13 years ago, in 2005, acclaimed journalist David Sheff wrote "My Addicted Son" for the New York Times Magazine. A first-hand, frank and unforgettable story about his son Nic's fight against drug addiction, especially methamphetamine, and David's effort to save his family during a nearly-decade-long ordeal.
Two years later, producer Jeremy Kleiner learned that Sheff had written a book about Nic's 10-year struggle called "My Precious Child", and also his son Nic had chronicled those years in his own memory "Tweak". Simultaneously launched, the two books together created an emotional portrait with different nuances of a family in crisis.
When Kleiner shared the books with his partners, producers Dede Gardner and Brad Pitt, he proposed an unusual scenario. Each book was moving and important in itself, but the combination was much more than the sum of its parts. Would they be able to make a film that combined both narratives in a cohesive story?
"We were impressed by both texts", says Gardner. "And we thought that taking two perspectives from the same series of events and putting them together in a movie would be even more convincing than they were on their own."
This is how Beautiful Boy emerges, a real and heartbreaking portrait of a father's struggle to recover his son. With two impressive performances by Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet.
The release is close!