Stephen Chbosky Dear Evan Hansen director Movie takes aim at cancel culture
Director Stephen Chbosky says his new film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical âDear Evan Hansen,â opening Friday, offers a critique of social mediaâs cancel culture.
âI donât remember a time of less tolerance in my life,â Mr. Chbosky told The Washington Times. âBecause young people are under so much pressure to be perfect and say the right things all the time, I think itâs important for us to say that itâs unsustainable and itâs not fair. Everyone deserves a second chance.â
The Pittsburgh native, 51, said growing up without the internet gave him the luxury of learning from his mistakes as he wrestled between his public face and private self to grow into his own identity.
âI canât imagine what itâs like [today], and I feel a great deal of sympathy for kids whose mistakes often have a permanent record on video and audio. Hopefully, weâre all evolving through our whole lives,â he said.
Mr. Chbotskyâs film version of the coming-of-age teen drama has Ben Platt reprising his Tony Award-winning stage role as the isolated Evan, an anxious teenager whose therapist tells him to write letters to himself as a self-help exercise.
The exercise spins out of control when Evan fabricates a friendship with a fellow student whose suicide becomes a cause celebre at his school, bringing Evan long-sought-after popularity. But, unable to live with the lie, Evan confronts the cancel culture when he posts a vulnerable online video confession about suicide.
âThat was one of the themes that attracted me the most about the original Broadway show. We actually added that confession scene because, we felt with film, we had a chance to talk about the other side of it,â Mr. Chbosky said.
The director said he felt drawn to export the Broadway musical beyond traveling theater shows because its message of hope seemed to resonate with young people and their families.
âWe celebrate people whose online celebrity gets overblown and then their fall from grace gets overblown,â Mr. Chbosky said. âI think the pressure put on this generation, and the pressure this generation puts on itself to be perfect all the time, is cruel.â
Mr. Chbosky is no stranger to filming theatrical musicals and dramas. He wrote the screenplays for the 2005 film version of âRentâ and Disneyâs 2017 live-action âBeauty and the Beast.â In addition, he directed 2017âs acclaimed âWonder.â
âMuch more importantly to me, when you talk about these issues directly in a successful and entertaining way, it provides a sense of comfort to millions of young people,â he said.
Early reviews of âDear Evan Hansenâ have been mixed, with some critics who screened it at Toronto calling it a bomb.
âThe truth is, the knives being out feels very strange to me and it feels personal, not like criticism at all,â Mr. Chbosky said. âMaybe this is something akin to what you call âcancel culture.â To me, I didnât make the movie for critics, I made it for young people and their families who are desperately trying to understand and help them.â
He said advance screenings have been met by thunderous applause and tearful confessions, with people coming up to him afterward to say they had lost their loved ones to cancer.
âI donât think the audience is here for the movie, no matter how many tickets are sold. I think the movie is here for the audience,â he said. âNot everyone has access to Broadway or a traveling company.â
Filming started last September in quarantined Atlanta with a couple of false positive COVID-19 tests that the director said really scared the cast and crew.
âWe would film and go home. We didnât see anybody. It led to a lot of anxiety and depression among people making the film,â he said.
Mr. Chbotsky first achieved fame for his 1999 novel âThe Perks of Being a Wallflower,â which he adapted and directed for the screen.
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