Painting an Unsentimental Picture of Group Home Life in "Short Term 12," the Summer's Best Kept Movie Secret

This year's must-see indie explores a group home.

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Complex Original

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The road to Short Term 12's limited theatrical release this Friday, August 23, has been damn near flawless.

In March, writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton's second feature—about the shared connections between the staffers and kids inside of a group home—premiered at the SXSW Film Festival, knocking both casual moviegoers and critics out with its many charms: humor, heart, but unsentimental execution. Short Term 12 left the festival with prizes for Grand Jury Narrative Feature and Narrative Audience Award. The victory parade continued at the Los Angeles Film Festival (where it received a second Narrative Audience Award), the Nantucket Film Festival (Best Screenwriting in a Feature Film), and the Little Rock Film Festival (Best Narrative Feature).

Cretton, 34, isn't so interested in the critical accolades. "It's weird when people praise your work so much," he says. "I don't like hype. It feels unhealthy because it dissipates so quickly." He's more interested in how audeinces are responding. "The experience for me feels real and amazing because of the conversations I'm having with people after every screening," says Cretton. "It's a film that seems to put people in the mood to be honest and open. I've had personal conversations with people after every screening. It's helping me connect with human beings that I wouldn't be able to otherwise, and that's incredible."

The film's star, Brie Larson (21 Jump Street), can relate. "It's amazing, especially when I'm there after the screenings," says the 23-year-old actress. "I've never felt so many people stare so deeply into my soul. I had someone say to me after a recent screening, 'We connected tonight.' It's surreal."

But understandable. Larson plays Grace, the group home's head supervisor; compassionate, sharp, and resilient, she's aces at her job, which she does every day alongside her boyfriend, Mason (John Gallagher, Jr.). She's also hiding some deep personal trauma. Her skeletons come tumbling out of the closet when a new intake, Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) arrives at Short Term 12 with troubling secrets that trigger something dark and disabling within Grace. Through it all, Larson is exceptional—it's a performance that should be on everyone's mind come next year's Independent Spirit Awards and maybe even the Oscars.

Though Short Term 12 walks into unpleasant territory, it's never uninviting. Cretton's love for his characters shines through in every scene—with every moment of pain, there's always hope on deck. Tears are just as likely as laughter, often at the same time.

Complex sat down with Cretton and stars Larson, Gallagher, Jr., Dever, and Keith Stanfield to find out how an unassuming indie went from a small-scale passion project to one of 2013's most critically acclaimed movies.

RELATED: Fruitvale Station: How a 27-Year-Old Rookie Filmmaker Humanized an American Tragedy
RELATED: The Spectacular Now: The Making of the Next Great Coming-of-Age Movie Classic
RELATED: 50 Indie Movies to See Before You Die

Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

Painting an Unsentimental Picture of Group Home Life in "Short Term 12," the Summer's Best Kept Movie Secret

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The road to Short Term 12's limited theatrical release this Friday, August 23, has been damn near flawless.

In March, writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton's second feature—about the shared connections between the staffers and kids inside of a group home—premiered at the SXSW Film Festival, knocking both casual moviegoers and critics out with its many charms: humor, heart, but unsentimental execution. Short Term 12 left the festival with prizes for Grand Jury Narrative Feature and Narrative Audience Award. The victory parade continued at the Los Angeles Film Festival (where it received a second Narrative Audience Award), the Nantucket Film Festival (Best Screenwriting in a Feature Film), and the Little Rock Film Festival (Best Narrative Feature).

Cretton, 34, isn't so interested in the critical accolades. "It's weird when people praise your work so much," he says. "I don't like hype. It feels unhealthy because it dissipates so quickly." He's more interested in how audeinces are responding. "The experience for me feels real and amazing because of the conversations I'm having with people after every screening," says Cretton. "It's a film that seems to put people in the mood to be honest and open. I've had personal conversations with people after every screening. It's helping me connect with human beings that I wouldn't be able to otherwise, and that's incredible."

The film's star, Brie Larson (21 Jump Street), can relate. "It's amazing, especially when I'm there after the screenings," says the 23-year-old actress. "I've never felt so many people stare so deeply into my soul. I had someone say to me after a recent screening, 'We connected tonight.' It's surreal."

