'Drugstore Cowboy' Writer James Fogle Allegedly Robs Pharmacy

By PopEater Staff Posted May 28th 2010 08:00AM

'Drugstore Cowboy' Writer James Fogle Robs Pharmacy

Whoever said art imitates life was ... well, actually, they were dead-on. Author James Fogle, who penned the semi-autobiographical novel 'Drugstore Cowboy' that inspired the 1989 Gus Van Sant/Matt Dillon film of the same name, is facing charges for attempting to rob a Seattle pharmacy, the New York Times reports.

"He's 73 years old and this is probably the only thing he knows," said Jim Bove, a police spokesman, told the Seattle Times.

Indeed, it's not the first time the writer has gotten into hot water. In 1990, Publishers Weekly noted Fogle had spent a whopping 35 of his 53 years in prison.

"It's very hard to catch a robbery in progress," Bove said, "but everything that could have gone right went right."

Now, he's being held on $500,000 bail as a suspect for first-degree robbery. King County District Court Judge Arthur R. Chapman cited a "substantial likelihood" of Fogle fleeing if a pricey bail was not set.

Fogle's criminal lifestyle, apparently the real-life catalyst for Gus Van Sant's breakout picture (which nabbed the National Society of Film Critics' Best Film vote in 1989), stretches dark and deep. According to the New York Times:

It turns out that Mr. Fogle's convictions have been piling up steadily since the movie was made. Court records show a series of arrests and prison stints over the past two decades in Washington and Oregon -- and Mr. Fogle is a suspect in still more crimes. Detectives in Centralia, Wash., say they believe that he was involved in robberies and attempted robberies at pharmacies there last year. 'America's Most Wanted' aired a segment about the cases this year.

When 'Drugstore Cowboy' hit theaters, Fogle was in prison. After his release, he seemed confident he could turn his life around, telling the Seattle Times in 1992: "I had everything going for me. But it wasn't really different. After you do a lot of time it's hard. You get out and you don't really know anybody except the people you knew before you went in. Some psychiatrist told me I'd been locked up so long I didn't have any point of reference, you know? I always went back to what I knew."

Officers said Fogle, wearing a hood and a pink bandana as he exited the Seattle pharmacy, came quietly, handing over a BB gun hidden in his pants. A fully-loaded .32-caliber handgun was discovered in the store. Fogle attempted the robbery with another man; together they bound the pharmacy employee's hands with plastic ties and locked them inside a storeroom.

"They were caught red-handed," Bove told the New York Times. "It is a pretty open-and-shut case, not a lot of drama."