The entry begins:When I began to contemplate the film version of Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim, a number of clear choices emerged for lead actor as well as director of the film. Street Poison is the remarkable true story of Robert “Iceberg Slim” Beck, a notorious criminal who pimped on the streets of Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and many other American cities for twenty-five years. He served five bits in prison during this period, including a two-year term at the infamous Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and a brief stint at the Chicago House of Corrections (he escaped from that prison in 1947). In 1962, Beck went straight and moved to California to be with his ailing mother. He published his autobiography Pimp: The Story of My Life and a handful of other streetwise crime novels with a third-tier paperback publisher, and in the process, he transformed himself from pimp to author. By the time of his death on the day of the Rodney King riots in 1992, Beck had sold over six million books, and his work had inspired the creation of blaxploitation film, gangster rap, and street literature.Learn more about Street Poison at the publisher's website.
When I began this book ten years ago I had always envisioned...[read on]
My Book, The Movie: Street Poison.
--Marshal Zeringue
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