Hemingway's Picasso

Steve Kough was a lot of things: an ex-NFL player, model, drug smuggler, art aficionado, Miami’s heart-throb, and a father. His unfiltered and brazen thirst for excitement mixed with a family history of crime was a cocktail for a wild life. On a cocaine drug run to Cuba in 1989, Steve winds up with a Picasso ceramic tile that once belonged to Ernest Hemingway. The piece is apparently meant to go to Pablo Escobar in lieu of cash, but due to political complications in Cuba, Steve gets to keep the piece. Steve’s son, Stevie now holds the treasured piece that represents all the incarnations of his father. The question is, do we believe the story?

During Steve’s short career on the football field he has a run in with his old buddies in the Detroit Mafia who lure him on his first trip across the border to Mexico. Steve’s son, Stevie reveals what life was like as the son of a drug smuggler in Miami. This is a Somethin' Else production in association with Vespucci.

Steve deals with the consequences of his arrest from his drug run in Mexico. He moves to Miami to chase his dreams of football stardom, and ends up exploring what else the city has to offer. But then, he gets an angry call from his mother. Meanwhile, Steve’s daughter, Jamie, uncovers what it was like to have a father like Steve, the good and the bad.

After being released from prison in 1984, Steve tries his luck at getting a normal job. But when his past kept catching up with him, Mustafa Hamshaw, AKA Joe Pegg, gives him a chance of a lifetime. Steve meets a Miami Dolphins cheerleader, Patron, one night on the dance floor, and they elope quickly thereafter. After a whirlwind romance, a less-than-perfect marriage followed, and soon Steve would realize he might need to make one last, big run to try to get out of the game and save his family.

Leah attempts to understand how Hemingway could have ended up with a Picasso ceramic by examining the relationship between these two important figures. She goes through the work Steve Senior already went through to establish the piece’s provenance, or the history of its ownership. And she makes some discoveries of her own.

The consequences of Steve’s actions as a father and drug smuggler have lasting effects on his loved ones. Stevie, his son, recounts an altercation he had with his father when he was 18, and how it set his mental health to spiral out of control. He spends the next 10 years of his life distancing himself from his father’s Miami and the heavy burden of Fred and Betty. Steve’s old girlfriend, Lourdes, comes back into his life 30 years later, during his last and final years. But then, Steve receives a phone call that threatens to put an end to their love story.

Once Stevie hears about Steve's cancer, he brings his dad to Temecula, California to battle his illness together. Jamie tries to help, but can't figure out her place with her father and brother. Then, she learns an upsetting truth about what was in Steve’s will. We speak with art specialists at Sotheby’s and Christies in London who deliberate on the authenticity of the piece and give their expert opinion on whether or not Fred and Betty is a real Picasso.