Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with an interview from our own Mr. Beaks who cornered the director of the upcoming indie drama MEAN CREEK, a film that I just recently saw myself and really dig. Funnily enough, I did my own MEAN CREEK interview today with the centerpiece of the film, Josh Peck... the bully that sets off the story. Expect to see that one as soon as I finish up with my SKY CAPTAIN interviews in the next day or two. While you're waiting you've got a great interview out of Beaks covering the ins and outs of Jacob Aaron Estes and his first film! Enjoy!
One of the more popular films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Jacob Aaron Estes’s MEAN CREEK has decompressed nicely from its high altitude triumph, emerging as an impressively nuanced debut feature buoyed by terrific performances from its ensemble cast of kinda-known young actors. Capably melding the bully melodrama with the pervasive morbidity of RIVER’S EDGE and STAND BY ME, writer/director Estes has announced himself as a substantially talented artist of assured understatement. He’s got a practiced playwright’s ear for stylized, but naturalistic sounding dialogue, and absolutely nails the schizophrenic dynamics of teen groupthink, upon which the tale’s mentally unhinged bully, played brilliantly by Josh Peck, wreaks particular havoc. This is solid, intelligent work, and the heightened degree of its artistic accomplishment all but guarantees that Estes will not be a one-and-out Sundance sensation.
So, in preparation for the film’s looming stateside release, I caught up with Estes on the phone last week, and found him an articulate and effusive interview. Here’s the goods…
More than any particular film, MEAN CREEK reminded me of the dour young adult literature of folks like S.E. Hinton and Robert Cormier. Did they influence you at all in the writing of this script?
Not really. When I was looking at what my foundation would be, I looked at a lot of films about kids dealing with crises from when I was growing up. So, I wasn’t really going back to novels. I thought about LORD OF THE FLIES, but that’s about it.
For a film so attuned to the experience of childhood bullying, I was surprised to read in the press notes that the impetus for the film came from an incident you encountered later in life.
Yeah. I knew I wanted to write a story that was in the genre about kids in this adult world with no adults to guide them or give them a moral compass for what to do in a crisis, but that was sort of an intellectual idea. I didn’t know what my story would be. In the meantime, I had been playing basketball a lot at this outdoor court, and there was this seven foot tall guy that started coming to the court, usually drunk. Like in a lot of athletics, there are people that you just instantly take a disliking to. It’s almost instinctual. He had that response to me for some reason. But he was also extremely out of control and emotionally disturbed. He took out a lot of his weird hostility on me verbally, and if I ever combated that verbally it would get worse – really bad, like saying the ugliest things I’ve ever heard said to another human being in the course of a basketball game. I’ve been playing sports my whole life, too. I’ve seen some aggressive, ugly people, but this guy was the absolute worst. In fact, Clyde has a line in the movie where he says, “No one talks to people like that, George”. That was a line I just borrowed right off the basketball court. (Laughs.)
(Laughing.) Some other player said that?
Yeah. Eventually, his verbal stuff turned into really dangerous physical attacks, all sort of masquerading as “basketball”. I was also very territorial, so I didn’t just stop playing basketball there because of him, but it got worse and worse. At one point, I started to have revenge fantasies, really escalating ones, and, at a certain point, I decided it would be better to stop playing basketball there. So, I started thinking about this whole notion of revenge, and the fact that it’s so primal and childish. I sort of synced up and converged it with this other sort of thought that I had about writing a story about kids, and I just (let that) be the seed of the story.
But was there sympathy for this guy? A sense that maybe he couldn’t help it?
No. (Laughs.) I didn’t have sympathy for this guy. He was so violent and disgusting that he would’ve made a really boring character had I just represented him in the light that I knew him. But I imagined, after sitting down and thinking about how to write this character of George… first of all, I thought it would be extremely worthless and boring to just write him as a villain. But I also sort of knew that somewhere in this guy’s life he was being motivated by some need other than pure hatred. There was something. He must’ve had a sad life. He must’ve been really lonely; he must’ve been needful of something. So, I tried to expose that through George. The good news was that, through exposing that, I sort of found the motor of my (story). I wanted to write about kids. I didn’t want to write about the awful, one-dimensional kids that are sometimes represented in this genre. I wanted to write about kids that are complex and intelligent. The kinds of kids from my childhood; the way I remember being. Which, by the way, was proved to me again by the nature of all the actors that I had hired. So, through exposing George’s humanity to myself and to the audience, I realized that the other characters, being sensitive and intelligent, would recognize that. And in recognizing that, the drama could get even more complicated.
The script for MEAN CREEK was developed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference. Was this ever intended to be a play?
No, it was never developed as a play. I have a playwriting background, and I studied dramatic writing after college with a guy who teaches playwriting and screenwriting all at the same time. He had recently been invited to the National Playwrights Conference as a playwright, and he suggested that I submit my screenplay, which was MEAN CREEK. I said that I thought they only took plays, but it turns out that once in a while, in the past, they’ve selected screenplays. I went there to develop the project, and I think, because that’s attached to the pedigree of the script, people always think it was a play.
It is so efficient, though. My writing mentor was ruthless about keeping our works under two hours. He even produced a just-under-two-hours HAMLET just to prove that you’re not necessarily sacrificing emotional heft by employing brevity. Did you have anyone like that? Is this efficiency something to which you’re predisposed, or was this just the length (the film is 87 minutes) that the script needed to be?
