The Movie They Didn't Want You to See

It seemed so obvious to me, a slam-dunk, a downright compelling true life American story. The story of how the Crips and Bloods -- two of the world's most 'iconic' gangs -- have been allowed to wage a virtual war within one of the richest cities in the world for 4 decades, a war that has taken over 15,000 lives in that time.

Yet I couldn't find any studio or production company interested in financing my documentary. I went door to door, pitching my project to all of the 'right' people in Hollywood. All of them said it was a great idea and needed to be done -- but no one would write a check.

This went on for close to a year until I finally met a man who showed a glimmer of interest. His name was Baron Davis and he's an NBA All Star point guard currently playing for the Los Angeles Clippers. His initial interest seemed obvious, he had grown up in South Los Angeles and had first hand experience of the everyday violence that accompanies life there and he wanted to do something to help heal his community. He said he was primarily interested in financing a documentary that would help draw compassionate attention to the gang wars that have consumed his community for over four decades. After weeks of talking back and forth he agreed to put up 50% of the budget. So now all I needed to do was find the other half. I thought that would be a piece of cake. It wasn't. Another eight months went by and nothing. No one was interested even though I've got 50% of the budget covered.

So I began wondering what I could say in my pitch that I wasn't saying to get people interested. I needed to say something about this subject that was more complete than what they've learned from the evening news, the local newspapers and gangsta rap. So I came up with a question to pose to potential funders: "If affluent white teenagers in Beverly Hills were forming neighborhood gangs, arming themselves with automatic assault rifles and killing other affluent white teenagers who were also living in upscale neighborhoods and were also arming themselves with AK 47s and shooting to kill, what would the response of our society be? Would society respond or would society ignore it? Would our government respond, if so, how would our government respond?"

Well I finally hit on something because it was this question that I asked a Silicon Valley businessman named Steve Luczo. He thought for a moment and then answered: "Affluent white kids would never be allowed to gang-bang as our society would do whatever means was necessary to make sure a problem of this magnitude was stopped immediately."

Everyone else I asked this question to said something very similar: "Our society and our government would never allow white kids to do this. Everything would be put into place to prevent it, all the necessary programs and resources would be funded to make sure something as tragic as gang-banging would never take hold in the white community."

So with Baron Davis and Steve Luczo in place as co-financiers I got to make my documentary film; Crips and Bloods, Made in America and I made this film because as a citizen of the United States and a native of Los Angeles, I could not understand how this problem of gang violence, now entering its fifth decade with more than 15,000 dead, has gone on for so long in the African American community of South Los Angeles without any effective solution.

It didn't make sense to me how this could happen year in and year out, decade by decade without our government finding an effective remedy. We Americans defeated Nazi Germany and Japan in a single war and in far less than a decade yet we can't defeat gang violence.

I made the film in over a year and a half period and I was able to meet with gang members of all ages, 12 to 65, current and former, Bloods and Crips, and sets from many different neighborhoods spread throughout the affected region. It was so troubling to me to see how confused these young men are and how hurt so many of them seem to be without any idea of why. They know that life is different 15 to 20 minutes in either direction from where they live but they don't know why it's different. They don't understand why things are so bad where they live and they don't understand why no one from the outside seems to care. They don't understand why there so few job opportunities in their community and why are so many of their fathers, uncles and friends are serving time in the penitentiary?

The more time I spent with them in their community the more I began to see a far different America than the America I was raised in. In fact the America I was raised in, average middle class America, has very little resemblance to the America these young men grow up in.

It's not just that most of these young men come from broken homes, it's that most are born into non-homes of unwed teenage girls who were also born to unwed teenage girls, on and on. Ask them and they will tell you they have never sat down at a dinner table with a mother and father present. These young men attend public schools that are at the very bottom end of the American educational food chain, less learning centers than just straight out day care centers. From a tender young age they see dead bodies in their neighborhood streets, they hear helicopters flying over day and night, and the sound of gunfire is as common as birds chirping. Most cannot venture out of their own neighborhoods as doing so can lead to being gunned down. These young men live in conditions that most of us would consider un-American with no traces of the American dream.

And through the entire process of making this film, I realized that if we are ever going to break this cycle of violence, we need to find a way to look at these young men with a compassionate frame of mind. Stopping gang violence is going to require that we understand that conditions in these communities are only perpetuating the problem and if those same conditions were suddenly found in affluent white communities perhaps we would look at this problem differently.

