THE ‘SILK ROAD’ TO PERDITION
Tiller Russell remembers exactly how he felt in October 2013 when he read in USA Today about the arrest of Ross Ulbricht, found by the feds in the science-fiction section of a San Francisco library. Ulbricht, who was raised in Austin and spent some time in Dallas before decamping to California, had become the subject of an intensive federal manhunt thanks to Silk Road, the dark-web site he created in 2011 to bring an Amazon-like efficiency to the backalley hustle of the illegal drug trade.
In a swift two years, the reclusive Ulbricht — by enthusiastically sticking a libertarian thumb in the eye of government officials — had become a hero to some and a villain to others. Ulbricht, now 36, is currently serving two life terms plus 40 years, to be done concurrently with no chance of parole, at a Tucson, Ariz., penitentiary. (By contrast, the better-known cartel captain El Chapo is serving life without parole plus 30 years.)
“I had this vivid, visceral sense that there was an amazing human story behind it,” says director/writer Russell, whose narrative feature about Ulbricht, “Silk Road,” opens Feb. 19 in theaters and simultaneously will be available on streaming platforms with the DVD and Blu-ray going on
sale Feb. 23. “And even though it was just top-line reporting, where not a lot of the details were revealed initially, I thought, ‘Who is this kid? And how did he end up in this place?’ ”
Russell, who is from Dallas, saw a bit of himself in Ulbricht. “I guess in a weird way, I felt some empathy for him, in the sense that I was a kid from Texas, I had my criminal shenanigans as a kid and whatever else,” he says by phone from Santa Fe, N.M. “And I thought, ‘How do you end up with the entire U.S. Department of Justice bending the wheels towards capturing you in the sci-fi section of the library?’ And I was fascinated right from the get-go.”
Bitcoin outlaw
“Silk Road” stars Nick Robinson — an actor known for such lighter fare as “The Kings of Summer,” “Love, Simon” and “Jurassic World” — as Ulbricht, a guy with a bachelors degree in physics from the University of Texas at Dallas and a masters degree in materials science and engineering from Penn State, who failed in his attempts at day trading and launching a video-game company. But the more successful Good Wagon Books, an Austin-based online used-book outlet he co-founded, would hint at the direction he would take for his big score: Silk Road, named after the ancient trade route between Asia and Europe.
Enamored of such new technologies as Bitcoin and Tor, software allowing for anonymous communications, and emboldened by an interest in free-market, anarcho-capitalist economic theories — specifically the work of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises — Ulbricht pondered bypassing the mainstream, statesanctioned economy altogether by setting up an online marketplace for things the government frowns upon: illicit drugs, mostly. (Ulbricht did have boundaries. Child porn, stolen credit cards, murder for hire and anything meant to harm or defraud were not to be allowed on the site. Yelp-style user reviews were meant to keep everyone honest.)
But was his interest in economics genuine or merely a philosophical fig leaf to hide behind in order to operate what the government would see as a major criminal enterprise?
“It’s (a question) that I asked both myself, as well as the sources that I had spoken to and across the board, everyone said that he was a categorical believer and that it was one of the fundamental animating principles to who he was as a human being,” says Russell who was not able to talk to Ulbricht in advance of making the film. “That, in a way, was almost the germ or the spark that ended up causing him to unleash Silk Road, was as a believer in individual freedoms. And because that was my question, too. Is this a posture? Is this a mask? Or is this conviction true and profound? And everybody
said that it was.”
For two years, Ulbricht was riding high and making money. But living a life in the shadows — staying one step ahead of the law and becoming increasingly paranoid and potentially homicidal as his world unraveled — took its toll on his personal life. Though, as shown in “Silk Road,” it’s a wonder it took so long for the feds — represented by an old-school, tech illiterate investigator played by Jason Clarke — to figure out what Ulbricht was up to.
“What we forget about this story contextually is, but for this story, none of us would have heard of Bitcoin. This is what injected Bitcoin into the zeitgeist in a fundamental way,” Russell says. “And the combination of using Tor to cloak your identity and using crypto-currency to make these exchanges was completely revolutionary. And it literally overnight changed the war on drugs … The government was completely caught flat-footed by this categorical transformation and the simplicity of the idea, really … All of a sudden, the postman becomes your drug dealer, unbeknownst to him.”
Life of cinematic crime
Russell may be especially appropriate to tell Ulbricht’s story. In addition to being a Texan, he has more than a passing knowledge of the American criminal justice system. His father worked in the Dallas district attorney’s office portrayed in Erroll Morris’ 1988 documentary, “The Thin Blue Line.” Much of his film and TV résumé is devoted to documentaries about crime and criminals: “The Night Stalker: Hunt for a Serial Killer”; “The Last Narc”; and “Operation Odessa” are some of the titles.
Turning Ulbricht’s life into a narrative film, instead of a documentary, might seem a bit out of character, but Russell says there’s no hard line between the two.
“I’ve spent time in writers’ rooms, writing for Dick Wolf TV shows as well as making documentaries. And for me, increasingly, the boundary between the two formats is porous,” says Russell, who was a producer on the TV series “Chicago P.D.” and Richard Linklater’s 2011 ripped-from-reallife Texas-set film “Bernie.”
“I could have just as easily have done the doc on this. The way this happened, David Kushner had written a brilliant article about Silk Road (in Rolling Stone), and that had been optioned. And so people came to me knowing my documentary work and knowing my fascination with crime stories like this. And so it just got onto the track to become a feature film early.”
(Also, there already is a 2017 documentary on the subject, “Silk Road: Drugs, Death and the Dark Web.”)
In fact, Russell says he’d like to make a film that has nothing to do with crime at some point. “I’m fascinated by crime, and my entire professional career has been defined by it. And I think I’ll always make those films,” he concedes. “And yet, at the same time, I’d love to make an amazing music movie, whether that’s a doc or whether that’s a feature film.”
Though recent narrative features about such other digital-era outlaws as Julian Assange (“The Fifth Estate”) and Edward Snowden (“Snowden”) didn’t set the box office on fire, Russell says he’s not worried that this bodes ill for “Silk Road.”
“At the end of the day, I think you, as a storyteller, have to go with the stories that you’re fascinated by and find compelling,” he says. “So my instincts are to just go with what captures my attention, and hopefully, it will grab other people as well, but you never know.”
As for Ulbricht, Russell would still like to interview him — perhaps for a documentary, “if Ross would be willing to sit down with me” — and he has spent a lot of time thinking about the case over the past seven years.
“I have a complicated relationship to him as a character and as a human being. I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time thinking about him and imagining his life and scenes from it, the formative ones that led him to launching Silk Road and eventually being busted and spending the rest of his life in prison for it,” he says. “I can imagine if you lost a loved one to an overdose from drugs bought on the Silk Road, how deeply pained and angered you might be.”
But part of him remains sympathetic. “I can imagine what it’s like being Ross, wanting to change the world and unleash this creation in the world only to have it come back and strangle you like a Frankenstein monster,” he says. “So I’m conflicted about it still.”