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| More American Teen: The Warsaw Five Speak for Themselves |
Megan Krismanich, Colin Clemens, Hannah Bailey, Mitch Reinholt, and Jake Tusing from ‘American Teen.’ Courtesy of Paramount Vantage. |
by Dan Lybarger
It’s been over two years since Nanette Burstein finished filming a group of seniors at Warsaw Community High School in Warsaw, Ind., so it’s not surprising the former high schoolers featured in the documentary lead much different lives.
American Teen garnered Burstein the Best Director: Documentary award at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Since then, the students, who are now in college, have been actively promoting the film around the country.
On their own, the five former Warsaw residents have been anything but idle. Hannah Bailey, the artistically minded non-conformist in the film, is currently attending the State University of New York at Purchase and is studying to be an editor. She’s also completed an internship with comedy producer-director Judd Apatow (Knocked Up).
Mitch Reinholt, the popular (with female students) basketball player who dated Bailey briefly during the filming, is now a pre-med major at Indiana University. Both he and fellow basketball player Colin Clemens worked as interns for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Clemens will be starting his junior year at Manchester University in Manchester, Ind.
Jake Tusing, who was a self-professed geek in the film, now sports shorter hair and a more muscular build. He also recently got to live many a geek’s dream by interning with video game specialists IGN.com.
Megan Krismanich, the popular but occasionally mean member of the quintet who almost got in legal trouble for spray painting a rival’s window with questionable material, is studying pre-med and seems to have shed her youthful vindictiveness.
All five of them spoke to me by phone last month, and it was an intriguing experience. The five have developed a camaraderie from working on the film, and all laugh their way through answers. At times, they even fill in each other’s responses. As a result, keeping up with the five of them and determining who was speaking was occasionally a challenge.
While the film will always be part of their lives, it’s intriguing to hear them recall that they doubted it would be completed, much less receive a wide release.
Dan Lybarger: So you guys didn’t think (the film) would get off the ground.
Jake: I personally didn’t. I thought it would be something fun to do while she was here. She sounded like she had a neat project, and really who would be interested in a small town like Warsaw, Indiana, especially just like high school students, people who have very little place in the community?
I don’t know if anybody else thinks that way, but
(A chorus of “yeahs”).
DL: How do you think she managed to develop such an intimacy with you because there are some moments that can politely be described as “unflattering.”
Mitch: A big part of the reason why she was able to capture the intimate moments was the relationship we had with her. She made her intentions clear from the beginning. She became our friend before she tried to film us a whole lot, before the filming was successful. There was kind of a one-month awkward period where we just stared at the camera and were uncomfortable. Then as we got to know Nanette, it was a lot easier and then she could really capture who we really were.
DL: One of the things that made the film compelling for me—and I grew up in a small Kansas town about 20 years ago—is that I was getting Vietnam flashbacks. In the case of Megan and Hannah, a lot of the stuff was really heavy, is it tough to look back on two years ago and see this stuff again.
Megan: I think the time difference is harder because Hannah and I have both matured a lot. There’s been a significant amount of time for us to grow up and learn from our mistakes in high school. Getting to relive those mistakes with thousands of strangers who have now seen the movie is a little hard at first. Overall, it’s not too bad. I kind of look back at the mistakes and see that I’ve learned from them and grown from them and become a better person from the mistakes that I’ve made.
DL: I’ve just read your (Facebook) profile and saw what you’re doing with CoachArt.
Megan: Oh, yeah. I love my internship. I’ve always been really involved with service projects, and that’s the internship I decided to take when I came to LA for the summer.
DL: And certainly Jake’s internship is something every geek like me would dream of doing.
Jake: It’s pretty awesome. I’m hoping to go farther with my internship and eventually move back out here and eventually work for them full time. And it blows my mind to think that these people get paid to have fun.
DL: Did you learn anything about yourselves or each other looking back at this footage that you might not have known at the time?
Jake: I’d never talked to any of these people in High School, so I got to meet them for the first time at Sundance back in January, so it was already two years after the film (was shot), so it was like seeing slightly different people.
Even just from watching the film, I learned that I need to think of strangers not as people I’ll never see again but as people who have lives as complex as my own. Everybody deserves a chance, and you shouldn’t be quick to judge other people. And we all have a lot more in common than we think we really do.
