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Movie Pirates

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Five minutes later he has seven copies of Cloverfield. He empties the tower, scribbling the title of the movie on each and sliding them into their own white paper sleeves, leaving only the original disk in the first tower, and placing a freshly burned DVD into the second burner tower. "A lot of times," he says, as he loads the second tower with blank DVDs, "I just pick up a copy of whatever [movies] I need to copy from somewhere else and then burn my own copies. Then I ain't gotta sit in the movie theater." Burn, remove, package, repeat. Burn, remove, package, repeat.

Asked if he knows other bootleggers, Chris keeps working. "Nah, I don't know them guys. I just stop by the beauty shop down the street, or sometimes they be coming in the barbershop. Them mutha­fuckas are everywhere." Burn, remove, package, repeat. Burn, remove, package, repeat. Thirty minutes later he has, among others, more than 50 hard copies of a movie that opened yesterday. On to Step 3 of the bootlegging process, which might also be titled "This Ain't No Job For Punks."

Sitting in the parking lot of a beauty supply shop on the northside of town with a trunk full of illegally burned DVDs and CDs is not for the faint of heart. Fundamentally, it's the same as sitting in the parking lot of a beauty shop on the northside of town without a trunk full of DVDs and CDs, but that one "tiny" difference is proving to be, well, uncomfortable.

"Relax." Chris says, the trunk full of contraband occupying about as much of his attention as the rising national deficit or Britney Spears's sudden British accent — which is to say, not very much.

The contraband in question is somewhere in the neighborhood of 300-400 illegally copied DVDs, most of which are movies still found in theaters — The Bucket List, First Sunday, Cloverfield, How She Move and I Am Legend, to name just a few. Current prices for the pirated DVDs are set at the street standard, $5 each, three for $10 or six for $20. (CDs are $3 each, four for $10 or eight for $20.) Chris is waiting for customers.

A stranger approaches Chris's burgundy sedan.

"What's up, cat? Whaddya need?" asks Chris.

"You got that Great Debaters or One Missed Call? And National Treasure 2?" asks the stranger.

"Yeah, you want all three?"

"Yeah."

Chris fingers through two of the three shoe boxes filled with DVDs, alphabetically organized, in the trunk of his car and digs out the three movies.

"Why don't you go on and get three more, square it a $20. I got that new ­Cloverfield," bargains Chris.

"Nah, that's good."

Money and movies change hands. Right there. In the parking lot. In the open. In the dying sunlight. For the world to see and that's that. So goes the next hour and a half of that Tuesday night. Some people, several of whom are weekly regulars, pull up right next to Chris's car and ask for specific movies or CDs. Others ask what he's got, and, depending on what's requested, he hands them a handwritten list of either movies or CDs. None of the patrons, according to Chris's finely tuned undercover cop detector, are police.

The trick for the pirates is for people to know where to find them without people knowing where to find them. "When people begin to notice a pattern of someone selling movies out of the trunk of their car, at a bowling alley or parking lot, for instance," says Lieutenant Michael Otero of the HPD Major Offenders Division, "that's when an anonymous tip is most likely to come in and we can act."

Given the esoteric nature of piracy, anonymous tips are hardly an everyday occurrence. Chris, like many other pirates, has taken advantage of society's fleeting conscience, and has been stationed outside of one specific establishment long enough to become a pseudoemployee of it. At one point in the evening, an actual employee pokes her head out of the store's entrance, cordless phone up to her ear, gives a What's up? nod of the head to Chris, then responds into the phone, "Uh-huh, he here."

"[People] will call to check if I'm out." says Chris. Yeah, he's been here awhile.

On average, a movie pirate selling illicit movie goods out of the trunk of his car can make upwards of $700 a day, easily, according to the MPAA's Mike Robinson, a stat confirmed by Chris. "Usually Mondays through Wednesday gonna be slow boogie. You could make anywhere from $10 to $1,000 depending on who you are and how you get yours." In between customers, he gives a crash course in Pirate Economics, explaining how, as with any other business, there are always mitigating factors that must be taken into account for one to be successful.

"People get paid on Fridays, people get paid every other week, people get paid on the first and the fifteenth. So, you put that together and that lets you know how the market be. That's why the beginning of the week is slower. But let's just say Thursday through Saturday, Sunday even, you ain't gonna really make nothing less than a 500 spot if you just sitting around at the right place, and sky's the limit depending on how much product you can get. That's the reason I like it. If you a real hustler, you can get out here and make real money."

All in all, 52 movies were sold in the hour and a half spent in the parking lot, for a total of $230. A slow night, to be sure, but at a rate of $153 an hour, it's not bad for a Tuesday.

Strip center parking lots, like those of beauty supply shops, video rental stores and grocers, are hotbeds for movie pirates because, according to Chris, "fast money finds fast money." Those types of places generate a lot of traffic, and the traffic that they do generate is already anticipating spending money. Remember: Somebody else's customer is your customer if you can reach them first.

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