How Peter Hedges turned Ben is Back into a family affair
Peter Hedges directs his own son alongside Julia Roberts in Ben is Back
It isn’t every celebrity interview that ends with a hearty hug. But that’s how director Peter Hedges chooses to conclude our chat about his new movie, Ben Is Back. He’s clearly emotionally invested in the film, which tells the story of a teenage addict (played by the director’s son Lucas) who makes an unexpected return to his family’s home on Christmas Eve.
The 56-year-old director has been affected by addiction in his own life. “I didn’t really know my mother — sober — until I was 15, when she stopped drinking,” he remembers. “And for the last 22 years of her life she became this remarkable presence in my life, and actually spent her time helping others.” He adds: “And then there’s the plethora of people in my profession, in the arts, who we’ve lost, who were important to me. So I don’t know of a person that isn’t impacted. But on a very personal level I grew up in a home that was ravaged by my mother’s drinking.”
Hedges has always told stories about families, from his first screenplay — What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, based on his own novel — to his directing debut, the Thanksgiving comedy Pieces of April. He’s also directed Dan in Real Life, in which a man falls for his brother’s girlfriend; and The Odd Life of Timothy Green, about an unusual adopted child.
The dream-team pair in Ben Is Back comprises Julia Roberts as the family matriarch and Lucas Hedges, who at 21 has already earned an Oscar nomination for 2016’s Manchester By the Sea, and turned in powerful performances in 2017’s Lady Bird and this year’s Boy Erased.
Peter wasn’t sure he wanted to direct his son again. He jokes that the only other time they worked together, in Dan in Real Life, the difficult young actor was yelling “I don’t want to do it again!” after a take. But to be fair, he was only seven.
Seriously, Peter was more worried about his own role in the equation. “I was very nervous because I didn’t want to fail him. He’s worked with the best directors.” But when father and son “took a meeting” to discuss the screenplay, he sensed it would work out. “Within minutes we were talking not as father and son, but we were two people trying to figure out how we would tell this story.”
Roberts was another concern. Hedges remembers thinking: “That may be the last thing she wants to do is a movie with a father directing his son.” But she was so enthusiastic she sent pictures of herself with her redhaired son, who looks like Lucas, as “proof ” she could take the role.
Roberts has three children and has at times curtailed her work to make sure she has enough time with them. Says Hedges: “One of the things that’s so great about what she brought to this film is that ... yes she’s my favourite movie star, yes she’s one of the great actresses of any era – but she’s such a mom, as a person. She’s a mom first. My hope was that she would bring things I couldn’t imagine, and then of course every day it was jaw-dropping. She’s so spectacular in this film and wasn’t afraid to go to the places that can make us uncomfortable.”
He says his screenplay featured a mother who would go anywhere and do anything to help her son. But it wasn’t until he saw his own son and Roberts that he knew it would translate to the screen. “He and Julia had an incredible bond, and I tried to respect it. Sometimes you just needed to put them in the space and let them go.”