We spoke to the writer/director of one of the most anticipated indies of 2013 about his amazing cast, how he got over his fear of writing from a female perspective, and why art is an essential form of self-expression.
Short Term 12 is one story that Destin Cretton couldn't get out of his head. Based on Cretton's own experiences working at a foster-care facility, the film's first incarnation was a short that made waves at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Through his own persistence and patience, Cretton expanded his short into a feature that premiered at SXSW 2013 and won the Grand Jury Award and Audience Award for Narrative Feature.
We jumped at the opportunity to speak to the writer/ director about first impressions, working with the incredible Brie Larson, and his unique approach to the directing process.
Tribeca: You made Short Term 12 originally as a short film, which premiered at Sundance in 2009. You then made the feature, I Am Not A Hipster, and then made Short Term 12 into a feature for SXSW 2013. What made you go back to your previous work?
Destin Cretton: After the response to the short, it encouraged me to want to explore the foster care world more. Up to that point, I didn't really know how universal a lot of the scenes were. So I wrote the expanded screenplay, but it just took a while to get funding. In the meantime, the screenplay won the Academy Nicholl fellowship, which then gave me a grant to write I Am Not A Hipster. I used that money to make that film while we were waiting to get funding for Short Term 12.
Tribeca: Why did you morph the male protagonist into a female one?
DC: It was really because I'd never written a female protagonist before, and it scared the crap out of me. However, looking at the story from a female perspective was also really exciting and gave me the opportunity to see the world from a different point of view. The weird thing I discovered was that a female character's point of view is not that different from a male's.
I guess in a way I learned that there is no clear difference between males and females. It's more about individual personalities and what people have gone through in their lives. I found through writing this script that I am a little like Grace, but there's also a lot of my three sisters in her too. Just like there's a lot of me and my sisters in Mason's character as well. That blurring of the lines took away my fear of writing from a female perspective. It's not so frightening to me anymore.
Tribeca: It's not often that you see a character as complex, messy, frustrating and loveable as your Grace. How did you know Brie Larson was the right actress to bring her to life? Can you discuss your collaborative process?
DC: The easiest mistake that we could have made with this character would have been to let her brood through the entire movie. I knew that Brie wouldn't do that. She just has something about her that is naturally vibrant and lovable. We were aware of that quality from the very beginning. It's a difficult tightrope to walk with a character who constantly has something really difficult on her mind but is still able to laugh at certain times. I think Brie just did a great job.
Brie was also able to go in and shadow the female supervisor at a place very similar to the one in the movie. She jumped in and experienced a pretty intense day. She saw a lot of stuff while she was there and learned a lot about the strength it takes to be a female in an environment like that. When she came back from that one experience, Brie was so much more of an expert on Grace than I was [laughs]. As for our collaborative process, it was just us talking about this character and each of the individual scenes and the different ways that we could take it. We figured out the best way to go about creating Grace for all parties concerned.
Tribeca: John Gallagher Jr. plays Mason, who is desperately in love with Grace. The two are polar opposites: he wears his heart on his sleeve while she internalizes everything due to her troubled past. How did you strike the balance between these characters?
DC: Grace definitely came first, but I think the Mason character came out of just trying to create the perfect person for Grace, specifically for her, and then create motivations for why he is the way that he is. He's goofy, weird and kind, and Grace loves him because he makes her feel safe. There's something very non-threatening and consistent about Mason. You have to have a lot of patience to be with Grace, and as the film unfolds you find out why Mason is the way he is and why he is able to have that much patience for somebody like her. For me, Mason is who I want to be more like, and Grace might be a little more the person that I am.
There are things of myself woven throughout it, but when I watch the movie, I see everybody's hands all over it.
Tribeca: I also heard you say in other interviews that the Nate character, played by Rami Maleck, is based on your own experience.
DC: Totally. All these characters sprung from different stages of my time working at a similar facility. I wasn't like Nate the whole time, but for the first two months, I was completely out of my element and scared out of my mind every day. I definitely said equally inappropriate things that I thought were fine to say until I was called out on them. [laughs] I think when I talked to Rami about that role; we talked about his character being the eyes of the audience. They're going to relate to every situation probably very similar to the way the Nate character does. I totally identify with him because it's frightening to be in a position of power and leadership when you have no idea what you're doing and when you know that a wrong move can have very bad consequences for some of the kids.
Tribeca:
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
We spoke to the writer/director of one of the most anticipated indies of 2013 about his amazing cast, how he got over his fear of writing from a female perspective, and why art is an essential form of self-expression. 
