Beasts Has Roots in Obama '08

Before Michael Gottwald, Dan Janvey and Josh Penn were Oscar nominated producers, they were working the ground as grassroots organizers for then Presidential hopeful Barack Obama. While their political persuasions stayed out of the conception and creation of Beasts, they did use their community focused grassroots experience to inform the casting, promotion and outreach on the film.

They recently spoke to Buzzfeed about how working on the Obama '08 campaign helped them to produce Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Early on, they saw similarities between the production environment in post-Katrina Louisiana and the Presidential campaign.

“We purposely had everybody stay in the bayou in housing that was provided by locals: fishing camps, mobile homes,” Gottwald said, comparing the living environment to that experienced by campaign organizers. “Instead of having it be very distant, we purposefully had a headquarters where everybody could come, where we had meals every day, where everyone wanted to be. We had this shared kind of spirit.”

When it came to casting the film, the three producers shied away from traditional casting methods and the film school wisdom that told them to seek out big name actors. Penn saw this as a direct extension of the naïve, hopeful approach he needed while he was working for Obama’s campaign. In 2008, he believed in the impossible, and he was doing so again with this film.

Read the full article on Buzzfeed.

GQ Interviews Benh Zeitlin

GQ: What did you learn about Southern Louisiana and Cajun culture that you didn't expect to uncover?

Benh Zeitlin: Cajuns teach fearlessness to their children, which is the opposite of what you experience in the Northeast, where people are raising children in a fear based culture of phrases like, "don't cross the street alone" and "don't talk to that person." If you drive by casually in Southern Louisiana, you will see children running around alone, but that's part of a plan. This region breeds the strongest people. They are so brave, and they have to be in order to live in that region. I am really in awe of that. We'd tried to express that in the film, with Wink as a father who doesn't coddle his daughter, but instead, expresses his love for Hushpuppy by allowing her to be on her own, to make her tough and ready to survive without him.

Read the full interview here.

Be Nice to Others - Rookie Magazine

Did anything surprise you about the movie when you saw it for the first time? There was a bigger me and a smaller me, and a bigger voice and a smaller voice.

 Tavi Gevinson, another powerful young woman, interviewed Quvenzhané Wallis for Rookie Magazine. Read the whole thing over at Rookie.

Could Summer Indie ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ Nab Oscar? - the Daily Beast

So, to give you a jump on the film that gurus of gold will inevitably be discussing and dissecting throughout the Screen Actors Guild awards, the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes and on through to inexorable conclusion at Hollywood and Highland, herewith, The Daily Beast has provided a handy primer on Beasts of the Southern Wild’s primary talking points: The kid stays in the picture:

Appearing in almost every scene in the film and delivering lyrical ruminations on the state of the universe, Wallis is a revelation: a tiny, vulnerable, yet ultimately indomitable sprite in rubber rain boots literally set adrift on a flooded tidal backwater in the aftermath of a Hurricane Katrina-esque natural disaster. If the actress were indeed to go on to garner an Oscar nod, Wallis would topple Justin Henry, co-star of the 1979 divorce drama Kramer vs. Kramer, as the youngest person ever nominated for an Academy Award. And if Wallis went on to claim an Academy Award, she would dethrone Tatum O’Neal, who hoisted the golden statuette—and has remained Oscar’s youngest recipient for the past four decades—for her supporting performance in 1973’s Paper Moon.

Read more at the Daily Beast.

Wet and Wild - San Francisco Chronicle

"Regarding Wallis' performance as Hushpuppy: it isn't one. It's a fact. Onscreen she simply is, a being as elemental, incontestable and strong as the advancing aurochs. She was 6 when the film was shot, yet the ferociousness of her presence - the anger and wisdom inside her - suggest someone older or ageless. Meanwhile, Ben Richardson's cinematography traps the heat and brackish scent of the Bathtub air. His handheld camerawork wiggles just enough to suggest an organism: a worm in the mud, a catfish in the water, a girl toddling through the delta in rain boots. The film is its own beast, and it's a rare one." Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle.