tence "was [as] an outcast, really,
albeit one who threw his energies
into artistic pursuits. His parents
envisioned an Ivy League university
with law or medical school follow-
ing, while Darren had the daunting
task of convincing them he could be
a filmmaker.
After attending New York
University, he completed his first fea-
ture, Sparkler, the "fairy tale" of a
trailer park princess who transforms
the lives of three jaded young men.
While Sparkler is receiving a grad-
ual art house release across the coun-
try, Jawbreaker opens wide today, and
Darren Stein is hoping to capture the
attention of the burgeoning teen audi-
ence as well as entice some film savvy
adults with his fast and furious movie
references.
"
JN: Why has there has been a resur-
gence of teen movies in the past few
years?
DS: Scream opened and made lots of
money and suddenly Hollywood got
wise to the fact that teenagers are
going every weekend to see movies.
They've got lots of disposable income
— they have an allowance, they have
jobs, they don't pay rent, they don't
pay bills — and they want to be stim-
ulated, and every weekend they want
something knew.
JN: How does Jawbreaker fit into this
recent crop?
DS: Jawbreaker began as a horror
film and turned into a satire: less
horrific, more funny, more grotesque
and kind of campy and surreal. It's
not really a suspense film or a
straight-ahead slasher film, or a day-
in-the-life John Hughes film. It's
more of a stylish, subversive little
ditty, if you will.
JN: What is it about high school
that's inherently horrific?
DS: Everything. High school is a
time in our lives where we enter,
emotionally and physically as one
person, and we leave emotionally and
physically transformed. So in those
four years you metamorphose. Every
summer, you come back and kids are
physically different. It's a rite of pas-
sage, and some people surface more
damaged than others. Some people
have great experiences and go on to
have horrible lives; other people have
horrifying experiences and go on to
make movies like Jawbreaker.
JN: Some recent high school films
parody television, but yours seems to
look more to movies to provide the
environment and context of
Jawbreaker.
DS: There are blatant homages to
films like Grease, Heathers, Carrie,
Rock Roll High School, Some Kind of
Wonderful., Rocky Horror Picture Show,
The Hunger, with all these great little
subtextual references. It's this mythic
world that has grotesquerie and beau-
ty, both in extreme manifestations.
Really, it's a hyper-stylized version of
what high school really is.
JN: You grew up not only in subur-
bia, but movie suburbia. Did you see
anything of yourself in the movies
that were released then?
DS: Being in Encino, it was such a
self-aware culture because the valley
girl thing was going on, and we used
to hang out at the Galleria. So it was
really weird to walk out of the theater
where you were watching Fast Times at
Ridgemont High and be in the mall
where they shot it. The movie Valley
Girl, they shot the prom for that in
my high school.
H A Ars Ni l A
StO) P.•
JN: In retrospect, what did you
observe about valley girls?
DS: It was a serious culture. It was
larger than life, it was glamorous, and I
was really piqued by the amazing self-
confidence these girls had. But when
you're that young, you're not aware of
the national implications and how it's
become this huge trend in America.
JN: So do the girls in Jawbreaker
come from wanting to explore what
it would have been like to be in that
high school culture?
DS: They are my fantasy of what the
ideal high school bitch would be, so I
was creating a world which I might
have liked to exist in. [But] the reali-
ty is, I would never have wanted to
have been there because it's a deadly
world. What I'm talking about are
the more surface, campier aspects of
it: the cat fights and the fashions,
things of that sort. But I wouldn't
want to have to take with it all the
emotional torment of Jawbreaker.
JN: Of the different cliques in high
school, who do you think ends up
ruling later in life?
DS: I think the geeks and the outcasts
are the ones who rule, definitely. The
outcasts usually filter their pain and
their isolation; [they] make something
more interesting out of their lives
that's fueled by their individualism
and not just conforming to cultural
standards. El
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