Shia LaBeouf Sent 'Honey Boy' Script to Director Alma Har'el From Rehab | Sundance 2019 - video Dailymotion

LaBeouf's autobiographical film stars Noah Jupe, Laura San Giacomo, Martin Starr and Byron Bowers.

Transcript

00:00Our movie is about a child actor who lives with his ex-rodeo, clown, felon,

00:07alcoholic father. It's about how he comes to terms with that relationship both at

00:13the younger age and as an older man.

00:21Jeremy worked before he was executive producer on my last documentary and he

00:27wrote the script and sent it to me from rehab and when I read it I was really

00:31blown away by it and felt like I have to do it. When we did the film itself and

00:36the filming itself Shia was literally entering his childhood trauma but this

00:42time playing his father and kind of having to have the empathy for that and

00:46in order to do that he was very focused on on his acting so I was left with the

00:52task of bringing to life Otis. When I met Shia and you know improvising with him

01:00and just playing around with him just felt like you know I could do anything

01:04and try anything and he definitely played a massive part in creating my

01:10version of Otis. I think anytime you're playing any character you do feel that

01:15responsibility to the filmmakers and to the writers that this is intensely

01:19personal to them whether it's true or not. It's that much more important to him.

01:24This is written from his memory. It all has meaning to him as it does to every

01:30writer but this has meaning to his life. Martin you also started on this

01:34business pretty young. Do you feel like this film is sort of touching on what

01:38that experience is like? Yeah it's definitely a unique experience to grow up in LA.

01:43I mean I knew Shia. He worked on an episode of Freaks and Geeks when he was

01:46doing Even Stevens. So we knew each other when we were both very young and it was

01:51interesting just to see him again you know 20 years later because we hadn't

01:55really had a lot of contact in between but I've known Alma for 10 years maybe and

02:00just been a big fan of her as a person and her as an artist and to see him again

02:05after 20 years I didn't realize how connected we really were and it's it's I

02:11I don't know I suppose part of our connection as kids growing up in this

02:17business we had an immediate bond when we met 20 years ago that still pertain to

02:23our connection now. I don't think I answered your question at all.