American Teen: Nanette Burstein interview

After going down a storm at last year's Sundance Film Festival - including a best director award in the documentary category for Nanette Burstein - American Teen finally receives a release in the UK on 6th March. The film follows five typical teenagers as they go through the trials and tribulations of their final year at an unremarkable high school in Middle America. We caught up with Nanette and asked her if the film reflects her own high school experience and how she went about choosing her subjects...

LOVEFiLM: Have you been surprised by the reactions you’ve been getting to the film?

Nanette Burstein: Yeah. I mean, you really don’t ever know how people are going to react to the movie, so absolutely. In every way I’ve been surprised.

LF: How did you choose which kids you were going to follow in American Teen?

NB: Well, a part of choosing the kids is choosing the place and that decision was pretty entwined. I wanted a high school that was almost like a fish bowl: you really couldn’t escape from your reality. So I wanted it to be a small town that only had one high school in it and I wanted it to be economically mixed. I was looking in Middle American because there’s an innocence about that part of the country and it’s also very isolated. And, you know, I needed a school that would cooperate and give me the access that I was looking for. So I called hundreds of high schools all across the Midwest and found 10 that were interested and interviewed all the incoming seniors. And based on that, I found this town had the most compelling students and stories that reflected the typical high school experience.

LF: Does the film reflect your own high school experience?

NB: It does it many ways. What I discovered about high school is there is a timelessness about it – at least in this country. A lot of the issues that I dealt with, kids are still dealing with today.

I think the one main difference is technology. That’s obviously changed and I think that’s had a big effect on their lives. So much of being a teenager is about communication and miscommunication; how you hurt someone else by communication or how you’re the victim of it. It’s like the old rumour mill that existed in my day. Back then it was through calling people or passing notes in class and now it’s through text messages and e-mails and Facebook pages and YouTube videos, and it’s much more detrimental as a result.

LF: Which of the teens did you identify with most?

I guess there’s a part of me that identified with all of them and that’s how I was able to make the movie. But I think on the surface the bohemian girl who wants to be a filmmaker is like I was in high school, or at least towards the end. But towards the beginning, I was in the more popular group, like the girl Megan in the film. You know, wanting to fit in and wanting to be cool. It didn’t really work out for me, which is how I ended up very differently by the end of high school. But I definitely understood that character as well.

LF: Are you still in touch with any of the main teens?

NB: I am, yeah. With all of them in fact. But some more than others. You know Hannah, the girl who went to California, she ended up just outside of New York City, which is where I live, so I see her and talk to her more frequently.

LF: It seems like you had a non-interference policy in the film. There were times where it seemed like you could have spared them a bit of heartbreak, for example...

NB: I didn’t really choose not to interfere. It was just there’s so much time off the set without the camera as well. When Hannah’s not going to school and she’s sunk into a deep depression, I made every effort to try to get her to go school. I took her to see a psychologist. I’d show up at her house in the morning and say, “OK, let’s go to school” and she would be unable to. I would tell her, “You’re going to get over this moment” or “You don’t want to ruin your future.”

So with each of them there was a lot of behind the scenes where I was trying to interfere, but I don’t know how much effect I ultimately had. You know, teenagers are very pig-headed and even though we became very close friends, they are stubborn about what they want to do and how they want to feel. There’s only so much impact that you can actually have.

LF: Similarly, at times it seems like you know what’s going to happen before it happens…

NB: That’s really a function of the editing. I mean, I had a thousand hours’ footage. I was whittling that down to an hour and a half, so it seems like it was, “Wow! The camera’s everywhere at every point”, but there were entire stories that happened that I really only captured fractions of and I just didn’t put them in the film. And they also didn’t end up being that important to telling the story of their life for the year.

Alexander Pashby