Ben Is Back
Ben is Backtells the story of a young man ( Lucas Hedges ) and his female parent ( Julia Roberts ) as he leaves rehab to spend the Christmas vacation with his family . A longtime martyr of drug addiction , Ben is struggling to keep it together while his mother gives him all the love she can muster in an attempt to keep her beloved son from succumbing to his powerful demon . Directed by Peter Hedges ( What ’s Eating Gilbert Grape ? , About a Boy),Ben is Backis a thought - evoke film about the existent - globe opioid crisis which has been tear America apart for years , while also an intimate story about a female parent ’s love for her Logos and a son who is trying so hard to be deserving of that making love .
While promote the home video release ofBen is Back , we spoke with writer / music director Peter Hedges , who share the tragic aspiration behind the celluloid , attending a writer ’s workshop to get the nut rolling on the script , working with his own Logos in the run role , and explain the deeper import behind some of the motion-picture show ’s fundamental view .
Related : Ben is Back Trailer : Lucas Hedges is Julia Roberts ' Troubled Son
Screen Rant : Before we jump into the movie , Ben is Back , I want to talk about your employment in general . Your movies are intimate stories about naturalistic multitude , but beyond that , I experience like the sky ’s the limit point in terms of the graphics you make .
Peter Hedges : It ’s funny , to me they all feel kind of similar , but I guess , if I were to be nonsubjective , which I do n’t seem to be extremely open of , they are tonally very dissimilar , are n’t they ? for certain the last film ( The Odd Life of Timothy Green ) to this one , but I mean , because I often spell about family moral force , maybe that ’s what feels similar to me . Ben is Backwas certainly an attempt to write something urgent and hopefully useful about this epidemic , but also to spell a narration about what happens when a female parent does n’t give up on her Word and when the son is trying so hard to show that he ’s worthy of the love that she keep feel for him .
Screen Rant : It ’s a beautiful handwriting , totally unpredictable . That dynamic is something that … We ’ve come across biscuit - cutter version of that here and there , everywhere , almost , butBen is Backfeels real in a way you just do n’t see every sidereal day .
Peter Hedges : Thank you , thank you .
Screen Rant : tell apart me about the earliest inception of this movie , when did it first participate your thinker that this was what you wanted to publish about ?
Peter Hedges : I knew , several years ago when we drop off Philip Seymour Hoffman . I make love him socially and professionally , he was n’t a close friend , but he was my preferent doer ever . Around that time , I also lost a close booster and about lost a close congenator to diacetylmorphine and opioids . I cognise I want to drop a line something about the epidemic , but I did n’t know what story to tell . I embarked on a long period of enquiry , and kind of a listening tour , attempt to understand all persona of the epidemic , and I learned a gross ton about the issues that we face . But I did n’t have a story . About a year and a half ago , almost two age ago by now , I signed up for a writing workshop that a former bookman of mine was running . Over a three - week period , I wrote the first nine pages , three pages each week , which became the first nine Page ofBen is Back . I felt , then , that I had the origin of something . I quit all my other projects and I went all in on this especial story . It wrote me , really , and write me jolly quickly . But I had done all that research and I had kind of packed for a very foresighted trip and then kind of climbed into the rocket that was the committal to writing of it , and it just wrote itself very quickly . Julia ( Roberts ) signed on now , and we were dissipate before I knew it !
Screen Rant : That ’s so interesting that someone who is , like , you know , a sea captain , I recollect it ’s reasonable to say , still sign up for publish workshops .
Peter Hedges : I had hit a arduous maculation . I lose some confidence . I imagine I had been trying to tell stories that I did n’t have to tell . Stories that I thought I want to say , but I just had lost some confidence and I was look for a way to jolt my system into something raw , peradventure cerebrate in new way , which I am increasingly doing . I ’m look , often , towards untried people , take heed to how they ’re working , at least they ’re trying , and some of the old greats , too . Just to endeavor to remain relevant and off - balance , but hungry and eager . That was a big help for me , to be in a room with other people , all of us at various stage of our calling ; I was belike the one with the most experience , but sometimes , circle of experience can paralyse you . If you get back into the beginner mind-set , you’re able to excavate an energy and a fire that I did n’t know I could even still possess . It was a keen group to be with , and it was nice once it start to take over , to endeavor to get out of the agency and just keep my fingerbreadth go as fast as I could as I was typing .
Screen Rant : That ’s awing , you ’re so inspirational . So , there ’s a scene in this moving picture , it ’s not a long aspect , but there ’s a vista where Julia Roberts ' character confront her family ’s old doctor and that is a panorama which , I reckon , could have , in another way , in another film from another Jehovah , been played for laughs , but it ’s handle so well , and it record such a gravid truth about addiction : there ’s so many , many , many ways that it can be forced upon us . It ’s not like , " Oh , you ’re an addict because you want to be . " We lose track of that snowball effect until it ’s too late , we do n’t have a selection , it ’s already take place . That vista is so real , so visceral .
Peter Hedges : That was important . One of the things my research kept telling me , which was surprising , at first , and then became appall the more I learn and explore , was the high numbers of people who are presently addicted to heroin whose first entry into opioids was through prescription pain pills . Sometimes they experimented at party where they were passed around illicitly , but often , they were order by physician . They ’re very powerful . And , you know , if you ’re not cognisant of the risk , you could come up yourself very quickly craving them in way that will make you indefensible and unthinkable affair . So I wanted to understand his history and I require it to come out tardily , as the motion-picture show progressed , but I also like the thought that someone would reserve someone in the aesculapian residential area accountable for component part of this epidemic . That was the idea of the scene , and , of course , Julia just crushed it in the mall . We did not have much meter to shoot that section of the scene . We had to do all of the mall in one day , and we were operate out of sentence , and I was so thankful that she is as expectant as she is , because we did not have the meter , and yet , she just crushed it .
