In Being Flynn, young writer Nick Flynn, played by Paul Dano, grew up without a father in his life. Shortly after taking up work at a Boston homeless shelter, Nick's wayward father, played by Robert De Niro, comes back into his life in all his homeless, drunkenly ranting glory. Amid his own struggles accepting his mother's suicide and battling his demons, Nick must find a way to accept his father back into his life, seeking to answer the age-old question of whether we become our parents when we grow up. NBN sat down with Paul Weitz, director, writer and producer of Being Flynn, at a roundtable to talk about turning Nick Flynn's memoir into a feature film.
What was the purpose of having the workers at the homeless shelter introduce themselves as how Nick would view them himself?
First off I wanted to put you into the skin of Paul Dano's character in that you'd think it would be a fairly grim prospect working at a homeless shelter, but in visiting the shelter with Nick Flynn, there were so many different kinds of people there. In terms of the people who worked there, they're not all saints. There's a young woman who looks at the camera and says, 'I want to live my life the way Christ does. And my rich parents.'
There are people there who are religious or who are former convicts or former homeless people. There are people in their 20's who are working there because it's an exciting place to work. And also there are young women who are working in these shelters where it's a pretty all-male environment, but they have the self-confidence to somehow pull it off and be good at it. And Olivia Thirlby's character was really not based on anything in the book, but based on women I would see working in the shelter.
It's a part of the movie where Badly Drawn Boy, who did the music for the film, I really asked them to have something that was propulsive. It was kind-of like going to a nightclub. And I was kind of afraid because I was worried I would feel like I wasn't dealing with the subject matter in a respectful enough fashion, but that's what I felt when I went there, and that's what Nick was going through in his life when he worked there. Paul Dano's character, when he first goes in there on his first day, gets punched in the face because he's stupid enough to step into an altercation between two guys. And as opposed to that making him want to go home, it really clears the cobwebs for him, and he wants to get right back out there. So it was just true to Nick's experience.
What are your thoughts on the process of homelessness?
I think there are some things we assume about homelessness which are not the case. For instance, one of the things you have access to if you are living in a homeless shelter is a shower and shampoo. So it was interesting because I was trying to get into the process of really what it's like working there. And I was quite worried about shooting any nudity that you'd have to show, because one of the things that happens there is that you go take a shower.
Another thing that was quite surprising to me was seeing guys in the homeless shelter who looked like what you would traditionally think of as homeless, but there were actually a relatively small proportion of them. There would be some people who looked like construction workers because they might work a day job and not make enough money to pay for a room for the night, but they actually had a job during the day and were staying at a homeless shelter. Then you'd see people who looked like they were working a tech job and were just sacking out there for the night. There were so many roots that brought one to it.
In terms of De Niro, it was really important for me to have Nick Flynn there, so for instance, Nick would talk about using duct tape to seal up your clothing at night when you're out on the streets in the cold. There's also a part of the movie where De Niro is wearing this wool cap, but he also has toilet paper stuck under the ear flaps, and that's something Nick Flynn said people would do for added warmth. There are a lot of things we don't really take the time to explain in the movie, but which were based on observations or details that Nick was giving me.
How did Paul Dano and Robert De Niro relate offscreen?
It's interesting. Usually I like to rehearse a lot to know what the actors are going to do when I start shooting. But in this case I took this leap, which was not having them rehearse at all because the characters are supposed to be meeting for the first time in this really charged situation of a guy working at a homeless shelter and his dad showing up to live there.
So the first time they acted together was really onscreen in those very first meeting scenes. One of the reasons I wanted Dano was because I really feel like he acts with a chip on his shoulder. He's really aggressive, actually. And he'd acted opposite Daniel Day-Lewis, who is very intimidating and stays in character offscreen. Dano described calling Daniel Day-Lewis and having him answer in character when he was shooting There Will Be Blood, so I figured he'd be comfortable pushing De Niro during shooting.
At the same time, Paul's a smart, respectful guy and was respectful to Bob offscreen, so I knew it was going to make my life hell having some guy giving De Niro a hard time. But the relationship was really taking place as the characters were meeting. The movie and the story are really a battle between these guys as to who has ownership of the story of their lives.
How does Nick's self-reparation mirror that of the homeless people he is working with?
Nick is covering up an unanswerable question for himself which is whether he should feel guilty about his mother's death and what will become of him if he becomes a writer. There's a bit in the movie where Julianne Moore, who was working at a bank, comes home and hands a wanted poster to this 11-year-old Nick. On the wanted poster is his father, who's wanted for cashing forged checks and she says to him, 'Don't ever become a writer,' because his dad is always claiming he's going to win the Nobel Prize as a writer.
I actually think that, in order to grow, at the point when he meets his father in real life and in the movie, it's too late to want love from him. I don't think it's what he needs. But I do think we grow through seeing our own flaws and seeing some really harsh things sometimes, and his dad is really the only person who can crack him open on a certain level. He says something to him, which is, 'You can't kill somebody with writing. Nobody's that good a writer.' So he destroys Nick's sense of control over things.
I think that Nick's guilt is a control mechanism. I think that's how guilt often functions. It's too terrifying to feel you have no control over what happens in life, so you feel guilty about things because you must have caused them in some way. And Jonathan Flynn, if nothing else, is a survival artist, and he teaches Nick a lesson in survival. That's really what he learns from his dad: base-level tools for getting on with life.
Being Flynn is in theaters now. Check out Megan Suckut's review of it here.