Script Analysis: “Honey Boy” — Scene-By-Scene Breakdown

Here is my take on this exercise from a previous series of posts — How To Read A Screenplay:

After a first pass, it’s time to crack open the script for a deeper analysis and you can do that by creating a scene-by-scene breakdown. It is precisely what it sounds like: A list of all the scenes in the script accompanied by a brief description of the events that transpire.

For purposes of this exercise, I have a slightly different take on scene. Here I am looking not just for individual scenes per se, but a scene or set of scenes that comprise one event or a continuous piece of action. Admittedly this is subjective and there is no right or wrong, the point is simply to break down the script into a series of parts which you then can use dig into the script’s structure and themes.

The value of this exercise:

• We pare down the story to its most constituent parts: Scenes.
• By doing this, we consciously explore the structure of the narrative.
• A scene-by-scene breakdown creates a foundation for even deeper analysis of the story.

Today: Honey Boy (2019). You can download the script here.

Written by Shia LeBouef.

Plot Summary: A young actor’s stormy childhood and early adult years as he struggles to reconcile with his father and deal with his mental health.

Honey Boy 
Scene-By-Scene Breakdown
By Ericka Boston
GoIntoTheStory.blcklst.com

1–4: It is 2005. OTIS LORT walks amid airplane wreckage, terrified by something unseen. Suddenly he’s ratcheted across a flipped car as explosions detonate all around him. Cut. Reset. He prepares to film the stunt again. Later, in his trailer, he struggles to remove his body harness. As his frustration builds, Otis attempts to calm himself, shoving his fingers into his mouth like a pacifier. He tries several tactics but still can’t get the harness off. His anger surges. He can’t find his cigarettes. He downs a third of whiskey. Finally he erupts, screaming for a walkie-talkie, punching the trailer, kicking the stove.

He fights back tears as SANDRA, his co-star, enters. She releases him from his harness. Just. Like. That. She kisses him and they fumble around on the bed.

4–5: In a Chevy Silverado, Otis and Sandra pass a lit blunt back and forth as he drives. He drops it. As he leans down to retrieve it, CRASH. A collision at full impact. They flip three times. Airbags deploy. Otis’s fingers are covered in blood.

Otis gets shoved into the back of a police car. He yells but they ignore him.

In a pitch-black cell, Otis, alone and terrified, screams for them to tell him why he’s been arrested.

5–8: Otis’s mom, LINDA, drives. Otis, with cuts on his face, looks out the window, avoiding her gaze. Later, in the common area of a rehab facility, Otis looks around, staring at the patients as they play games or knit. They stare back.

In the exam room, he’s strip-searched. His bag is searched. His cell phone is confiscated. The next day he meets with DR. MORENO, who lays bare the stakes: this is strike three, and if Otis leaves the facility he’ll serve a four-year sentence. She asserts that he has PTSD and challenges him to journal his memories so they’ll no longer trigger him, starting with whatever makes him angry. He dismisses her diagnosis. “No, I don’t. From what??”

8–12: It is 1995. YOUNG OTIS smiles as he’s hit in the face by whipped cream pies and propelled backward in slow motion. He’s held by a wire and stops just short of a white picket fence. A STUNT COORDINATOR helps him down and they prepare to do the stunt over again.

Later, Otis approaches JAMES LORT, who’s holding PAM hostage with tales of his past rodeo work with a stunt chicken, Henrietta Lafowl. Otis interrupts, asking James to help him out of his body harness. James reluctantly attends to his son and gives him a knowing look. Otis puts on his best behavior, but Pam doesn’t give James her phone number.

12–13: From the back of a motorcycle, Otis clings to James’s back, “the closest thing to a hug he knows,” as James maneuvers the bike through traffic. They come to a stop at the Vista Motel. Otis unwinds in the pool, reviews the next day’s lines and, from afar, studies LITTLE Q, a fellow Vista resident and 18-year-old prostitute, with her pimp, MAMA J.

