Poets ? They're a bit gay aren't they ? Usually they're middle class and middle aged and they get ripped off by scam merchants who post adverts saying " Send us your poetry submissions for our best selling anthology book of erotic poetry and don't forget to enclose $30 for administration costs " In short there's nothing less cool than poetry but Miguel Pinero made the genre cool , streetwise and sexy and he deserved a far better biopic than this <br /><br />I'd never heard of the guy until I saw this movie . A remarkable life story of a man who spent time in the big house and soon achieved critical acclaim via his plays and poetry . He wrote a play called SHORT EYES set in a prison , a play that was turned into a film . Just out of curiosity I went to this site and looked it up . The phrase " short eyes " is American prison slang for a child molester the lowest of the low in any penal system . It's also a movie that IMDb reviewers have greatly praised . Now why did I have to visit this site to find out the remarkable story behind the making of the film ( Check out the trivia page on SHORT EYES - I guarantee you'll be amazed ) if I was watching a biopic on the play write behind it ? <br /><br />By trying to show us how cool and streetwise the eponymous character is the director/screenwriter fails to show us anything about Miguel Pinero the man apart from that he swore and took a lot of drugs which hardly made him a unique individual . The story slips in time and space , from colour to monochrome and has characters appearing and disappearing in a haphazard manner . Miguel Pinero made poetry the new street culture and he probably deserved a better film telling his life story