Well, the script was probably fifteen pages longer than what ended up in the final cut. I definitely have been taught all throughout my development as a writer and a filmmaker that less is, generally, more. And sometimes *more* is more, you know? (Laughs.) So, I was, in the writing, always looking for ways to reduce and remove any redundancies. And, then, in the editing we did the same thing: remove things that were non-essential or were beside the point. One of the things that developed in the editing process, which was a huge development, was that there were these two… seven or eight minute scenes where there was a lot of dialogue surrounding what to do with George’s body – rationalizing whether or not to bury him, what would the judge do, all that kind of stuff. To an extent, I think certain people in the audience miss that, but I felt like it was almost like nothing could be said. Marty had this impulse to bury the body, and he was going to overwhelm the group, so, almost all of that dialogue was removed. And, in one of the scenes, where Millie is throwing the rock, it was completely removed. There was, like, four minutes of dialogue back and forth between the group, but it was sort of exposing what could already be seen in their faces, which was this horror. So, the movie got more efficient than the script ever was.
Moving on to the performances, which are unusually rich and nuanced for an independent first feature, and I think that’s often because directors aren’t equipped to speak to the actors. I’m wondering if your theatrical background helps you in this respect.
I’m sure it does. I studied as an actor as a kid at the ACT in San Francisco during the summers when I was hanging out with my dad, and with The Second City in Chicago for a number of years. So, I was exposed to how difficult it is to stand up there. I have a lot of empathy for actors. Working in the theater, in college, my first play that I ever wrote was developed in a workshop environment where the actors and a director assigned to the project were critical in the development of the play. So, I learned that actors can help you make your project better if you let them; they can actually make the script better. And I let the kids (in MEAN CREEK) do that, too.
Was there any difficulty in guiding Josh Peck or Carly Schroeder away from the broader sitcom style of acting to which they’re accustomed?
Truly, no. When I first met both of them, I saw them read the part, and talked to them before I ever looked at the back of their resume. The reason I bothered looking at the back was because, right off the bat, they had a strong take on the material. But Josh Peck is such a hard working actor, and so skilled. He’s got more talent in his little finger than I do in my whole body, so there was no problem. The kid’s got range. With Carly Schroeder, it’s the same thing. She’s just got this incredibly natural gift and presence. If anything, her age is sort of a different mind frame. She was twelve when we shot this. I don’t know what that means, really. I guess all it means that they’re just different human beings, and I had to work with them differently. (Laughs.) But she got the part, too. She understood it in very simple ideas, and translated it to her performance.
It was also striking to see Rory Culkin in this film, because the last thing he’d done that was really indelible for me was YOU CAN COUNT ON ME in 2000. To see him somewhat grown up in this was a little disconcerting, but that made him great casting for this role.
He was great. We needed someone that could be in a scene, hardly say anything, and, yet, still *be* in the scene. I don’t know what to say about Rory except that he is so intelligent, and he challenged me to make the film better. I have nothing but good things to say about the kid.
Finally, not to slight the rest of your cast, but Scott Mechlowicz was a shock to me. He seems poised for legitimate movie star status; he’s just got the presence, the looks and the skill. Yet I’d hate to see him stuck in traditional leading man roles. He’s just got too much going on for that. When you cast him, did you see that, or did it just show up on set?
I don’t know whether he’s going to be a movie star or not, or if he even wants to be, but when I was looking at him in the audition process, he had an incredible tool set to make choices. He fully commits to whatever choice he’s making. And, then, if you ask him to make a different choice in the moment, he understands how to make that adjustment. He’s so clear. He’s really well trained, and works really hard; he was studying every night. He’s just got… something. He’s a beautiful guy, and I think he’s relatable. You look in his eyes, and he emotes what he’s performing very easily.
Your film isn’t what I’d call a “Hard ‘R’”, but it is a “Definite ‘R’”. But it’s something that would appeal to, and is something that absolutely should be seen by kids under the age of seventeen. Was there ever a temptation to tone down the language in order to secure a “PG-13”.
Well, if we had toned down the language, there would still be the drug use. And if we had taken out the drug use, there would still be the “emotional terror”, which is also a consideration. We probably could’ve gotten around it if we had removed the language and the drug use, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to make a movie that dealt with a teenage world that I know exists. Again, they’re not bad kids doing drugs and saying bad words all the time; they’re good kids who happen to curse… and maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe they hurt each other’s feelings, and maybe that’s the point.
That’s what kids do.
Right. So, it didn’t seem right in this case to tone down the language particularly. If I could’ve just dropped the marijuana and got a “PG-13”, and left the language in, I think I would’ve done that. Because they have to hurt each other with their words. That’s the way people do it. Or, at least, that’s the way immature people do it.
Unfortunately, I don’t think too much changes as we get older.
Well, sometimes we do it a little more subtly. (Laughs.)
So, what are you up to next?
I’m reading a lot of scripts, and if I find something I want to direct, I’ll pursue that. Other than that, I’m thinking of what I want to write next; something’s brewing right now.
Are you interested in doing things with a broader scope?
I try to avoid looking at it that way. I’m interested in doing projects that are good and appeal to me, and if that happens to be broad or small… so be it. But it has to strike me as having some kind of value, and being worthwhile, because it’s such a hard, hard road. (Laughs.)
MEAN CREEK opens this Friday, August 20th in New York City and Los Angeles.
Faithfully submitted,