DL: That’s certainly the case. Megan, you might enjoy this, even after the graffiti incident, the audience I saw the film with in Columbia, Mo. clapped when you were accepted into Notre Dame.
Megan: All right! I made a comeback!
DL: What sells the film is that it’s so intimate. If the filmmakers didn’t get that close to you, it would feel real.
Several in Unison: Definitely.
DL: Was there anything that Burstein and her crew did to prevent themselves from being noticed?
Hannah: One of the things she did during the most personal intimate moments, she would just come herself. The crew was already small. There were just three people at the most. At huge events like prom and graduation, there would be a couple of crews, but that was rare.
But during, for instance, the scene the beginning of the movie when I’m crying with my best friend Clarke (Joyner) because my first boyfriend breaks up with me. That was just her with the camera all alone. She brought a mike. She took a few seconds to put it on me. She filmed for about 15 minutes, and after she filmed, she spent a few hours talking, and she gave me some advice. And I just spilled my guts to her, which was nice to have someone to vent to about all that.
So I think that had a lot to do with the capturing of the intimate moments. She was a friend before a filmmaker in our eyes.
Jake: It was kind of weird. She seemed to be more connected than disconnected. I think that’s what made the difference. She didn’t make any attempt not to be seen. She made an attempt to be seen as a friend instead of a filmmaker.
DL: This was a tough year for all of you, particularly for Colin. Go to war or earn a basketball scholarship. Not that there’s any pressure in that?
Colin: Hardly?
DL: Do you think teenagers of your own generation have pressures that teenagers in mine never had?
Colin: My big pressure like you just said was getting a scholarship or joining the army. A pressure that I have that most people don’t have is having a father who’s an undercover Elvis impersonator.
Other than that, I didn’t have too many pressures because I was pretty close with my family and had a lot of good friends. I don’t know how it was back in the day with scholarships and stuff with basketball, but that’s more common nowadays.
I’m sure that anybody can relate to the army aspect from previous generations.
It was much more terrifying back then I’d assume.
DL: Ms. Burstein told the audience that your performance has a player has really improved and that you now lead the team in assists. Is that true?
Colin: Yeah, that was true. We kind of had a break in the season this year, or at least I did because I went out to Sundance. I’ve had to miss some games due to the movie and stuff, which my coach understood. The starters were averaging 20 minutes a game. I was averaging about 10 to 12 minutes a game, so I was in about half the time, and I was leading in assists. It was pretty impressive for me. I was pretty happy about that.
My dad was pretty happy, too. That was a cool thing.
DL: It’s really interesting watching you adjust to pressure, and seeing how Hannah went from the painful breakup to making films in New York.
Hannah: And I think that’s something that everyone goes through. It just happened to me that year. But that’s something that happens throughout life to various degrees. That’s what great about it. People of all ages can relate to it, heartache, breakup, whatever it may be.
DL: How did you guys feel about the animated segments?
Mitch: I thought they were pretty cool. I thought it was appropriate for a high school teen movie to put animations in. It wouldn’t have been successful. For some dialogue, it would have been difficult to show what we were thinking if they just showed us talking.
Jake: I always wanted to be a cartoon character.
DL: Ms. Burstein says that a lot of her musical selections were made based on your own tastes. Is that true?
Hannah: Yeah, I listen to Cat Stevens a lot, and I listened to that song in particular—that CD of his greatest hits—when I was skipping school. And I think she probably took note of that.
DL: Oh, wow.
Hannah: But a lot of the music was…
Jake: On the wrong label.
Hannah: So they couldn’t use it because they went with a certain label and had to use songs from that label.
Jake: They did find a lot of similarities, though. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Pandora.com. But you type in a song that you like, and the web site finds similar bands to help broaden your interests. They found what we liked and were able to find similar bands. It fit pretty well with my taste in music, too.
DL: Do you think the film would have had a different feel if Ms. Burstein had chosen a school, say in Florida?
Jake: Yes, we talked about this a little bit earlier today.
I think the Midwest is why Nanette picked it. There’s a timelessness and an innocence to it. A lot of other places have different problems than we would, not just economically, but even naturally. Like in Florida, they have the hurricane season every time. I imagine it would be pretty rough on the community.