But understandable. Larson plays Grace, the group home's head supervisor; compassionate, sharp, and resilient, she's aces at her job, which she does every day alongside her boyfriend, Mason (John Gallagher, Jr.). She's also hiding some deep personal trauma. Her skeletons come tumbling out of the closet when a new intake, Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) arrives at Short Term 12 with troubling secrets that trigger something dark and disabling within Grace. Through it all, Larson is exceptional—it's a performance that should be on everyone's mind come next year's Independent Spirit Awards and maybe even the Oscars.

Though Short Term 12 walks into unpleasant territory, it's never uninviting. Cretton's love for his characters shines through in every scene—with every moment of pain, there's always hope on deck. Tears are just as likely as laughter, often at the same time.

Complex sat down with Cretton and stars Larson, Gallagher, Jr., Dever, and Keith Stanfield to find out how an unassuming indie went from a small-scale passion project to one of 2013's most critically acclaimed movies.

RELATED: Fruitvale Station: How a 27-Year-Old Rookie Filmmaker Humanized an American Tragedy
RELATED: The Spectacular Now: The Making of the Next Great Coming-of-Age Movie Classic
RELATED: 50 Indie Movies to See Before You Die

Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

Writing from Personal Experience

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Born and raised in Maui, Hawaii, Destin Daniel Cretton moved to San Diego when he was 21 years old, to get his Masters in Film at San Diego State University. With that education, he made four award-winning short films, including one titled Short Term 12, a kind of first draft of his latest feature-length movie. Premiering at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, the original Short Term 12 won the prestigious U.S. Jury Prize there, before earning more awards at festivals like Seattle International, CineVegas, and Independent Film Festival Boston.

Propelled by the miniature Short Term 12's success, Cretton dove headfirst into his first feature, I Am Not a Hipster, a tender drama about a self-destructive musician trying to sort his life out within San Diego's indie rock scene. The film premiered at Sundance in 2012 and proved to the world that the guy who'd made several excellent shorts could handle feature-length. I Am Not a Hipster's warm reception also gave Cretton the confidence he needed to flesh out his short passion project into a 90-minute motion picture.

Thus, a little over a year later, he was at the SXSW Film Festival, accepting the Grand Jury Prize award for this Short Term 12 feature. Clearly, Cretton has an understanding of the group home dynamic, the restul of the two years he spent working as a line staffer at a San Diego facility right after he graduated.

Destin Daniel Cretton: I had a friend who worked at a group home on the overnight shift. I was desperately trying to get a job in video production but couldn't find anything. Down in San Diego, my friend at the group home told me that they'd most likely hire me if I reached out, as long as I did a decent interview. I applied, got the job, and then was thrown into this situation that I was not expecting, at all. I was very much like the Nate character in the film.

I went in with high-minded ideals, and what I learned over the course of a year-and-a-half working there was that they were unhealthy. I put myself on a different level than the kids, thinking that I was going to be the dude who would come in and help them easily. I quickly learned that these kids are smart and will sniff out any hint of insecurity, or any sign that someone thinks they're going to be a savior. That's a lesson I've carried with me ever since, that it's never healthy to interact with any human if you think you're the one to help them. It should always be a shared experience, where you help and they help.

I have a lot of journal entries from the time I was working there. I worked the day shift, and then I started working a lot of night shifts and overnights. That gave me a lot of time to write down experiences in my journal, which I then put away. Maybe three or four years later, I made the short; it took that long for me to realize that my experiences could make for a really great movie. While I was working there, though, I never thought about that—I was thinking more about how I needed to survive each day emotionally.

It took about four years for it to settle into my brain, where I could organize it into something. I used the short film as a way to explore some of my questions and organize my emotions. I didn't know that it was going to be any good, but then it got into Sundance and won the Jury Prize. It's been a constant surprise to see how many people connect with this world that I thought would be so foreign to everybody. Viewers are able to see themselves in these characters in the same way that I learned about myself working at the group home. Even if they're living very different lives, they're still dealing with things that all people can relate to.

Brie Larson's Time to Shine

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It's never been a question, whether Brie Larson can act or not—it's more about whether she could lead an entire movie as the lead, rather than just serve as a supporting scene-stealer.

