American Pimp

Starring:Dennis Hof, Todd Anthony Shaw, The Bishop Don Magic Juan
Director: Allen Hughes, Albert Hughes
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

There's a fascinating film to be made about the pimp culture and the myth of the outlaw sexual entrepreneur. American Pimp, a slick and entertaining but rather timid documentary by filmmaking brother act Allen and Albert Hughes (Menace 2 Society, Dead Presidents) isn't quite it, but it's a captivating document nonetheless. Flashy, garrulous real-life characters with names like Charm, Rosebudd, Too $hort, C-Note, and the "internationally known" Bishop Don Magic Juan take over their interviews with silver-tongued charm, spinning self-aggrandizing, often contradictory stories of life in the trade. The Hughes never challenge those contradictions and give only token representation to the women in the life (who have either bought into the myth or are too cowed to say differently). Apart from a few unguarded statements by less cagey subjects, the film avoids the seedy flip side to the so-called benevolent relationship between pimp and "ho." More to the Hughes' point is the fluid relationship between media image (as celebrated in such blaxploitation classics such as The Mack and Willie Dynamite) and street image. Simultaneously embracing and decrying their outlaw status, these pimps transform themselves into peacocklike fashion statements inspired by the very images they find so denigrating. They are undeniably dynamic characters playing out a bizarre fantasy of wealth, power, and swaggering sexuality, but if the film shows the cracks in their masks, it never manages to reveal the men under the money or expose the fallacy behind the fantasy. --Sean Axmaker

Description

Urban auteur filmmakers, the Hughes Brothers (Menace II Society, Dead Presidents) hitthe mean streets with an "incredibly entertaining and charismatic" (Shout) expose on real-life pimps. A "snappy, stylish documentary" (The New York Post) containing "blunt, raw power and stylistic energy" (The Hollywood Reporter), American Pimp is "a primer on pimp craftand culture" (Shout) that takes you into the shadowy world of prostitution, "putting on the screen everything you ever wanted to know about pimps" (Nuart). Cutting straight to the heart of the world's oldest profession, this intimate portrait of infamous "mack-daddies" like Filmore Slim, C-Note, Gorgeous Dre and Rosebudd is eye-opening and shocking. From the dirty streets of New York, L.A. and San Francisco to the "Player's Ball" in Milwaukee, you'll walk the boulevard ofbroken dreams and hear every heart-wrenching story and hilarious anecdote. It's an exclusive ride you've never experiencedand won't soon forget.

Customer Reviews:

dont confuse it man.......2006-08-28

Your opinion of this movie should not be influnced by the people it represents
Pimps suck, thats true but this documentary does not
It is a lot of spittin game, which sometimes comes out looking like the pimps are being glorified. But this is what these pimps are like, this is how they con and make their money, its a 24/7 thing for them.
Are they always telling the truth? of course not, but the documentary is an accurate representation of what some pimps are like (albiet on a superficial level) and the philosophy they preach

Pimpin' Ain't Easy.......2006-08-13

Regardless of your opinion on prostitution, pimps, streetwalkers, ho's, etc., this is a fantastic film. Incredibly insightful and very enlightening. It will truly open your eyes to a cultural phenonemon like no other. This film is a must see. Check your morality/superiority at the door, open your eyes and ears, and learn something.

There are a lot of pimp movies out there, but this is the one you need to see.

Unique Perspective. .......2006-01-11

I really don't understand how anyone could call this a glorification of much of anything. There's no glamour here, just reality. American Pimp is exactly what it purports to be- an expose of the illicit world of prostitutes and their masters. It manages to surprise us by revealing that the hookers and pimps have a symbiotic relationship. It manages to surprise us by revealing that pimps have with their hookers a symbiotic relationship that is both quasi-paternal and quasi-marital. The "employees" of the dynamic often seem to not fear their employers who they instead idolize. This conflicts with our default position in regards to workers of the sex trade which is that they are objects of oppression and misfortune. We forget the fact that many of those who chose to sell their bodies do so by choice. As to whether we can label them as being masochistic personalities or not is another matter entirely, yet, even if this was the case, it would not contradict personal choice having something to do with their decision making. Many of the pimps on display here are not crazed drug addicts who batter women as a hobby. They possess varying levels of understanding regarding the business aspects of their profession. There is an elaborate subculture within this underworld that I first became aware of after reading about the life of Billie Holliday. There is a complexity and nuance which defies our stereotypes and, thus, mandates study.

