Friday, May 27, 2005 | 11:15 a.m.
In the documentary movie "American Pimp," a man named Ken Red stands in front of the U.S. Capitol and boasts of his prominence in the profession.
"I'm representin' the pimpin' all over the nation, you know what I'm sayin'," he says, a wide smile beneath his dark sunglasses. "From the state capital to the nation's capital to the pineapple to the Big Apple."
According to local authorities, it wasn't just an image.
Louis Kenneth Wright, also known as Ken Red or Kenny Red or K-Red, was indicted last month by a federal jury in Las Vegas on charges that include pimping teenage girls across state lines. Now he is in custody awaiting trial.
From his Las Vegas home base, Wright drove a 15-year-old girl to Phoenix and Los Angeles in his white Cadillac Escalade, where "she engaged in prostitution at his direction," prosecutors allege in court documents.
Another alleged prostitute told investigators that Wright and his son, Dontay Simpson, worked together. Last summer, Simpson gave the 17-year-old a fake Arizona ID stating her age as 22, according to the court papers.
Wright bought a $388,000 house in Summerlin last June, off Hualapai Way between Sahara Avenue and Charleston Boulevard. Despite the posh address and fancy cars, the documents claim that Wright never filed a tax return.
The court papers also note Wright's star turn. Ken Red is one of the major players in the 1999 documentary, which shows him taking calls from his "bitches" in a Washington, D.C., barber shop and in his car taking money from a woman on a street corner.
Ken Red is an exuberant, wisecracking character in the movie. In one scene, he asserts his authenticity: "I'm a real, full-fledged, 100 percent pimp."
But that wasn't really the case, said Wright's lawyer, James Buchanan, who asserted that the U.S. attorney's office is prosecuting based on nothing more than an image. He likened Wright to a gangsta rapper who boasts of violent acts he hasn't really committed.
"Because he did a movie -- that's not evidence," Buchanan said. "They have to provide solid evidence that he was a pimp. I personally don't think they can prove it."
Buchanan said he expected the case to go to trial. It is scheduled to be tried in federal court next month.
Directed by the brothers Albert and Allen Hughes, makers of "Menace II Society" and "Dead Presidents," "American Pimp" depicts street prostitution with a lack of judgment that some have found refreshing, others offensive.
The film includes several scenes in Las Vegas and also features "legal pimp" Dennis Hof, owner of Lyon County's Moonlite BunnyRanch.
The movie was a milestone in the mainstreaming of the subculture pimps inhabit, an ever-less-shadowy underworld that now inspires imitation at "pimp-and-ho" parties in Las Vegas and elsewhere and hip-hop hits like the rapper 50 Cent's "P.I.M.P.," observers say.
American pop culture has glorified pimping and prostitution, said Don "Woody" Fieselman, a vice detective with Metro Police. "It used to be that this was a very tight subculture, and it's not anymore," he said.
Wright will not be the first "American Pimp" to be tried in Las Vegas. In fact, the film ends on a somber note as Andre "Gorgeous Dre" Taylor sits in a cell in the Clark County Detention Center.
An aspiring rapper from New Orleans who spends most of his screen time in "American Pimp" lecturing about the strong character a good pimp must possess, Taylor was arrested during the movie's filming. He was prosecuted on federal charges involving prostituting minors across state lines, and in 2000 he was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison.
At Taylor's trial, footage from the movie was shown and Allen Hughes testified as to Gorgeous Dre's movements. Taylor's attorney claimed he was merely a "former pimp" who had cleaned up and found God, but the judge didn't buy it.
As the film ends, some of its subjects do claim to have started new lives. One becomes a minister, another a blues singer. One gets married and finds work as a telemarketing supervisor.
But in "American Pimp," Ken Red is not among those who say they've quit the business.
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