Piñero (2001)

Benjamin Bratt: Miguel Piñero

Photos 

Quotes 

• Miguel Piñero : Sunday morning in New York City for a junkie, their ain't no pity. When walkin' down the street with loaded dice, you hear the people say, "Hey, there goes Mikey, Mike Piñero, junkie Christ."

• [first lines] 

  Miguel Piñero : Hey, what's happenin', what's happenin'?

  [chuckling] 

  Miguel Piñero : We'll just start from the top.

  Miguel Piñero : Well, I guess I started stealing when I was eight. Stealing bread for my baby sister and brother. And other times you walk into the supermarket and just eat the food right out of the aisles, and not even pay. We'd walk right outside, you know? Now when you think about Latin writers, you probably think about Senior Márquez, Neruda, Cortazar - the magic realism. Not here, not this. There are no floating butterflys around my head when I walk down Avenue B., you know.

  [looking into the camera] 

  Miguel Piñero : This is street reality. This is where we shout it out. Shout it out.

  [winks] 

  Title Card : In 1974, a Puerto Rican ex-con named Miguel Pinero took the city of New York by storm with a controversial play about life in prison. Short Eyes won the Obie and New York Drama Critics Award and later became a movie.

  Title Card : Pinero was one of the founders of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Over the years he went on to write poetry and more plays, wrote for and acted in movies and television. Kojak, Fort Apache - The Bronx, Baretta, Miami Vice, and more...

• Miguel Piñero : Hey mira, brother man, you wanna buy a brand new TV? I just liberated it... $35. I got medical bills, I gotta buy a new liver.

  Nuyorican : Tutu, you wanna buy a TV? It's brand new.

  Tutu : Esta loco? Shit, that thing has a broken antenna.

  Miguel Piñero : Ah, nah, look dude, it's not broken, it's just a short one. So it don't get in the way and shit like that. You dig?

  Tutu : We need one for the bathroom, any way...

  Miguel Piñero : Hey man, that's cool. That way you don't miss out on the soap opera when you're takin' a shit and stuff.

  Nuyorican : That's funny man, why don't you take that fool fuckin' language somewhere else!

  Tutu : Yeah, like be cool, motherfucker.

  Miguel Piñero : [self-deprecating shrug] 

• Miguel Piñero : [startling awake]  What the fuck you give me, elephant tranquilizer? What day is it? And do you have any more?

• Miguel Piñero : [to Sugar]  You like me so much, it makes me nervous.

• Miguel's Mother : The last time you had a job you were hired at nine o'clock in the morning, by eleven you were fired. That was two years ago.

  Miguel Piñero : So what, are you a detective now?

  Miguel's Mother : Worse. I'm your mother.

• Miguel Piñero : It's not like we go into the homes of the rich and we walk out with a silver ash tray. No, we go in, and we walk out with something better - their attention. We take them to a world they used to fear. We tell them, "hey, it's cool. We used to fear you too, man."

• Miguel Piñero : Povod. What kinda Puerto Rican name is that?

  Reinaldo Povod : Russian.

• Miguel Piñero : Well, I never wanted to be anybody. But I guy once said to me, "you can write, and writing will get you out of jail." And it did and it didn't, 'cause I had to keep doing bad to keep the writing good, 'cause I sell trouble. I'd go down, bring up a sponge, another fish, another pearl maybe. But after you make that dive one too many times, your ears get shot, your eyes go blurry, and one day you finally come to the surface and you say, "You know what? I like it better down there."

• [last lines] 

  Miguel Piñero : Every player is a poet, an actor, a statesman, a priest. But most of all, he's a player. You go out there on the street and you meet a world of suckers, the world of greed and whatever other names have been defined for those that seek some thing outside the acceptance of their society. And you stand with your balls exposed in the jungle of fear and you battle. And you fight the hardest fight of your life each day out there in those streets that demand blood to nurse its own energies. Today and all the todays of tomorrow are left inside your soul. You know? And when it's over, when the streets are soaking up in the blood, you smile and you know that you've just won another day with yourself. You know?