“I WAS 22 and playing basketball every day on these outdoor courts in San Francisco,” explains the film-maker Jacob Aaron Estes, “and this 7ft, 370lb drunk guy started showing up. He smelled me, or something, and I was subjected to his ridicule and it was disgusting. It went on and on.”

Estes, now 32, is outlining the source of Mean Creek, his award-winning debut feature. Even a decade on, he almost shudders recalling it. “I had all kinds of revenge fantasies — some that concluded in horrific outcomes,” he continues, “but I’d stepped away and thought: ‘This is really juvenile’. In the meantime I had wanted to write a story to do with kids that had some kind of tragic element to it. So I thought that I could give it to these characters as fuel for the story.”

Set in a small rural Oregon town, Mean Creek deals with teenagers who concoct a fictional birthday as an excuse to lure the kid, who regularly picks on one of their group, for a river trip on which they will take their revenge. When events go fatally awry, the group is faced with some daunting, adult choices.

It’s a scenario with shades of acclaimed films such as Stand By Me and, particularly, Larry Clark’s Bully (2001), though Estes points out that he started writing the screenplay almost ten years ago: “I never thought the movie was about bullying. To me it is really about the need to fit in and be part of the social group despite its destructive qualities.”

Estes’s characters reveal some unexpected dimensions. The obese tormentor George (Josh Peck) is exposed as a lonely kid desperate for friendship; the cocksure rebel Marty (Scott Mechlowicz) turns out to be fragile and abused; and the youngest two, Sam (Rory Culkin) and Millie (Carly Schroeder), often appear the most emotionally mature.

“I remember this about being 12,” Estes says. “You’re on this ascent toward maturity, knowing what’s right and what’s wrong, trying hard to be good, and then puberty hits. Carly Schroeder was 12 when we shot the movie and she knew every word in the script, she didn’t have any questions about vocabulary or ideas. She had an ability to analyse it. Each of the kids, across the board, had insights into the script that I didn’t have yet.”

Aside from Estes’s own nuanced writing and fresh, handheld shooting style, his young cast have been gaining plaudits. Mechlowicz, formerly of the teen comedy Eurotrip, has garnered favourable comparisons to a young Brad Pitt. Estes also notes the courage of the heavy-set Josh Peck in taking the role of the troubled, overweight George: “I thought if we cannot get him for some reason, we’re screwed. It was a miracle to find him.”

Also featured is the latest Culkin, Rory, following his brothers Macaulay (Home Alone) and Kieran (Igby Goes Down) off a seemingly endless production line of sibling child actors to take leading film roles. Given the careful balance of a little-known cast, did Estes have reservations about bringing in someone whose family history in the film business is anything but low key?

“You’re always asking yourself: ‘What’s the dynamic going to be?’ ” he admits, “but Rory’s such a good actor and there’s nothing showy about what he does. My experience of his family was completely pleasant. His mom was amazing; Macaulay came to the set and he was nothing but helpful.” He grins wryly. “So I had a fantastic Culkin experience.”

Mean Creek was given its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004, when Estes found himself getting caught up in the whole market frenzy. “There were movies with so much more obvious commercial appeal — Garden State and Napoleon Dynamite,” he recalls. “We came in so far under the radar. There were no movie stars [involved], but people had a sense of discovering it, which was great.”

Fortunately, a week after the festival closed, the film was picked up, bringing another dilemma: certification, and thus marketing. “It became the dominant question — who’s our audience? A movie about 12-year-olds for adults?” He grimaces, recalling suggestions to tone down the language and recut the film for a PG rating.

“The story was always about kids hurting each other,” Estes insists, “and one of the ways kids do that is through language. I didn’t want to remove that layer. In America the film has been rated ‘R’, so it’s difficult for teenagers to get in without their parents. In France it was rated for 13 and up, which I’m really grateful for.” Presumably the BBFC’s 15 certificate here also meets with his approval.

Mean Creek was not Estes’s only way of getting back at his former courtside tormentor. “I photoshopped a ‘No Parking’ sign in the computer and changed it to ‘No Greg’, listing all his negative attributes, printed them out. I went to the park at about 3am and pasted signs on to the court backboards. He came by the next day and was horrified.”

Satisfaction, however, was far more short-lived. “He came back a week later after tearing these signs down and my life was threatened. That was the point when I was imagining snipping the cables to his brakes on his bike and watching him fly into the traffic. So I left and joined the YMCA.”

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