NY TIMES: The Stories Behind BEING FLYNN
In New York Times' article "Long Trip From Skid Row to the Screen," Ari Karpel reviews the remarkable trip from Nick Flynn's memoir of dealing with his father to the making of a feature film based on that story. In some ways the story is about two writers - the dad, Jonathan Flynn (played by Robert De Niro), who believes himself to be a great writer, and the son, Nick Flynn (played by Paul Dano), who is trying to become a writer. The making of the film, as the article points out, is also about two writers - Nick Flynn who wrote the original memoir, and writer/director Paul Weitz, who went through more than 20 drafts of the script to get it just right. What connected both of these writers is their image of their dads. Weitz explains, "My dad was a pretty successful fashion designer...But what he wanted to be in life was a writer, and he was a very loving but fairly tortured fellow. And so I've always wanted to react to that, to try to avoid some of his specific brand of pain, coming from creativity."
In New York Times' article "Long Trip From Skid Row to the Screen," Ari Karpel reviews the remarkable trip from Nick Flynn's memoir of dealing with his father to the making of a feature film based on that story. In some ways the story is about two writers - the dad, Jonathan Flynn (played by Robert De Niro), who believes himself to be a great writer, and the son, Nick Flynn (played by Paul Dano), who is trying to become a writer. The making of the film, as the article points out, is also about two writers - Nick Flynn who wrote the original memoir, and writer/director Paul Weitz, who went through more than 20 drafts of the script to get it just right. What connected both of these writers is their image of their dads. Weitz explains, "My dad was a pretty successful fashion designer...But what he wanted to be in life was a writer, and he was a very loving but fairly tortured fellow. And so I've always wanted to react to that, to try to avoid some of his specific brand of pain, coming from creativity."