Stacy Peralta Tells His Side of Doc Story

(Made in America was part of the IDA's 2008 DocuWeek, by the way. The 2009 DocuWeeks Call for Entries is now happening. Get information here.)

Posted on The Huffington Post, his story is a common one for most doc filmmakers: he had trouble rounding up funding, he reveals what he learned from his subjects, and discovered that it's tough to change the world through filmmaking.

It's a great read, especially when he reveals how he twisted his pitch about the movie which covers the four-decade-old gang war between Los Angeles gangs, the Crips and Bloods.

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."

See the fruits of his labor in the trailer here:

Find out more about the film at www.cripsandbloodsmovie.com.