The Usual Suspects is an episodic (weekly) television show that is set in a United States Penitentiary (federal pen). The show chronicles its two main characters, Don Corleone and Robin Banks, as well as their tragic and comedic lives. It has a wide array of characters that span the subcultures of American criminals, the hacks that work this fictitious joint, including prison officials, and the head of the institution, Warden Sledge.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons operates 122 facilities that are broken down into three basic custody levels: Minimum (Club Fed), Medium (Federal Correctional Institutions or FCI), and High Security (United States Penitentiary or USP). USP’s are the most volatile in the federal system. There are about 16 of them that are stone fortresses, tucked away in places far from the eyes of the general public. The convicts in these institutions typically have a history of violence.
Inside of a federal pen you will find members from every street gang in America, Native Americans, international criminals who happened to get pinched in the U.S., and members of organized crime that include Italian mafia, Chinese triads, and Japanese Yakuza. USP’s are filled with psychotic people who do not think straight and who live without any expectation of ever living life as a law-abiding citizen. Most have LIFE sentences and will never go home. The ARE home.
The convicts in a USP live by a value system that is inverse of the normal one that people live by in society, a value system that can best be described as predatory. Violence is celebrated and respected, and used as a tool, mainly because it is all that most people back there understand and respond to. The daily environment for THE USUAL SUSPECTS is filled with manipulation, extortion, and violent altercations. Rape and robbery and murder and mayhem are an everyday way of life.
There has never been a show in the history of television that takes a brick out of the wall that surrounds this demographic and allows the viewer to see them as they live amongst their element. THE USUAL SUSPECTS not only takes a brick out of this wall, it hurls it at the viewer and lets them see what the convicts see and makes them feel what they feel. The viewer will realize one undeniable fact. We are not all wired alike, yet at our core, we are all the same.
Some of THE USUAL SUSPECTS include:
DON CORLEONE: Retired capo for one of the five mafia families in New York City. The feds retired him via LIFE sentences for racketeering and murder. Cooks up great schemes and great meals. Can usually be found playing Gin for a penny a point (and cheating) with Robin Banks. Has great criminal diplomacy. Once ran a very lucrative bingo game to benefit the “Disabled African war victims of Bahrain. When Robin Banks pointed out that, 1) There were no Africans in Bahrain, and 2) There had never been a war there, Don Corleone yelled, “Whose side are you on here!?!”
ROBIN BANKS (a.k.a. Fridge): Serial bank robber who writes and blogs from prison. The guards call his “The Mastermind.” Likes to call himself a Penal Documentarian. His nickname derives from his vocation and he said that he always wanted to use it as an alias so that when the judge looked down on him, and asked, “Are you Robin Banks, sir?” He could reply, “No, silly, I’m standing right here.” Constant companion of Don Corleone.
THIS FUCKING GUY: Authority on everything from brick masonry to gynecology. If you don’t think he knows everything, just ask him. To hear him tell it, he’s done everything from train Navy Seals and practice ophthalmology, to attend seminary and run with the bulls in Pamplona. I think he fell in some of that bullshit and rolled around in it. Every time that I see him he is holding court with lesser miscreants and saying something completely audacious and I will say to whoever I am with, “Will you look at this fucking guy?”
WORKIE WORKIE: 4’8 Mexican whose primary hustle includes cleaning cells, changing linens and fluffing pillows, and doing laundry. He’s under 100 lbs and is almost bald, but the hair that he does have left is pushed up into this Mohawk thingy that sticks straight up off his head like a pith helmet. The effect is that it makes him look like a Mexican cockatoo. Workie Workie has an affection for oversized clothing and doesn’t speak a lick of English, or claims not to. No matter what anyone says to him in English, he will just smile and give a nod and a little wave. Doing time for illegal entry into the U.S. and is in a USP because of his association with a Mexican drug cartel. I’ll bet they miss him. He’s a great worker.
THE CHINAMAN: Six foot tall Chinaman that used to live on my tier and that is crazy as a shit house rat. Loves to catch pigeons through the bars in the window on the tier, then eat them. Triad member from NYC doing LIFE for racketeering and murder. It sure wouldn’t bother me to see him come down with a case of the bird flu. I’ll bet the pigeons wouldn’t mind either.
WHITE WALLY: White supremacist skinhead that has swastikas tattooed underneath each of his eyes and OLD SCHOOL HATE tattooed across his neck, just to take the mystery out of it. Serving a LIFE sentence for burning down synagogues in what he nostalgically refers to as his “Genocidal Phase.”
FRANCISCO: Colombian cartel member that was kidnapped by the United States government from the jungles of South America and brought to the U.S. to stand trial for simple possession of 8 tons of cocaine. Francisco is a barber who while trimming his clients hair in the cell block, discusses everything from favorable countries for avoiding extradition, to recipes for cooking plantains the jungle.
FAT LOUIE: Wiseguy from Philly who is squat, with a sloping forehead. Always has gel in his hair. His bloodline is about two generations removed from homo erectus. Doing LIFE for killing a government witness that testified against him. Keeps an autopsy photo of him on the wall of his cell and claims that he wishes he could dig him up and kill him again.
