Show 1 Filmmaker Behind 1 Creek I Found Inspiration in His On Tommy Nguyen The Washington Post WASHINGTON The The bully in director Jacob Estes' Estes Mean Creek is an overweight obnoxious trigger hair-trigger explosive named George and the neighborhood kids seeking revenge have George right where they want him They're on a boat floating down the river river They've been thinking about this all day long Strip the fat boy of his Ws clothes and ditch himin him himin himin in the woods But George wont won't be finding his way home today as the events take a darker turn along the rivers river's edge These are good kids out to serve some comeuppance to a guy who from their perspective perspective per per- perspective rightfully deserves it But it just gets out of control says Estes 31 whose first feature feature feature fea fea- fea- fea ture was one of the more talked-about talked entries at this years year's Sundance Film Festival Despite the mornings morning's overcast light washing washing washing wash wash- ing over the hotel cafe booth Estes has a way of tempering his Ws booming voice with an inviting inviting inviting ing sunny West Coast ease He was one of those crunchy granola at the University of California at Santa Cruz and then a student at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles from which he graduated in 2000 Because of its serious often artful gaze upon youth violence and revenge plots Estes' Estes film has already been mentioned alongside Larry Clarks Clark's Bully and Gus Van Sant's inspired Columbine-inspired Elephant So it doesn't take long for the conversation to turn to young bullies and their newer dramatic roles on recent movie screens In the past screen on-screen the bullies that I can think of have been more one-dimensional one Estes says For the most part moviegoers could easily spot them as the biggest kids in inthe inthe inthe the sandbox Or the guys in leather or letterman letterman letter- letter letterman man jackets strutting down a school hallway Estes' Estes bully is an outcast a pushy geek But Buthe's Buthe's Buthe's hes he's also clever funny and human enough at times that the other kids including Sam Rory Culkin youngest of the acting family who suffers from one of Georges George's schoolyard attacks begin attacks begin to have doubts about their original original inal plan I dont don't think George is necessarily a new kind of bully Estes says Its more about looking i the heart t 9 of your adversary rec r ry-rec ry rec v 1 humanity instead of objectifying objectifying objectifying him In Mean Creek the kid who orchestrates the revenge plot Marty Scott of is a brute himself What's more much o othe of the violence taunting and personal demons gripping these young characters characters characters charac charac- often come with a disarming exhibition exhibition exhibition of male sexual tension I have no no problem with anyone seeing that in my movie the director directo r says I think maybe Marty has anxieties anxieties anxieties about his own sexuality that's explored through the way he badgers his friend Clyde whom I dont don't see as conflicted about his sexuality considering considering considering consid consid- ering that he has two gay fathers That detail of Clydes Clyde's life can seem curiously out of left field in the movie but Estes explains that he himself was raised in Chicago by his father and his fathers father's gay partner since the age of 4 There was a little window when Iwas I Iwas Iwas was innocent enough to think that it i iwas t was normal so I just talked about my gay dads and no one cared says Estes whose father and mother divorced when he was 3 But when the third grade came everyone was thinking about it all of a sudden When they started understanding what their homophobic homophobic homophobic homo homo- phobic parents were saying he says the kids at school started to make fun of him Wm It became ugly to the point where I started denying that I had gay fathers Estes says he wasn't honest about his parents again until he reached the ninth grade By then I was intelligent enough to know that I had to be honest about my life So for the movie I wanted t to o write characters who were as intelligent and a as s honest as I remember being at that age The director knew he wanted to write a screenplay reminiscent of the popular once-popular genre that found teen-agers teen navigating a amoral amoral moral vacuum in the absence of adults adults films films s like Rivers Edge The Outsiders Over Ove r the Edge and Stand by Me But Estes says say s the movies movie's revenge plot was inspired by a different different different dif dif- ferent emotional circumstance in his life When he moved to San Francisco after graduation graduation graduation Estes says he came to eye-to-eye with his s George on a basketball court had Had this this' story that thai was brewing inte leco lec- lec o w a i s- s r came j jc back c I o 0 rt o f u o aY rs r U ou o u s r r. r s 2 r 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O V 4 N. N I I f Y p. p o ao t O o 0 60 t J a aI I 7 as a o I o ot t O o 3 oo U ou U o c p. p FILM ESTES Jacob Estes' Estes Mean Creek casts a gaze upon youth violence and revenge says the screenplay was inspired by his as young adult with ith a bully at a basketball court Illustrates FILM FILM FILM-ESTES ESTES category e by 2004 The Washington Post Moved Wednesday ept 2004 MUST CREDIT Washington Post photo by Andrea Bruce Woodall but not really developing he says When the two things merged the whole plot erupted Estes says the guy whose name was Greg stood almost 7 feet tall and would always arrive a drunk constant horror for every player playa play play- er who frequented the court But Estes who is 6 feet 2 says for some reason the bully zeroed in on him both verbally and physically He keyed into me because I think he thought I was he gay had a lot of those sexual sexual sexual al issues that we were talking about earlier says Estes who has been married for the past three years Theres a point in the movie when George is erupting on the boat and Clyde Clyd says No on ones talks to people that way way George and ri that that's s wn t ine of bf the theother other basketball basketball bas bas- pla placers ers this ibis guy while he was attacking me His words were so hostile and ugly Revenge fantasies began to consume Estes He eventually acted out on one of his less violent violent violent vio vio- lent more creative ideas He doctored a photograph photograph photograph pho pho- of a No Parking sign to read No Greg and put one on each baskets basket's backboard The sign also listed Gregs Greg's negative attributes drunk racist homophobic and so on The signs scored well with the other players too Greg went away for a while but then he and things got worse Estes remembers I eventually had to stop playing there In turn Estes found the terrain he needed to complete Mean Creek The script eventually eventual eventual- ly started kick-started his filmmaking career It was selected to be at the Eugene ONeill O'Neill Theatre Centers Center's National Playwrights Conference It got him into the directing program program pro pro- program gram at AFI in 1998 That same year the screenplay was one of five awarded the Motion Picture Academy's prestigious Nicholl Fellowship beating out more than other submissions Because I won the Nicholl Fellowship I Iw Iwas Iwas w was s practically in every office of every studio studio stu- stu dio Estes Estes- says says' But th then Columbine h happened happened happened hap hap- and the studios didn want want to touch anything that involved kids and violence especially from a first fust The script was shelved for several years until producer Rick Rosenthal who teaches at AFI and directed Bad Boys stepped in to finance the film with a budget of The film was shot in 24 days much of it on See Film continued on page 7 1 Film continued from page 3 Washington's Lewis River near the Oregon border As films take a look at today's more robust more disturbing modem modern bully bully and and the victim who can easily himself himself- become the bully Estes says filmmakers wont won't be the ones flinching Very dramatic things happen to us as teen-agers teen and teen teen-agers learn about the world that way Estes says I was looking at stories stories stories sto sto- ries that allow us to reexamine reexamine reexamine ine our relationship to these dramatic events and in that sense I think stories about teen-agers teen are incredibly relatable to adults They're almost intoxicating that way |