Florida Film Festival 2013 movie review: ‘Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp’

Robert Beck a.k.a. Iceberg Slim, was a pimp turned bestselling author who used his ignoble lifestyle and career choices to help propel himself out of that same lifestyle, and at the same time provided a new, fresh, and most importantly, real voice to the landscape of Black authors of the era. According to the documentary “Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp,” this lifelong criminal and defiler of women and robber of people in general became one of the most influential and important Black authors ever. And after watching the documentary and listening to the people who share these views, it is kind of hard to argue against this point.

“Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp” is a nuts to bolts documentary about Robert Beck, with much of his story being told through readings of his first book “Pimp: The Story of My Life” and animatics portraying what was being said, and supplemented by both new interviews with his family members and people he influenced and old interview footage with Iceberg Slim himself. And they have an interesting mix of talking heads in the film discussing the life and impact of Beck, which includes the film’s producer Ice-T, as well as Chris Rock, Bill Duke, Henry Rollins, Snoop Dogg (excuse me, Snoop Lion), and a plethora of authors and scholars who are very much able to contextualize what made this one person so special.

This is a compelling story for several reasons, namely because Iceberg Slim is a very charismatic and interesting person, and was very open about his upbringing, which was just fascinating as it was obvious how these events in his early life effected who he became in his teenage years and in his 20s. Also very compelling is the look at pimping in 1930s and 1940s America, which had yet to get to the overly colorful, cartoony look your average person currently relates to pimps. As explained in the movie, it was really all about looking good and exuding success, as this was one of the keys to maintaining a stable of prostitutes (I think that’s how they were referred to in the movie, as a “stable,” like a bunch of pack horses) and convincing them that they were helping a seemingly important and successful man continue to be important and successful.

And finally Iceberg’s transformation from a street hustler to an acclaimed author is downright fascinating, and this documentary actually goes out of its way to contextualize both the publishing house that published his books and the landscape of Black authors at the time (or really the lack of popular Black authors who told stories of the “streets” in the same way Iceberg managed to do), really getting across the importance of these books that this man wrote, and which he did only at the insistence of his first wife.

The post-pimp section of Iceberg’s life is actually the most interesting, considering he decided that the best thing to do was settle down and start a family, and start a family he did, most of whom sat down with the filmmakers in this documentary to relay their own experiences and memories with this man, really helping to give us a very rounded out and complete idea of who this person was. Just about anyone can hit the streets and become a lifelong criminal, but it takes a special person to come around the way Robert Beck did and turn his crooked ways and illegal lifestyle and turn it into both art (in the form of novels) and a warning call to any young people who might want to follow in his footsteps, who might misread his autobiography as a “how-to” instruction manual for pimping and who might end up in the same, tiny, smelly prison cell in which he decided that he was done with hustling for good.

This is a very compelling documentary, made all the more sweeter by the fact that director Jorge  Hinojosa is a Central Florida native, which made this screening at this year’s Florida Film Festival a homecoming of sorts for this gentleman who said he has not been back to the area in a long time and who seemed to really enjoy the fact that this excellent doc that he worked on was getting it’s Florida premiere where he grew up. How can you not root for that?