Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1043753
B E A U T I F U L B O Y | P E R S P E C T I V E 4 7 I awoke to find a family member vanished. Left behind were their wallet, medication, house keys and a half-eaten sandwich. Only they and their cellphone were absent. Two harrowing days later, a private investigator managed to find them. Starving, ashamed, in a crystal meth den fronting as a pleasant suburban home. Sobbing into the arms of strangers. Using a drug I'd only seen in movies. Not long after, a therapist gave me the novel Beautiful Boy. The subsequent year, with several rehabs, relapses and their slow but marked personality change, I promised myself to take time off from film production. The next day, I received the script for Beautiful Boy. I did not think I could make this movie. How could I objectively interpret the Sheff family's story with my own playing out in real time? But shame is what compels addicts to escape, and their loved ones to misinterpret them. I was compelled to make this movie. Not only for loved ones keen on destroying themselves, but for those compelled to love and cherish them. Sometimes, in our desperation, we are unwittingly encouraging that very self-destruction. The director Felix Van Groeningen and the director of photography Ruben Impens both hail from Brussels. They have a long work history, a naturalistic approach, and had yet to employ large set builds. But large builds were what the schedule dictated. Thus before guiding them through physical and later, digital models of the most central location—the Sheff home—I first asked if we could visit the real one. Traveling to Inverness, CA, where the story of Nic's addiction began, we discovered a dramatic landscape somewhere between Ireland and Tolkien's Middle-earth. David Sheff, a celebrated journalist, and his wife Karen, B A. THE COMMUNAL AREA OF THE SECOND FLOOR STAGE BUILD. FOR BOTH NIC'S CHARACTER AND THE STORIES' PLOT, FAMILY RUN-INS HERE WERE ESSENTIAL. BUILT AT RED STUDIOS IN HOLLYWOOD. PRODUCTION PHOTO. B. SHEFF HOUSE SECOND FLOOR SET MODELS FEATURED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE BY ETHAN TOBMAN, MODELED IN RHINO AND SKETCHUP, RENDERED IN SHADERLIGHT AND PHOTOSHOP. Amazon Studios