Thu. Night's CNN story on Bloods Documentary- Transcript.

[StillNoScript]

Here's a transcript from a story CNN ran Thur. night about a documentary film called, "Slippin'", based on 10 years in the lives of a group of Rollin' 20's Bloods members. I posted this in the Urban Cinema thread as well, so please go there to discuss any information on the movie itself.

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http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... sb.01.html


n 1993, two documentary filmmakers came up with an idea to capture a violent world on film. They wanted to answer this question -- what's it like to live, to survive, to be a member of the Bloods, the notorious L.A. street gang? Their project would last a decade, a journey into darkness, one of the men would call it. But also a life experience. The film is called "Slippin': Ten Years With the Bloods."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's about revenge. It's about pain. It's about suffering. And it's about you take one of mine, and I'm going take one of yours.

TOMMY SOWARDS, DIRECTOR: "Slippin'" is a documentary about the Rolling '20s blood gang group. It's about five friends who we meet back in '93, and we follow them for a period of ten years. We wanted to show the reality of what life would be for them and kind of an ethnographic cinema verite style.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every day is stressful in L.A. being a gang member. And ain't no gang member can even sit here and say it's not a day that go by that they don't think about getting killed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We belong to the Rolling '20s Gang way back in '93. There I am, Low Down. KK, which stands for "Krazy Killer," was the newest of our bunch. CK, which stands for "Crip Killer" he was 16, and he was the youngest. And Dig Dug, he actually got his name from a video game. Bloods fly red. Crips fly blue. Our enemies were the Crips.

SOWARDS: Jumbo was the guy that introduced me to Low Down and introduced me to the others, yet he wasn't a Blood. Jumbo wasn't a Crip. Jumbo was basically a hustler, a drug dealer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tastes just like candy.

SOWARDS: Within the gang structure, it seems like the young ones have to do the most dirt. The young ones have to do the most crimes to prove themselves, you know, to get in the gang or to be accepted by everybody else.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: CK, also known as little mike shows us where he was shot by some Harlem Crip.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About four shots were fired. Then I ran up to that step right there, and I got hit.

SOWARDS: Little mike was at that stage in his life, and I think maybe that after Little Mike died, they were all feeling that maybe we showed him the wrong example.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Little Mike, you know, he was just like -- I always told him to slow down, though. I always told him he was slippin', always told him to watch your back. I always told -- got on him just like he was my little brother, because he was young. He was like the baby of the bunch. But treacherous at the same time. And a lot of people was jealous of him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Little Mike was honest, truthful. He didn't lie. He didn't need to lie.

SOWARDS: Low down, he's a sweet character. He's got a really big heart. I think he's caught between his big heart and the rough edges and lifestyle that he was brought up in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're losing period, because we're losing the honor. We're losing who we are. We're losing the dignity of who we are. And we're losing the respect of who we are.

SOWARDS: That was Low Down in '93. I'm doing an interview. And here comes out this big gun is pulled out. It was like a toy to him. It's like a little boy, you know with his truck, or a teenager with his car. I mean, his gun belonged to him at that time.

And we see guns, I think, throughout the entire piece. He's moved to Hollywood, which to him is a huge step.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After Little Mike's death, the area wasn't secure, so I felt we had to move. At last we got our own place.

I didn't think I was going to move over here this far. I thought probably going to move somewhere in the hood, just waiting around to get blasted on. But I got to use my head. If I want to live, I got to use my head.

SOWARDS: Little Mike's young death really, really affected these characters, it affected all of them. None of them really achieved the idea of the word bling bling, to make lots of money, like you see in the music videos. It's a part of the idea of this documentary is to take the glamour out of being a gangster. It's just a way to survive.

(END VIDEOTAPE)