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In writer/director Jacob Aaron Estes' first feature film, "Mean Creek," Rory Culkin plays a boy who conspires with his brother and friends to get revenge on a bully who's been picking on him. But as their plan is set into motion during an outing in the woods, they discover the true person inside the bully: desperate for friends and emotionally needy. But it's too late to change their plans, and tragedy ensues. Sitting down with Estes recently, MTV News' Kelly Marino went searching for the source of "Mean Creek."
MTV: What inspired you to write this story? Were you ever bullied when you were younger?
Jacob Aaron Estes: Yeah, I think everyone was bullied when they were younger, whether it was by their sister or their brother or someone in the classroom. And you know, I think some people are much larger targets because of some physical attributes or some family background. I was really a target for various reasons, and later on in my life I sort of played on the opposite side of that fence and was part of bullying other people too, you know, so the story came out of a desire to deal with those themes.
MTV: Word from the set is that you went to great lengths to make the cast feel comfortable with you and trust you. Why was that so important for you to do?
Estes: Well, we had to work really fast and ... I really wanted the cast to be trusting each other and trusting me so that we could work fast and so that we could be honest with each other, because the whole movie required sort of an emotional honesty with the actors. It wasn't going to happen unless they felt safe, and that meant safe with me and safe with the rest of the crew, and safe with each other, so we started the whole process off with a game of whiffle ball, where we just got to know each other and played together, and we just continued to do things together that just increased our understanding of each other, and we did a lot of playing, basically. And I gave them the freedom to tell me if they didn't like something in the script, or tell me if I was wrong, or tell if they thought I was wrong, because I didn't want them to be uptight and I didn't want them to do only what I said. I wanted them to give me what they had to offer.
MTV: Did you run into any trouble shooting on the river? Were there any accidents or injuries?
Estes: Well, we did do a lot of precautions. We taught each of the kids CPR, and the Millie character needed to do CPR for real and make it look for real, so we taught [actress Carly Schroeder]. The only accident that we had on set was Ryan Kelley getting out of the van one morning and he tripped on his seatbelt and face-planted on the concrete, and all the other actors were laughing and he had to be rushed to the hospital and get stitches that day. We had to continue to shoot without him, and when he came back the makeup artist had to put a patch on his chin, and we just started shooting from any angle that we could to hide what had happened to his chin. We were almost shooting the whole movie in sequence, and it actually happened that day we were about to shoot the fight scene ... so we could have justified him getting cut open but we had shot a couple scenes out of sequence. So we couldn't do it. So we needed to hide it.
MTV: Being that this was your first feature film, what was the most challenging thing about making it?
Estes: Well, you know, with absolutely no money to support myself or my crew, the challenge was to just keep everyone moving and going and inspired, because I couldn't say, you know, "Here is $7,000. Work for me." It was like, "Here's $5 an hour. Work for me." So that was a big challenge, and just staying together myself, physically, because it was so exhausting at the end of the day. I just had to keep doing it, and doing it, and doing it, and we hadn't sold the movie until after Sundance, and we didn't know if we were going to get into Sundance. So just staying healthy was the big challenge.
MTV: What do you have planned for your second film? What's next?
Estes: Next? Uh, I can't talk to you about the next upcoming project because it's top secret.
MTV: Really? Not even a hint of a plot?
Estes: No, I can't do it.
MTV: Or who's in it?
Estes: No. [He laughs.] It's a big secret.
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Photo: Kelli Schroeder
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