"Beautiful Boy" was a well-acted and generally well-made film that earned Amazon Studios some critical plaudits but didn't do too well at the box office. With an estimated budget of $25 million, its worldwide earnings were just over $8 million.
One thing that surprised me was the naked exposition in the opening scene.
Steve Carell, as the boy's father, is talking to a therapist. He says he's there on a personal matter, not as a journalist, and then this is the dialogue:
DAVID It’s about my son.
DR BROWN (O.S.) Okay, how can I help?
DAVID There are moments that I look at him, this kid that I raised who I thought that I knew inside and out, and I wonder who he is? He’s been doing all sorts of drugs, but he’s addicted to crystal meth, which seems to be the worst of all of them. And I guess I am here because I just want to know all that I can about all of it. Know your enemies right? So... my two big questions are, what is it doing to him and what can I do to help him?
FADE TO BLACK.
Whoa! If this had been the first page of a script by one of my students I would have advised finding a scene that would intrigue the audience, not spell out exactly what the story is.
Stories about addiction tend to be predictable (on drugs, off drugs, on drugs, off drugs), the only question usually being whether or not the addict survives. Therefore this script needed to find fresh ways of keeping the audience's interest and that first speech didn't help. Yes, the point of view of the father desperate to help his son and willing to go to extreme lengths to do so added depth to the story, but the way it was presented didn't.
THREE WAYS TO PUT CLOTHES ON NAKED EXPOSITION
There are a few ways to disguise exposition. The first and best is to show the information, rather than telling it. There are plenty of scenes in the movie that establish the boy's drug habit, the father's frustration, and the dad's extreme desire to help. I don't think this speech was needed at all.
Another method is to put the exposition into an emotional scene. Instead of saying that he thought he knew his kid inside and out but now sometimes wonders who he is, it's easy to imagine that being built into a dramatic confrontation scene between the father and son in which the father's anger turns to tears of frustration.
The third strategy is to involve an outsider who doesn't know the full situation, ideally someone who has an emotional connection to your protagonist rather than a neutral figure like a therapist. For instance, a close friend of the father, who has noticed how distracted and torn up the dad is but doesn't know why, could ask, "What the hell is happening to you?!" There could even have been a bit of irony if the friend asked, "You're not on drugs, are you?"
If you find any naked exposition in your own scripts, quick, cover it up!