My film premiered to standing ovations at the Sundance Film Festival and is now playing in selected theaters across the country. It is my very deep hope that the film will help motivate a much-needed dialogue on this subject, a subject that affects not just the African American community of South LA, but ethnic minorities in cities across this nation and indeed across the world.

Stacy Peralta is the award-winning director of Dogtown, Z-Boys and Riding Giants. DVD and theatrical listings are available from www.cripsandbloodsmovie.com.

Comments

[lilian101]

Bloods and Crips, Hong Kong Tong gangs like the Hungs and the Hop Sing that swarm from the exodus from Hong Kong to British Columbia and then down into the US Chinatowns and suburbs and the Hispanic gangs of MS 13 et cetera et cetera.
The problem is these 'gangs' are the contemporary culture. The Long Beach Police Department proudly wears their own 'gang' tatoos.
This is a culture of use of the mainstream system in subverted manners to render powerless through abuse of the mainstream system, any person the 'gang' dislikes.
This is not a 'gang' problem, but a problem of public corruption.

[schmuckwithearlaps]

I share the author's wonderment about why our society tolerates the violent street gangs, but I do not like simplistic answers. It is an understatement, of course, to say that the author is not the first person who could not get funding for a Hollywood project because of a "conspiracy". Unfortunately the problem is more complicated. It is related to the question of why Martin Luther King hospital was a death trap in which people were left to die in the waiting room. The failure of that hospital was not based on a conspiracy by the Mr. Charlies of the world. It was a failure because white liberals (look in the mirror please) would not enforce proper medical standards on a "black" hospital because the "community" might be offended. We liberals also will not crack down on gangs because we do not want to be the "Gestapo" that uses force in the inner city. The only people who are motivated to clean up the gang problem are the hard working families that live in the community, are the victims, are afraid to go out at night or cross the wrong street, and who have no voice in CIty Hall or Sacramento. What Demo or Repub politician represents them?

[Todd Sullivan]

i wish you the best of luck with your documentary. but if you wondered why you had a problem getting a producer, and if your blog is a reflection of the tone of the movie, i think one reason is that everything you're saying, audiences have heard before.

who knows, maybe your film and it's nuances will answer the question of gangs in los angeles with a different perspective.

once again, good luck.

[chickenNgravy]

Tracy said it all right here.

"It's not just that most of these young men come from broken homes, it's that most are born into non-homes of unwed teenage girls who were also born to unwed teenage girls, on and on. Ask them and they will tell you they have never sat down at a dinner table with a mother and father present."

But, other than Obama alluding to this, very few of the current black leaders ever make mention of the fact that 70% of black children are born without a father in the home.

[cousinavi]

"We Americans defeated Nazi Germany and Japan in a single war and in far less than a decade"

I hate it when Americans toss that off like it's true.
Britain (the whole of the Commonwealth) and France fought WWII for THREE YEARS before America bothered to enter the fight. America COULD NOT have "won" the war without the Soviet Union.
America is the dinner guest who showed up in time for dessert and now tells everyone they cooked the whole meal.
It bespeaks the sort of arrogance to which President Obama directly referred - arrogance and ignorance; an ego-centrism that does nothing to enhance America's image and much to confirm the view that the USA is full of swaggering, puffed up fools who really do think the universe revolves around them.

[balickistan]

....and you no nothing of history. america may have entered ww2 at the end of 1941, but we provided material support which helped britain and russia survive to that point. to mention france as afighter for "3 years" shows how uninformed you are. france capitulated after 6 weeks. the free french need an asterik when mentioned throughout ww2. certainly the soviets bore the brunt, and turned the tide of ww2, but no nation can claim the victory solely. certainly not the british, and most definitely not the french.

after ww2 every french person claimed to be a part of the resistance, but none ever claimed to be the ones who turned in neighbors or fellow townfolk for deportations. save your silly references for a meeting of beret wearers, but do not equate the silly french with people who actually did something.

[Itchybiscuit]

"america may have entered ww2 at the end of 1941, but we provided material support which helped britain and russia survive to that point."

See my comment above - you may learn something other than your obvious disdain for the French people who died to allow British/French troops to escape Dunkirk to 'fight another day'.

Itchy.

[Itchybiscuit]

A very good point cousinavi.

The vast majority of the American people were not interested in fighting a war against nazism. FDR had to come up with the solution of Lend/Lease because he didn't want to be seen to be providing munitions and equipment to the British free of charge in that political climate.

Britain's WWII debt to America ($4.336 trillion) was finally repaid on 31st December 2006 - it only took us 61 years to do so.

