Beautiful Boy Started on Two David & Nic Sheff Memoirs
From David Sheff's memoir *Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction* and Nic Sheff's *Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines*, Beautiful Boy is developed largely from flip sides of the same tale. For the most part, Nic and David's stories indicate that Beautiful Boy is a faithful reproduction of the actual narrative. Especially, both stories' emotional reality is preserved, so even little alterations have no negative effect. David even mentioned during a symposium with ColoradoHealth, "capturing the emotion of what it is like," makes the movie successful.
One of the only significant structural alterations is that the events in the *Beautiful Boy* movie are far more compressed than the actual narrative. While the film portrays his road from Addiction, rehabilitation, relapse, and ultimately recovery once again as only a few years, Nic actually battled opiate addiction for ten years. With four different actors playing Nic at various phases in his life, *Beautiful Boy* does try to show the passing of time (Kue Lawrence, Jack Dylan Grazer, Zachary Rifkin, and Chalamet).
Is *Beautiful Boy* Based On A True Story? The Real-Life Inspiration Explained
The 2018 tear-jerking movie *Beautiful Boy* offers a potent insight at a family's struggles with drug addiction, and it might have caused some viewers to question, "Is *Beautiful Boy* a True Story?" Felix van Groeningen oversees *Beautiful Boy* as it follows the connection between parent David Sheff (Steve Carell) and his son Nic (Timothée Chalamet). At the beginning of the film, Nic is a talented but disturbed adolescent who develops drug addiction against negative effects on his future. Only the patient love and help of his family results in saving him.
Among Timothée Chalamet's strongest performances as well as among Carell's most sincere ones is this one. Though the movie was a box office disaster, only making $32 million (per Box Office Mojo), Chalamet received a Golden Globe and SAG nomination for his work and Rotten Tomatoes rated it a 68%. Though not as crucial as Chalamet's performance is, Carell's is among the best of his career. Their personalities too are anything but fictional.
Beautiful Boy Leaves Out Two Medical Emergencies With David and Nic Sheff
Felix Van Groeningen most likely understood what many directors of films about drug use do—that the audience has only so much capacity for increasingly tragic events—which may be part of the reason he omitted Nic's near amputation or David's brain hemorrhage from the film. David wrote in *The Guardian* about how Nic almost lost his arm following IV drug use's infection of it.
Nic believes this episode was moved from the film for its resemblance to Harry's destiny at the end of *Requiem for a Dream* and the directors were scared it would glamorize or sensationalize Nic's story (via FlickDirect). David's hemorrhage, which happened during his time writing the memoir, was even more terrible and sent Nic sliding into another relapse via NYT. Though David talks in the epilogue of his memoir on how it also reminded him that he also needed to take care of Nic as well as himself, this hemorrhage was almost a big setback.
Beautiful Boy Leaves Out Notes Of Sex Work In Nic's Life
Though in real life Nic found alternative means to pay for his lifestyle, Beautiful Boy shows Nic stealing to fund his drug habit. He is rather honest about engaging in sex work while living without a house in order to pay for more drugs. Nic specifically chose sex employment; he told *Out Magazine*,
"Don't get me wrong; I really needed the money. Above everything, though, I yearned to feel beautiful. I could have made money elsewhere as well. I wanted to perform prostitution. Nic says, "I'm telling you, a lot of the kids I encountered were just like me. Apparently, it was a similar situation for other people his age living on the streets who engaged in sex business. They yearned to experience what I yearned to experience. They yearned to feel wanted."
Nic Took Medication to Control His Bipolar Symptoms
Although it's never stated in the film, Nic was diagnosed as bipolar in 2003 (via Salon). But worried about helping the pharmaceutical business, he refused to take medicine. Nic kept relapsing while his bipolar pals stayed sober on their meds. Nic claims that his bipolar illness made keeping sober much more difficult, although he does not directly blame it.
After reading his father's story, Nic finally started taking meds. With that book and following five trips to rehab, Nic decided he would follow the doctors' advice to get sober using an anti-depressant, mood stabilizing, antipsychotic pharmaceutical regimen. Now he appreciates medicine, meditation, and a 12-step program for keeping him drug-free.
Where Nic and David Sheff are now
Nic and David Sheff have gone on to life full lives while their family suffers. Nic married Jette Newell in 2011; the pair, who attended middle school together, currently reside in Los Angeles, close to Nic's younger siblings (Datebook). Nic has penned for TV programs, including *The Killing* and *Recovery Road*. For Netflix he also created and penned *13 Reasons Why*. Nic has also authored two fiction novels in addition to three memoirs—including *Tweak* and one co-written by his father.
Drug use and addiction run across both Nic Sheff's 2014 *Schizo* and 2016 *Harmony House* fiction works. David Sheff carried on doing what he does best—writing—after *Beautiful Boy*. One still finds his pieces in places like the *New York Times*. Currently residing in Northern California with his family, he publishes and regularly speaks on issues related to mental illness and substance-use disorders (via David Sheff). He even spoke before the UN. For a family who battled through the worst over a protracted period, this is a joyful ending.
Keep an eye on Amazon Prime Video.