13–16: James asks his son for the per diem. Otis hands his dad an envelope containing cash, then goes to the bathroom to urinate, but James criticizes his stream. James demonstrates how it should be done — a one-sided pissing contest — but Otis is more interested in his script. James tells Otis that his acting is just “clowning,” nothing he didn’t do in the rodeo, but Otis dismisses the comparison, saying he’s seen the rodeo. James gets upset after learning that it was Tom who’d taken Otis to the rodeo.

16–19: As they retrieve their laundry, Otis hesitantly asks his dad for some of the cash, saying he’s going to a baseball game the next day with AJ and wants a hot dog. James asks for more details but seems excited for his son and gives him some money. He tells a racist joke about the pitcher but only he laughs. He playfully pokes Otis, but Otis recoils and accidentally hits him in the face, angering him. After James asks more questions about the game, Otis finally admits that Tom is driving him. He apologizes for lying to James, saying he didn’t want him to get weird about Tom.

19–25: As they practice their juggling, Otis asks his dad about some long-ago promise to build him a tree house. James reminds him that they’ve never owned a tree. Otis asks James if he attended his meeting. James affirms that he did and asks if Otis will get him a cake when he hits his next anniversary: four years of sobriety. He also wants to check out Tom to be sure he’s not a child predator. Otis says his mom trusts Tom and that should be enough. James reminds Otis that he’s the one who’s there every day. He offers Otis a pack of cigarettes to bring Tom by, but Otis must smoke in the bathroom so no one thinks he’s a trash father. James goes to get them sodas, and Otis watches James on TV, doing his rodeo routine with Henrietta.

25–26: (2005) Otis awakens from a dream, breathing heavily. His roommate, PERCY, is sound asleep. Otis takes his aggression out on a treadmill, running in his underwear as a PHYSICAL THERAPIST takes notes. Later he observes a trust exercise in the swimming pool. ALEC asks Otis to participate but Otis looks away. At lunch he eats by himself, pushing aside the knitting needles and yarn on his table.

26–27: Otis blasts Dr. Moreno for wanting him to knit for two hours. She guides him in a mindfulness exercise to bring down his anger. After a rocky attempt, he refuses to continue.

27–28: Otis and Percy gather eggs in the chicken coop. Percy cracks jokes, but Otis doesn’t laugh. In their room they discuss prayer. Percy does it, Otis doesn’t. Later, Otis is in the bathroom, urinating. He listens to the sound as he stares at himself in the mirror.

28–29: (1995) Otis leaves a small present and fresh cup of coffee for James before heading to work. James wakes up and unwraps the gift: a scratch-and-sniff watch. He scratches and sniffs. While wearing an “Adopt a Highway” safety vest, he breaks into a grassy area off the highway interchange. Later he listens to CRAIG share during an AA meeting.

30–32: Otis, alone, sneaks a smoke. James, still at the AA meeting, challenges Craig’s interpretation of a Bible verse. James yells at the group and leaves. Meanwhile, a PA asks Otis if he has a ride. Otis says his dad is coming. The PA has doubts but leaves Otis alone.

33: Otis and his dad walk, holding hands, but when they reach a taco truck, James lets go. Otis passes his dad the money to pay for their food. Some GIRLS recognize Otis. James admits his jealousy but Otis laughs at him. James responds with an insult.

33–34: Outside the motel, James smokes, alone. Little Q returns home and James mimes for her. She smiles, but when he arises from his bow she’s gone.

34–42: A yellow hot rod truck pulls into the Vista Motel parking lot. Otis, in the passenger seat, warns the driver, TOM, not to mention the Big Brothers program to James. James saunters over, praising Tom’s truck, and the two men make small talk as Otis races to put his things in the room. He rejoins the men, wearing his swim gear, and they follow him to the pool. James tells a backhanded joke about the truck but Tom is polite.

From the pool, Otis watches nervously as James probes Tom about his career. James praises Tom and sends Otis to get ketchup and sodas. James presses Tom about his background.

Near the soda machine, Otis observes a tense argument between a visibly battered Little Q and Mama DJ. When Mama DJ leaves, he chats up Little Q, who is responsive. He notices that her cigarette is broken, then tells her to wait and disappears.

