Skid Row
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Male
24 years old
NEW YORK, New York
United States
Last Login: 8/22/2008
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Skid Row's Interests
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| General | DIRECTORS’ STATEMENT
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have no money, no roof over your head, no
food… and no one to turn to? “That would never happen to me,” you say. But what if it did?
How would you survive? How long do you think you would last on the streets… before turning
to drugs, crime… despair?
Homelessness is no joke. It’s also nothing new. It exists all over the world, including in every
major city in America, a country that prides itself on being the “land of opportunity” and the
richest country in the world. We know what homelessness looks like, smells like, and sounds
like. We might think we are compassionate about the issue because we occasionally give a
dollar to a bum, or volunteer an afternoon around the holidays to dole out food to the poor. But
when was the last time we made eye contact with a homeless person? Or had a conversation with
one? Or asked him/her, “What’s your story? How did you get like this? What can I do to raise
you up out of here?”
Our film is not about homelessness. It’s about the “epicenter” of homelessness in America… a
50-block radius in the middle of Los Angeles, one of the most glamorous, wealthy, famous and
most beautiful cities in the world, where on any given night, you will find up to 100,000 homeless
people living on the streets – in an area called Skid Row.
Many have long referred to Skid Row as “L.A.’s dirty secret.” But for Angelenos, Skid Row is
nothing new. You’d be hard pressed to find a native Angeleno who has never driven downtown
(day or night), made a wrong turn and suddenly found themselves surrounded by hundreds of
zombie-like homeless people. Skid Row has been a political hot bed in Los Angles for decades.
It has even been “cleaned up” before – notably around the 1984 summer Olympics and the 2000
Democratic National Convention. But after those events, after the cameras had left, the homeless
crept back from wherever they’d been shipped off to, and claimed the streets yet again.
Most recently, Skid Row has been getting press again, due to new Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
and Police Chief Bratton, both of whom have promised to clean up the area in order to make way
new for multi-million dollar real-estate investments. The LA Times has devoted front page space
to the issue in a series of investigative reports and editorials. But the only solutions proposed thus
far have been to force people out of the area - without finding adequate housing or shelter for the
displaced. This has made Skid Row even more volatile and dangerous.
The filmmakers behind the feature documentary SKID ROW set out to make a film not only
about the area and its issues… but also, to try and humanize this complex issue by exposing the
plight of the faceless, nameless street nomads we call “homeless.” We were lucky to team up
with Pras Michel (1/3 of hip-hop group The Fugees), who was equally passionate about the
subject, and wanted us to film him living on the streets as a homeless person for 9 days. Because
Pras was incognito and without entourage, he was exposed to the same elements that the
homeless experience daily, faced the same obstacles and was able to get first-hand experience.
What followed in those 9 days… illuminated, informed and enlightened us about a world that
exists in our own backyard, but which most of us ignore every day. We discovered that Skid
Row is more than just a place – it’s a way of life, a mindset, the last resort for those who have
given up on society and, in many cases, themselves.
-- Niva Dorell, Marshall Tyler, Ross Clarke, SKID ROW directors |
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Skid Row's Details
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| Status: | Single | | Zodiac Sign: | Cancer |
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| Films: 1 |
Total Plays: 136 |
Plays Today: 0 |
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Run Time:
188
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Plays:
136
Comments:
1
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