Unlike many films, American Me, the directing debut of Hispanic activist and actor Edward James Olmos, was a product of the director's own research.

"This movie materialized right after The Godfather," said Olmos in a recent interview, referring to the script which was written in 1974 and originally had been designed as an Al Pacino vehicle.

But Pacino did not want the role, and Olmos obtained the movie rights in 1982. The director then went to work visiting prisons, where he said he was shocked to find that gangs, and not wardens, were in charge.

"Everyone pays rent," said Olmos. "If they can't afford a pack of cigarettes, then maybe just one cigarette...it's a whole society on its own."

And Olmos says that was not the only surprising thing about the prisons he visited.

"I thought that prison was the safest place to go," said Olmos. "Then I learned about flame throwers."

In Folsom State Prison near Sacramento, California, Olmos met an inmate who was making license plates.

"I noticed his back--the skin was singed and I asked him and the guy said, 'they got me.'" The inmate had been sprayed with kerosene from an aerosol container and set on fire.

For American Me, which was filmed on location at Folsom, a federal prison and a juvenile hall, Olmos received unparalled access from prison officials, and he used it.

During one juvenile hall scene, a young Santana, the film's protagonist, is raped during the middle of the night by another inmate. As Santana takes a knife away from his assailant, Olmos shows us a boy in a nearby bed who repeatedly urges, "kill him."

That boy, it turns out, is one of several real inmates Olmos employs throughout the film. "That is a 15 year old who is in for a dual, premeditated murder," Olmos said.

And that may be what makes the movie special.

"I think this movie is really unique. People get to go to a place where they didn't even know they wanted to go."