Seeing Characters, Not Actors
Oren Moverman, who wrote and directed “Time Out of Mind,” a Hamptons International Film Festival Spotlight Film, engaged in a wide-ranging conversation about his approach to filmmaking with Joe Neumaier, film critic for The New York Daily News, on Saturday. Rowdy Hall in East Hampton was the setting.
“Time Out of Mind” stars Richard Gere as George, a homeless man first encountered as a contractor (Steve Buscemi) rousts him from his squat in an empty New York apartment building. George protests that he lives there, so convincingly that we almost believe him. “The movie starts with Steve’s voice, which is so specific to New York,” said Mr. Moverman. “He’s not a bad guy, but the building is full of garbage that has to be removed, and George is part of the garbage.”
The film follows George as he shuttles between living on the streets and sleeping in shelters, often looking as if he isn’t sure where he is or why, as the people and sounds of the city swirl around him.
“The idea behind the film was to look at something we, and I include myself, avoid all day long in a big city,” said the director. “We wanted the movie to be from the perspective of people who are distracted and not really involved in what’s happening all around them. We had the whole city moving around George. In a way it’s a collection of photographs, where we sometimes get close to the subject and sometimes move away.” Mr. Moverman said he was influenced by Saul Leiter, a pioneer New York photographer who shot the city through windows, reflections, and obstructions.
One of the initial concerns was whether Mr. Gere would be recognized on the streets. Though the decision had been made to shoot with long lenses, thereby keeping the crew at a distance from him, neither the actor nor the director knew what was going to happen.
“So, as a test, we set up to do a shot of me panhandling in Astor Place,” Mr. Gere told the audience after a screening of the film. “It wound up as one of the last scenes in the film. I started out with the cap down low, I was in character, but I was also a little fearful about what the situation would be.” For 45 minutes, the actor held out a paper cup and asked passers-by for change.
“People were making decisions from two blocks away not to engage me. It was a profound experience, a very freaky experience, for these guys behind the camera as well as for me. Nobody made eye contact. I got maybe a buck and a quarter. Nobody saw Richard Gere there. It gave me a very deep insight of the metaphysical world of someone on the streets. They’re not part of the structure at all. They’re radioactive.”
The film creates the urban environment and puts the audience in the position of paying attention to something it’s used to avoiding. “My experience is that you begin to discover the movie when you start shooting it. The sound at a certain point became the city, and we treated the sound design like the score of the movie,” said Mr. Moverman. “We separated the sound and made it as surround as possible, with fragments of conversation, music, noise — an assaultive soundscape.”
His films, which include “The Messenger” and “Ramparts” as writer-director and “Jesus’ Son” and “I’m Not There” as writer, focus on character. “I’m interested in character much more than stories. I find stories quite boring. I write with a lot of empathy for the characters, because you’re developing an intimate relationship with the character when you write it. When writing, I never see an actor, I just see characters.”
Mr. Moverman grew up in Israel and came to New York City in 1988 determined to make films. He decided to teach himself screenwriting by adapting a collection of short stories. Years later, he met Elizabeth Cuthrell, who was starting a production company with David Urrutia, both of them actors. She invited him to join them in adapting Denis Johnson’s book of short stories, “Jesus’ Son.”
“The three of us, Elizabeth, David, and I, didn’t know what we were doing. I didn’t know Denis Johnson had a huge following, including a celebrity following, so as the project took shape a lot a great actors wanted to be involved.” The film was well received by critics, including Robert Ebert, who wrote, “ ‘Jesus’ Son’ surprises me with moments of wry humor, poignancy, sorrow and wildness. It has a sequence as funny as any I’ve seen this year, and one as harrowing, and it ends in a bittersweet minor key, as it should.”
“The Messenger,” Mr. Moverman’s first film as writer-director, starred Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster as soldiers telling next of kin that their loved ones had been killed in Iraq. “The biggest challenge with my first film as director, as with every film since, is to get people not to think about the way films are supposed to be made but to think about the ways we can make them.”
As a writer, much of his work deals with identity, for example “I’m Not There,” a biopic about Bob Dylan directed by Todd Haynes, “that really isn’t a biopic.” When Mr. Haynes proposed the idea, Mr. Moverman rejected it because “it will be a movie all about casting, how did you get a guy who looks like Dylan, sounds like Dylan. I suggested he just pick 10 people, none of whom are Bob Dylan but are aspects of him, his career, his influences, and just play with that. Todd looked at me and said, ‘That sounds like a Todd Haynes film.’ ” Among the “Dylans” are Cate Blanchett, Ben Wishaw, Christian Bale, Marcus Carl Franklin, Heath Ledger, and Mr. Gere.
“Love and Mercy,” a film about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, directed by Bill Pohlad and written by Mr. Moverman, premiered last month at the Toronto Film Festival. Split between the Brian Wilson of the 1960s who produced “Pet Sounds,” played by Paul Dano, and the 1985 post-breakdown Wilson (John Cusack), it, too, is an unconventional biopic. “We got to go to the studio where they recorded ‘Pet Sounds,’ put together the group of studio musicians, and re-recorded ‘Pet Sounds’ with Brian Wilson there,” said Mr. Moverman.
Both he and Mr. Gere hope to do a lot of outreach with “Time Out of Mind,” to bring attention to the issue of homelessness. “Richard was trying to make a movie about a homeless guy for 10 years,” said the director. “He’s on the board of the Coalition for the Homeless. He lives in that world and cares deeply about it. We hope the reception for the film will allow us to take it as far as we can.”