Stephen Chbosky writes friendship with a warmth we value, taking young people's feelings seriously without making them ridiculous. His weakness is explanation: he too often gives his characters extra dialogue when the actors have already made them clear.
Fi1m perspective
In The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), friendship is allowed to be fun, at least until Stephen Chbosky feels obliged to explain why it matters. Logan Lerman, Emma Watson and Ezra Miller give the school story humour and friction, keeping its familiar troubles from becoming the only things that define these people. We were moved by the friendships, because the three actors make the pleasure of finding company feel as important as the difficulties surrounding it. Chbosky is worth watching for that sympathy, and for his refusal to treat being young as something faintly embarrassing.
Writing the screenplay for Rent (2005) meant adapting a stage musical; with The Perks of Being a Wallflower, he returned to his own 1999 novel and directed the result. That move matters because the actors are so important to what works in his writing. The voice-over and conspicuous musical taste belong to a conventional coming-of-age drama, but the cast keeps the friendships lively. What strains our patience is the accumulation of adolescent troubles, each requiring attention that the script cannot always give it. Fewer difficulties, explored more fully, would have helped.
The limits of his approach are clearer in Beauty and the Beast (2017), directed by Bill Condon and co-written with Evan Spiliotopoulos. Some of the added attention to Belle and the Beast helps their romance, and Watson and Dan Stevens give it warmth. But characters keep supplying information about their past when the next exchange between them would be more welcome. Chbosky shares responsibility for that excess; the screenplay is not his alone. Too much of the extra dialogue lengthens the film without making anyone easier to understand.
His subsequent directing work includes Wonder (2017) and Dear Evan Hansen (2021), both adaptations. He keeps returning to young outsiders and to the task of making their feelings understood. That is a worthwhile concern, though we would like to see him leave more of the explanation to his actors. In Perks, Lerman, Watson and Miller give him plenty of reason to do so. Start there, provided teenage earnestness does not send you looking for the remote.
Biography
Stephen Chbosky is an American screenwriter, film director and author. He was born on 25 January 1970 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.F.A. in film writing in 1992 and directed his first feature, The Four Corners of Nowhere, in 1995.
Chbosky wrote the 1999 novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower. He wrote the screenplay and directed the 2012 film adaptation. His other screenwriting credits include Rent (2005) and the screenplay for Beauty and the Beast (2017). He co-created the television series Jericho (2006–2008) and directed the films Wonder (2017) and Dear Evan Hansen (2021). His second novel, Imaginary Friend, was published in 2019.
