From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the Treatment, which you can also hear at KCRW.com.

My guest, writer, director, Paul White, has been here a number of time.

The first time for his film, which he did with his brother, American Pie.

Since then, he's been here for Down to Earth and Abouter Boy.

His new film as writer-director is the adaptation being Flynn starring Robert De Niro and Paul Dano.

Paul, thanks so much for coming back.

Thanks for having me. It's interesting because looking at the films you've done, there's so many cases where

there's basically somebody trying to create a narrative around his own life.

Yeah, and this really focuses in on that.

I'm really into folding some aspect of performance into, whether it be a film or a play

and consciousness of performance, whether it be a film or a play and consciousness of performance.

Whether it be an American Pive, there's a big singing competition in it.

American Dreams, which is also about a singing competition.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And about a boy ends with a sort of big performance.

This one, the storyline, Robert De Niro, it's based on memoir by the poet Nick Flynn,

and Robert De Niro plays a guy who's an alcoholic who was very much an absentee dad and who considers

himself one of the three greatest writers that America has ever produced. Unfortunately,

his desire to be great has destroyed his

ability to actually work. So he ends up being homeless at some point in the movie. And Paul Dano

plays Nick, who at that point in his life was working at a homeless shelter in Boston. And

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