James grills both the food and Tom, asking if Tom got into his alma mater because he’s a minority. Otis interrupts and asks his dad for a cigarette. James complies. Tom is stunned. After Otis leaves, Tom brings up the Big Brother program.

James puts the burgers on the table and leans in, threatening to hurt Tom and his family if he doesn’t stay away from Otis. Tom gets up but James throws him into the pool, tossing the buns in after, as Otis arrives and looks on helplessly.

42–44 (2005): Otis sits on the pool’s ledge, trying to ignore patients in the water, but Alec asks Otis to join their hugging circle exercise. Otis struggles with the activity, but his roommate, Percy, cracks a joke that makes him and the group laugh. Afterward, Alec suggests that Otis go into the woods and scream as loud as he can. Otis has doubts.

44–45: Otis and Percy chat about privilege. They’re knitting scarves while Percy’s cousin is doing time. Otis cracks a joke that makes Percy laugh.

45: Otis juggles balls emblazoned with chicken faces. He drops one. As he retrieves it, he sees an actual chicken. He wakes up.

45 (1995): Otis makes sure the coast is clear, then fills a backpack with James’s favorite snacks from craft services. Elsewhere, city sprinklers water a marijuana plant sprouting from the dirt. James departs the site on his bike and picks Otis up from set.

46–50: James eats the absconded goods as Otis talks to his mom on the phone. He updates her on a potential gig in Canada but ends up passing messages between his parents. When the discussion turns sensitive — “She wants to know if you can leave the country … because of your record” — James becomes angry that Linda has involved Otis in adults’ issues. He’s irate after she tells him, via Otis, that she can ask Tom to help with their passports. The conversation devolves, with James screaming and Otis in the middle, tossing sordid details and barbs from parent to parent. Finally James takes the phone.

Outside, Otis watches James yell into the receiver. He grabs a walking stick and heads to the junkyard. He throws a brick through a junk car’s windshield, then sits on its hood and smokes a cigarette.

50–53: James greets everyone at an AA meeting. They’re happy to see him. It’s his anniversary. As he recounts his sobriety story (his parents met in the casino where his mom worked… they were the last two alcoholics in the bar), we see Otis, back at the Vista Motel pool. He approaches Little Q.

Otis and Little Q talk for a bit. She sees that he’s cold and holds him in her arms.

In his meeting, James continues: His mom left his dad for a woman who was an even bigger drunk — and violent. His mom died after falling out a window and onto a freeway. He turned to booze, weed, the Army and then cocaine. He “woke up a sex offender” but says he “didn’t rape this woman.” He found AA and God in jail, got out and realized he had a son to raise.

James tearfully confesses that he’s doing all he can for Otis but he’s in pain.

Back in his motel room, Otis and Little Q play fight. She kisses his cheek. He kisses her eyelid. He takes off his shirt, but “Little Q holds him like a mother. Gives him warmth.” He puts money in her hand and heads out.

53–54: (2005) Otis grabs a walking stick and treks through the woods.

(1995) Young Otis does the same, in a vacant parking lot. He stands on a rusty car and yells with abandon — a “hopeful” yell.

(2005) Otis tilts his head back and screams until he shakes. Then he erupts in a fit of manic laughter.

54–56: (1995) Otis wins a game of gin, boasting that he’s getting better at lying. Otis says James lies, too. “We all do.” James said he’s never lied a day in his life. Otis asks him why he won’t hold his hand in public. James says it’s so people won’t think he’s a predator.

56–57: (2005) Otis shakes Alec’s hand, thanking him for the idea to yell. Alec asks Otis if he’s acting. Otis says everyone is, all the time. Alec says Otis won’t wear him out. Otis says he isn’t trying to.

57–58: In Dr. Moreno’s office Otis insists that he doesn’t need to talk about his dad. Though James takes credit for everything that’s good in Otis’s life, he is not the reason Otis drinks, Otis says. “So having your own ideas is key?” Dr. Moreno probes. She again challenges Otis to write.