One look at her explosive and raw co-starring performance alongside Woody Harrelson in the 2011 cop-gone-bad drama Rampart is proof enough of her talents. It's a bold, heartbreaking turn that's similar, and actually superior, to Evan Rachel Wood's work in Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler. Larson offers a brief yet crucial portrayal of a neglected daughter trying her best to internalize the pain of a dysfunctional relationship with her dad.

She's also adept at comedy, playing the sexually promiscuous daughter of a schizophrenic on Showtime's well-reviewed, though no longer airing, original dramedy series United States of Tara, as well as Jonah Hill's plucky love interest in last year's hilarious 21 Jump Street.

In Short Term 12 Larson is an awe-inspiring revelation. As the charismatic, tough-but-troubled Grace, she's a devastating virtouso—funny when the mood's light, endearing when it's time to for her character to empathize with one of the kids, and incredibly vulnerable once Grace's inner demons come out. Larson's metamorphosis from reliable co-star into a full-fledged leading lady is Short Term 12's driving force.

If there's any justice in the movie world, her Best Actress victory at this past weekend's Locarno Film Festival, held annually in Switzerland, will be the first of many such accolades.

Brie Larson: It was one of those scripts that was just sent to me, though I was familiar with Destin already (even though he doesn't seem to remember this). I went to Sundance for the first time two years ago. It was my first time having something in the film festival, a short film I'd written and directed with two friends.

At Sundance, all the filmmakers attend these gatherings, brunches, and cocktail parties, and it's incredibly jarring because you're not allowed to bring guests. The directors have to go alone,. You want to bring your significant other, so you at least have someone to talk to, but instead you're forced to talk to everyone else. Destin was there. Everyone had to wear one of those "Hello, My Name Is" name-tags, and his said, "Hello, I Am Not a Hipster" because that was the name of his film. I thought, Nice, that's funny.

Cretton: I do recall meeting her, but I didn't make the connection between Brie as a director and Brie the actor, which says a lot about the type of performer she is. She's such a chameleon. That was my one initial attraction to her as an actor, her versatility.

Larson: About a year after Sundance, I was sent this script from him. We did a Skype call, and about 20 minutes into that Skype call, I knew I wanted to do the film.

Cretton: Within the first ten minutes of the Skype conversation, I realized how smart and thoughtful she is. She had so many wonderful emotional insights into this character.

Larson: Working on this film was a turning point for me. Destin was the first person to give me a big opportunity to learn to trust myself more. I've done a bunch of films and projects before this where the filmmakers trusted me to bring whatever I could to the table, but I wasn't asked to bring that much. This was the first time where it was a big responsibility.

Destin's such a kind and patient person. It wasn't until after we finished shooting that I realized that I never felt rushed, I never felt nervous. We just did it. For the longest time, we were two days ahead of schedule, and that never happens. There was this feeling that we'd get it done. It never clicked in my head that we didn't have the money where we could go over 12 hours a day—if we didn't get the scenes or the moments, then we didn't get them, period. We were working with a very low-budget, and to realize that we were able to accomplish so much with so little, I'm going to take that with me for the rest of my life.

Establishing Chemistry

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Had Destin Daniel Cretton kept Short Term 12's story confined to the group home itself, the results would have been no less resonant, yet, wisely on his part, the film's not just a fly-on-the-wall look inside America's foster care system. Through the protagonist, Grace, Cretton spends a great deal of time creating one of film's strongest female characters in years. And in order to express Grace's many dimensions, Cretton paired her with fellow Short Term 12 line staffer Mason, played by The Newsroom's John Gallagher, Jr.

Their relationship feels lived-in. That's partly due to how organically Cretton peels back their three-year-long union, never overtly calling attention to their situation, but, rather, letting their personal history together emerge through natural-sounding conversation. Another major factor into why Grace and Mason are such a likable, believable couple is the easygoing, spot-on chemistry between Larson and Gallagher, Jr.

You'd think they've been dating for years in real-life. In reality, though, they didn't have much time at all to develop their rapport. Fortunately, Cretton's an inventive matchmaker.

Larson: We didn't have much time, in general, before we started shooting, and then the shoot itself was really quick. It was only 20 days. John and I were both working on other things, so I only had a couple of weeks with Destin; we met up, maybe, twice. With John, I only had a couple of days with him before we started shooting.

We met for dinner. Destin did something really brilliant: John and I had agreed to meet for dinner, and right before John left his house, Destin dropped an envelope off on his doorstep. It said, "Do not open before you get to the restaurant."