Pimpin' since been pimpin' since been pimpin'.......2005-08-27

For all you squares, lames and suckaducks out there hatin' on the pimp game are just mad cause you can't do it. Do you know how much of art pimpin' is? Hell, if pimpin' was so easy damn everybody would be doing it. A pimp gots to hard on his hoes, but show compassion espicially to his bottom bitch. Pimpin' aint never going to die its gone evolve and multiply. My uncle was a pimp, on the street they called Ruby Red, but we called him Uncle Reggie. I remember hearing him on the phone one day talking to one of his hoes and he said "Bitch if you ain't got my money prepare for the slaughter and when she get old enough I gone recruit your daughter!" I knew you had to be a powerful man to lock someone up without physical chains. In the immortal words of Milwaukee's Pimpin Ken (a legend) "When the last hoe fall, pimpin still gone be standin' tall!"

Not happy.......2005-07-07

The Movie is great, but the used DVD is garbage. The DVD skips and stutters. I feel like I got taken to he cleaners.

American Pimp - Raw Outtakes and The Hard Truth (with Official CD Soundtrack)

Average customer rating:

Very good addition to the collection
U-know-what-Im-Sayin

American Pimp - Raw Outtakes and The Hard Truth (with Official CD Soundtrack)
Starring: Daniel Brown
Director: Albert Hughes , and Allen Hughes
Manufacturer: Shout Factory Theatr
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0002VEZ30
Release Date: 2004-09-21

Description

By popular demand - unreleased footage from the acclaimed Hughes Bros. movie, plus the highly anticipated official soundtrack!

American Pimp, the feature documentary by the Hughes Bros. that earned a Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury nomination, explores the fascinating subculture of street pimps. Released in 1999 to a limited theatrical run, the doc aired repeatedly on HBO. Pent-up demand for more inspired this DVD of unreleased film footage, including extended interviews with Snoop Dogg and the other ghetto-fabulous characters introduced in the original film, such as veteran pimps Rosebudd, Payroll and Ken Red, plus newcomers Charm, C-Note and T-Mack.

DVD Program Listing:
Extended interviews with :
1. Bradley
2. Ken Red
3. Snoop Dogg
4. Payroll
5. Rosebudd
6. Charm/C-Note/T-Mack

Also available for the first time and only in this release is the highly-anticipated soundtrack from the film. The soundtrack features 13 pimp-approved songs taken from and inspired by the original film, interspersed with unforgettable and repeatable sound bites from this film's classic pimp-culture dialogue.

CD Soundtrack Track List:

1. A Pimp Is Only As Good As His Product (Dialogue) - Paul Harris as Blind Man (from the 1973 film, The Mack)

2. Skin Tight - Ohio Players

3. Mary Magdalene (Dialogue) - Gorgeous George

4. I Want'a Do Something Freaky To You - Leon Haywood

5. Bitch (Dialogue) - Kenny Redd

6. Easin' In - Edwin Starr

7. Call My Ho (Dialogue) - Rosebudd

8. Bustin' Out - Rick James

9. Workin' Everyday (Dialogue) - Brad

10. Kung Fu - Curtis Mayfield

11. Be Thankful For What You Got - William DeVaughn

12. Fish To Water (Dialogue) - Brad

13. Bread & Butter (Dialogue) - Don Juan

14. Slide - Slave

15. Bitch (Dialogue) - Payroll

16. Pursuit Of The Pimpmobile - Isaac Hayes

17. Goon Hand (Dialogue) - Brad

18. Don't Mess With Mr. T - Marvin Gaye

19. Riding High - Faze-O

20. The World Is A Ghetto - War

21. Visionary (Dialogue) - Don Juan

22. After The Dance - Marvin Gaye

23. Heaven (Dialogue) - Rosebudd

Customer Reviews:

Very good addition to the collection.......2005-07-07

If you have American Pimp this is a good addition to the collection

U-know-what-Im-Sayin.......2005-03-20

Well, If you saw the original then there is no point getting this pointless add-on, just a gimic by the Hughes Brothers to pump more money out of the same product by scraping discarded film-clips from the floor and throwing them together and giving them a new title.
The original was slickly edited to create a rather seemless documentary - in this unfortunate follow-up we see the Pimps as they truly are - unable to create a single coherant sentence. What you'll hear is one full hour of sentences like, "And then I met this Ho U-know-what-I'm-Sayin, and we were vibing U-know-what-I'm-Sayin and she was trying to play U-know-what-I'm-Sayin so I put my Pimp moves on her U-know-what-I'm-Sayin and soon she was inline with my pimpin U-know-what-I'm-Sayin and it was tight U-know-what-I'm-Sayin", or you get Rosebudd spending 5 full minutes trying to figure out which hotel one of his hoes was murdered in - extrememly boring stuff.