Screen Rant : It ’s unbelievable . It might be my favorite scene in the picture .
Peter Hedges : I could n’t take on everything in the story , it follow one family over the course of one day , but it did sense like we were capable to go after , you know , some of the accomplices to this epidemic .
Screen claptrap : Among so many other thing , this movie is a New York history , but you did n’t set it in the city , which would almost be too easy , right ? It ’s set in the suburbs in Westchester and Rockland counties .
Peter Hedges : That ’s right , that ’s where we shoot .
Screen Rant : The closest you get to " the urban center " is Yonkers , which is actually where I produce up , and my parent still exist there , but in a much nice street corner than the riverside setting you opt ! I guess a big part of the moving picture is that living in the suburbs does n’t close one off from risk , and things that look safe are not of necessity safe .
Peter Hedges : That was the theme . I lay in Vermont when I publish it , but there ’s no tax bonus in Vermont , and I really like where we ended up being capable to scud it . I felt the location and the towns felt very American . It could almost be anywhere , almost . And yet , it was still a very distinguishable place . The exercise of the Tappan Zee Bridge , I estimate now it ’s the Mario Cuomo Bridge , and we did namedrop Yonkers because why not ? It ’s where we were . I was proud of that I could be close to home and have the bunch be able-bodied to stay at home while we snap . But the estimate was that it could be anywhere , and if it could hap to Julia Roberts and her fanciful cinematic family , then it could happen to anybody . That was kind of the idea .
Screen Rant : I ’ve been telling citizenry that this movie is white - metacarpophalangeal joint thriller disguised as a phratry drama . It ’s set over one Clarence Day , and halfway through , it takes this film noir adventure act that I was just not expecting . The tenseness had me just on the edge of the couch the whole time .
Peter Hedges : I ’m beaming . I never think I would compose that sort of film , I did n’t deliberately set out to do it , but it happened organically , based on the fact that the doubt throughout the movie is , " Will he succumb ? " And it just kind of organically happened . As you love from my body of work , there ’s nothing in my early oeuvre that intimates that I would compose something that would have that sort of ticking clock , as you said , " white metacarpophalangeal joint " flavor . I was so neural shooting the 2d half of the movie because it feel so out of my comfort geographical zone . It sounds like it worked for you , I do n’t know if it works for everybody , but the goal was to try out to show what liveliness could be like if he were drug - free in an almost - idyllic home plate ; not a unadulterated family , but a moderately lovely home with a lovely family . And , in that same neighborhood , in that same residential district , there ’s a dark-skinned world . Particularly at night , and particularly when hoi polloi need their fix . It was interesting to seek to make a film that could hold both of those worlds . That was certainly not what I determine out to do , but it became unmistakable as I was writing , that ’s the fib that was being separate .
Screen Rant : Okay , I ’m certain you ’ve gotten this about a million time , but I desire to tattle a little bit about Lucas . I ca n’t fathom how proud you must be of him ; I have in mind , my parents are gallant of me , and I only write about the movies . Mid-90s , Boy wipe off , Lady Bird , et cetera , what a résumé ! And he ’s only , what , 22 ?
Peter Hedges : Yeah , he just turn 22 .
Screen Rant : That ’s loopy . I do n’t anticipate you to talk for him , but …
Peter Hedges : I will say this : I ’m the favorable father to two unseasoned valet . When any of your kids , and your parent feel this elbow room about you , understandably , when your kid recover what they love to do and they thrust themselves into it , and they find joyfulness in the doing of it , and it ’s actually study that ’s honest , and , you live , all of those affair , it ’s a slap-up impression . Really , what we want is for our kids to rule their position in the world . Both of my Word , who happen to be roommates , they share an flat in the city . My former boy work in finance and secret equity , which he bed , and Lucas work in film and theater . But to speak about working with Lucas , it was … It almost feels like a pipe dream , still . I ’m actually sitting in the room on my garden floor of my home ; it ’s the room where he and I sit to talk about whether it was a good musical theme for him to do the movie . Up until he read the hand ofBen is Back , at Julia Roberts ' urging , it had been passably much understand that he would not be in a project of mine , that he feels and felt that he had prissy experience with directors , but he only gets one dad . And he just wanted me to be his pop , and I understood that . I wrote this script , not believe he would be in the motion-picture show . First of all , he was n’t going to be uncommitted when I wanted to film it , and I just wanted to publish something that he and his brother would be proud I ’d written . While they were proud of my most recent work , they ’re especially fond ofPieces of April , Gilbert Grape , some of my earlier work where it was … I would n’t call it first-rate - uptight , but it had a turn more bite . So anyway , get to work with him was , I describe it as " a pipe dream I did n’t make out I had , come true . " Because I did n’t allow myself to dream it . And I ’m sure it was inept . For him , there were times when I would get confused whether I was a forefather or a conductor on a especial Clarence Shepard Day Jr. . But on set , we had a great pot of regard for each other . I stress to stay out of the mode . He and Julia formed an incredible bond . That carried over to his family relationship with Kathryn ( Newton ) and Courtney ( B. Vance ) and the two vernal minor , Mia and Jakari . They just formed a cracking Julian Bond , and I prove to create a secure space where they could play , and play with ferocity and abandon . Like I aver , it was a aspiration I did n’t love I had that came true .
Screen Rant : That ’s incredible . We ’ve all known that you ’re an unbelievable filmmaker , and now I know that you ’re also an incredible daddy .
Peter Hedges : That ’s the more authoritative of the two , and that means a tremendous amount , that you would get that horse sense and that you would say that .
More:Ben is Back Review
Ben is Backis out now on digital , and tally DVD and Blu ray on March 5 .