John Gallagher, Jr.: Destin had emailed me and said, "I would really love it if there was an opportunity for you and Brie to hang out and get to know each other." I was all for that, and Destin did it in such a way that was so easy. All we had to do was show up for this dinner and talk, using the cards he gave us. Anytime the conversation would dry up, we could pull out another scrap of paper and start talking about an all-new topic.

Larson: We joked that it was a scavenger hunt for us to do together, but when we opened the envelope up and saw that it was a letter from Destin and a bunch of little pieces of paper that had different topics written on them. They were conversation starters, and they all were about being in relationships, childhood memories, what our characters' first date was like, and other things like that.

Gallagher, Jr.: They varied from things like, "Describe your fears and hopes about being a parent someday," to, "What do you think Grace and Mason's first date was like?" Without it feeling like work in any way, we were able to suddenly and very organically create a back-story for these characters, and a history and a life together."

Cretton: I wish people did that for me more often, just forced me to talk about certain things with people. I did that for I Am Not a Hipster, where we quickly had to develop a family, with three sisters and a brother. I sent them all on a hike in a similar way, with an envelope, and I wrote questions that they should know about each other, and had them do things that siblings should do together. At some point during the hike, for example, somebody had to fart in front of somebody else. And then there were really heavy, intense conversation-starters they had to address. When they got back into the room with me, they felt like real brothers and sisters.

Larson: By the end of the dinner, we'd created a mythology for our characters, and we felt comfortable bouncing ideas off of each other. John and I have both been in long-term relationships, so we know what it's like to have that level of comfort and how to deal with it when things get sticky, when someone's scared or feels inadequate to the other. We had the comfort to be able to talk about personal things that had happened to us, and how to find new ways to deal with those things together.

Writing and Rapping

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Short Term 12 is full of scenes that resonate to the core, but there's one in particular where writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton lets his abilities shine.

In the foster care facility, Marcus is only a few weeks shy of his 18th birthday and subsequent release back into society. Up until this point, he's been quiet and resistant to close interactions with anyone else inside Short Term 12. His back story comes to light suddenly, during a raw and profane rap he's just written about his relationship with his mother. As counselor Mason beats a drum alongside of Marcus and listens on with compassionate ears, the teen spills his heart.

Marcus repeats the wrenching hook: "Look into my eyes so you know what it's like/To live life not knowing what a normal life's like." Scenes like this almost never work. And yet.

Keith Stanfield, 22, plays Marcus. is the MC half of the Los Angeles-based duo MOORS (whose music can be heard here). He first gave acting a shot in Cretton's original version of Short Term 12; the feature is his first major motion picture. Based on the superb performance he gives, you'd think he was a seasoned pro in front of the camera.

Keith Stanfield: I'm from Victorville—it's about an hour-and-a-half away from Los Angeles, up in the desert. They call it Victimville because it's kind of violent. It's a beautiful place, though. It's quiet.

I've been fortunate to get involved with Short Term 12. I was just a young teenager on the Internet, clicking on anything that had the word actor in it. One day, someone called me in for a movie audition. I was stoked; I went there to audition and, as it turned out, it was an acting school. That's how they get people to join—they had them come down thinking it was for an audition, and us dumb kids were told, "OK, you need to give us $10,000."

I ended up doing that, and then I was lucky enough to end up sitting in front of this agent, who sent me on an audition for a young filmmaker who was working on a short film called Short Term 12. I met with Destin, got the role, and then, five years later, Destin called me and said, "We're making a feature out of it. You want to audition for it?" And I was like, "Do I want to? Shit, I'm already there!"

Cretton: Even though he was in the short film, Keith came in to audition late in the game. He wasn't responding to any of my emails. [Laughs.] I was under pressure to choose my Marcus, but thankfully he responded and drove the two hours from Victorville and auditioned in my living room. I was in tears by the end.

Stanfield: Marcus is pretty much the same character that was in the short. In the movie, though, there's more context. In the short, you can tell that he's a troubled kid, but the rap in the short doesn't give as much insight as it does in this film. As the character grew, so did the elements of the rap I wrote for it. Music is something I do full-time in real life. I was doing music long before I was even thinking about acting. It's weird how it worked out; this just happened to be a role where I could explore both things at the same time.


