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		WANNABE: LIFE AND DEATH IN A SMALL TOWN GANG documents the gang-related murder/suicide that took the lives of four teenagers in the quiet community of Appleton, Wisconsin in May of 1995. This compelling one-hour documentary explores issues of race, family dysfunction, and youth violence in the context of one small, middle-American city. Producer/director John Whitehead returns to his home town to investigate the rise and fall of a teen gang called the D-Mac Crew. The gang's five teenage members - four white and one black - took their name and marching orders from their leader, 17-year-old high school junior Derek "D-Mac" Barnstable. A white, middle-class kid from a troubled home, D-Mac lived an MTV-inspired fantasy of thug life, idolizing the hard-core rapper Eazy-E and imitating the black "gangsta" style and slang he picked up from movies like "Colors," "Boyz in the Hood" and "Menace II Society." "Jazz" Grey In the spring of 1995, the D-Mac Crew's "wannabe" fantasies turned tragically real. The gang had begun hanging out with Jermaine "Jazz" Gray, a 17-year-old black youth who had recently moved to Appleton from the meaner streets of Milwaukee. Jazz fell out of favor with the gang over a disagreement about drug money and also because he "dissed" the small-town crew's gang aspirations, telling them they were "too white." At D-Mac's urging, but without his actual participation, three members of the D-Mac Crew lured Jermaine to a remote cabin and brutally murdered him. Ten days later, with the police about to arrest them, the three chose to end their own lives rather than face prison. They drove to a local park where one shot the other two and then ended his own life. Florence Morrow, mother of murder victim Jermaine "Jazz" Gray, in court The crimes detonated a shock wave of grief, anger and disbelief in Appleton, a prosperous city of 70,000. Gang style shootings were expected in L.A. or Chicago but not in Appleton, a town of quiet neighborhoods and leafy parks, an idyllic place with a low-crime rate and booming economy. The circumstances in Jermaine Gray's murder were the exact opposite of what mostly white Appleton would have expected: the victim was a black kid from Milwaukee; the murderers were local whites. As the police sorted out the bodies and puzzled over motives, the townspeople of Appleton faced a deeper, complex question: what was happening to their community? One local woman commented that no Appleton resident is untouched by the issue of teen violence. "There are kids of all kinds from all economic backgrounds in this community and all races who are involved in violence." WANNABE goes beyond the usual tabloid treatment of true crime to look at the root causes of youth violence and to try to understand the attraction of "gangsta" families. Skillfully blending news footage, home movies and family photographs with intimate interviews, the film charts the tragic trajectory of the D-Mac Crew, reconstructing the lives of its members, its leader and their victim. In doing so, the compelling one-hour drama explores how issues of race, family dysfunction and adolescent dynamics play out against the seemingly prosaic back-drop of one small middle-American city. The program shows how Appleton-like most American communities these days-is a city in transition, in the process of transforming from the "Norman Rockwell" all-white Appleton of producer John Whitehead's youth, to the increasingly generic, rootless and infinitely more troubled community of the present. WANNABE is a disturbing cautionary tale that explores why it is that yes, it can and does happen HERE. Home | The Story | Gangs | The Filmmaker | Resources | Comments | ITVS