Having interviewed you several times over the years, you seem more at ease with yourself nowadays?
Yes, I do feel that. I think that’s part of growing up. A lot of things happened in my life while I was making this movie, and it made me think that we never know what’s going to happen in the future. All we have is right now, so what do you have to lose but to go for it?
You spent your first day of shooting in a jail?
Yes. People are most open and most vulnerable when they feel it is safe, and it is hard to feel that way in a jail, that’s for sure. It was weird to start the first day of a movie in a jail.
That must have been tough?
It was. I went to LA County Jail and then I went to a couple of juvenile halls which was life changing.
How so?
I think we tend to generalise and to just look at anybody who is in jail a certain way. We don’t look at the story of each person who is in there which is what I think is frustrating. It’s the same as people saying, ‘Is this movie a war story? Is this a story about war?’ I feel you tend to generalise each individual story, what the story is. If someone is a soldier and they are at war, does that mean they are just a soldier at war? Or do they have their own story? And has that story become a war story because they are a soldier? People are coloured by things and that type of prejudice because it’s not what the story about. But in this movie, as in every movie, I found myself learning a different lesson and the biggest lesson I learnt from this movie was from my experience with these boys in juvenile hall.
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