Got any gum, chum?

Itchy.

[Ohioan730]

I can't wait to see the film, Stacy. I'm sure it will inspire people to see inner city children as Americans in peril and not pariahs of society. Thank you for your curiosity that reaches beyond the typical narrow minded American view that implies that something is somehow inherently wrong with minorities and they don't know how to raise children right--or whatever it is people try to imply.

[JonRaymond]

I saw this film. it was great. I wonder if the same theory could be applied to my film, End War, to stop all wars.

What if your neighborhood was occupied by a U.S. military force in an effort to find "terrorists"? What if they bombed out your street and your children were killed or maimed in the process? What would you do? What do you think the Iraqi and Afghan people should do?

http://outinthestreetfilms.com

[FinancialRefugee]

You'll have to somehow get the folks doing the Tea Party crap to care about this. I hate to credit South Park with having the best explanations for everything, but their "history of america" segment fully explains why this violence is happening. People flying their "no fear" flags. Yeah, sure.
Same creator, different weightings on liberties scale.

[scarab23]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-perspec0412smugglerapr12,0,6083722.story

Here is that link again. The last one was broken.

[The Ghost]

Stop the War of Terror Against the American People.

Repeal Prohibition and Abolish the Police State.

[scarab23]

I continue to be amazed and flabbergasted at the unwillingness of a huge portion of our society to look at what is really happening, and examine solutions that make sense. The difficulty Stacey had in making this doc proves the point. I am attempting to make a series here in Toronto with youthful gang members in Toronto's 13 neighborhoods of concern as crews/documentarians, and it is so difficult to get it done. So far, no broadcaster or funding, despite the fact that they all say it needs to be done. One solution to the gang problems however is elucidated in an op-ed I wrote in today's Chicago Tribune, and can be found here -
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-perspec0412smugglerapr12,0,6083722.story

[canfemlib]

I arrived a few years ago from Toronto to Winnipeg, where the historic "north end" continues to be an area of poverty, trouble and strife, and now gang wars. I wondered aloud one day why the north end had been under seige for so long, and yet with all our resources, it was still the way it is. And then it occurred to me -- its okay with everyone the way it is. If poorer people, immigrants and aboriginals are shooting each other, then who cares....
Later this month I'll be attending my first political policy meeting, and try to start stirring the pot, pointing out that the rest of the city and province will never truly be successful until they have addressed the issues of the north end.

[Chuckwheat]

Stacy - Have you seen the new CBS cop/gang drama "Southland?"
& if so, what's your opinion?

[touchtype]

wanna hear a viet nam war story? joe bolden was a machine gunner with the 1/52nd Infantry, 198th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division. when i got there i was assigned to be his ammo bearer. it's a three man team: gunner, assistant gunner and ammo bearer. i got there a month after martin luther king jr. was murdered and the assistant gunner told me this story at a reunion two or three years ago.

the night of king's murder, joe bolden sat in the jungle, softly crying. the assistant gunner said, 'joe, what's wrong?' and joe said, 'now we'll never make it.'

[Bluesman48]

Riding Giants is a great movie, I'm pretty sure this latest will be excellent as well.

[Unrepentantliberal]

As a white kid from a semi-rural area of Illinois I experienced firsthand the same experience in 1980 when I went to work at a Job Corps instructor serving mainly inner-city youth: It was an introduction to an entirely different reality. My students were raised in a completely different world than I was although I grew up only some twenty miles away.

I learned that many of my students were, although high school drop outs, extremely bright and resilient. Growing up and living poor in an urban setting is extremely complicated and challenging. It takes smarts and adaptability to keep food in your stomach and a roof over your head in that kind of environment.

I learned that they had few personal role models around to show them the pathways to be a success. All they dreamed about was being a big success as an NBA player or entertainer, not as a plumber, a lawyer, accountant, a business owner, doctor or any of the everyday jobs most of us have.

They just could not see a path to such success for themselves. They could see it for white people but not for themselves because they personally had not seen it in the people involved with their own lives.

They were good people. They just couldn't see a path to success. I'm not sure one existed then and I don't think things have changed. That is where we have failed them.

[GardenerNorCal]

I agree I think the most basic problem is a lack of hope. When young males and even females lack hope they turn to violence and anger as their only alternative.

Jobs are the answer. It's hard to expend a lot of energy on mindless rage when you're tired and satisfied from a day's labor. Provide productive work and a respectful wage for these areas and I think you would see less violence.