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>>It was just some talk on the street with street kids about if 

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you go to Hollywood, you can make it. You'll be a success. 

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You know, everyone there goes, you know, they become a 

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star. So I fell for it. 

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>>Matthew Bushar, the story is one of success in the City 

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of Angels. But it's not in the way he imagined it. I knew I 

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was gay. I don't think there's anything wrong with that and 

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yet it made me a target for some horrific bullying incident 

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in school. 

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>>After months of enduring abuse. He simply did what any 

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rational 13- year- old would do. He stopped pretending. 

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When his devote catholic mother found out he was truing, 

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she confronted her son. -[ unk ] it was because I was gay. 

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He said, no you're not and she said, you'll never step foot 

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in this house until you're done and not gay. And 

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she dragged me across the floor and threw me out the 

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door. 

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>>So he scraped up enough for a bus ticket and landed in 

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this park. 

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>>I thought, well, the park. That's cool. I did that in San 

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Francisco. I'll find a boyfriend, you know, this all be great. A 

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hotdog stand across the street from the park called 

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Oki- Dogs would occasionally provide a meal. But one 

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night, 14 skinheads appear across the street. I heard one 

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of them yell the phrase, " let's kill the faggot ." And 

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I realized that my life at that point was in danger. 

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>>Matthew then took off running down the alley but the 

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mob had split in two and cornered him. 

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>>They relentlessly started kicking, punching, knocking me 

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down to the ground. The 14 skinhead also had razorblades 

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in their boots, so as they were kicking, their goal and their 

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intent was, you know, it wasn't at maximum damage, it was 

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actually their intent was to kill the kid that was in the alley. 

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>>Matthew miraculously survived and nursed his wounds 

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alone for two months. 

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>>And I just existed hour by hour and what would happen 

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next. There's a part where you give in. Whatever is gonna 

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happen is gonna happen and hopefully it's death. But he 

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persevered. The 13- year- old who hopped on that bus to 

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Hollywood, he made it out of the park, first by working at 

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a fastfood restaurant and then as a hairstylist. He 

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then found a job at the Museum of Tolerance, a unique 

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multi- media museum examining racism and prejudice 

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throughout the world and that was the perfect outlet for 

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exactly what I was looking for. The museum seems to 

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attract people with troubling pasts like Timothy Zall. 

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[ unk ] many, many years where hate and 

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violence for me was like breathing. I couldn't 

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live without it. It's like being in a junky. 

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>>And Tim recounts early childhood violence that let him 

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down the path to become a white supremacist. 

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>>My brother being shot by an African- American I think is 

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the number 1 reason why 

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I become a racist and extreme racist. He 

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eventually served time after being convicted of assaulting 

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an Iranian couple. The bars didn't change him though. 

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All it took was a moment with his son. 

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>>I'm in a grocery store with my son. He sees an 

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African- American man in the store and says, " Look, 

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Daddy. There's a big black ." and blurts out the N word and 

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I'm starting to rethink my life, 

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my living patterns, the kind of things that I was doing. 

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>>Matthew and Tim were paired up to give presentations to 

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youth and hate and recall one school group that changed 

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their lives. 

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>>Matthew wanted to discuss, you know, how best to 

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approach this particular group and we went to have coffee 

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and talk about the situation. 

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>>In those first few months, I'm thinking of him as this really 

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cool guy that I wanna get to know more about, which was 

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why we reached to him when there was this issue at a 

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school. And during our conversation we start to talk 

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about where we used to hang out, you know, Hollywood. 

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He was talking about Oki- Dogs and the park and I was 

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talking about punk rock and Oki- Dogs and I 

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said something like I quit going there because 

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of violent behavior that was involved with and he 

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sort to ask all these questions. 

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>>So there is a moment I was absolutely disbelieved 

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because you're just saying like this cannot possibly be true 

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and at the same time you're like, " No. The only people 

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who know what happened in the alley are me and 14 guys 

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who were there. And I'm sitting across from one of those 

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14 ." The time, the place, 

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it all started to tide up. There was the look and feel of the 

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final boot that gave the pair or the proof they needed. 

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>>And I also used to take the corners of razorblades and 

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break them off and stick them in the toes, in the side of 

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my boots and when I kicked him in the head he was out. 

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>>So here they were, two men; a victim, a perpetrator-- 

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Matthew and Tim kept their distance until Museum 

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programmers got wind of their story and encourage them to 

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begin a program called Hate to Hope. 

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>>And I'm like, " Okay, well I don't really like him ." And it's 

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like, well, that doesn't matter. You're just gonna tell the 

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story. But I don't know if I can stand on a stage with him. I 

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wasn't there yet. 

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>>When we were sort of thrown together and 

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I knew that there was a process to go through. I've got 

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Facebook but Facebook's pretty cool 'cause it-- 

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>>Myspace. 

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>>Myspace. 'Cause it's got a bunch of-- 

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>>But the beautiful part of all that is that we're simply just 2 

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people who are completely normal. Who doesn't get 

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frustrated with their friends when they don't think they're 

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doing what they want them to do and so on and so forth, 

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and all those normal things. That's an incredible process. 

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The one thing you begin to realize-- these two, they 

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aren't so different. There's a common thread in that being 

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feeling invisible and feeling to put down and feeling 

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rejected and feeling not important and worthless as a child 

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that led us in these different directions but meeting up twice 

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in one life. 

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>>For Time video, Sean Donnelly, reporting from Los 

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Angeles, California.