Documentary Maker Nanette Burstein Discusses American Teen

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Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 5/21/2008 2:10:00 PM

"Which one were you?" asks the trailer for American Teen, a new documentary attracting buzz ahead of its July 25 release. Winner of a Director's Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival, the film explores those familiar high school icons we all grew up with: "the jock," "the princess," "the geek," "the rebel," "the heartthrob." Just ahead of the film's New York Sundance Institute premiere May 29, the filmmaker Nanette Burstein (On the Ropes, The Kid Stays in the Picture) spoke with SLJ.

You've done one film about boxers and another about studio executive Robert Evans. What got you interested in teens?
High school was a really tough time—but a really formative time—for me. It's amazing to me: there are so many movies and TV programs about teens, and [yet] I find them to be incredibly one-dimensional and often clichéd …So, [my goal was] to do something that was entertaining but could have a wide appeal to both high school kids and older [viewers], about the tough times of high school—the insecurities, the need to fit in, the search for identity, the heartbreak.

You're dealing with high school icons, but the kids themselves turn out to be delightfully human.
You had these kids that seemed simple on the surface but were in fact far more complicated and vulnerable. That was the point. There are these stereotypes, but this is just how their peers want to label them. In fact they are much richer individuals, struggling to be themselves in this pressure-packed environment.

You had extraordinary access, capturing on film all these incredibly intimate moments: ["heartthrob"] Mitch texting ["rebel"] Hannah his decision to break up; Lorrin cheating on ["geek"] Jake. Did you have cameras on these kids 24/7?
Not night and day, but I had cameras on them a lot. It's unusual to spend an entire school year filming people. Most reality shows come in for a couple of months and make 20 episodes out of it. I had 1,500 hours of footage. And some of it is luck! You see remarkable moments, and you're like, "I can't believe I got that." 

I was struck by the major role electronics played, almost like a fifth character.
I certainly knew that teenagers were texting and emailing and chatting all the time. That was how rumors were probably spread. I was surprised at how encompassing it was and how often it brought out the cruelty. I think the consequences of putting things online are not fully thought out by high school students before they do them, because they're not thinking about long-term consequences—ever. So it is an issue in teenage life, and the problem is it keeps changing. Every six months, there's a new addition. When I was filming [2005-2006] no one was posting their videos yet on YouTube.

I loved the video-game animations you used to illustrate the kids' inner lives and aspirations. How'd you come up with that?
Before I shot the film, I was thinking that so much of your life at that age is your inner thinking—and wishful thinking, that never seems to work out! How do you show that? So I thought, "Why not try to animate it?" I asked the kids to share these intimate moments and explained that I wanted to use animation. 

There was some really awful parenting on display in American Teen.
When I make a film, I tend to understand everyone's point of view, and I know that the parents truly did care about their kids. They didn't always have the best way of communicating it. There has been a strong reaction from some people about the parenting.

Did you come away feeling that the teenage experience had changed from your own?
In a lot of ways it hadn't changed, and that surprised me. I think there's a lot of hype here, like there is about everything in the culture: "it's getting worse, out of control." In fact, the issues I dealt with in high school, these kids 20 years later are dealing with. The one thing that has changed is technology and how that's affecting their lives in ways we can't even imagine. But all the insecurities, the need to fit in, the problems you have with your parents—that keeps repeating itself. It's just this rite of passage we have to go through—but we survive it.