Felix Van Groeningen makes his American debut

The early numbers are encouraging: American audiences are not ignoring Beautiful Boy. Is that a relief?
FELIX VAN GROENINGEN: Absolutely! There are big names involved. They invested a lot in Beautiful Boy. A good opening is very important. More than anything, I feel as though the film has moved people, and that is precisely why you make a film in the first place. You want your film to have impact and that does seem to be happening – knock on wood. We are surprised that so many young people are coming to see it. To a large extent that is thanks to Timothée Chalamet. It is great in any case. Beautiful Boy is about a young person who loses himself to drugs. If the film can help young people or make conversations between parents and children possible, then I’m one happy man.

Does the value of a film depend on how many people see it? Not so many people went to see Belgica, but I still think it is a good film.
VAN GROENINGEN: Belgica was a more difficult, stubborn film. I had to make it and I am still very proud of it. People were disappointed because their expectations had been too high – probably due to my track record. On the one hand I understand that: I was disappointed myself. But on the other, that is quite frustrating. After all, Belgica actually did quite well: I won awards for it at major festivals, 90,000 Belgians went to see it, and it is available on Netflix. In hindsight I regret that deal because not many people have watched it on Netflix, but it seemed like the right decision at the time.
Sometimes you have to distance yourself from the numbers: it’s still tense for Beautiful Boy. Lower viewing figures are not necessarily an indication of a film’s quality, but say whatever you want, in the end, you want everybody to love your film.
I want my films to find their place. What that place is differs from film to film. With my first films – Steve + Sky and Dagen zonder lief – I sometimes felt as though they deserved more, but ultimately they did what they had to do. Sometimes you just have to be patient. The international success of The Broken Circle Breakdown came very late. I was actually already frustrated. I didn’t understand why the film didn’t do better. But in the end, it became very popular internationally and was even nominated for an Oscar. Ultimately, it exceeded all expectations.

Why are you surprised that young people are going to see Beautiful Boy?
VAN GROENINGEN: Young people go to the cinema less anyway. Marvel productions might still attract them, but more serious films that take their time to tell a story? Beautiful Boy did well with young people in test screenings. But the fact that young people are actually coming to see it is thanks to Timothée Chalamet.
Something similar happened with Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers. When I went to see that film in its first week, the cinema was full of young girls who wanted to see Selena Gomez. The marketing had been targeted to those girls, but it didn’t work. Spring Breakers was not commercially successful, but Korine did manage to confront a lot of young people with a type of cinema that was new to them. I was very impressed by that. Beautiful Boy isn’t nearly so experimental, but I am still very happy that it appeals to young people. Film should be an event and should have an effect.

You are very lucky with Chalamet. You might just as well have cast Kevin Spacey in the role of the father and then nobody would come.
VAN GROENINGEN: The reaction to Kevin Spacey was very extreme, don’t you think?
We didn’t choose Timothée Chalamet because of his popularity. We couldn’t have done because he hadn’t broken through yet. We chose him because he is such a good actor. We knew it was a role that might be a young actor’s big break, so we didn’t necessarily need a big name. We could just go with the best. But Call Me by Your Name put Timothée on the map before Beautiful Boy could. I guess it just had to be that way.

How did you decide on Steve Carell?
VAN GROENINGEN: For the role of the father, we did need somebody with a certain status. We decided that a number of excellent actors – I won’t mention any names – were not right for the role. They were good, but they weren’t famous enough, not quite A-listers. But we also wanted somebody original and somebody we thought could make the difference. Steve Carell really surprised me in Foxcatcher and The Big Short. I was sure that he could handle the role. When I read interviews with him, I suspected that it would work very well if we could keep the character close to him personally. He thought the same. He accepted the role because he reacted very emotionally to the story as a father. During the shoot he kept thinking: what if it was my son? The film had an impact on him personally. It was difficult for him to let go of Beautiful Boy.

