Miguel Piñero wrote the script for this film version of his award-winning play, written while the Puerto-Rican-born Piñero was serving a five-year stretch in Sing Sing for armed robbery. The story moves from the daily social interactions among prisoners to a jarring disruption with the appearance of a new inmate, known as “short eyes,” the prison epithet for a child molester. Short Eyes goes beyond prison melodrama to a challenging, chilling portrait of a dehumanized society in which violence cannot be explained away by sociological theories.
“In Piñero's view prison society is a very strict caste system, where whites are the minority and a few sex criminals are the pariahs, the untouchables. Short Eyes examines the rituals of victimization.... (B)ecause we identify...we have to confront our own voyeurism and complicity.... It's scary and unforgettable because it explodes a taboo....” --New West.
Director Robert M. Young's credits include Nothing But a Man and Alambrista!.