Ben is Back tells the story of a young man (Lucas Hedges) and his mother (Julia Roberts) as he leaves rehab to spend the Christmas holiday with his family. A longtime sufferer of drug addiction, Ben is struggling to keep it together while his mother gives him all the love she can muster in an attempt to keep her beloved son from succumbing to his powerful demons. Directed by Peter Hedges (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, About a Boy), Ben is Back is a thought-provoking movie about the real-world opioid crisis which has been tearing America apart for years, while also an intimate story about a mother’s love for her son and a son who is trying so hard to be deserving of that love.
While promoting the home video release of Ben is Back, we spoke with writer/director Peter Hedges, who shared the tragic inspirations behind the film, attending a writer’s workshop to get the ball rolling on the script, working with his own son in the leading role, and explained the deeper meaning behind some of the film’s key scenes.
Screen Rant: Before we jump into the movie, Ben is Back, I want to talk about your work in general. Your movies are intimate stories about realistic people, but beyond that, I feel like the sky’s the limit in terms of the art you create.
Screen Rant: It’s a beautiful script, completely unpredictable. That dynamic is something that… We’ve seen cookie-cutter versions of that here and there, everywhere, almost, but Ben is Back feels real in a way you just don’t see every day.
Peter Hedges: It’s funny, to me they all feel kind of similar, but I guess, if I were to be objective, which I don’t seem to be highly capable of, they are tonally very different, aren’t they? Certainly the last film (The Odd Life of Timothy Green) to this one, but I think, because I often write about family dynamics, maybe that’s what feels similar to me. Ben is Back was certainly an attempt to write something urgent and hopefully useful about this epidemic, but also to write a story about what happens when a mother doesn’t give up on her son and when the son is trying so hard to show that he’s worthy of the love that she keeps feeling for him.
Screen Rant: Tell me about the earliest inception of this movie, when did it first enter your mind that this was what you wanted to write about?
Peter Hedges: Thank you, thank you.
Screen Rant: That’s so interesting that someone who is, like, you know, a master, I think it’s fair to say, still signs up for writing workshops.
Peter Hedges: I knew, several years ago when we lost Philip Seymour Hoffman. I knew him socially and professionally, he wasn’t a close friend, but he was my favorite actor ever. Around that time, I also lost a close friend and nearly lost a close relative to heroin and opioids. I knew I wanted to write something about the epidemic, but I didn’t know what story to tell. I embarked on a long period of research, and kind of a listening tour, trying to understand all parts of the epidemic, and I learned a ton about the issues that we face. But I didn’t have a story. About a year and a half ago, almost two years ago by now, I signed up for a writing workshop that a former student of mine was running. Over a three-week period, I wrote the first nine pages, three pages each week, which became the first nine pages of Ben is Back. I felt, then, that I had the beginnings of something. I quit all my other projects and I went all in on this particular story. It wrote me, really, and wrote me pretty quickly. But I had done all that research and I had kind of packed for a very long trip and then kind of climbed into the rocket that was the writing of it, and it just wrote itself very quickly. Julia (Roberts) signed on immediately, and we were shooting before I knew it!
Screen Rant: That’s amazing, you’re so inspirational. So, there’s a scene in this movie, it’s not a long scene, but there’s a scene where Julia Roberts’ character confronts her family’s old doctor and that is a scene which, I think, could have, in another way, in another film from another creator, been played for laughs, but it’s handled so well, and it shows such a big truth about addiction: there’s so many, many, many ways that it can be forced upon us. It’s not like, “Oh, you’re an addict because you want to be.” We lose track of that snowball effect until it’s too late, we don’t have a choice, it’s already happened. That scene is so real, so visceral.
Peter Hedges: I had hit a hard spot. I lost some confidence. I think I had been trying to tell stories that I didn’t have to tell. Stories that I thought I wanted to tell, but I just had lost some confidence and I was looking for a way to jolt my system into something new, maybe think in new ways, which I am increasingly doing. I’m looking, often, towards younger people, listening to how they’re working, at least they’re trying, and some of the old greats, too. Just to try to remain relevant and off-balance, but hungry and eager. That was a big help for me, to be in a room with other people, all of us at various stages of our career; I was probably the one with the most experience, but sometimes, lots of experience can paralyze you. If you get back into the beginner mindset, you can unearth an energy and a fire that I didn’t know I could even still possess. It was a great group to be with, and it was nice once it started to take over, to try to get out of the way and just keep my fingers moving as fast as I could as I was typing.
Screen Rant: It’s incredible. It might be my favorite scene in the movie.
Peter Hedges: That was important. One of the things my research kept telling me, which was surprising, at first, and then became horrifying the more I read and researched, was the high numbers of people who are presently addicted to heroin whose first entry into opioids was through prescription pain pills. Sometimes they experimented at parties where they were passed around illegally, but often, they were prescribed by doctors. They’re very powerful. And, you know, if you’re not aware of the danger, you could find yourself very quickly craving them in ways that will make you untenable and unthinkable things. So I wanted to understand his history and I wanted it to come out slowly, as the movie progressed, but I also liked the idea that someone would hold someone in the medical community accountable for parts of this epidemic. That was the idea of the scene, and, of course, Julia just crushed it in the mall. We did not have much time to shoot that section of the scene. We had to do all of the mall in one day, and we were running out of time, and I was so grateful that she is as great as she is, because we did not have the time, and yet, she just crushed it.