Here we don’t have a lot of worries. The town is just now starting to grow again. It had been really still and calm for a long time. In the bigger cities, it would have been a completely different experience.
DL: In the last twelve years, it’s grown from 12,000 to 39,000.
Jake: It’s getting really big, really fast, it sounds like.
DL: Is this the first time you’ve been able to see the rest of the country?
Jake: Kind of. Personally, I don’t travel a lot. I stayed up in Indiana almost the entire time. It’s a big culture shock coming out to California and seeing how different life is out here even though we’re in the same country.
I think other people, like Mitch, goes on cruises a lot. He gets to see lots of different places and meet lots of different people. For me it’s a very unique experience.
DL: You’re getting some really choice opportunities because I have to wait till next week to see The Dark Knight.
Hannah: (laughs) Yeah, so do we. Megan and myself.
Colin: The boys got to go to “Batman.”
DL: When I heard Mitch and Hannah talking before their relationship began, each of them seemed to think the other was unattainable, which I thought was fascinating.
Hannah: That’s true, actually.
Mitch: That’s true. No one’s ever said that. You’re definitely right.
DL: This film took a long time to put together. Didn’t Ms. Burstein take a year to edit this thing?
Jake: Yeah. There’s been a lot of downtime between when the filming stopped and when we got to see the final product. It did take a long time, like a year and a half.
DL: This one is for Hannah. Before we talked, I actually got to see Julie.
Hannah: (Giddily) Julie. Oh, my movie. That’s a natural reaction because that’s my dog’s name.
DL: It’s interesting to know that not only are you in school, but you have a few films to show for it.
Hannah: That was I guess my big project of the year. Eight minutes, so not too long. It’s hard. It was on film and everything. I got it transferred to DV, and I decided to put it up on YouTube. It’s been getting pretty good responses.
DL: How does it feel to be on the other end of the camera now?
Hannah: I still don’t know how to direct actors, which is why I ended up being in my own movie because I’m not good at getting people to do what I want them to do in that way.
I can make a boy wear a dress and do that, but I can’t direct him.
I used some of the things I learned when I was working with Nanette. I’ve always wanted to be behind the camera. I’ve made little music videos since I was a kid, so I’m more comfortable with that than being in front of the camera.
DL: I’ve been reading up on what various people in the group have been doing, but I’m curious about what Mitch is doing at this moment.
Mitch: Good question. I am at Indiana University, pre-med. And that’s about it.
Jake: I don’t know how to feel about it. I was always kind of comfortable living in Warsaw, having a good knowledge of the community always knowing what’s going on. Now that I’m out in a big city, it’s kind of fun to be out where things are always changing, and you never know what’s around the next corner.
DL: How have you felt about being instant celebrities with the Facebook and the Blogspot journals and stuff like that?
Jake: It’s a good chance to get our ideas out there, what few we do have.
Megan and Hannah: Great! It’s OK. The best part is just meeting people, really.
Jake: You get lots of different contacts out here. There’s potential for jobs later on. That’s actually what I’m looking forward to the most.
DL: This question’s for Jake. In the film, you talked about how much bad luck you had with girls, but I started counting, and you actually had several dates there. I started counting, and I said, “I didn’t have that kind of luck when I was in high school.”
Jake: I think that things were different my senior year probably because all of the people who weren’t involved with the movie directly were trying to get into the movie.
I think that’s why Larrin decided to go out with me to begin with. I have a few other opportunities like that with girls I didn’t particularly want to get to know. But I figured they deserved as much of a chance as anyone else. I very rarely got the opportunity to go out with someone I wanted to go out with. So I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt and take them out for once.
That happened several times, but it never took off. Actually, my senior year between Molly, the girl I took to the senior semi-formal, and Leslie, the girl who flew in from San Diego, that was the most success I had, at all.
I’m actually in the middle of a two-year dry spell right now. Senior year was kind of strange in that respect.
DL: Had any of you been interested in documentaries before you became involved in this?
Hannah: I’d watch documentaries occasionally. Not as much as I do now. I had Netflix before I knew Nanette. I’d get recommendations for documentaries.
