A documentary that chronicles rapper Pras Michel's (The Fugees) 9-day experiment as a homeless man in downtown Los Angeles.

Skid Row is a 50 square block area in downtown Los Angeles where an average of 90,000 homeless and transient people live on any given night. More than just a place – it’s a way of life, a mind set, the last resort for those who have given up on society and, in many cases, themselves. In the feature documentary Skid Row, Pras Michel – one third of the successful hip-hop band The Fugees – lives on the streets of Skid Row for 9 straight days and nights as a homeless person. The entire time, he and his crew are undercover, using surveillance cameras.

His journey is a difficult one, riddled with hunger, exposure to the elements, criminals, drugs and danger. It is also life-changing… as Pras learns not only how to fend for himself, but discovers the dark, very human and, at times, humorous underbelly of Los Angeles.

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 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