keeps resonating. I saw the pictures from LA and the crowd. You had a full house.

JR Yeah, sold out.

DA When was that?

JR November 7 in LA. It was part of the IDA, International Documentary Association, series.

DA There's a broader applicability to it that I think gives this story legs. So thanks for doing it, coming on here.

JR Oh, yeah. Great to see you. Thanks for having me.