I understand that. It is very difficult to accept that there comes a point when you can no longer help your child.
VAN GROENINGEN: David Sheff begins his book with that conclusion. As a parent, it is very difficult to accept that you cannot decide how your child lives or dies. That is incredibly scary. But in another way, it is also liberating.
Nature got it wrong: at first your child depends on you completely and then it doesn’t need you for anything. [Laughs] I don’t know much about that yet; it’s still very early days for me. [Van Groeningen has just become a father, nr]

Does one of the books offer an explanation for Nic Sheff’s addiction?
VAN GROENINGEN: Both the father and the son spent day after day looking for a cause, but they never found a conclusive explanation. Nic is bipolar. Is that somehow related? It is certainly not the only factor, but it may explain why he was so unstable and relapsed so often.
David Sheff’s books were based on the diaries that he kept while his son was going through the worst of his addiction. That was his way of processing what was going on, so that he didn’t go crazy.
It is thanks to David’s and Nic’s honesty and their talent for writing things down that I could really grasp the problem for the first time. Their books give a human face to families that are destroyed by drug addiction. I had never been confronted with issues like that up-close.

Are there any differences between American and European attitudes to terrible drug addiction?
VAN GROENINGEN: Americans talk more easily and more openly about drug-related issues, but their attitudes are very black and white. They divide society into winners and losers. And losers are looked down on. People in the losing camp are ashamed of themselves. If you have a terrible addiction, people often simply think it is your own fault. In Europe, we’re less quick to point the finger. Our problem is that we don’t talk about addiction as easily and we keep the misery it can cause bottled up. We can be very unrefined in that respect.

At the end of the day, there is not such a big difference between a Belgian and an American film. You use moving images and sound to tell a story that will move an audience. But what is the biggest difference at the beginning of the day, so to speak?
VAN GROENINGEN: It takes a long time to get a film green-lit in the States. There is constant uncertainty because the productions are on a much larger scale, a lot of the financing is private, and the actors to a large extent determine whether or not a film will actually get made.
But once the shoot has started, it is a great place to work. Post production gets more difficult again because there are a lot of people looking over your shoulder. Releasing the film is also the work of a huge machinery that you cannot control as a director.
Seen negatively, you have much less power as a director, but from a positive point of view, there are a lot more people involved, and they help to ensure that you get things right. When everything runs smoothly, it is a good system.

And when it doesn’t?
VAN GROENINGEN: Then things sometimes get rammed down your throat. There were trailers that I really didn’t like but couldn’t stop. I didn’t have the power. But of course I was allowed to have my say, and in the end those trailers weren’t released. Everybody collaborated constructively. The keyword was authenticity. Beautiful Boy tells the story of what real people experienced. It was very important to me that everybody stayed focused on that idea. The Sheffs, both the father and son, let me into their lives, and we became friends.

There are moments in the film when the soundtrack, with music by John Lennon, David Bowie, Neil Young, Sigur Rós, and Nirvana, gives you goosebumps. A Belgian film would never be able to afford those songs.
VAN GROENINGEN: When we made Steve + Sky, Dagen zonder lief, and even The Misfortunates, there were songs that were great for the films but which we had to scrap because we couldn’t afford them. It was very frustrating. For The Misfortunates, we absolutely had to have Roy Orbison, but we ended up paying an insane amount of money. The fact that we could basically do whatever we wanted this time was amazing. But limitations stimulate your creativity. I’m not afraid of going back to working with smaller budgets.

You involved two trusted sidekicks in your American adventure: director of photography Ruben Impens and the Brussels-based editor Nico Leunen. BRUZZ has already heaped more than enough praise on Leunen in the past. Tell us something bad about him.
VAN GROENINGEN: Nico Leunen does not deserve a single bad to be said about him. [Laughs] He’s the best editor in the world. To me, he is simply part of “Felix Van Groeningen”. I know that. I acknowledge that. And I really like it.
Nico is insanely talented. He combines incredible skill with steel balls. He dares to do anything but at the same time, he never puts himself above the film. He puts me through hell. It’s not fun, but the film is all the better for it. And I do the same to him. We have been on an incredible journey together. The difference is that his journeys with other directors – like Fien Troch – are even more incredible.

> Beautiful boy. US, dir.: Felix Van Groeningen, act.: Timothée Chalamet, Steve Carell