Trivia / Beau Is Afraid

• Acclaimed Flop: Despite generally glowing critical reviews and high praise from veteran filmmakers, the movie didn't make back a third of its budget at the box office.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $35 million. Box office, $11.5 million. The budget Ari Aster was granted for this long, deeply personal, and extremely weird movie would have likely required it to gross even more than Midsommar in order to just break even; it failed to make a fourth of that film's gross by the end of its theatrical run, and A24 reportedly lost $35 million on the film. However, it was soon revealed that Aster and A24 both expected this outcome and didn't mind.
• California Doubling: The city of Corrina and the town of Wasserton, both fictional, are nevertheless implied to be part of the United States, but the movie was shot in Montreal and the neighboring borough of St-Bruno-de-Montarville in Canada.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: In an interview several months after the film's release, Aster stated that it was his personal favorite of his films thus far.
  "...I would say that it's the film I'm proudest of. I think it's the best filmmaking that I've done. I love the film, and I really hope that people continue to find it."
• Doing It for the Art: Both Ari Aster and A24 knew that the film's bizarre concept and structure would not fare well for general audiences or even some of their audiences and very much expected it to bomb at the box office. Aster's main goal was sharing the full story of the film to the world.
• Enforced Method Acting: Joaquin Phoenix had sharpened pins installed in his bandaged hand to poke him painfully if he used it.
• In Memoriam: The film is dedicated to Billy Mayo, who played Sidney in Ari Aster's short film The Strange Thing About the Johnsons, and who originally played Beau in his 2011 short film of the same name, a nascent version of this film. He passed away in 2019.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: The younger Beau is played by Armen Nahapetian, who looks so much like Joaquin Phoenix that a lot of people thought Phoenix had been digitally de-aged.
• Time-Shifted Actors:
  • Beau is portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix as an adult and by Armen Nahapetian as a teenager.
  • Elaine is portrayed by Parker Posey as an adult and by Julia Antonelli as a teenager.
  • Mona is portrayed by Patti LuPone as an older woman and by Zoe Lister-Jones as a younger woman.
• What Could Have Been: While there's several scenes from the 2014 script that are pretty similar to the actual movie, some differences in it stand out. Some of those are:
  • Once at Roger and Grace's house, Beau is in no hurry to leave (since the funeral already happened), and he even calls his therapist, who advises him to stay with them. The script describes a few extra scenes with them, including a montage of them living together as a happy family and Grace taking Beau to another therapist.
  • Grace and Roger's son doesn't exist in the script, so Toni doesn't have angst about her parents treating Beau as a Replacement Goldfish. Her death by drinking paint, which happens in the garage, is portrayed more as a self-destructive impulse than a suicide, since an early scene (that doesn't exist in the movie) shows her and her friend inhaling the fumes of a car's exhaust to "get fucked".
  • In the script, the Orphans of the Forest are a murderous cult that brainwashes orphans by making them believe that certain celebrities killed their parents, turning them into assassins. In the movie, they are just a weird but benevolent theater troupe.
  • The ending in the script is more open and comedic, since there's no trial and Beau gets into the ocean after taking the boat, where he comes across a cruise ship where Michelle Obama (the target the Orphans assigned to him) is conducting an exercise program for obese children. Beau screams in frustration and the screen cuts to black as he enters his Manchurian Agent mode.

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