ICEBERG SLIM: PORTRAIT OF A PIMP (Jorge Hinojosa). 89 minutes. Opens Friday (August 16). For venues and times, see listings. Rating: NNN
Once upon a time, a man named Robert Beck wrote a book called Pimp: The Story Of My Life.
Published in 1967, it was a revolutionary event, codifying underworld culture, introducing millions of readers to the idea of hustlers, hos and tricks and influencing the first generation of rappers and hip-hop artists.
Perhaps most daring of all was Beck’s use of his street name as a form of authority: Iceberg Slim.
Jorge Hinojosa’s Iceberg Slim: Portrait Of A Pimp is a fine talking-heads documentary that brings Beck’s legend to vivid life through testimonials from his publisher and family, as well
as archival footage of the man
himself. Hinojosa and executive
producer Ice-T – who took his name from Beck’s stone-cold street persona – tell Slim’s story in chronological order, from his youth as a petty criminal through his emergence as a counterculture author and ending with his ignominious death in 1992.
Given hip-hop culture’s tendency toward lionizing criminals, I was impressed by Hinojosa’s refusal to turn the film into a straight-up hagiography. Beck was a gifted writer but a pretty awful person, and the movie doesn’t back away from that. Neither is it as flashy nor as dynamic as its subject.
But really, what could be?