Ask Me, Don't Tell Me (1961)

★★★★★ · Ask Me, Don't Tell Me · zerp · 2005-03-20

This is a very cool little movie, and YES, the soundtrack is very good. Bay Area residents will recognize the Castro theater, some liquor stores, and even the town of Alviso, which is now incorporated as part of San Jose. There's a mix of black kids, Mexican kids, Asian kids, and even some American Indian kids. There's some great stock shots of cruising, smoking, drinking, eating, dancing, construction work, bridge-building, and even some activism as the kids get involved with petitioning Washington DC for some social change. There's some cool newspaper headlines from 1958 on this particular…

★★★★★ · Ask Me, Don't Tell Me · Christine Hennig · 2003-07-14

This film documents the Youth for Service project in San Francisco during the 50s; a project that recruited youth gangs to do various community service projects, usually involving construction, maintenance, or environmental work. The project itself looks quite successful in channeling the gangs into constructive activity; one wonders if it is still going on today and if not, why not. But beyond that, this film is a wonderful document of 50s gang life and teen culture. Gang members narrate certain parts of the film themselves, using almost unintelligible gang lingo. We get to see inner city…

★★★★★ · Ask Me, Don't Tell Me · dan b · 2003-10-22

This is a very cool movie, indeed. There are some incredible scenes of street-corner gangs with names like "The Lonely Ones," "The Esquires," "Los Lobos," "Aces" and so on. The clothes and pompadours are a joy to watch. The story is about some guy who convinced some early 60's gang members to put aside their differences and work together for free doing jobs like painting houses for people who could not do it themselves. The program was called Youth For Service, and it benefitted the gang youth by giving them a sense of necessity, while helping those in need. Cool. The visuals are the best…

★★★★★ · I'm hip to that! · Spuzz · 2003-01-01

Amazing overview of the Youth For Service program ran in San Fransisco where youth gangs... er I should say "clubs" as they are referred to in the film leave their misunderstandings and pasts at the door and help in community projects. Utterly fasicnating beginning of a gang member speaking in (I think) jive, and I could only catch maybe a third of what he was saying. Is this program still in existance? I would doubt it, as the 'clubs' here are much more agressive and hostile today then in 1961. Highly reccomended not just for the film itself, but for the amazing score as well.

★★★★★ · A Warlord Speaks · regal33 · 2015-09-13

I was one of these young men, We were a very interracial group of a wide spread heritage, comprised of Latino's, Pacific Islanders, Blacks, Anglo's, Asians and some Native Americans. If you were a racist, you were not welcome among us, Our President was a Samoan named Johnny Bird who fought under the name The Hurricane Kid, He became third ranked middle weight in the world. This film shows him being interviewed by Carl May a Quaker who started Youth for Service in SF. He was a ex-boxer and jazz drummer, his wife a Beatnik artist. Our turf was Nob Hill, the Tenderloin, Market Street, South of…