58–60: A chicken roams freely, and Otis follows it through a tennis court and a surreal trailer park. Inside the trailer, Otis hears an old recording. It’s an argument between Young Otis and James. Outside Otis walks toward an old man in a rocking chair. The recording continues but now it’s 2005 James and Otis. James tells Otis he’s throwing his life away. Otis responds that it’s magic: “Every single time I drink, you take over.” James buttons the scene as he often does, with a put down. It’s the same recurring insult: “Oh yeah? … Your dick get bigger, too, peckerwood?”

Otis wakes up and snaps the rubber band on his wrist — the mindfulness exercise from before. He tries to go back to sleep but fails.

60: Otis writes in his notebook, knits, dances with Percy and types on his laptop. “He’s FINALLY all in.”

61: (1995) Otis, wet from a swim, smokes a cigarette at the Vista pool. Meanwhile, water dances over James’s marijuana sprouts down by the freeway.

61–62: Otis acts in a scene. From off camera, James, sporting a black eye and swollen lip, watches and recites the lines to himself. He checks his watch, then the clock on the wall. Then he swiftly shuts down the take. Everyone is up in arms, including Otis, but James is undeterred. They leave the set as he cites child labor laws.

62–66: A party rages in the Vista Motel parking lot with Mama J, Little Q and GUESTS. James and Otis rehearse in their room, but it’s interrupted by a loud argument.

James goes out into the parking lot and yells at them to shut up, but they tell him to return to his side. He does.

Mama J bangs on his room door and she and James argue further. She throws her drink at him and walks off, daring him to come for her. Inside the room, James punches the wall, declaring war.

66–68: Otis requests a break from rehearsing but James says he doesn’t have the scene yet. It’s the argument from Otis’s rehab dream. Otis demands a cigarette. James flicks a lit one at his head, calling him Little Lord Fauntleroy and taunting that Otis can do what he wants since he’s paying. Otis retorts that he’s doing James a favor by employing him, since he’s a felon. James warns Otis that he doesn’t like it when he talks to him like an employee and to be quiet because he’s close to the edge. “I don’t have to be here.” Otis attempts to calm James, saying he wants him there, but James presses his hand over Otis’s mouth. He insults Otis’s work, making him cry, but then he tells Otis not to cry in front of him. “You keep pushing me…” he says.

69–70: During a scene, Otis’s TV DAD comforts Otis’s character, Jeff. Jeff: I just thought you didn’t love us anymore. TV Dad: I love you more than words can say. The scene stirs intense emotions in Otis. His eyes search the set for his father but find James chatting up a random woman. TV Dad asks Otis if he’s okay. Otis puts his sunglasses on.

70–74: James, on his bed, watches TV. It’s the scene Otis filmed with his TV dad. Otis, in a chair, watches James and smokes a cigarette. Otis walks to his dad and pours his heart out. “I’ve always been waiting for you to act like a real dad. You haven’t done that one time. … I’ve missed you for a long time, dad.” James turns to him and lip syncs TV dad’s line: “I love you Jeff… I love you more than words can say.”

We cut back to Otis in the chair. He never left it, but now he’s crying. James demands to know why. Otis recounts how Tom got their passports expedited, even though James threatened him and his family. James interjects but Otis curses him out. Calmly, James tells his young son not to talk to him like that. Otis demands that James promise to be a better father. James extends his pinky, to pinky swear. Otis slaps it away. James tells Otis he deserves a better father, one who teaches him lessons. He promises to start immediately. “All smart guys know,” James begins, “if you can hit your boss once…” He smacks Otis with all his might. “Then you can hit him twice.” James strikes him again.

Otis, coiled on the bed, crying, tells James to leave. He obeys, driving away on his bike.

Otis wanders out to the junkyard, crying, as James rides the highway on his bike. Otis, spent, sits on some cars and smokes.

