From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell.

It's the fondest wish of many indie filmmakers

to take a short that they've made and expand into a feature.

That's what director Ryan Fleck and his writing partner Anna Bowden have done with their first feature of film,

and that movie is Half Nelson, which derives from a short they did a few years ago that played Sundance called Guanus Brooklyn.

Guys, thanks for being here.

Thanks a lot for having us. First of all, talk about finding Shariqa Epps, who's the star of both, the amazing,

untrained young actress who you found in the schoolyard in Brooklyn, right?

Well, we didn't have a casting director for the short, so we just went into schools

and put out a casting call, invited people to come to an open casting call. And we looked at a bunch of people. We

didn't have them read or anything. We just talked to them and talked to them about their lives.

And she just had such a great presence and was so natural. And you also brought back Karen

Chilton, too, which I guess helped a lot too, didn't it? Yeah, Karen, back when I was at NYU undergrad making little student films, she's somebody

who auditioned for a short that I made then, and I thought she did such a terrific job that

I've continued to put her in other shorts that we made. So yeah, I mean, that's where we met Karen

back in 97, 98, maybe.

And she's great.

She's a terrific actor, and I wanted to definitely use her again for half Nelson.

We should say, too, that we're talking about a mother-daughter combination.

Shrika is the daughter, and Karen plays her mom.

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