 

No baby is born wanting to kill themselves; sometimes, our environment and the way we internalize our environment forces us to do things we'd otherwise never want to do. - Keith Stanfield

 

Marcus represents one of the many sides of the human perspective. We've got a version of Marcus inside of us. Change is coming to him and he doesn't know how to deal with it. He's trying to deal with it the best way he can, which is to block everybody out. He only knows how to lash out; he doesn't know how to control his emotions. We've all been in situations like that. In fact, for me, Marcus' situation is real. This is all weird for me to get used to, this new environment. It's weird trying to get used to doing these interviews, and going to screenings and Q&As. It's been quite a journey trying to assimilate into that. So I didn't have to think about it much while playing Marcus, because I was already feeling a lot of his emotions and confusion, just from becoming an actor.

That rap verse was difficult for me to write. Destin and I worked on it together, and it was a tedious process but it was also fun.

Cretton: The process was simple and organic. I wrote the initial rap—you can see it in the script, it has all of the vital information in it. The verse is telling us about the character and what happened to him, but Keith is a really talented rap artist, so I handed it to him and he made it cool. He created the rhythms and things I'm not good at. It's not hard to write a bad rap. [Laughs.]

Stanfield: What we really wanted to portray, out of everything, is that sometimes you see people who lash out and do crazy shit, and you think, Damn, that person's an asshole. But sometimes we don't take a look at the broader spectrum to see what it was that brought this person to this point. No baby is born wanting to kill themselves; sometimes, our environment and the way we internalize our environment forces us to do things we'd otherwise never want to do.

Gallagher, Jr.: In the film, Mason encourages Marcus' writing and raps as a way to communicate—that's his specific relationship with Marcus, and Grace has a completely different one. If Marcus is having a bad day, Mason knows that he should check in with him to see if he's written new material. Mason knows that he has a special kind of relationship with Marcus where he feels comfortable revealing his art to Mason. But he doesn't have that kind of bond with the other kids. Keith and I were able to work on that together. That scene where Marcus delivers that rap to Mason is incredible to me.

Stanfield: Marcus is no different from anyone else. He's trying to overcome his struggle the only know way he knows how to, and all he knows is that he's an emotional wreck. I wanted to draw the idea that he's a product of his environment. What happens to him could happen to anyone.

The cool thing about working with Destin is, if you have your own ideas, he'll say to you, "Cool, go!" He lets you explore creatively. I wanted to keep it minimal because that's what feels real to me. I didn't want the character, or the movie as a whole, to be overstated. A lot of times you watch movies like this and every emotion is overstated. In order to avoid that, I actually felt what Marcus was feeling. Whenever I was off-camera, I brought myself to a lonely, isolated place. People were probably looking at me, saying to themselves, "What the hell is he doing?" [Laughs.] I wanted it to be where, when Destin said, "Action," I was already there. On and off camera, I was Marcus the whole time.

Nina the Octopus

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Before the new kid Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) checks into Short Term 12, Grace's life is stable enough—she's been able to suppress her painful past well enough to not lose her mind. But the cold, disinterested, and rebellious Jayden reminds Grace of her younger, similarly-scared-but-too-tough-to-show-it self. Their common bond: terrible fathers and domestic abuse.

As he does throughout Short Term 12, Destin Daniel Cretton doesn't take the easy way out when revealing the realities of Jayden's home-life. There's no teary-eyed breakdown, no gratuitous violence. The admission comes in the form of a story, written by Jayden, about "Nina the Octopus." Before reading it to Grace, Jayden offers a disclaimer: "It's a kid's story. so there aren't any big words." And from there, she tells one hell of a clever, subtle, and alarming tale in which Nina, so desperate to make friends and feel some kind of personal connection, lets a bigger, more aggressive shark eat her arms.

16-year-old actress Dever—whom fans of the excellent FX series Justified will recognize as young Loretta McCready—plays the scene perfectly, steering it away from hokey melodramatic. The same can be said for Cretton, who wrote the film's most quietly powerful moment from a place of both vivid memory and dumb luck.

Cretton: I had a moment working at the home with a kid, and I knew what he had gone through when he was young, but I'd never heard him talk about it. One day I was doing room checks, looked through his journal, and saw these pictures that he had drawn. I got emotional looking through them, because I realized that he thinks about what happened to hiim all the time, and was trying to work through that stuff. But it never came out.

