AMERICAN TEEN Movie - Behind The Scenes

Return to the Wild About Movies homepage.

Movie Showtimes

Discount Movie Tickets

WAM Homepage

Free Movie Screenings
PRINT PASSES

The Wrestler

Free Movie Screenings

WAM Newsletter

Movie Box Office

Search the Site

"American Teen"
BEHIND THE SCENES
by Tim Nasson
July 8, 2008

Watch "American Teen" Trailer

“In a TIME poll . . . two-thirds said being a teenager is harder for them than it was for their parents. It’s fair to ask whether any teenage generation has ever thought otherwise . . . ”
TIME Magazine, July 31, 2005

It’s senior year in a typical American high school and five students – a jock, a geek, a princess, a heartthrob and a rebel – are teetering on the brink of the future. All they have to do is survive the greatest pressures they’ve ever known – an incredible onslaught of parental expectations, personal insecurities, college dreams, romantic nightmares, sports disasters, prom night nerves, petty vandalism, public embarrassment and the perils of friendship – and they’ll get their first big shot at real life.

From director Nanette Burstein comes the runaway Sundance Film Festival hit, AMERICAN TEEN, a funny, fast-paced tale of one Indiana graduating class that becomes a provocative window into what 21st Century teens are thinking, doing, feeling and going through right now. Burstein started with raw, spontaneous documentary footage of a handful of real-life teenagers in a small Midwestern high school; then, she ingeniously structured her film into a compelling narrative that cuts to the very core of what makes being young so exciting, dangerous and unforgettable – a non-stop mix of wild emotions, fierce hopes, heart-wrenching mistakes, comic misunderstandings and moments of revelation and connection you hold onto for the rest of your life, no matter who you are…or are about to become.

Defying categories, Burstein uses an ample creative arsenal, including animated sequences, collages, voiceovers and music, to redefine the straight-ahead documentary as a humor-fueled dramatic experience that resonates with anyone who is or ever was a teenager.

There are currently more than 32 million teenagers in the United States. That number has risen 15.5 percent since 1990
-- U.S. Census Data, 2005

American Teen Movie

Teenagers have long been a powerful symbol in American culture. There’s something about their brash, reckless, idealistic personalities, about their unfinished identities and uninhibited emotions that seems to mirror the nation’s personality. They invite extreme interpretations -- equally deplored as a sign of all that’s wrong with our alienated, sexualized, consumer-driven society and revered and idolized as all the talent, creativity, energy and hope that is going to drive the world’s future. So central is the teenager in the American imagination that teens have long also been a compelling subject for groundbreaking, popular movies, from REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE to AMERICAN GRAFFITI to THE BREAKFAST CLUB.

There have been countless fictional teens that have won over movie audiences. But what happens when you put a group of five real Middle American teenagers together in the boiling pressure-cooker that is senior year – and all the stereotypes and social hierarchies that define nerds, athletes, basket cases, popular girls and misfits start to fall away? A defining teen movie for these times, AMERICAN TEEN is at heart about how we all construct our identities and set in motion our fates out of the angst and ecstasy of being 17.

The film began with documentary filmmaker Nanette Burstein’s unusual vision of making a film that would expand on the classic teen comedies of John Hughes – THE BREAKFAST CLUB, PRETTY IN PINK, SIXTEEN CANDLES – via a fresh, honest, 3-dimensional, 21st Century reality. “I grew up watching movies such as FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH and THE BREAKFAST CLUB. Those films had a profound affect on me back then because I could so relate to the portrayal of adolescence and all of its challenges. For the last fifteen years, I have wanted to explore those same themes in a nonfiction film but with all of the complexities and depth of real people that are often lacking in the teen fictional movies.” Burstein explains.

The director continues: “Like most people, I struggled through my own high school years, and I wanted to make a film that explored the very real and very intense pressures of being 17: of trying to figure out who you are while pushed by your peers to be a certain way, pressured by your parents as to who you should become, and face the mounting pressure to make crucial decisions – inevitably, poorly-informed ones - about your future,” she explains. “But I wanted to explore the theme of struggling to find your identity, not with actors, but with real teenagers.”

Burstein already had developed a reputation for taking the documentary form to new and more emotionally accessible places. Previously, she directed the Oscar®-nominated ON THE ROPES, a riveting tale of three Brooklyn boxers vying for a shot at the big time that drew comparisons to big-budget sports dramas; and co-directed the acclaimed THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE, a look at the rise and fall of the charismatic, high-living producer and studio head Robert Evans which was hailed as an innovative and entertaining twist on the biopic.

She knew, however, that making AMERICAN TEEN was not going to be like any other experience. First, she would have to find a way to get deep inside the inner lives of some of the most preternaturally suspicious and secretive people on earth: teenagers. Then she would have to fly by the seat of her pants, waiting to see what unpredictable twists and turns her narrative might take – who would fall in love, who would fall apart, who would attain their dreams, who would still be searching? -- over the course of many months of patience, negotiation and investigation.