DL: It’s really odd watching people in an audience cheer for what’s essentially a personal experience.
Jake: I think so. It still makes me smile whenever we go to a screening and we hear the audience’s reaction. That’s part of our reason for being out here.
I keep telling people when they come up to me after the screening. I was just being myself. There’s really nothing in my mind that stands out about me. I’m just a typical person telling a typical story.
And it’s like, oh no, you’re really brave, and you’re really awesome, and we appreciate what you really did. To me, it just doesn’t feel that way. It feels like a home movie almost.
DL: That you’ve been involved with a teen movie of your own, how do you feel about fiction films on the same subject?
Jake: You mean like The Breakfast Club or Sixteen Candles or something?
DL: Yes. When I was talking with Ms. Burstein, she was constantly throwing out references like that. How do you feel about those films now that you’ve actually lived through something like this?
Jake: They’re fun to watch.
I don’t really put much credit in them. I don’t try to compare them to American Teen because I think there’s a big enough difference between what a director of a mainstream picture does because they’re looking for ideal situations. And they’re in complete control of what the characters say and do. I don’t see how you can make a true comparison between a documentary and a major motion picture.
DL: How has the community reacted to the final film?
Megan: They love it.
Jake: They’re pretty positive about the whole thing. A lot of people are anxiously awaiting the release. Actually, most people in Warsaw haven’t seen it. We had one private screening for our family and the other close characters in the movie.
DL: There is a danger with documentaries that the locals who cooperate with the film could be exploited. Ms. Burstein seems to have avoided it.
Megan: If you do it honestly with an honest portrayal and especially in our town where people are generally enthusiastic about new things and curious and interested. There’s been a good response to the movie, and I think it will continue to be popular when it is officially released. People respect that.
DL: How have your families reacted to the film?
Jake: My mom never stops talking about it. She’s always really excited to tell people about it and get more fans to go see it. She’s basically kind of doing a promotional front back in Warsaw. She’s basically self-motivated to do that.
She’s a big fan of it even though she’s not really in it.
I don’t really know about Colin’s dad.
Colin (facetiously): My dad actually has quite the large ego. He wears his suit around morning, noon, day and night, to work, and it’s quite embarrassing for the whole family.
DL: One of the things I noticed from watching the film is that even though you’re introduced, you’re both presented as two good-looking guys, you both have really warped senses of humor.
(A huge outburst of laughter ensues.)
Colin: Could you elaborate?
DL: The Magic Johnson joke got quite a rise out of my crowd. It’s nice to see you have active brains inside there.
Colin: Thank you very much. We’re not typically meathead jocks. We’re pretty normal guys. We’re pretty cool guys, I think.
Hannah disagrees I think.
Mitch and I were always known as a couple of the nicer guys in the class. Everyone kind of knows us as nice guys. I would say that we’re not typical jocks or anything like that.
DL: One of the charms of the film is that you’re each given a label, but as the film progresses, that label falls apart.
Jake: I think that’s a big part of what the movie’s about. You shouldn’t be so quick to judge people. We’ve all got, despite different stereotypes, similar problems. We all do our best to overcome those.
DL: As we get to see more of Megan’s background, you see that she’s from a family of overachievers, and with the horrible tragedy that happened to your sister, you have to have pretty strong character to survive all of that.
Megan: Thank you.
DL: I was struck by how you all had problems, but yet she humanized you all.
Megan: That was her whole intention in doing it. She wasn’t trying to make it flashy.
DL: She and Mr. Roberts compared what they did with this film and what happens with reality TV. In reality TV, they’re not going to spend a year after they get the footage editing.
Hannah: It’s obviously typecast. And now there’s a lot of scripted “reality” TV, which is very different than what she wanted to do and what she did end up doing.
There’s been some criticism, which is upsetting to us because we’re real kids. And it’s like trying to defend that you’re alive and that you’re real. It’s a very weird situation to be in. This is me; I’m here. Listen to me talk.
It’s a subject we’ve had to deal with a bit. It’s a little bit frustrating, so we want to make it clear that’s the cool thing about the movie. You can relate to us, and we’re actually real.
link directly to this feature at http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=2531
originally posted: 08/11/08 23:44:11
last updated: 08/11/08 23:55:34
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