Artist in Person "First a word about the title. 'Crasy' with an 's' not a 'z.' Gangster's spelling, not Webster's. A ninety-five-minute, color film on the life and thoughts of the members of a Long Beach, California Samoan Crip gang-the Sons of Samoa Westside 32nd Street Gang-My Crasy Life has at its core a commitment, radical in its simplicity: to respect the voice of its 'subjects.'" (Jean-Pierre Gorin) To this end, Gorin offers the camera as a stage and a mirror: what we take for straight interview material is actually scripted with the collaboration of Gorin and the boys, who perform themselves as they see themselves, and in some instances, as they wish to be seen. (Like so much of Gorin's work, including Poto and Cabengo, this is a study of language, the gang members themselves being eager teachers.) Gorin also accompanies a cop on the Westside beat whose determination to save at least one boy's future takes him all the way to the Islands. It is there, where many family members still live, that the Sons of Samoa go to cool out when the heat is on. But despite a sentimental attachment, for these boys the gang has been family, culture, and role model from a very early age; home is where the "homies" are, and they demand that we respect that. Meanwhile, the cop is subjected to a car radio in "talk mode"-the filmmaker's voice, we presume, intruding at last-offering cynical observations on the futility of trying to figure out the cultural mystery that propels these boys toward a violent end. Like the Samoan gang member, sitting on a beach in paradise, puts it, "Fuck Margaret Mead. Long Beach: that's where you want to go if you want to make a movie." My Crasy Life received a Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival "for its intelligence and experimental play between documentary and fiction."