That was the initial spark behind the octopus story. But I feel like that story was handed to me by the screenwriting heavens. All of these specific revealing moments were a challenge to write, and when that scene came, I had no idea how it was going to be tackled. I was on a walk around the block, and I ended up at a coffee shop. The idea hit me out of nowhere.

Kaitlyn Dever: Before I auditioned for [Short Term 12], I read the script and I immediately fell in love with it and Jayden. I fell in love with what I would get to do, and all the crazy scenes to put all my effort into, so I was looking forward to auditioning for Destin.

I thought it would be a good movie to show people what I could do. And I knew that it was an amazing character, someone not at all like me. I had to pull a lot of weight with the character.

Cretton: I lucked out with these kids. It was hard to find them, but it wasn't like we had option A, B, or C for any of these roles. We were auditioning and auditioning, and I was getting more panicky and depressed. [Laughs.] I wasn't finding anyone close to what I wanted, and then Kaitlyn walked in, and I was in tears by the end of her audition. The first time she came in, she did the scene where she's blowing up, and at the end of that my heart was thumping in my chest. When we brought her back to do a more subtle scene, the one where she tells the octopus story, and she blew me away again.

Larson: That scene reads on the page just as it plays on the screen. Every scene was easy like that. We did most of the scenes in one take. Sometime we we needed more takes, but I'm pretty sure what you see in the film are the first takes. When you have a script that's well-written, and then you have the right people acting that script out without any vanity and with intense care and appreciation for it, and are willing to expose themselves without asking for anything, it just works. We all felt safe and connected. We were inspired by each other.

Kaitlyn is incredible. She's really good at turning it on and off. The scene where her father doesn't show up and she has the big meltdown, we did that scene about eight times, and she'd go out of her mind each time. And then they'd yell, "Cut!" and she'd look at me and say, "Was that good? Let's do it again!" [Laughs.] She loved doing it. She was so good at going in and out of it. I'd say to her, "I want to take my cues from you. I don't need to go home and beat myself up about this stuff. I don't need to be in a sick mood all day. I can just go into the scene and then come right out of it, like you." We all learned from each other.

Working With Kids

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Spending Time in the Real Environment

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For the actors, it was obvious how to learn about the ins and outs of a group home: visit a functioning facility.

Larson: I shadowed workers in a real facility. It was my first time in that kind of environment. I had read about it, but it's a different thing when you're actually there. You don't get that emotional impact from reading about it. You don't get the tension, the pain, and the love that's in those places. I spent time there, but I don't want to say too much about it. I want to protect those kids.

Gallagher, Jr.: From talking to people who work in foster care facilities for a living, one of the main things they said is, "Keeping it light is so important because there's so much darkness in these kids' worlds." That's why Mason's the comic relief; he realizes that the kids need to laugh every now and then. Keeping the kids on a schedule, in a routine, and keeping them smiling and laughing is a gift that you can give to them.


 

Seeing how the line staffers communicate with each other, and knowing that they love and care about these kids so much, and that they're able to joke on the job so much, was all so inspirational and uplifting for us. - John Gallagher, Jr.

 

I spent about five or six hours in a group home a few days before we started shooting. It was amazing to see the commitment of the people who do this. There was a gentleman I followed around, a line staffer. He'd been working in that world for over 10 years, and one of the things he said to me was, "You think this place is tough? This place is a cake walk for me. My last job was in a high-security ward for kids, and we would have suicide attempts almost every night. This place? I hope I stay here for as long as I can, because it's a lot easier to sleep at night now." The facility where I was with him seemed like he had his hands full there, so to hear that it was actually an easier place than his last one was stunning.

What was amazing, too, was the resilience of these kids. You know that they're fighting every day. Just being there for a few hours, you see a lot of subtle moments where the kids are revealing something about themselves, or coping as best they can. These strange things happen where you're crying and then a minute later you're laughing. Seeing how the line staffers communicate with each other, and knowing that they love and care about these kids so much, and that they're able to joke on the job so much, was all very inspirational and uplifting. If you don't soldier on and keep some positivity, it can be easy to get bogged down and feel dour.

