In the summer of 2012, Rudy Eugene, 31, who is Haitian, was dubbed by the media as the "Miami Zombie” and “Causeway Cannibal” after he violently attacked and mauled Ronald Poppo, 65, a homeless man living near the MacArthur Causeway in Miami.
Eugene was shot and killed by a Miami police officer during the May 26, 2012, attack. Lab tests found only marijuana in Eugene's system, but no other drugs or alcohol. Poppo lost an eye, his eyebrows, his nose and parts of his forehead and right cheek. He underwent several reconstructive surgeries.
A new film, Know Me: A True Life Drama by Miami native filmmaker and actor Edson Jean, examines the media's sensationalized media coverage. Jean specifically spotlights Eugene's struggles with his mental health and explores how his Haitian family dealt with the media frenzy.
The film, currently in post-production, follows the debut release of Jean’s Ludi, which premiered at the 2021 Miami International Film Festival and South by Southwest. The latest project follows a similar throughline: dissecting the untold stories surrounding Haitian culture and the Black diaspora.
Jean’s close friend happens to be Marckenson Charles, Eugene’s brother. Jean and Charles co-wrote the project. It began as a journal to try to make sense of what went through Eugene’s mind and the media spectacle evolved into a screenplay more than two years in the making.
The film tells the story of Eugene's brother's determination to preserve his memory against the false public portrayal of his religious belief system following the violent attack. Jean plays the role of the brother.
Delray Beach native actor Donald Paul (of Emancipation and Law and Order) plays the character, Jimmy Hilaire, who represents Rudy Eugene.
In the film, a series of flashback moments show Hilaire's uncanny state of mind, including his fixation on his own interpretation of the Bible, dreams and the afterlife.
“I look death in the face and I ain’t blinked,” Hilaire, the character, says in one of the scenes.
The film, which also stars Miami-native and Haitian-American actress Shein Mompremier as an empathetic reporter, “pledges to explore him [Rudy Eugene] sincerely, in his complexity as a human being. As a brother. As a friend. As a son. As everything that made him human as opposed to the monster the media made him as,” said Ronald Baez, an award-winning Afro-Latino producer who is involved with the film.
Jean said Eugene's Haitian heritage, historically known for its various vodou religious practices in some parts of Haiti, helped fuel some of the false vodou and zombie accusations. But Eugene's actions don’t represent any aspect of Haitian vodou culture and many of the Haitians in Haiti identify as Christian, many of whom tried to distance themselves from the media spectacle.
“That is a large crux of what the film unveils — really how the community itself turns its back on the [Eugene] family, whether that's local churches, whether that's people within the community,” Jean said. “So it definitely had a significant impact on them.”
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Photographer: Tia Bailey |
Jean told WLRN his film, Know Me, is currently in post-production and in final fundraising rounds with no release date yet. He spoke with WLRN’s Palm Beach County reporter Wilkine Brutus about the film project. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
WLRN: The victim, Ronald Poppo, who was homeless, underwent months of painful treatment to reconstruct his face and he is left permanently disfigured. How does the film portray him?
JEAN: In the film, we don't spend too much time with Mr. Poppo. Obviously because I did not know him. We do not ignore it altogether because we actually delve into the fact that this is a complex story and a complex character to sort of unpack based on not only who he was but what he did that day and by no means do we try to ignore, subvert, or go around the idea that it was a heinous act but rather beyond just the incident. We challenge our community audiences, people worldwide, to have a broader, more empathetic conversation beyond just the initial sort of knee jerk reaction we might have to a headline or to what happened.
There's a scene where your character is confronted by the media at his home. What is your take on that particular scene?
Well, yeah, it's just something that happened on the day. Something that Marckenson had to go through and the family had to go through. And not only them, but even people around them. The media was absolutely relentless. And certain people in the media, right? I also want to be conscious of not blanking the media as sort of like this monolith. There are sensitive journalists, empathetic and respectful journalists.
And that scene specifically touches on the ones who weren't and the ones who were engaging in an aggressive way and not respecting privacy of the family, and just letting the rest of the world in on what the family had to deal with beyond that point.
You're known for the Haitian immigrant coming of age film, Ludi, which opened the 2021 Miami International Film Festival and premiered at South by Southwest. Is there a through line or connected themes between your current film, Know Me, and your previous one?
Absolutely. It's my mission as an artist. It's something that I'm continuing to learn and hone and develop with each go that I am honored to have the opportunity to make a film. It's to further expand the consciousness of the U.S. and the world of Haitian and Haitian American stories within the African diaspora.
The Haitian people are a people for such a long time that have been misrepresented, continue to be misrepresented, not only in popular media, but in pop culture. In politics.
In 2022, Austin Hariff, who is white, was committed to a mental health facility after a Florida judge accepted his insanity plea for the 2016 murder of a married couple in their Tequesta, Florida garage. At the murder scene, Hariff was found chewing one of the victim's faces. How do you feel about the media portrayal of Hariff versus Rudy Eugene?
I was just astonished at how differently — astonished but not astonished. It's just like sometimes you are constantly surprised when A, it seems like within society, as a black person, you're being gaslit to not believe that there are disparities between, you and the privileged fairer skin. And where, in fact, not to measure what has happened between the two because I think they're both terrible things to have happened, but Austin killed two people. But really in large part is the response to how and why Rudy's situation was branded as a zombie, as a cannibal.
There is a scene where the character who portrays Rudy Eugene goes on a religious rant about the afterlife and your character's having a hard time following along. What's your interpretation of that scene?
Anyone who knows him, like throughout high school, knew that he was a very religious person and spoke about not only the Bible, but God in a way that wasn't necessarily common for someone of that age.
But often those interpretations were interpretations that exceeded what would actually exist on the written page. And these sort of conversations or moments were signs when we look back in retrospect, of someone who wasn't necessarily all there mentally.
But no one, no one in that time or around him was thinking there could be something off here. So that scene — let's think of it as sort of like a portal to a larger conversation about mental health awareness.
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