This is also very much an African-American experience you're documenting. There were parts during the film when I thought, I cannot imagine white people coming out of their houses and dancing in the street like this. So what is it that separates us?

[Laughs.] Well, it is possible for white people. I've seen it.

Well, what's the ingredient that makes that possible?

I think ... You know, you definitely find it with gay people, too. You find it in gay neighborhoods. They'll party in the streets. In the face of all that adversity when AIDS was happening, people would ask, "How could they keep going to clubs and partying?" Because they weren't celebrating it -- that was their release. They weren't being flippant to the epidemic or trying to forget it, but for those moments, they were just expressing themselves in movement. They kept dancing throughout the epidemic, and it's still going on.

Maybe marginalized people sometimes have that feeling, more, of family, than, say, people who have it all. When you got nothing to lose, when you're not trying to keep up with the Joneses and you don't really care what people think, there is more freedom. There is more sense of family and community, weirdly enough, in the ghetto, even though they always talk about the broken homes down there. As I recall, there are a lot of broken homes in Hollywood, too. And it's just exactly the same thing, but they always focus on, "Oh, the single mom in the 'hood!" But you know what? It's the same way in Beverly Hills, the absent parents so consumed by their careers. You find these giant houses and there are all these empty rooms. I go to the 'hood, I see this one little house, and it's full of life.

When the kids were talking at the premiere, it was remarkable how they all had such a strong belief system and such a clear ideology that keeps them going. They talked a lot about pain and suffering, and I wondered, does that strength come out of the bad stuff they've been through?

Two of the kids in the film were born to parents addicted to drugs. We all read about the crack-baby epidemic in the '80s. Well, here they are. Two of them have parents who are O.G. -- original gang members, original gangsters. That means they were founding members of the Crips and the Bloods. Baby Tiger Eyez's father is one of them. There's all sorts of adversity, but there's also so much love. They create family where there was none and they create art where there wasn't any. I was given every art program when I was a kid. They've had none. They've had no African studies. They've never seen African dance. They've never seen African face paint. It's in their blood.

Did you find yourself having to hold back from art-directing certain scenes?

No, I really didn't art-direct anything ... there were so many interesting things in their homes, and where they live, and in that neighborhood, that I didn't feel like we had to art-direct anything except just making sure we were in the right spot. Making sure we captured it all, so you had the feeling of that neighborhood. I was relieved not to have to art-direct anything. It was so good just to focus on their lives. There's no narration or voice-over; they spoke for themselves. I would just start conversations, and then they would just finish the conversation. I didn't want any talking heads or any celebrity endorsements. You know, like they said [at the premiere], they're the alternative to all the bling-bling. They treat the women who krump as sisters. They don't treat them as bitches and hos like they do in rap videos -- you know, Nelly taking a credit card and sliding it down the girl's ass crack on his last video? That's not their thing.

Is krumping a legitimate movement? Do you see this spreading?

They are the Seattle of hip-hop. What Seattle was to rock music, they are to hip-hop. They are the alternative, they're the Nirvana, they're the Kurt Cobains. They're a whole new generation that's rejecting that whole commercial idea of hip-hop with the cribs and the bling-bling and being Donald Trump. Yeah, they want to make their own businesses and stuff. [Miss] Prissy wants to do krump clothing, but that's just creating. They just want to work, and make things, and create. But their goal is not just to have as much money as possible, to the point of ridiculousness. They don't have that sort of greed in them -- they're very spiritual, these kids. They're on a completely different trip.

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