Genre: Drama, Drugs, Biography, Prison
Plot: Miguel Piñero was a New York City poet and playwright who wrote what he knew: a world of "stabbing, shooting and dying." This gritty, non-linear biographical film presents Piñero's dark charisma and even darker life in all it's angry glory. A junkie, a drug dealer, and a thief, Piñero (played by Benjamin Bratt) spent time in SIng-SIng prison, an experience which was the basis of his most famous play, SHORT EYES, which won the Tony award in 1974. Piñero also pioneered the spoken-word poetry (the forebearer to rap and hip-hop) of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which he helped found. Mixing digital video in color with 16mm film in black and white, the film creates a convincingly harsh and lively portrait of life on the mean streets of Lower East Side Manhattan in the 1970s and '80s. There were a number of people in Piñero's life who recognized his genius and tried to save him from self-destruction: his mother (Rita Moreno), theater impresario Joseph Papp (Mandy Patinkin), and his longtime girlfriend (Talisa Soto). But the allure of crime and drugs won him over, and Piñero finally crashed and burned, dying young in 1988. This film is a passionate tribute to a passionate artist who remains an important Puerto Rican-American icon.
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