He can already carry a film and that’s no easy task in a big ensemble like this.” He may be young, but he brings a lot to the table. The 12-year-old Bennett already had numerous acting credits under his belt when he captivated the filmmakers with his audition for “Shorts.” Rodriguez recalls, “Jimmy walked in and just floored me. They cause a real ruckus, but, just as he wished, they are really cool.” What he gets are these little alien friends who try to help him, although it doesn’t always work out. When Toe picks it up, the rock tells him to make a wish, so he wishes for friends that are just as cool and interesting as he is. Toe isn’t the first to find the Rainbow Rock, but since the tale is told out of order at the whim of his own memory, Toe’s episode marks the Rainbow Rock’s entrance into the film when it gets lobbed at his head by a pack of bullies who are chasing him.īennett continues, “They are throwing rocks at him and don’t even think twice when they see the Rainbow Rock they just throw it at him. “Every day he goes to school and they just keep picking on him and even dumping him in the trash can. “Toe is a nerdy kid who is always getting picked on,” Bennett comments. The tale unfolds through the eyes of friendless outcast Toe Thompson, played by Jimmy Bennett. “So for him to play one of the leads is a fair thing since it was his idea.” Rebel, who plays one of the neighborhood kids, also provided the title: “Rebel said, `It’s called “Shorts,” because the stories are short, the kids are short, and they wear shorts,’” Rodriguez recalls with a laugh. It’s a lot of fun to tell the story by rewinding and fast-forwarding and juxtaposing scenes.” “Once they have me hooked, they’ll circle back and show me the middle and, if I’m a good audience, they will rewind to the start. “When my kids want to show me something funny they saw on TV, they’ll use the DVR to speed up to the good parts, so I see the story zipping by,” he notes. The film’s episodic structure also mirrors the director’s experience with his kids when they want to share a story they’ve seen. “Then, as the script evolved, I took one of the ideas Rebel had about a wishing Rainbow Rock and used that as the unifying element.” “They’d be completely separate stories but utilizing the same kids in the neighborhood,” Rodriguez explains.
The original idea was to structure the film like a series of “Little Rascals” episodes.
I wanted to take that magical kids’ world a hundred times further and set it in suburbia.” It was an idealized state, where they all mixed and matched through different adventures. Rebel suggested making a film with the kind of episodes his family loved watching on “The Little Rascals.” The director offers, “`The Little Rascals’ felt like real kids, but not exactly like real life. Just as his son Racer had come up with ideas for “The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D,” another of Rodriguez’s sons, Rebel, helped dream up “Shorts.” His action-packed family adventures are, at their core, contemporary fables, which are both inspired and informed by his own kids. Rebel Rodriguez is not only a do-it-all filmmaker but the father of five children.