Behn Zeitlin Director of "Beasts of the Southern Wild"

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a kind of an amazing American story… Where did it start? Actually, the film creatively began with two movies in-progress at the same time… I had an idea, after my short film Glory at Sea, to make a film about holdouts, people living after the last town when you drive all the way to the Mexican gulf, to find out who was holding on at the very end of the precipice essentially. At the same time, we were working on turning Lucy [Alibar]’s play, Juicy and Delicious, into a short film. These stories both dealt with people that were losing the things that made them. One was about a little child who is losing her parents and the other one, about a community losing its land.

It seems casting was a very avant-garde process. Each time we found potential actors, we were listening to their personal story before giving them the script. Like this, they became collaborators, not only performers of the lines. We let the cast rewrite the lines with us and bring life to both their characters and the overall story. The best example is Mister Dwight Henry who plays Wink [Hushpuppy’s father]. He’s a local figure, running a bakery. We basically would spend every night with him at baking hours, and while making doughnuts me and him would be discussing his life. Since he had a girl around Hushpuppy’s age, he sort of taught me how to be a father, when your home is imperiled or in a crisis situation…

Talk about how it was working with Hushpuppy The process with her was much more like a process with a professional actor. I would sit with her with the script at night, and she would say this line is too long, I can only say it this far. So we would rewrite it. We would sit at the computer and revise until she felt confident. We adapted to her ability.

And then you finished the film: We finished the film 2 days before Sundance, I don’t really know what happened in between, someone put me on a plane and pushed me on stage. I don’t think any of us had time to think of how people would react to it. We edited the film for 2 years, and these 2 years sucked. When you screen a draft for a bunch of intelligent people and they get back to you saying, this is horrible, that sucks. It took a long time to perfect the film. It wasn’t until all the elements were done that it started to communicate. Sundance was the first time it was speaking to outsiders. And now bringing it overseas is a new thing.

To what extend did you keep to your script during the shooting? The way our project was designed was sort of an explosive machine. In preproduction the script was very crafted, but the film is made on location with children and animals and water and a lot of people who don’t have experience, so it sort of throws the original design into a blender and let’s it fly all over the place. Every day things are coming apart; the current is going the wrong way or there are snakes where you intended to plant your tripod. For me, in terms of what you loose in precision, you are going to gain in having these rough edges that feel like they have a lot of blood and sweat and muscle in it.

Transcription by Maartjet Alders