Ironically, pimps talk about the need to have good verbal skills and all, but after listenting to this it was obvious that most 3 year olds have better verbal skills than they do. Also there was nothing "raw" about this really except that you hear the word that rhymes with witch about 3,000 times, but they already did that in the original. There is a long interview with Snoop Dogg but it's not very interesting at all, and certainly not enlightening.
As for the soundtrack, I havn't listened to it yet but you could download those songs from the internet for free so why spend money buying this CD?
All in all this is a very sad effort U-know-what-I'm-Sayin ?

Average customer rating:

Fascinating Morality Tale
Gazzara and Bogdanovich at their peak
Tedious trip down memory lane
Casablanca in the Far East (Time capsule of Singapore)
Character study with a great character actor

Saint Jack
Starring: Elizabeth Ang , Lily Ang , Andrew Chua , Denholm Elliott , and Ben Gazzara
Manufacturer: New Concorde
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00004Y3WF
Release Date: 2001-01-23

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating Morality Tale.......2006-01-24

Prostitution being the world's oldest profession it was only a matter of time before the pimp reared it's ugly head. Opportunity arises in Singapore for Jack Flowers, expatriate failed American writer, to add nobility to the world's most dishonored profession next to the lawyers and politicians. If it were only that simple. Despite running a brothel where the girls and the patrons admire and respect you the local competition uses less than subtle efforts to shut down your operation. Then the U.S. military acquires your services to provide R and R for the boys getting a momentary respite from the Vietnam quagmire. Even that doesn't feel clean. Director-writer Peter Bogdanovich has fashioned a compelling morality tale in a place where morality wouldn't seem to exist. The sweltering seediness of Singapore is captured perfectly here. Gazzara offers a complex reading of the affable Jack who begins the film apparently confident in the choice's he's made only to evolve into a man uncertain of his actions. Good supporting turn by Denholm Elliott as a British accountant who forms an unlikely but totally believable kinship with Jack.

Gazzara and Bogdanovich at their peak.......2005-12-01

Ben Gazzara plays an expatriate American who works as a two-bit pimp and errand boy for the Hong Kong mafia's Singapore operations in the early '70s. He aspires to run his own bordello, and local hoods seek to dissuade him in an increasingly menacing fashion. But this is not an action film by any means. It's a story of an exceedingly likeable but shallow man who learns that achieving his "dream" means using -- and even harming -- others. He also learns the value of friendship through his relationship with Denholm Elliot's character, an English accountant hired by the Hong Kong mafia to audit the books of Gazzara's employer. The friendship between the two is warm and touching. The many non-actors used in minor roles are completely believable and add to this film's gritty realism. The film tackles many themes -- friendship, the consequences of our choices, the war in Vietnam, scruples -- all subtly. "Saint Jack" is also a no-nonsense look at the life of expat Americans and Brits in Asia. (Any former or current expats will know what I mean.) This film will make a Ben Gazzara fan out of you -- and make you wish he had played more such meaty roles in his career. --MellowMonk.com

Tedious trip down memory lane.......2005-01-16

The most outstanding part of this movie was seeing Singapore in the 1970s, a bygone era of roadside eateries, straggling Englishmen and safari suits in the stifling tropical heat.
Singapore today -- with all the bumboats cleared from a once stagnant, dank Singapore River and its prostitution now corralled into neat neighborhoods -- has gained and lost much in that time.
As a Singaporean who was still in kindergarten when the movie was filmed (and was not even born during the time period the movie was based in), it is a fascinating visit to a half-remembered time that previously existed only as tinted memories in my mind. Alas, that visceral, seedy but very atmospheric Singapore no longer exists as openly.
Set against this backdrop, the story -- as it were -- seems almost incidental. Ben Gazzarra plays John "Jack" Flowers, a men ultimately of deep conscience, who aspires to and briefly operates a succession of brothels that cater to American GIs on R&R from a diminishing Vietnam war (and gets paid for his effort by a motley crew of bell-bottomed gangsters with the creation of some impromptu tattoos).
Along the way, he encounters a series of colorful characters, including a parade of prostitutes and transsexuals, the CIA and George Lazenby.
Of particular enjoyment and a foil to highlight Flowers' humanity is William Leigh (Denholm Elliot), a sweet Hong Kong-based accountant who tragi-comically dies of a heart attack (preceded by a short generalized seizure and immediately followed by a half-hearted attempt at CPR).
The movie is fairly weak on narrative, dialogue is often mumbled in a thick Singaporean accent even I occasionally had difficulty with and Peter Bogdanovich plays hard and fast with chronology (a time period of about a year passes unannounced at one point between one moment and the next).
Ultimately, you should see this movie if you are interested in Singapore or South-East Asia in the 1970s, the amorality of a moral man or the cinematic representation of the business practices and stealth abilities of local gangsters.

