characters
Danny Trejo, actor “I was addicted to drugs. I was addicted to adrenalin. I was addicted to violence. I wanted to be like my uncle who was a criminal. So I became addicted to that and thought, wow, this is the life.”
John Wesley, actor “If you don't pull your head out of the sand and do some internal work, you'll never have the ability to change your situation. And nobody else can really change it for you.”
Emilio Rivera, actor “I've been sober for ten years now and I wouldn't want to go back to getting high, because that one more needle I put in my arm could be my last.”
Antwone Fisher, screenwriter “Every time I felt myself going in the wrong direction, I felt lie a guiding hand was steering me away from trouble.”
Eric Roberts, actor “About the end of the first year I was clean, I realized that, wow, if I applied all that manic insane desire I supplied towards cocaine towards anything else, it could be something.”
Seth Binzer, aka Shifty, musician “I got involved in a series of well-set-up robberies and eventually it just backfired in my face. All of a sudden, the smallest things I had done turned into nine felonies.”
Coolio, musician “Once I realized that I was a leader, nobody could ever steer me in the wrong direction. I was like, OK, I got a clear direction, I know what I want to do, and this is what I'm going to do.”
Rick Thorne, BMX champion “I've got 'Never give in. Never give up.' tattooed on my hands. I put that there so that when I ride, I look down at it when I start to doubt myself. This is a quote that I believe in.”
Seymour Cassel, actor “I had got to a bottom. I had a warrant out for my arrest again and was unemployable because nobody wanted to mess with me.”
Kelly Minter, actress “You can overcome any obstacle. As long as you got your heart, your mind, and your will, you can do it.”
Mr. Cartoon, tattoo artist “Two tattoo artists told me that I was worth more than the way I was living and that the county jail always has a bed waiting for me.”
Ms. Toi, singer/songwriter “I fought every day. I was fighting for my respect. I forced myself to be the toughest kid on the block.”
Jerry Stahl, author “Our house was like a museum of my father's rage. You learn early on in life to have secrets, and that's a perfect rehearsal for being a drug addict.”
Luis Rodriguez, author/activist “We were the left-out ones, and we were completely disenfranchised to the point where we created our own cultures and worlds, and that was the gangs.”
Edward Bunker, screenwriter/actor “I ran away when I was seven and managed to get on a freight train to Sacramento. I was a runaway. Everywhere I went, I would cause an insurrection. That is how I dealt with the world. You condition yourself to deal with the world with this rage.”
additional characters: Giorgio Allen, Adele Bertei, Clifton Collins Jr., David Flury, Brian Goodman, Louis Ippolito, Manny Jimenez, Ty Granderson Jones, Stogie Kenyatta, Jake La Botz, Jimmy MacDonald, Cyril O'reilly, Estevan Oriol, Ross Porter Mark Reasinger, Christian Redd, Brian Renslow, Lil Rob, Gilbert Salinas, Lobo Sebastian, Hubert Selby Jr., James Wellington