“The pimp game is a lonely one.”

There is a lot to offend in the documentary “American Pimp.” As the title suggests, pimps are the subjects of this documentary. Before watching this film, ask yourself if you want to watch pimps talking about how they find and train girls. Pimps are not exactly exalted in society (although apparently there is a Pimp of the Year contest), and most people probably will find this film distasteful to some degree or another. Pimps with names such as Bishop Don Juan Magic, C-Note, Charm, Payroll, Rosebudd, and Sir Captain hold interviews explaining pimping. The film is broken down into sections which including the definition of a pimp, how they got into the business, the origins of the pimp, pimp style, rules of the game and ‘knocking’ (when a pimp lures a girl away from a rival pimp), etc. The documentary also includes clips from many pimp films. It seems that the trend in documentaries is to move away from the heavy-handed directorial style of the past, and to present interviews that loosely flow, so that the film acts as a mirror of the documentary topic. This is the method followed by the Hughes Brothers in “American Pimp.” Unfortunately, critics of the film seem to interpret the documentary’s style as glorification of pimps. This is simply not so. The directors placed a mirror is front of the pimps, and stuck a microphone in front of their mouths, and then the actions and the words of the pimps were recorded. This is not glorification–this is documentation. It is for the viewer to make moral judgments on what they see and hear.

Pimps are asked whether or not they consider giving their girls (and I have to use the word ‘girls’ here, but that is not the word used in the documentary) a percentage of the money they make. The pimps uniformly found the idea so ludicrous that some actually laughed. Also pimps declared that some girls ended up in ‘the crazy house’ as if this is a bizarre phenomenon for which there was no logical explanation. Pimps also remembered the girls who were murdered–one was commemorated by a very large diamond necklace, but at no point did a pimp say that he quit the business because of this or that girl’s death. Life goes on apparently…

I wish the documentary had included some additional interviews with the girls. Some of the most upsetting footage (for me) showed one girl being yanked out of a phone booth and ordered back to work. Indeed the pimps appear at their most unpleasant when they describe how they get girls and the treatment they apparently think the girls need. Some of the girls spoke in the presence of their pimp, and two were interviewed alone. Some data would have been interesting too. The DVD includes an interview with the Hughes brothers, and in the interview they explain their interest in the topic. There were spots in the documentary in which various pimps felt compelled, apparently, to pass on handy tips, and this did give the impression of training–or Pimpology 101 for the entrepreneur, but overall, the documentary was a chilling reflection of the sort of lives these girls lead.