Documentary filmmaker Nanette Burstein (The Kid Stays in the Picture) turned her camera on a handful of high school students from Warsaw, Indiana, and created American Teen, a film that honestly depicts life in high school in a way that hasn't been seen in theaters since The Breakfast Club.
Burstein chose to focus on four seniors from different social cliques and economic backgrounds. Colin Clemens, the star of his school's basketball team, needs to score a scholarship or it's off to the Army he'll go. Megan Krizmanich is pretty, popular, wealthy, and under pressure to get into Notre Dame. Jake Tusing is the all-but-invisible nerd who's painfully shy and has no self-esteem, and who's big goal is to go on a date. And then there's Hannah Bailey. Hannah marches to the beat of her own drum, a loner with big dreams who doesn't fit in in high school or in her conservative town.
Following the teens for 10 months, Burstein captured the joys and horrors of high school life in American Teen.
Why did you choose Warsaw, Indiana?
"Well, you know, I had never heard of Warsaw, Indiana before I started the process of finding the right school. But I chose basically to focus on the Midwest because I felt that there was an innocence and a timelessness, and I was just kind of interested in teenagers in a more conservative part of the country. I wanted it to be in a town that only had one high school because I thought that it would just be a lot more social pressure they can't really escape. And if you are popular you feel even more powerful. And I wanted it to be a town that was economically mixed, which is hard to find in a single town.
I was hoping to find a town that was racially mixed, but that was extremely hard to find in the Midwest in small towns, which I discovered. I needed it to be a school that would cooperate. So I found 10 high schools that fit that bill, especially the part of the high school cooperating, and I went to visit each of them to interview all the incoming seniors that were interested. Because, at that point, you know it was really going to be the kids at each of these schools and the storylines that would dictate where I was going to go. And this high school had the best storylines and the most compelling subjects."
What kind of questions were you asking during the initial interviews?
"I was asking them, first of all I was asking them what group they belonged to, who their friends were, and what kinds of conflicts they were going through. Really what I was looking for was I wanted kids from different social classes, I wanted kids from different social cliques, but I wanted kids who really needed to achieve something that year or really wanted to achieve something that year and it would play out whether they would be able to or not. And what they were trying to achieve would involve somehow pressure from their friends or pressure from their parents or pressure about their future.
For example, you know Colin is the star of the basketball team but if he doesn't get a basketball scholarship, because of his parent's financial situation, he's going to have to go into the Army so that is a compelling story to follow. You don't know how it's going to end. But you know you have a story one way or the other. You know, Hannah is desperate to get out of Indiana and move to California. She's having problems with her boyfriend, her family life is screwed up. She's clearly the coolest girl in school but nobody knows it. There is a compelling story there. So with each of them they all had this need and this desire and this want, and I knew I could watch it play out and it would fit in."
Was there actually a big variety of people to pick from?
"Yes."
Even in a small town?
"Well I didn't pick a small [school]. That was the other thing. I picked the town that had one high school, but I made sure that high school was big so that I would have a lot of people. Because, you know, you're not going to have the entire senior class show up. You're going to have maybe 35-40% show up if you're lucky. So I was having a couple hundred kids show up at each of these places."
Were you always sure it was going to be four people you followed, or was there a point where you thought maybe you could do five or even cut it down to three?
"I actually thought it would be three. I thought four was going to be a tough number to integrate. But I couldn't let any of them go. They all had such great stories and they all complemented each other so well that I ended up with four. But I mean I knew I was going to film more than three because you don't know how things are going to turn out. I definitely by a few months into it just focused on four or five stories. But yeah, when I got to the edit room I realized I had to have these four stories instead of three."
How difficult was it to get the parents to say yes?
"It wasn't hard at all. I mean when any of these kids showed up for these initial interviews in all the schools that I went to, the parents had to sign a paper saying they were okay with it. So to begin with you had parents that were open to the idea. And before I filmed anything, when I chose Warsaw and got to the school, I had a meeting with all the parents and gave them this very long release that they would have to sign if their kids were going to be involved in this. They could ask any questions that they had and they all signed it, actually. But I think it gave them an opportunity to ask me questions and once that happened, they sort of just allowed whatever. They just let it go. They got to know me and they weren't too concerned."