The journey began with an epic quest to find the right school, and Burstein initially limited her search to the American heartland. “The Midwest is often held up as quintessentially or conventionally American,” she explains, “and I was also looking for the kind of town that only has one high school. If a town only has one school, it’s that much harder for kids to escape the social structure – and I wanted to explore that kind of inescapable social pressure cooker,” she comments. “I also looked for towns that were economically mixed and racially mixed, although the latter was much harder to come by in the Midwest, so that I could explore how those kinds of differences play out in the teen world. And, perhaps most crucially, I needed a school where the people would be truly excited about the prospect of a having a movie made about them and were willing to grant me a great deal of access.”

After narrowing the list down to ten prospective schools in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana, Burstein began more intensively interviewing incoming members of the senior class at each of the ten schools to figure out which had the most intriguing and emotionally diverse group of students. Ultimately, at the peak of this extensive process, she chose Warsaw Community High School in Warsaw, Indiana, a town in the north of the state, far from any major city, and a population of just over 12,000 people.

Known, according to the town’s website, as “the orthopedic manufacturing capital of the world,” Warsaw is a microcosm of typical Midwestern American towns that were built on traditional jobs and family structures and feature a lot of class diversity, from wealthy to working-class families. But what really convinced Burstein that she had found the right place to make her movie were the high school students she met there, a group of savvy yet sincere, tough yet funny, anxious yet articulate kids who seemed to both encompass and defy the typical teen stereotypes of jocks, freaks, queen bees, hunks and renegades. Most of all, she felt she had come across a rare group of kids on the precipice of adulthood who would be as capable of raw honesty as of compelling surprises in that journey. “Given the themes I wanted to explore, Warsaw had the richest subjects and storylines,” she comments, adding, “The town also had the best restaurants, which turned out to be a godsend in the year to come!”

After choosing Warsaw, Burstein picked up and moved there, having already planned to spend the entire school year living amidst the subjects of her film and hoping to become so close to them that the cameras would become a natural part of their everyday lives. “I knew I would need to film daily for the entire school year so that I would have enough footage to show the most dramatic and telling moments of my subjects’ lives,” she says. “And I knew I also needed time to gain the kids’ trust. But time was on my side, because I had all year.”

73% of teens say their parents trust them as much as they deserve to be trusted; 21% say their parents don’t trust them as much as they should.
-- Gallup Youth Survey, 2005

Burstein wound up following five primary subjects for AMERICAN TEEN, each in very different cliques yet who ultimately all impact each other’s lives: Hannah Bailey, an artsy, alt-rocker outsider who would much rather escape Warsaw than fit in; Colin Clemens, a star athlete who has been riding high as the school’s favorite jock, but now knows he must either win a college scholarship or head to Iraq; Jake Tusing, an insecure, self-titled “marching band supergeek” and videogame addict who would do anything to have just one girlfriend before high school comes to an end; Megan Krizmanich, the brash-mouthed rich girl who rules the school as one of the most popular (and reviled) students in it, but faces enormous family pressure about her college future; and sensitive heartthrob Mitch Reinholt who enters the picture as Hannah’s unlikely new boyfriend who gets the whole school gossiping.

Though it wasn’t instantaneous, Burstein slowly began to gain the confidence of Hannah, Colin, Jake, Megan and Mitch simply by getting to know them as intimately as she could, listening like a trusted confidante to their stories, confessions, dreams and fears. Each one had his or her own major and minor personal issues, which also shifted and evolved over the school year, sometimes in ways no one could have anticipated. Hannah went through a devastating heartbreak and a dark phase before rediscovering her spirit and California-bound ambition; Colin found himself in a dangerous scoring slump that had his father putting major pressure on him to perform; Jake found himself once again the victim of several near-misses at love, becoming more and more self-aware of his “loser” status; Megan made a “mean girl”-style detour that nearly unraveled her entire future; and gallant Mitch battled peer pressure to end his relationship with the outsider.

To capture all of these spontaneous, richly relatable moments in their poignancy, Burstein let her young subjects know right from the beginning that she wasn’t going to be an authority-figure in their lives. She wasn’t their teacher, their parents or their coaches – and that she wasn’t going to judge them or ridicule them or do anything other than do her best to capture them for who they really were underneath their roiling surfaces. “Teenagers lead a very ‘Lord Of The Flies’ and secretive existence, so gaining their trust was essential,” Burstein observes. “It took a few months for me to become close friends with them, and at the same time, for them to trust that I was really there to tell their stories honestly.”

“After gaining their trust, I would show up at the school every morning and speak to each of them about what was going on in their lives so I knew what to film each day,” said Burstein. “If a drama was just starting to brew, we would discuss what I could film of it. It was definitely a constant negotiation. I wanted to be very respectful of them, especially since they were so young, but at the same time, to make a good and honest movie. So we both made compromises along the way, and I think it actually made for a much better film.”

The tight bond that Burstein developed with the students made them each feel especially at ease in front of the camera. They were able to be themselves, and not censor or over-dramatize their behavior. When her subjects felt especially private, Burstein even left her crew behind, shooting by herself with a very small camera. “There were times when certain people didn’t feel like being filmed, so I had to really weigh each situation,” she says. “I didn’t want to ever expose them in damaging ways. But I always wanted to show their complicatedness and humanity.”