Screen Rant: Among so many other things, this movie is a New York story, but you didn’t set it in the city, which would almost be too easy, right? It’s set in the suburbs in Westchester and Rockland counties.
Peter Hedges: I couldn’t take on everything in the story, it follows one family over the course of one day, but it did feel like we were able to go after, you know, some of the accomplices to this epidemic.
Screen Rant: The closest you get to “the city” is Yonkers, which is actually where I grew up, and my parents still live there, but in a much nicer corner than the riverside setting you chose! I guess a big part of the movie is that living in the suburbs doesn’t close one off from danger, and things that look safe are not necessarily safe.
Peter Hedges: That’s right, that’s where we filmed.
Screen Rant: I’ve been telling people that this movie is white-knuckle thriller disguised as a family drama. It’s set over one day, and halfway through, it takes this film noir adventure turn that I was just not expecting. The tension had me just on the edge of the couch the whole time.
Peter Hedges: That was the idea. I set in Vermont when I wrote it, but there’s no tax incentive in Vermont, and I really like where we ended up being able to shoot it. I felt the locations and the towns felt very American. It could almost be anywhere, almost. And yet, it was still a very distinct place. The use of the Tappan Zee Bridge, I guess now it’s the Mario Cuomo Bridge, and we did namedrop Yonkers because why not? It’s where we were. I was pleased that I could be close to home and have the crew be able to stay at home while we shot. But the idea was that it could be anywhere, and if it could happen to Julia Roberts and her imaginary cinematic family, then it could happen to anybody. That was kind of the idea.
Screen Rant: Okay, I’m sure you’ve gotten this about a million times, but I want to talk a little bit about Lucas. I can’t fathom how proud you must be of him; I mean, my parents are proud of me, and I only write about the movies. Mid-90s, Boy Erased, Lady Bird, et cetera, what a résumé! And he’s only, what, 22?
Peter Hedges: I’m glad. I never thought I would write that kind of film, I didn’t intentionally set out to do it, but it happened organically, based on the fact that the question throughout the movie is, “Will he succumb?” And it just kind of organically happened. As you know from my body of work, there’s nothing in my early work that intimates that I would write something that would have that kind of ticking clock, as you said, “white knuckle” feeling. I was so nervous shooting the second half of the movie because it felt so out of my comfort zone. It sounds like it worked for you, I don’t know if it works for everybody, but the goal was to try to show what life could be like if he were drug-free in an almost-idyllic home; not a perfect home, but a pretty lovely home with a lovely family. And, in that same neighborhood, in that same community, there’s a dark world. Particularly at night, and particularly when people need their fix. It was interesting to try to make a film that could hold both of those worlds. That was certainly not what I set out to do, but it became evident as I was writing, that’s the story that was being told.
Screen Rant: That’s nuts. I don’t expect you to speak for him, but…
Peter Hedges: Yeah, he just turned 22.
Screen Rant: That’s incredible. We’ve all known that you’re an incredible filmmaker, and now I know that you’re also an incredible dad.
Peter Hedges: I will say this: I’m the lucky father to two young men. When any of your kids, and your parents feel this way about you, clearly, when your kids find what they love to do and they throw themselves into it, and they find joy in the doing of it, and it’s actually work that’s honorable, and, you know, all of those things, it’s a great feeling. Really, what we want is for our kids to find their place in the world. Both of my sons, who happen to be roommates, they share an apartment in the city. My older son works in finance and private equity, which he loves, and Lucas works in film and theater. But to speak about working with Lucas, it was… It almost feels like a dream, still. I’m actually sitting in the room on my garden floor of my home; it’s the room where he and I sat to talk about whether it was a good idea for him to do the film. Up until he read the script of Ben is Back, at Julia Roberts’ urging, it had been pretty much understood that he would not be in a project of mine, that he feels and felt that he had nice experiences with directors, but he only gets one dad. And he just wanted me to be his dad, and I understood that. I wrote this script, not believing he would be in the film. First of all, he wasn’t going to be available when I wanted to film it, and I just wanted to write something that he and his brother would be proud I’d written. While they were proud of my most recent work, they’re particularly fond of Pieces of April, Gilbert Grape, some of my earlier work where it was… I wouldn’t call it super-edgy, but it had a bit more bite. So anyway, getting to work with him was, I describe it as “a dream I didn’t know I had, come true.” Because I didn’t allow myself to dream it. And I’m sure it was awkward. For him, there were times when I would get confused whether I was a father or a director on a particular day. But on set, we had a great deal of respect for each other. I tried to stay out of the way. He and Julia formed an incredible bond. That carried over to his relationships with Kathryn (Newton) and Courtney (B. Vance) and the two young kids, Mia and Jakari. They just formed a great bond, and I try to create a safe space where they could play, and play with ferocity and abandon. Like I said, it was a dream I didn’t know I had that came true.
More: Ben is Back Review
Ben is Back is out now on digital, and hits DVD and Blu ray on March 5.
Peter Hedges: That’s the more important of the two, and that means a tremendous amount, that you would get that sense and that you would say that.