CHYNA DOLL: Native American transgender serving 15 years for second degree murder back on the rez (Fort Apache). Looks better than a lot of women. Dope fiend who uses her sphincter like an American Express card. And like 75% of the rest of the prison, uses her wealth on drugs and is completely strung out.
WADOO SCARY: Old black convict that has been down over 25 years on a LIFE sentence. High ranking member of Chicago street gang convicted of attempting to buy shoulder-fired missiles from the dictator of a third world country. Is so institutionalized that anything out of the norm freaks him out. Constantly stopping by the bars of other people’s cells on the tier, appearing like a wisp of smoke, saying things like, “They’re seven minutes later calling lunch. Do you think somebody got killed?” Or,”I sure hope they have ice cream on Cheeseburger Day this week. They had the best ice cream back at USP Atlanta in the nineties.”
J. EDGAR: Unit Manager for the cell block where Don Corleone and Robin Banks reside. Has the steely-eyed look of a true fed. Before he got the Unit Manager job running the cell house, he worked for the Special Investigative Service (S.I.S.) at the prison. SIS are the people that read all of the convicts mail and listen to all of their phone calls and try to catch them doing something; anything. They also surveil and try to catch the prison employees doing the same thing. Although J. Edgar no longer serves da Fuherer, it is still in his blood. He trusts no one. J. Edgar is living proof that you can take the man out of the Gestapo, but you can never take the Gestapo out of the man.
GHETTO BOY: Member of one of the two major street gangs based in Los Angles doing LIFE for guns, drugs, conspiracy, and anything else the feds could find to keep his black ass off the street. Has so much gold in his mouth that it’s rumored that when he was in the county jail and it came time to pay his lawyer, he pulled out one of his teeth and tossed it across the table to her. Wicked high I.Q. and the only one who can beat Robin Banks at Scrabble.
OFFICER I.E.D.: Prison guard and former marine and veteran of The War on Terror in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Still thinks he’s standing post in Fallujah. Skittish; blinks a lot and has the affect of the word “Vacancy” on a motel sign. Robin Banks keeps him on his toes like a ballerina. He’ll intentionally drop a book near him and scream something like ALLAHU AKBAR!!! and Officer I.E.D. will go straight up in the air like a cat. When Don Corleone told him that he should cut the guy a break, Robin Banks replied, “He’s a stinking prison guard. It’s his job to stay on his toes and it’s my job to keep him there.”
WARDEN SLEDGE: Career bureaucrat who is crafty and not completely stupid. Natty dresser who collects federal law enforcement and BOP patches and has them framed and covering the walls of his spacious office. Runs his Federal Fiefdom with force. Thought that the Warden in the Shawshank Redemption was actually a good guy and cried when he shot himself.
The characters for the television show THE USUAL SUSPECTS come from Jeffrey Patrick Frye’s very first blog to his Bank Robber’s Blog on his former publisher, Murder Slim Press’s website. It also appeared in print in his first book for MSP, titled, BANK BLOGGER. The majority of the characters that will appear in THE USUAL SUSPECTS are caricatures of actual people that Frye did time with, while a couple of them are composites. Frye chose to take these characters and use them as the achor for a television show.
The pilot episode is titled “Le Maschere” (Which means The Masks in Italian and refers to the happy and sad faces that are associated with the theater and can sometimes be found on a playbill) derives from a blog that Frye did on the Bank Robber’s Blog back in 2014. It is about a riot he was involved in when MS-13 decided to kill someone from a rival gang, or “Take them off the count,” as it is called. To accomplish this though, they created several fights at different places around the prison as diversions. The first one occurred on the outdoor rec yard when two Hispanic men began to beat, and then kick the living shit out of another Hispanic man. Then there were other fights that kicked off in cell blocks on both sides of the compound. MS-13 did this so the staff would be too tired from running around the institution and they would have plenty of time to kill the person they were after in the indoor rec center.
In United States Penitentiaries, the outdoor rec yard is in the middle of the compound. It is one large rectangle-shaped area and the space that is divided into three separate rec yards that have 12 foot high fence topped with razor wire and gates that allow for crowd control. And the entire rec yard also has a 12 foot chain-link fence surrounding it that is topped with razor wire. Dead-center in the middle of the rec yard is the gun tower. It is about five stories tall and it has large windows that slide open so the officers in the tower can toss concussion grenades and shoot down onto the rec yard when shit kicks off, which it always does.
I have some pretty lofty, but I feel realistic, goals when it comes to this television show. There are roughly 53 content-buying cable networks on television. I plan on selling this show to either Netflix, Apple TV+, Hulu, or Amazon Prime video (that also produces television shows). I have put together a “Pitch Packet” that includes a bio of me, an overview of the show, with suggested places for filming. It has a list of the characters, and the last thing that is in the pitch packet is the pilot episode. I put together a pitch packet last year and sent it to a friend of a friend named Dayton (He is listed as Dayton Hollywood in my phone) who is connected to the film industry. But he asked me to make a few changes, the main one being to write the pilot episode in screenplay form. The new packet is going back out to him.
