Trivia
With the announcement of the 2012 Academy Award (Oscar) nominations on January 10, 2013, Quvenzhané Wallis became the youngest person ever nominated for a Best Actress Oscar (at age 9). She broke the record of the previous youngest-ever Best Actress nominee, Keisha Castle-Hughes, who was nominated for Whale Rider at age 13. The same day that Wallis became the youngest-ever Best Actress nominee, Emmanuelle Riva (age 85) became the oldest-ever Best Actress nominee for her role in Amour.
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Spoilers (1)
More than half of the cast hails from Louisiana bayou country, including the film's star Quvenzhané Wallis, and five others in speaking roles.
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The 65-member film crew included two residents of south Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, where most of the filming took place: Mike Arcenauax, who helped with special equipment (especially boats), and Barbara Dupre in catering.
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The film is based on a one-act play called "Juicy and Delicious" by playwright and actress Lucy Alibar, who also makes a cameo appearance in the movie, which she co-wrote with friend and director Benh Zeitlin.
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The movie was financed, with a reported budget of $1.3 million, by New York-based nonprofit Cinereach and was the first feature-length project of Court 13 Pictures.
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The film was the recipient of two San Francisco Film Society/Kenneth Rainin Foundation grants--first in 2010 and again in 2011.
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The film was a 2009 June Screenwriters and Directors Lab participant, a 2010 Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Award winner, and was officially selected for the US and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary Competitions of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
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The film won the Sundance Institute's Indian Paintbrush Producer's Award at the annual Producers' Lunch in 2012, the accompanying $10,000 grant going to Josh Penn and Dan Janvey.
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"Beasts" was truly a collaboration of director Benh Zeitlin 's circle of family and friends. He was assisted on set by his sister, artist Eliza Zeitlin, and the movie was co-produced by fellow Wesleyan grads Michael Gottwald and Dan Janvey. Zeitlin's hometown neighbor from Westchester county, NY, Crockett Doob--son of filmmaker Nick Doob--contributed as the movie's editor and longtime New York City-area friend Dan Romer co-wrote the music with Zeitlin.
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Dwight Henry, who plays Wink, owned and operated the bakery across the street from the space from which the crew was working and casting. Director Benh Zeitlin posted a casting flyer with tearaway numbers in Dwight's bakery and, after several weeks, invited Dwight over for a read. Two days later, Dwight moved his shop to a larger space, and when the crew went looking for him to ask for a call back, no one could figure out where he went. Two months later, they located him, but he turned down the offer, as he was investing all his time in the new bakery. Finally, every single person involved with the film at that point showed up at his bakery at the same time and told him he had to do the movie. Dwight agreed, as long as they rehearsed with him during his midnight baker's hours.
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Quvenzhané Wallis and her mom admit that they fibbed about Quvenzhané's age, claiming she was at least six years old, as required to audition, when she was only five. According to director Benh Zeitlin, Nazie, as she is called, beat out almost 4,000 other area kids considered for the lead role.
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When Wink reaches down in the river to show Hushpuppy how to catch a fish with his bare hand, a member of the production crew almost died swimming under water to facilitate this "fishing" feat.
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Director Benh Zeitlin revealed in a June 22, 2012, interview with HitFix that he never looked at dailies until after the shoot was finished.
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The film won the Mejor Largometraje Ópera Prima Internaciónal (Best International Debut Feature) award at the Guanajuato International Film Festival, which was held in July 2012, along with the New Horizon/Special Jury Award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival in October.
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On the film's very first day of shooting in the fictional "Bathtub" location outside of New Orleans, the BP oil rig explosion and the start of the massive spill occurred. For most of the shoot in nearby waters, Benh Zeitlin and his crew had to maneuver in and around the clean-up operations.
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When Oprah Winfrey featured "Beasts" in a one-hour TV show, Oprah revealed that it was President Barack Obama who first told her about the movie.
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Shares many thematic connections to Court 13's earlier short film Glory at Sea. Both deal with a ravaged community beset by storms. Both reference Greek myth including "Elysian Fields" and are contain fantastic elements in an otherwise very "real" narrative, otherwise known as magic realism. Also the character of Sergeant Major, played by Jimmy Lee Moore appears in both films in a significant role.
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Benh Zeitlin gives considerable credit to Qulyndreia Wallis, mother of the movie's six-year-old star Quvenzhané Wallis who was always on the set and helped Zeitlin explain concepts and draw emotions from her daughter to maximize the quality of her Oscar-nominated performance.
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Originally, in its Sundance workshop phase , there was no formal script for "Beasts," and co-writers Benh Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar shared "a moment of panic" when they quickly had to combine two separate ideas for the film into one that would work. In the process, they abandoned the idea that the story would be some type of "fable comedy."
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Spoilers
Toward the end of the movie, Hushpuppy arranges with a small-boat captain to transport her to a floating bar that also appears to be a brothel. A sign identifies the name of the brothel as "Elysian Fields." In Greek Mythology, "Elysium" or "Elysian Fields" was the name for the afterlife of the gods and blessed mortals. Greek mythology also contained a boatman (named Charon) who ferried souls from the world of the living to the world of the dead for a small fee. Aside from the references to ancient myth, the name "Elysian Fields" also is a reference to the movie's southern Louisiana setting. Elysian Fields is the name of a major avenue and thoroughfare in New Orleans, and is a part of one of Blanche DuBois's first lines in Tennessee Williams's New Orleans-set play, "A Streetcar Named Desire": "They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at--Elysian Fields!"
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