P. 74–77: (2005) Otis sits crying as he role-plays the scene, portraying his dad and young Otis while reading lines from a note pad. Dr. Moreno asks about his distress level. Otis explodes. Why put a number to the pain, he asks? So we can chart progress. Otis: For who? Won’t I know progress? Dr. Moreno: For court. Otis tells her 80. He berates and insults her yet she calmly urges him to lower his number. Finally he complies. “The only thing my father gave me that was of any value is pain. And you want to take that away?” She asks him if he’ll let her.

P. 77–79: (1995) In the junkyard, Little Q wipes Otis’s tears with her robe and holds his face in her hands. They look at each other in the Los Angeles moonlight. Inside the Bare Elegance strip club, James orders a drink. When the WAITRESS brings it, he whispers something to her and gives her some money.

Otis mimes as Little Q dances. Meanwhile, James preps drugs in the strip club bathroom while the water runs into a sink. “Hillbilly heroin.” Otis mimes that he’s dead. James sweats. Realizes the sink has overflowed. Little Q, miming, brings Otis back to life. They hug. They dance.

At the Vista pool, Otis dives underwater, touches the bottom and shoots back to the surface. James “dives into his Oxytocin dreams,” nodding off as a stripper performs.

79–83: James pulls his bike into the Vista parking lot. The noise rouses Otis and Little Q, in the room, in bed together. They jump up to make the bed but James enters and sees Little Q in just a robe. James demands to know if she had sex with his son and charges at her, but she slaps him and runs out as he falls to the ground.

James asks Otis if she took advantage of him. Otis says no, “She’s just friendly.” James tells Otis it’s a crime and he’s a victim; he’s just 12 years old. Otis declares his love for her. James heads for the bathroom and vomits.

Similarly, all of their issues come shooting to the surface: career envy, Tom, Otis’s mother. Finally James asks, “How do you think it feels to have my son talk to me the way that you get to talk to me? To have my son paying me?” Otis replies, “You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t pay you.”

James cries. Otis is near tears. James sees his son and lights a cigarette. Otis does the same.

James initiates a deal: Otis will stop bringing up the past so he can move forward, and James will give Otis all he has to give. James extends his pinky. This time Otis accepts.

83: (2005) Otis follows the chicken as V/O from Dr. Moreno tells him to get rid of what doesn’t work and there are no quick fixes.

83–84: (1995) After their argument, James tells Otis he’s growing marijuana beside the freeway. Otis asks what happens if he’s caught? James tells Otis to trust him.

As James and Otis ride on the bike, Otis grips his father and closes his eyes.

(2005) Otis walks toward the chicken as James (1995, V/O) tells Otis about their family’s history of substance abuse.

(1995) James shows off his crop and promises enough money to build Otis’s tree house. Otis runs through the greenery. James: “Get in there! It’s yours!” Otis holds a plant. James puts his arm around his son.

85–86: (2005) Otis continues after the chicken as James’s V/O tells him to let go of any grudges before they kill him from the inside. Otis follows the chicken through the Vista Motel parking lot and sees his dad’s bike.

Their motel room door is open. James appears in the doorway, wearing a clown costume. He mimes for Otis, who watches, frozen.

86: (1995) James teaches Otis to smoke weed. He smiles as Otis coughs violently. “You know a seed has to totally destroy itself to become a flower… And doing that is a violent act, honey boy.”

87: In the Vista Motel parking lot (2005), and in the highway 101 weed garden (1995), James and Otis hug.

87–88: (2005) James and Otis sit with their legs in the Vista Motel pool. James is still in full clown gear. James says he now has everything he ever wanted and hands Otis a joint. Otis says he’s making a movie about James. James says, “Make me look good, honey boy.”

88: (2005) Otis maneuvers the motorcycle. This time James holds his son tight. We stay with them, flying down the highways, through the California landscape.

But it’s only Otis on the bike.

Writing Exercise: I encourage you to read the script, but short of that, if you’ve seen the movie, go through this scene-by-scene breakdown. What stands out to you about it from a structural standpoint?

To download a PDF of the breakdown for Honey Boy, click here.

Kudos to Ericka Boston for doing the scene-by-scene breakdown.

To see 100+ screenplay scene-by-scene breakdowns, go here.