Stanfield: My aunt has had a group home for a couple of years, and I've seen some crazy shit in that place. There was this one kid who liked to collect things—I think it was a mild form of autism where he would collect things and line them up; he was really good with patterns. We opened up his closet one time and saw that he'd lined up a bunch of poop pellets in it. It was crazy, and nobody knew how to deal with that type of thing, but my aunt was able to handle it because she's worked with underprivileged kids for so long.

I have a brother who has autism, and in the beginning we didn't know how to deal with it. We didn't know what was going on. Sometimes you think that, when your kid has issues like that, you can whoop that out of him, but you have to realize that they're a human being. They develop slowly. We, as a family, can identify with trying to develop with kids. A parent's relationship with a kid is always a learning process for everyone. That's illustrated so well in this film.

A "Message Movie" That's Not a Message Movie

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Unless you're a soulless drone, it's pretty much impossible to leave Short Term 12 without feeling something. It might be anger at the awful things unfit parents can do to their undeserving children; it could be the enlightenment derived from watching Grace find inner strength through the resiliency of kids who've been dealt crappy hands in life; and there's a chance it could be nothing more than the joy and gratitude one feels after viewing a movie that's wonderfully written, directed, and acted.

But what makes Short Term 12 so special is that no one involved is forcing you to feel anything. Destin Daniel Cretton and his actors are simply telling a story about love, compassion, pain, and fear.

Cretton: Personally, I'm hoping that people can get a small taste of what it's like working at a group home, the place where I learned so much about life. It taught me so much about humanity, and what it means to be walking through the ups and downs of life, the lowest lows mixed with the highest highs. I do hope that the movie sparks conversations around the country about how these kids are treated, teens who have nobody to care for them—I do hope that conversation happens.

I also hope that people connect with this movie personally, and see that it relates to how they treat their kids, or how they were treated by their parents, even if they've had a wonderful relationship. Seeing what these characters go through can help you think about what's going on in your own life. Hopefully people who are passionate about any specific part of this film will use it to talk about these issues more. The state of that system in our country is a situation that we should be talking about.


 

The point of the film isn't to take a stance on this issue at all, but I do hope that some people will want to look into it further and want to reach out, whether it's donating colored pencils to a place or actually spending some time in a group home like this. - Brie Larson

 

Larson: It's really easy to miss the bigger message with this film. People get mesmerized by the performances and by how natural it all is, and how it's different than what we usually see in films. At this point, it's mostly cinephiles and film lovers who have seen the film, so most of the discussions are about the acting and technical aspects, but the point that we haven't quite reached yet is that this film is scratching at the surface of a real thing.

It's a real thing that I've spent time in, and that Destin has actually worked in for two years. If you take the time to look into it a little more, it's a pretty devastating and screwy situation that we have. It's going to take a lot of us to recognize that this is a really unfortunate thing that's happening to these children.

Stanfield: I hate movies that beat you over the head with their message. I hate movies that press their agendas. A lot of people say that it feels like a documentary, and I agree with that. Although it's a fictional story, there are people who really go through this. This is drawn from real people and real experiences. It's awesome that it feels so natural. That's why people are connecting with it so much. It doesn't feel like there's an agenda.

Larson: The point of the film isn't to take a stance on this issue at all, but I do hope that some people will want to look into it further and want to reach out, whether it's donating colored pencils to a place or actually spending some time in a group home like this. It's an important thing for us to do.

The movie doesn't end with one of those black cards with the white lettering, saying something like, "1.5 million children are currently living in this system," and blah blah blah. Or, "63 percent of them end up in jail once they've aged out at 18.'"And it doesn't need that. I'm not going to be the one to tell everybody that information, and we shouldn't be the ones responsible for that. All people need to do is look into it for themselves to realize that it's upsetting.

Gallagher, Jr.: Destin said it best the other night. We were giving an interview, and he said something that mirrors my own feelings about this film: "The most important thing to do was tell a good story and tell it as honestly as we possibly could." If that starts conversations about the foster care system, that's wonderful, and if it doesn't, that's OK, too. We don't want it to seem that we know anything that other people don't, because the minute you get into message territory, then suddenly there's a position of having an upper hand.

We really want people to walk out of the film with their own experience and do what they see fit with that. There would be something dishonest about having an agenda, even if it's a good one, even if it comes from a good, authentic place.

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