DETENTION: An Interview with Director Joseph Kahn

Detention, starring Josh Hutcherson, Dane Cook and Spencer Locke hits theaters this Friday, April 12.  In this horror/slasher/science fiction/action-thriller/time-traveling/teen/romantic/high school/comedy, the students of Grizzly Lake High School are terrorized by the serial killer “Cinderhella.”   The suspects are all sentenced to detention and must figure out who the killer is before it’s too late…

Josh Stadtner:  Let me ask a question that I think will be on many people’s minds when they see Detention.  How do you define it?

Joseph Kahn:  It’s a horror, science fiction, time traveling, high school comedy with kung fu in it. [laughs]

JS: [laughs] Hell yeah and it was awesome.  But out of all the genres and subplots, what would you say is the central theme?

JK:  That’s a good question.  I would say (and I’m not sure it’s a theme) but the meaning of it is that you have to look outside of yourself and your own problems to understand other people.  If you look at the way Detention is structured, the reason it has so many genres in it is basically every kid in high school is living their own genre. Ultimately if you look at high school, it’s a series of genres.  And when you make a high school movie, you pick a genre and say that’s what this is going to be about.  But what I wanted to do was to take a macro view of it and let each character play out their own genre.  Ultimately everyone ends up flipping, even the bully.  That’s the thing about high school, everyone thinks their in their own genre, but everybody has their own problems.

JS:  I understand that you make a ton of music videos for artists like Katy Perry, Maroon 5 and Eminem, how has that shaped the way you make feature films?

JK:  I’ve been making music videos for 20 years so I’ve always been tied into pop music and culture.  The difference with a lot of filmmakers is that by the time they turn thirty they hop off and find their own thing.  But because the nature of my job includes getting new music all time, so I’m like an old guy who still understands what everyone else is into.  So just because of that, music and pop culture are chained to my f–king feet!  So if I ever make a movie and I’m honest about it, this is the way I see the world.

JS:  What was the most fun part?

JK:  Spending my own money and getting to do whatever the f–k I wanted!  [laughs]  Honestly.  On the set of Detention, I could place a camera wherever I wanted and no one said anything. It was just me and the kids.  And by the way, kids are the best f–king actors because they’re not jaded and they don’t know how to act like divas yet! I got real performances out of these kids because they are just like they are in the script.

JS:  How did you go about getting Dane Cook? 

JK:  Well, I put Dane in his first major motion picture role [Torque] and the studio fought me for putting him in because they didn’t know who he was at the time.  But I said, Dane is funny and he has a lot of fans and they wanted some other guy.  Then like that year, he popped.  Then a few years later I showed him the script and he liked it.  At first he was hesitant because it’s so against his type.  Usually he plays the cool guy that has sex with a lot of girls, but here he’s playing this character that’s been beaten by life.  It was totally outside him comfort zone and it was very selfless of him to do it.

JS:  The film definitely seems to reflect and play on our generation’s short attention span.  When people say ‘Generation Y is doomed because we have a short attention span!’ what do you say to that? 

JK:  Well I love the kids today the most. Period.  You are the least racist, least sexist and least homophobic.  You f–king love a black president! You’re the most progressive f–king people ever on the face of the planet. Am I positive about you guys? Absolutely!  So short attention span?  No, I call it multi-tasking.  You guys are smarter, more put-together, you guys are hipper and more aware of the media.  You’re superior on every f–king level.  I’d say you’re so educated that you get bored easily.  You guys need something that challenges you otherwise you’re going to be bored as f—k.