Netflix ask you imagine, it’s your tenth birthday and your Mother tells you that she has something for you but it was mailed to her. You couldn’t imagine what that could be, after all, your Mom has no need for what 10 year old boys are currently into. You keep wondering until she hands you an envelope, inside it is a headline and that headline is about your Dad. It reads “Missing Informant feared dead.” but you are 10 years old, and even though the sentence is dire, you cling to the hope in that one phrase “feared dead” because feared dead does not mean found dead, that would mean your Dad is gone. But your Dad can’t be gone, he’s a superhero, right?
Imagine it is three years later and while you are not as starry eyed as you were as a 10 year old you think that your Dad certainly must be out there somewhere. After all, the headline said feared, not found and from everything you’ve heard about your Dad you know that he’s just the guys on Miami Vice, He had to have been the one to thwart the bad guys and get away. Speaking of which, after this movie preview for this new movie called Scarface goes off, you’re all set to tune in. It has Al Pacino in it and it deals with Mafia stuff, doesn’t really seem to be your thing, oh well you’ll sit through it until Miami Vice comes on, this week, you’re bound to see your Dad in the cast somewhere!
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If you think the above story is an entirely fictional account you would be wrong because it did happen. That was the childhood of Jael Nash when he was young, When he was 24 he tried to get some answers via the government, but as soon as the man at the government agency put in his Father’s information into the computer, a phonecall was received and Jael was told not to pursue the matter any further. He did not officially know what happened to his Father until 2006, when a concerned friend of his did some digging around online using his Dad’s name. No one from any federal agency had ever bothered to let him know that his Dad had died many years ago, much less the brutality in which it occurred. If you think that this was the first and only time that people have been inconsiderate to the family about this matter, no, it’s been happening since the death of Larry Nash.
In 2018 when Jael was on facebook, for reasons entirely unrelated, he got recommended a video “10 facts you didn’t know about Scarface.”, he had actually never seen the movie so when he watched the video he got the shock of his life when one of the first things he saw was detailing that the first five minutes of the movie Scarface was about his Father’s death. During all that time of his being alive, no one in Production from the movie Scarface had ever sent them a permission form asking if they could use the details of his Father’s death in the movie. And when his Mother wrote the judge in charge of the case the only thing she got back was a letter three years later saying that her letter had somehow been misplaced. How does one misplace a letter for three years? Especially one having to do with a high profile federal murder case.
It’s a strange thing, that someone from Hollywood, who was not related to Mr. Nash in any way, could readily receive details about his death fairly quickly after it happened, because if you watch the etxtra features on Scarface it says that Brian DePalma and Oliver Stone got the information that they used directly from the Miami DA’s office, unlike the family who had to write letters and make phonecalls and never really got anywhere, even decades later. This film won three Golden Globe awards and not once did one of the higher ups think to themselves, “Oh, can we double check and see if the family has been informed of what happened?” Granted, this was the early 80’s, but there have been other, lesser Hollywood productions who have done their due diligence better. The family at the very least needs a formal apology, along with a copy of whatever information the DA provided these film makers. All they have ever wanted was answers as to what happened to their loved one and it doesn’t seem like anyone is willing or able to provide.
Fast forward to today. This needs to change, victims of families should get a say on how their loved ones stories are portrayed, even if they are only a 2 minute clip 10 minutes into an 8 episode documentary, especially if said loved one was tragically murdered. Lots of times, it’s not that these family members don’t want the truth coming out, they do, but they would just like to be informed of what to expect when they turn on the TV for a night of Netflix and chill. Just ask Jael, he didn’t get that warning and received a nasty shock that brought back 40 years of being caged in abject fear. It’s 2020, it’s time content creators exercised some sensitivity. For any other soap opera and entertainment news, please visit Daily Soap Dish. For more royal and celeb baby news, come back to Celeb Baby Laundry.