Casablanca in the Far East (Time capsule of Singapore).......2004-12-30

"Saint Jack" is a character movie, revolving around Jack Flowers (Ben Gazzara), an American hustler trying to make his fortune in 1970s Singapore in small time pimping. He dreams of building a fortune by running a brothel himself and returning to the States to lead a life of luxury. Savvy but not unsavory he strikes up a friendship with the character played by Denholm Elliot, a genial and decent auditor who travels to Singapore every year. (Elliot's character is not unlike his role in the Indy Jones movies, except less bumbling)

Bogdanovich does a wonderful job of weaving the web of relationships around Jack - the girls, the hotel owners, the madam and the expatriate Americans and English who form Jack's clientele. Through their interactions with Jack, we get a rich character sketch of a fundamentally decent and loyal man beneath the worldly and pragmatic exterior. Not unlike Bogart in Casablanca.

The setting of Singapore in the 1970s deserves a mention because it is as much a star of the film as Gazzara. This film was shot without the permission of the Singapore government and is still banned in Singapore for it's not necessarily flattering portrayal of the country. But it is a surprisingly successful attempt to capture the look and feel of Singapore in that lost era - in that transition stage after its days as an exotic colonial outpost visited by the likes of Somerset Maugham but before it cleaned up and catapulted into wealth. For this alone the movie is something of a rare gem, both in craft and content. Singaporeans who lived through the 70s will recognize the remarkable authenticity. "Casablanca", which merely offers a caricature of Casablanca, doesn't even come close in this regard.

Ultimately, the background of the Vietnam War comes into the picture as Jack is offered the opportunity by the CIA to run a brothel for the R&R activities of US soldiers on leave in Singapore. The movie weaves in deeper issues here which are not as clearly communicated as in the book (are they ever?). The soldiers are not altogether themselves - psychologically damaged as it were. In a scene where a CIA operative and Jack survey the frolicking soldiers and comment that they are leading the happy lambs to the slaughter, the more sinister nature of the R&R operation is made clear.

The anti-war theme continues as Jack is offered wealth, and the opportunity to leave Singapore to return to the States that it confers, if he assists in photographing an anti-war US congressman (played by George Lazenby - incidentally an early striptease scene in the movie plays to Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger" as a tongue in cheek reference to Lazenby's role as Bond 10 years prior) in a compromising situation. The moral dilemma of going against the greater good by hobbling the anti-war effort versus obtaining one's personal desire to leave Singapore is again, redolent of "Casablanca".

There is no Ingrid Bergman to provide glamour and no French police chief to provide comic relief, but "Saint Jack" offers a more satisfying Bogart in Gazzara - a "Casablanca" for the real world and all it's complexities.

Character study with a great character actor.......2004-10-18

Saint Jack is unique among Peter Bogdanovich's films in that it is more than any other focused on a single character, Jack Flowers, played by the great character actor Ben Gazzara. What comes out in the film is that living in Singapore, Flowers gets to strut his stuff as an American, taking advantage of the totally loose environment of Singapore in the 70s to run a fancy whorehouse. He knows and calls many native residents by their first name, wears Hawaiian shirts most of the time, looks relaxed and doesn't even flinch much when his place is ruined.

Befriending William Leigh, one of the several Brits who hangs out in this strange metropolis, Flowers is both amused and touched by Leigh's conventional stiff upper lip "Brit-ness". As Flowers encounters Singaporean thugs, young, horny American soldiers (the setting is the early 70s during the VietNam conflict when Yanks were given a respite in Sin City aka Singapore), dissolute Brits (it seems all they do is drink, sing, and complain), and his beloved hookers, he keeps his calm--one thing Gazzara is great at portraying--and banters with the best of them.

The question really is, Why? It's never actually answered, but we do have a lot of fun encountering these various people and seeing what Singapore looked like back then (it's changed so much, says Bogdanovich in an intriguing interview included with the DVD, that you wouldn't recognize it now if you knew it from back then). Flowers makes his way through it all unruffled, joking, shrugging off tragedy when it occurs, until, near the end, it hits home and he sobers up--for a short time. And then it's back to being Saint Jack, the go-to guy for all high rollers, gotta-have-fun people, and those who just want to drift through life.

This is a lot more than a travelogue; it's a way of life that has sadly passed us by in our current terrorism-wired world, and for that--combined with the fascinating portrait of a bygone era in a city that no longer exists as it did--it's definitely worth seeing.

Average customer rating:

An American Pimp
Starring: American Pimp
Manufacturer: MacDaddy Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00001TZ6Z
Release Date: 1999-06-15

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