Miguel Pinero on AllMovie

As a screenwriter Miguel Pinero had a reputation for penning realistic, violent accounts of criminals on the New York streets and in prison. He knew his subject well and frequently had difficulties with the law that resulted in at least two prison sentences. He was incarcerated in Sing Sing when he wrote the play Short Eyes, a brutal, wrenching account of the abuse suffered by a child molester in prison. Short Eyes was made into a film in 1976. Pinero made his acting debut and subsequently appeared in several other feature films and on television where he was typically cast as a drug-addicted crook. He also continued writing screenplays for such films as Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981) and Alphabet City (1984). Pinero died in 1988.