Interview (Part 1): Destin Daniel Cretton
This week, we are reading and analyzing the script Short Term 12, so I thought it would be a good idea to reprise my October 2013 interview writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton.
One of my favorite movies of 2013 is Short Term 12, so I was understandably excited when its talented writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton agreed to an interview. Our hour-long conversation did not disappoint.
Destin’s script “Short Term 12″ won a 2010 Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship. He used that to write the script for the 2012 movie I Am Not A Hipster which Destin also directed.
Today in Part 1, Destin shares how he got interested in filmmaking and the inspiration for Short Term 12:
Scott: I have your IMDB Pro credits and all the way down at the bottom, I see this short film in 2002 you did called Longbranch: A Suburban Parable. When did you catch the bug about film making?
Destin: I guess it depends on when you consider it a bug. I don’t know because I was one of six kids growing up on Maui in Hawaii. The first time I caught the bug was when my grandma loaned us her VHS camcorder when I was about ten. That was when we first started, my family and I, my brothers and sisters, we got addicted just making silly movies as kids and things when we were young.
I didn’t ever think that, “Oh, I want to be a film maker when I grow up.” But I did know that I loved it. I was always the guy who was, for summer camp, doing those videos. I’ve always loved the process of doing it.
But that film Longbranch was that the first actual film that I ever made that I submitted to festivals and things. I had a bet with a friend of mine, Lowell Frank, and shot it in around 2001.
It went to festivals including Tribeca. We got to travel around with it a little bit and just watching something on the screen you slaved away at, seeing people react to it and hearing them talk about it afterwards, I got hooked after that.
It wasn’t so much, I want to do this for living. It was more of, I want to figure out a way to continue to do this the rest of my life, even if I have years of not really doing it.
Scott: After college, you got a master’s at San Diego State in film?
Destin: Yeah. After I graduated from college, I worked at a group home for at‑risk teenagers for two years, very similar to Short Term 12. While there, I made Long Branch. I also got into San Diego State University. So I left to go to film school.
Scott: Short Term 12 won the 2013 South by Southwest audience award. Here’s a plot summary from IMDB. “Twenty‑something supervising staff member of a foster care facility navigates the troubled waters of that world alongside her coworker, a longtime boyfriend.” It was inspired by that job you had at that group home after you graduated from college. As a storyteller, what were some of the narrative elements you looked at or thought about from those experiences where you said, “This would make a good movie.”
Destin: The first thing I saw that was instantly inspiring, I was looking back through my journals during the time I was working there when I was trying to do my thesis project at San Diego State University. There was one story I had written down that was an experience I had with a young boy who, it was his birthday and his dad didn’t show up.
He was acting like he didn’t care and he held it in as long as he could, and then he disappeared down the hall, we heard his door slam. I was the closest one to him emotionally, so I was the one who was trying to push the door open. And he was holding it and then let it fly open and I fell in and then he took out his anger on my face and just started wailing on me. So we had to restrain him.
We fast‑forward about an hour later. The adrenaline had passed and this same young man was able to open up and have a very intimate conversation with me about all the stuff that he was dealing with that day.
Looking at that journal entry, it kind of encapsulated the complexities of that environment and also summed up just the general feel of what it felt like to go through the ups and downs of the emotions of that place.
Scott: That scene is actually in the movie. It happens to Grace and Jaden.
Destin: Yeah. That was one of the few scenes that was in the original short film, which we shot in 2008. Also a version of it carried into the feature.
Here is the trailer for the original 2008 short film:
Tomorrow in Part 2 of the interview, Destin delves deeper into Short Term 12.
The official movie site is here.
Go here to rent or buy Short Term 12.
Destin is repped by WME.
You can follows Destin on Twitter: @destindaniel.