When it came to shooting AMERICAN TEEN, form followed function. Since Burstein’s most vital goal was to remain as unobtrusive and non-invasive in her subjects’ lives as possible, she started the process with just a single, very minimal camera crew. She never lit any rooms, but just relied on natural light, and basically tried to blend into the background. As the kids became more accustomed to being filmed, Burstein added additional cameras and crews.

“Because I only had one crew in the beginning, I couldn’t film each of the kids at the same time,” she notes. “So that meant I really had to keep in daily contact with them so I would always know when something important was happening in their lives. And if there were stories that needed to be filmed simultaneously, I set off on my own with my small camera to film one student, while my film crew filmed another student in a different location. Then when the students became more comfortable with the filming process, I brought in a full time second camera crew, so we can be in three places at once if necessary. But each individual crew was very minimal—not more than one or two people.”

Yet, even as Burstein was trying to underplay the presence of the cameras for the film’s teenagers, she was also trying to work with the cameras creatively. Despite the limitations, Burstein wanted to shoot the film with the same sense of spaciousness and freedom as any director shooting a tightly structured dramatic screenplay. The only difference as she saw it was that she had no script. “I still wanted to follow the rules of fiction filmmaking in the structure, so I often had to move around the room quite a bit -- filming wide shots and filming matching close-up angles. That’s why almost everything we filmed was handheld. We wanted to move around the room but without drawing attention to ourselves,” she says.

She wanted the cameras not just to soak up Hannah, Colin, Jake, Megan and Mitch’s angst, ecstasy and dramatic interactions, but also the contours of their entire teen landscape. “One thing I really wanted to focus on was all the technology that is such a significant part of this generation’s lives such as texting, emails, ichats, etc.” she explains.
Despite all the precautions she took to protect the kids she was shooting, or perhaps because of them, Burstein found that the kind of funny, moving and true moments she only hoped she would uncover were a nearly constant feature of these young lives. “And that is exactly what most surprised me about this film, how universal and timeless the stories turned out to be,” concludes Burstein.

Seven out of 10 teens say they are optimistic about the world their own children will live in.
-- Gallup Youth Survey, 2005

Nanette Burstein not only filmed Hannah, Colin, Jake, Megan and Mitch on a daily basis, but she also attempted to get inside their most private fantasies, which come to life via whimsical animated sequences in the midst of the film’s more stark reality. For Burstein, in any film about American teenagers there simply had to be a way to reveal the place where teens really live -- inside their heads – and to evoke all those crazy, painful, candid, comical things they think and feel, but wouldn’t dare to say explicitly in the light of day. Animation gave her this entrée.

“Teenage life is so full of vivid imagination and I thought what better way to show what’s really going on in the fantasies inside their heads than through animation, which is larger-than-life and just as surreal and exaggerated as fantasies,” she says.

The animated sequences were shaped from Burstein’s most intimate interviews. “As I talked to them over the course of the year, I would ask them each about their fantasies, about how they most wished their lives could be at that particular moment. These thoughts became the inspiration for the animated sequences.” Burstein states.

She merged style and content, giving each sequence its own individual visual flair and personality: for example, Hannah’s sequence comes alive in gritty stop-motion that echoes her strong, mercurial emotions whereas Jake’s romantic dreams are expressed in graphics right out of a role-playing videogame, with him naturally cast as the hero.

Once she had the creative concepts for the animations, Burstein turned to boutique animation company Blacklist to bring in a number of talented artists from around the world with whom she collaborated. Most gratifying to Burstein was that the kids fully supported the idea of having their innermost feelings animated on the screen. “They thought it was really cool,” says the director.
Now, after ten months living in Warsaw, and essentially becoming an integral part of the town, Burstein retreated back to the editing room where she got to know each of the characters in AMERICAN TEEN even better. “By the end of the school year, I had one thousand hours of footage. Working with two editors, it took me another year to shape this into a 100-minute feature length film,” Burstein explains.

It was perhaps an even bigger task than getting the teenagers to confide in her in the first place. Says the director: “Beyond the sheer amount of footage, the challenge was interweaving multiple dramatic stories that intersected and complemented one another, while keeping each distinct and revealing the different aspects of being 17.”

The film was also set to a rousing youthful soundtrack with songs from some of today’s hottest bands, including MGMT, The Ting Tings, the Black Kids, Frou Frou, Blackalicious and Does It Offend You, Yeah?. These song choices were inspired by the kind of music the kids had been listening to.

As the structure of the film came together, Burstein began to see each of the five teens in new and often unexpected ways, and hopes the audience will as well. “On a surface level, each of these characters are very different from each other - the homecoming queen, the athletic star, the rebel, the outcast, the heartthrob - but internally they all struggle with similar problems. In fact, they’re the same problems I struggled with 20 years ago in high school,” she muses.

She adds: “You know at first I was not sure how much high school had changed since my generation. But after two years of working on this movie, I came to realize that, though fashion and technology may alter, everything else—all the wonderful and horrible experiences of being 17, the feeling of being utterly lost – is the same as it ever was.”