Steve Kough lived many lives. He was an NFL journeyman, a male model, and one of the most well-connected smugglers in 1980’s Miami, the “Drug Capital of the World." Kough collected many souvenirs from his adventures, but his most treasured bounty – a beautiful ceramic, crafted by Pablo Picasso and gifted to Ernest Hemingway at the author’s Cuban home, the Finca Vigia... or so the story goes. Lost during the Cuban Revolution, the artwork resurfaced when Kough took it as a payment for drug run financed by the notorious Pablo Escobar. Kough passed away in 2018, passing the piece down to his son, Stevie, a skateboarding hippie growing weed in California. Stevie feels he needs to complete his father’s mission – of selling this piece and telling Steve’s cinematic life story. So, is the Picasso authentic—or a fraud? Was Steve Kough a big talker or a real deal smuggler? Does any of that matter or is this a story of aspiration, legacy, and difficult love?
Steve Kough was a lot of things: an ex-NFL player, model, drug smuggler, art aficionado, Miami’s heart-throb, and a father. His unfiltered and brazen thirst for excitement mixed with a family history of crime was a cocktail for a wild life. On a cocaine drug run to Cuba in 1989, Steve winds up with a Picasso ceramic tile that once belonged to Ernest Hemingway. The piece is apparently meant to go to Pablo Escobar in lieu of cash, but due to political complications in Cuba, Steve gets to keep the piece. Steve’s son, Stevie now holds the treasured piece that represents all the incarnations of his father. The question is, do we believe the story?
During Steve’s short career on the football field he has a run in with his old buddies in the Detroit Mafia who lure him on his first trip across the border to Mexico. Steve’s son, Stevie reveals what life was like as the son of a drug smuggler in Miami. This is a Somethin' Else production in association with Vespucci.
Steve deals with the consequences of his arrest from his drug run in Mexico. He moves to Miami to chase his dreams of football stardom, and ends up exploring what else the city has to offer. But then, he gets an angry call from his mother. Meanwhile, Steve’s daughter, Jamie, uncovers what it was like to have a father like Steve, the good and the bad.
After being released from prison in 1984, Steve tries his luck at getting a normal job. But when his past kept catching up with him, Mustafa Hamshaw, AKA Joe Pegg, gives him a chance of a lifetime. Steve meets a Miami Dolphins cheerleader, Patron, one night on the dance floor, and they elope quickly thereafter. After a whirlwind romance, a less-than-perfect marriage followed, and soon Steve would realize he might need to make one last, big run to try to get out of the game and save his family.
Leah attempts to understand how Hemingway could have ended up with a Picasso ceramic by examining the relationship between these two important figures. She goes through the work Steve Senior already went through to establish the piece’s provenance, or the history of its ownership. And she makes some discoveries of her own.
The consequences of Steve’s actions as a father and drug smuggler have lasting effects on his loved ones. Stevie, his son, recounts an altercation he had with his father when he was 18, and how it set his mental health to spiral out of control. He spends the next 10 years of his life distancing himself from his father’s Miami and the heavy burden of Fred and Betty. Steve’s old girlfriend, Lourdes, comes back into his life 30 years later, during his last and final years. But then, Steve receives a phone call that threatens to put an end to their love story.
Once Stevie hears about Steve's cancer, he brings his dad to Temecula, California to battle his illness together. Jamie tries to help, but can't figure out her place with her father and brother. Then, she learns an upsetting truth about what was in Steve’s will. We speak with art specialists at Sotheby’s and Christies in London who deliberate on the authenticity of the piece and give their expert opinion on whether or not Fred and Betty is a real Picasso.
We speak to Antony Penrose, the son of artists Lee Miller and Roland Penrose. He and his parents spent summers in the South of France with Pablo Picasso, one of the most recognized artists of the 20th century. Picasso was warm with Antony and other children, but the famous artist showed a very different side to adults, especially to his lover Françoise Gilot.
Ernest Hemingway was embraced by many Cubans as Papa, the everyday man who lived in the iconic seaside estate, Finca Vigia. He wrote some of his most masterful novels in Havana, Cuba - and lived quite the life there, too. But Cuba is rarely highlighted or even remembered in Hemingway's biography. Fidel Castro saw the importance of Hemingway as a writer and political tool. In this installment, Norberto Fuentes, the legendary Cuban journalist and author in exile, discusses Hemingway’s life and legacy in Cuba.
Carlos Lehder isn’t a celebrity like Escobar, but the truth is that, without Lehder, Escobar would never have become a wildly famous drug kingpin. Lehder, the German-Colombian, drug-trafficking genius was responsible for bringing 85% of the cocaine from Colombia into the United States in the 1970’s and 80’s by way of the Bahamian island Norman’s Cay. Ron Chepesiuk, journalist and author of Crazy Charlie, discusses Lehder’s rise and fall - and all the craziness in between.