From Honey Boy to Marriage Story, semi-autobiographical movies have provided artists with a way of dealing with their inner demons
Shia LaBeouf doesn’t come off looking so good in his critically approved festival hit Honey Boy. As James Lort, washed-up rodeo clown turned manager to his child actor son Otis (Noah Jupe), he cuts the paunchy figure of a balding, abusive alcoholic. But the screenwriter/star’s deconstruction of his own image doesn’t stop there; LaBeouf modeled Otis after himself, an avatar meant to illustrate how the demands of his kid-star career warped him as he grew into an entitled, self-destructive adult. In this work of semi-fictionalized memoir, the celebrity known to the public wrestles with both his memories of his father as well as himself, with a specificity bordering on the confessional. A young-adult Otis (played now by Lucas Hedges) re-enacts LaBeouf’s infamous run-in with the law captured via bodycam, howling everything short of “don’t you know who I am?!” in a fit of curdled
Hollywood petulance.
Related: Honey Boy review – Shia LaBeouf turns therapy into big-screen drama