"Renegades"

“40 words or less” – An ambitious hotel pool boy in the late 1970’s becomes manager of Miami’s most infamous nightclub and devises a plan to assassinate Fidel Castro with the help of the club’s notorious patrons in order to open a franchise in Havana

Full Summary:

It’s 1978 and The Renegade Hotel on South Bayshore Drive in Coconut Grove is at the epicenter of the drug fueled, high-society Miami party scene.  Carlos Estrada, a handsome Cuban in his late-twenties, is a pool boy at the hotel who spends most of his time on his hands and knees scrubbing tiles while the drug kingpin guests around him constantly flaunt their money, get high and drunk and cavort with young models less than half their age.

One especially wealthy drug dealer, Ariel Mendez, soon befriends the disgruntled young man and asks him to do a series of menial tasks.  Having proven his worth, Ariel quickly takes Carlos under his wing, even inviting him as his guest to the ultra-exclusive private nightspot attached to the hotel, The Renegade Club.

According to Carlos, The Renegade Club was “the epicenter of the cocaine jazz age and 1970’s Miami decadence.  The club was so exclusive even I couldn’t walk in here as a hotel employee.  Rumor has it a yearly membership cost $20,000.  Sure, the place was ultra-exclusive but everyone who’s anyone came here on any given night.  There were flashy drug dealers, their wannabe hangers-on, gun runners, politicians and legitimate South American businessmen desperately trying to become fixtures on the burgeoning Miami nightlife scene.  The Kennedys’ were regulars and so was Governor Reagan.  There were athletes, singers, celebrities, Hollywood starlets, bankers, Cuban refugees both old and new, every hot girl within a 50 miles radius whether they were paid or not, and even the occasional exiled dictator from some small third-world Caribbean country that no one’s ever heard of.  But definitely no pool boys were here.  If you were famous or infamous, no trip to Miami would be complete without a stop at The Renegade Club.  Hell, rumor had it, local law enforcement, and even the fucking CIA, was known to visit the place, and why not?  If you wanted to know what illegal activities were going on in Miami…or Latin America or South America for that matter, and who the players are, you’d come here.  You really had to see it to believe it.”

The only thing that rivaled the excesses seen and done in The Renegade Club were the actions and activities taking place in the hotel suites above.  Depravity and debauchery were the rule virtually every night in the hotel suites which offered privacy from the outside world and a place to continue the party after the club closed, or start the party before it opened.

Carlos further ingratiates himself to his new benefactor by serving as a lookout for a drug shipment coming in by sea but when Mr. Mendez offers him a more permanent position in his organization, he surprisingly declines.  When pressed on why he declines, Carlos shares his lifelong dream with Ariel.  All he wants to do is run a nightclub with the stature of The Renegade, he wants to be the center of Miami nightlife, he wants to know everyone worth knowing and, more importantly, he wants them to know him.  After hearing this, Ariel uses his contacts, and unconventional tactics, to get Carlos a job at the club but he has to start off on the bottom rung of the ladder, a busboy.

In his new position, Carlos immediately butts heads with the current manager of the club, Paco, and quickly finds himself in a predicament that could mean his life.  To save his own life, while also positioning himself to become the new manager of The Renegade, Carlos pitches a rather insane plan to Ariel.  In order to build a coalition against the current manager, Carlos presents his idea of franchising the club into other markets, the first being Havana, and giving Ariel a piece of the business.  How was he going to open up an American franchise in communist Cuba?  By assassinating Fidel Castro of course.

Although thinking Carlos is crazy for such an overture, Ariel can’t help but also think about the lure of making money off the club so he decides to back Carlo’s ascension to manager, again through the use of unconventional tactics.  Once he takes charge, Carlos devises his assassination plot with the help of the club’s notorious patrons, all of whom have their own personal and professional hatred of Castro.  He enlists old Cuban refugees involved in the Bay of Pigs, drug dealers, legitimate South American businessmen, gun runners, financiers, speedboat world champions, even a couple rogue CIA agents and a well-known Latin American singer.

Their plan is simple enough, probably too simple, and involves sending a small invasion force on a fleet of drug smuggling fishing vessels and speedboats from the Keys to infiltrate the seaside palace of Castro’s during his birthday celebration and capture him while he and his security force are distracted by the singer’s performance.  Naturally the invasion fails spectacularly, and while many of the key players go back to life in Miami like nothing happened, several others die or are captured in Cuba.  The incidence does help instigate the Mariel boatlift later on. 

Renegades Screenplay