Street pimps, all of them African-American, discuss their lives and work: getting started, being flamboyant, pimping in | dG1fUHptVDMzdmtwMm8
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Okay so then in 99 you guys did American Pimp and what I didn't know until I
00:10interviewed your brother was that you guys got snaked by the guy who did Pimps
00:14Up Holes Down. Well Pimps Up Holes Down was also popular back then.
00:19Well that that was a that that is a sore spot because that's a dear friend of mine
00:23that stole the idea and did it really cheaply. Oh he did oh cuz that came out
00:27before yours. Oh I always thought that American Pimp was uh... Six months before us but it
00:32wasn't done before us it was you know like the way I do docs and back then me
00:36and my brother doing docs we take a few years yeah and this friend of ours who
00:40shall remain nameless went missing I because I was telling what the offers
00:44we were getting on like three minutes of footage and it was multi-million dollar
00:47offers and this guy just went missing and the next thing I know I show up to a
00:52Players Bowl in Chicago and there's my good friend that I fished with every
00:55other month at the Players Bowl with a camera crew and that took the wind out
01:00the sails you know. Because that came out first the American Pimp came out second. We had it killed for a
01:06year and we were at a powerful agency who called up HBO at the time Sheila
01:11Nevins was a big executive producer she that was her domain documentaries and
01:16she did a bunch of dope documentaries for HBO for 20-30 years right. The funny
01:21part of the story is we're mixing dead presidents in North America right around here
01:25I call up Sheila Nevins I pitch American Pimp to her. I have it all written out
01:29the ideas flamboyant this that players ball she was like I don't know what are
01:34people gonna think about the Hughes brothers doing a documentary on pimps
01:38I'm like what do you care you're gonna you get it hang up the phone I'm kind of
01:43like the winds out of my cell she they had already produced hookers at the point
01:47ah yeah right I remember that so that was the same same filmmaker or let's
01:52call the video maker um and he was our location scout or location manager for
02:01for dead presidents and Alan was right about the story as soon as he heard the
02:05figures coming out for the sale of an early version of like 10 minutes of
02:11footage that I shot in super 8 super 8 film of Rosebud that's when we show up
02:17to a players ball he's there with another crew it's like you ever see that
02:20movie man bites dog yeah okay it's like the opposing crew with the opposing
02:25killer right yeah it felt like that basically right so yeah there was a lot
02:32of interesting things that went on about like we wanted that to be a thousand
02:36theaters the distributors had it out against us because we wanted to sell it
02:40in Sundance like every other white boy did they did not appreciate us going to
02:44sell a movie at Sundance and we even showed early footage to Bob and Harvey
02:49Weinstein in a hotel room wow and infamous hotel room yeah we didn't get
02:56groped he comes out in a robe but everybody knew that bullshit but like he
03:07goes well we'll offer you know Harvey we'll give you 2 million we'll give you
03:112 million now it was only 10 minutes of super 8 footage and we're in our mind
03:14thinking 2 million if he's saying 2 million now what's it gonna be like no
03:18we're good so then we showed at Sundance and that was the lowest point
03:24in our career Sundance is that all we broke the record for pre-sales on the
03:30tickets they made a mistake of putting us in one of those small theaters in a
03:33mini mall normal people that go to the film festival had tickets the
03:38distributors got fast passes and went into the theater kicked all the normal
03:42people out so it's a theater full of distributors who are pissed off at us
03:46and they're like fuck these guys but that was also a lesson early on and if
03:53you look at the movie which is hard to find now because it's not out digitally
03:57right there's a key shot in that movie where a black guy's in bed with two
04:03white girls and I stupidly cut away to him slapping one like you know tapping
04:07her thigh and that black hand on that white thigh does a number on white
04:12people right so the difference between doing a documentary about pimp and the
04:21blowback that we got which was like insane blowback right how dare you guys
04:26glamorize and it was like history 10 10,000 Hitler documentaries nobody gives
04:32a fuck about changes to the channel 10,000 mafia documentary people can kill
04:36nobody gives a fuck about it right the mini of a black guy pimping on a white
04:40woman it's like hmm it's a rash worse than murder worse than murder yeah yeah
04:44I remember I went to a players ball and I was dressed up and people people
04:47thought I was mr. white folks like people literally walk it up to mr. white
04:51folks as he was yeah