Thursday June 6, ICEBERG SLIM: PORTRAIT OF A PIMP
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Hot New works Coming to Chicago
Thursday June 6, 2013, 7pm Admission: $6.00
Chatham 14 Theaters, 210 W 87th St
ICEBERG SLIM: PORTRAIT OF A PIMP
2012, USA, 88 minutes
directr; Jorge Hinojosa
from the oju image collective
Author of the 1969 pulp best seller Pimp: The Story Of My Life, Slim defined the rules of the game and also managed to pull himself out of it through a successful writing career. In his own way, Slim was a pioneer for African American authors with a unique voice that still resonates to this day. Though he never achieved mainstream success or acceptance in his lifetime, the legacy remains unquestioned. Director Jorge Hinojosa’s exhaustive, inventive, and entertaining new documentary Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp honors the legend and tells his remarkable lifestory to introduce new audiences and fill in the gaps for longtime fans with questions.
As a child Iceberg Slim (or Robert Beck, if you prefer) was a straight A student with a promising future, but the usual setbacks and prejudices that affect all ostracized urban youth led him down another path. He became a pimp and one of the best, but that’s a lifestyle that can only end one of two ways. His ending was a prison term and during that time behind bars he vowed to give up the game and do something better with his life. He ended up marrying and having a family, taking up a job as an exterminator to pay the bills. Of course that never cooled his mind or made the stories of his life disappear. Eventually after telling his wife one unbelievable pimping story after another, she finally suggested that they write them down together. The result was Pimp: The Story Of My Life. It was picked up by a paperback publisher and became a hit.
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