Honey Boy
monition : The following stop spoilers forHoney Boy .
-
Shia LaBeouf ’s novel moving picture , Honey Boyis based on true event from his childhood and untried adult life , but how accurate is the movie ’s portrayal of these event ? After landing in royal court - ordered rehab for a public boozy effusion and evading arrest in Georgia , LaBeouf dedicate himself to his recovery and used the focused fourth dimension and introspection to pen a book for a movie about his upbringing , particularly focusing on his early playacting years and family relationship with his father .
bring in ill fame through the Disney Channel show Even Stevens , Shiah LaBeouf was one of the rare nestling wizard who successfully made the transition to teenager star and again to grownup lead , withroles in magnanimous movieslikeI , Robot , Constantine , Disturbia , the first threeTransformersmovies , Nymphomaniac , andFury , before he started to pull in attention for gonzo public demeanour and drinking issues , finally landing in Margaret Court - ordered rehab .
LaBeouf say he think was just an boozer , but in rehab , he was diagnosed with PTSD due to puerility injury . He was order to go through pic therapy , where he worked to vividly remember the events of his life and wrote them down , which ultimately go him to write the screenplay forHoney Boy .
On theTHR Awards podcast with Scott Feinberg , LaBeouf say part of his agreement to nullify a felony charge was that the rehab facility would make up one’s mind when he was complete with his program , which he says was key to him determine to developHoney male child :
… I was facing a felony charge . So I cerebrate " Ok , I ’m here for a while " and got quite comfortable with the process , got quite invested in the process , and so possibly three to three and a half weeks into the process I started make this copy of this dialog I was having with myself in exposure therapy , and being a capitalist , being an creative person , being an actor dire to not give my craft out , commence looking at this from a unlike angle . I was n’t sure I could ever do it , but project " well I ’m here , " you get it on , I ’m not getting sent playscript . This could be a path toward creativity again .
InHoney Boyayoung boy named Otis ( Lucas Hedges)has a complicated relationship with his abusive , on - again - off - again reclaim freak Church Father , James Lort ( LaBeouf ) as we also witness anolder Otis ( Lucas Hedges)entering rehab and go through photo therapy . The names are clearly deepen , but LaBeouf say the taradiddle is mostly true to life:“Everything in the film occur , it ’s what I did n’t put in the film . There ’s thing that happened that are n’t in the film , but everything that wound up in the film is what was give out on . "
Over the course of the film , we see young Otis go to work as an player during the Clarence Shepard Day Jr. and working with his father James , who ’s also a rodeo clown , to hone his skills as an entertainer . Juggling and script memorization and recital with push - ups and occasional verbal or forcible abuse from James as he drive Otis to be better .
It becomes clear that Otis is the breadwinner and supports his dad as they deal a very complicated relationship . While James is very antagonistic to Otis , Otis still holds out promise his dad will appreciate him and plow him right , even trying to use his position as the family unit breadwinner to exert leverage over James , only for James to lay hands on Otis before storm out to break his sobriety .
The relationship between Otis and James is heartbreaking to witness , but that spirit is heightened even more by the meta vista of knowingLaBeouf is the one portraying James , his own forefather by another name . If the act of going through photo therapy was n’t enough , LaBeouf ’s artistic collaboratorHoney Boydirector , Alma Har’el , state she would n’t consider aim it unless he act the role of James himself .
LaBeouf credits this choice for his ability to get a line to empathize with his father and action his own PTSD:“Alma knew the only way through the pain was this path , that I was n’t go bad to sympathize with my father as a author , that I was only going to empathize with my Father of the Church as an doer . And it ’s real . If I had just written it and sent it off , there ’d still be a shady part in my heart that I had n’t full excavate … it was n’t empathetic on the page . "
The unconscious process of makingHoney Boydidn’t only play genial and emotional healing to LaBeouf , but also to his begetter . They had n’t spoken for seven years , but he says his father has learn the picture , saying"he knows that I really see him from the inside,“and that it will for sure change their relationship endure forward . LaBeouf has faced a set of public scrutiny and ridicule in recent years before entering rehab , but Shia embraces that"I do n’t think you were wrong for believe I was a peter , I think context of use is really significant , and I opine what Honey Boy does is it contextualizes who I was publicly and it plays on that . "
