Director of ‘Honey Boy’ explains how Shia LaBeouf’s rehab stint led her to make the most honest movie of the year

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Nov. 9, 2019 – Sentenced to community service and one year of probation , LaBeouf was also court-ordered to attend a drug rehab facility. There, through counseling, he was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder stemming from his troubled childhood with his father. He recorded the sessions he was having with his counselors that forced him to look back on his childhood and transcribed them. Perhaps because he’s been an actor since age 10, that transcription evolved into a script. Suddenly he was molding his painful past into a story about a child actor named Otis Lort and his relationship with his father, James.

Soon after, with no notice, Har’el received a script in the mail titled “Stamen,” the word for the male fertilizing organ of a flower. It was authored by Otis Lort. “And with the script were two photos of Shia with his father when he was a very young kid, which broke my heart,” Har’el said. “I saw those photos and I knew I had to make this film.” Though LaBeouf had given the characters different names, the script told the story of the warts-and-all true relationship he and his father Jeffrey had when the actor was 12 years old and the star of the popular Disney Channel show, “Even Stevens.”