Screenwriter Oren Moverman has a prestigious filmography, including heady and penetrating dramas like I’m Not There, Love & Mercy, and Jesus’ Son. In 2009, he also began directing, and received scores of critical acclaim for his films The Messenger and Rampart. His newest film, currently in theaters, is called Time Out of Mind, and it follows the day-to-day depressive drudgery of one homeless man living on the streets of New York. It’s a stirring portrait of what Moverman calls “a societal problem.”
Moverman is a deep thinker, and a passionate artist who was kind enough to be interviewed by CraveOnline, revealing the origins of Time Out of Mind, homelessness in general, and how European cinema may or may not have influenced him. He also has a few words on the weird outlier in his filmography: it turns out that he also wrote The Quiet Ones.
Crave: What drove you to write a movie about a homeless man?
Oren Moverman: I [wish] I could take credit for starting the process, but I didn’t. It actually started with Richard Gere, who, years ago, received a script with a different title about a homeless guy. It was something he became quite obsessed with, to figure out how to do it. He ended up buying the script and developing it in different directions. And then a few years ago – less than three years ago – I ran into Richard at a party, and he started talking – I knew [him] from I’m Not There, the Bob Dylan movie that I co-wrote – and he was saying that he has this role as a homeless man that he really wants to play. He just can’t figure it out, and said why don’t you take a look?
I knew immediately he was trying to do something very different from anything that he had done before. That immediately excited me. Then I read the script, figured out what we could do with it. I also felt this was an invitation to go through a world that I didn’t know from personal experience. A world that’s right next to us, but that many of us don’t really notice. So it just became a very appealing process, where we started going to homeless shelters, started talking to people on both sides of the issue, and really try to figure out the best way to tell a movie, to tell about the experience of the homeless, the experience of homeless shelters, without being preachy, without all the conventions. A kind of experiential approach.
You explored shelters? What was that process like?
You go out there, you hear people, you listen to stories, and it starts become a movie about the process as opposed to a story. So, while there is a story, and there are things to hang your hat on, it’s still very much a movie that takes you through a process. In that process, many of the scenes you see in the movie are scenes and exteriors that we had talked about with people who had shared their experiences of being homeless, people in shelters. So it really informed the script in a true and practical way.
Did Richard Gere ask you to write and direct? Or did you want to direct?
He said he wanted a writer/director. Basically, he said to me in so many words, that this should be up your alley. Not knowing if I would like it or not, just kind of making that idea a possibility. For me it was really a kind of exciting moment. I had to consider it as a writer/director, and it started to make a lot of sense to me.
IFC Films
Is this movie intended to be making some sort of political statement? Homelessness is, after all, a big problem that is often politicized.
Yeah, but I don’t think it’s a political problem. I think it a societal problem. I think it’s a human problem. And I think that’s all we’re trying to do: really call attention to the humanity of the characters, and find a way to shine a light, basically, on the idea that homelessness is everyone’s problem. Not just the people who are on the street. But it’s society’s problem, and how can we as a people and as a community and as a country – and even as a world! – ask “How do we deal with thins thing? How do we take a responsible, human approach to this that benefits society?” Because right now, everyone is hurt by homelessness.
Homelessness is actually very expensive for society. It’s a mental illness issue in many cases. Substance abuse. It’s a hardcore problem for society. As individuals, we tend not to deal with them as members of the community. The movie is just saying “Look at one story. Look at the possibilities and the experiences of a person experiencing this.” And how do we talk about it? If we can generate some sort of conversation about it, then that is really our job with this movie.
How much of the film was made in actual homeless shelters?
We shot inside the Bellevue Intake Center. Which is the main shelter in Manhattan for men. That’s where everyone who goes into the shelter system in New York is processed. So they allowed us to actually shoot there one night. So all those scenes are there. Then we moved to Brooklyn where we did a little bit of… we turned a school into a shelter. But we had access to a shelter. The city shelter for the homeless, gave us a lot of direction and advice as to how to portray these places.
Did you interview any homeless people? Did any of their stories make it into the movie?
Oh absolutely. Almost everything in there is based on stories I heard, or things that I’d seen. It’s not like we invented something here. Because the truth is there are lots of familiar tropes and familiar stories out there. There are a lot of unusual ones as well. We were relying on the people who actually lived it. The people would guide us, so the direction the material took would have some sort of truth.
The cast is very impressive. Steve Buscemi, Kyra Sedgwick. How did all these people come on board?
We asked them! [Laughs.] People were excited about the script, I think, and wanted to be a part of it. They realized that the movie would be, well, ultimately a movie, but also have another purpose. All the people in the movie are people who care about the subject as well, and just wanted to be a part of it.
IFC Films
Your films are very down-to-Earth in a very European way. Very naturalistic. Are you a big fan of Vittorio De Sica, for instance?
I think that, when you reach a certain age – if you love movies, and you’ve been obsessed with movies your entire life – when you reach a certain age, all these movies are piled in your head, and an aesthetic becomes less intellectual, and more instinctual. I’ve seen a lot of European films, but also a lot of Americans, but there is not one inspiration where I can say we’re doing just that. But I think it’s a collection of a lot of different people. I can talk to you very comfortably about anyone from De Sica to Altman to Nicholas Ray to Renoir. All these things. You may not see anything in the movie and say “Oh, that’s ‘blank.’” They are who they are and they did what they did. I think it’s just a collection of everything in our DNA as filmmakers.
You’ve written movies about Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson. Are there any more obscure musicians that you’ve wanted to share with the world in movie form?
Hm… I’d have to get back to you on that one.
What was the first record you bought with your own money?
Berlin by Lou Reed.
Nice! When you write, do you hope to direct, or does the direction come later?
When you write, you’re directing in your head. So it always feels like directing when I’m writing anyway. But I’m always open to the possibility of directing or not directing. I don’t get personal about such things. I love to see other people take a script and make it their own, and I like to be part of the process of directing a movie. Every case is different.
IFC Films
Of all your screenplays, The Quiet Ones is sort of the outlier. Explain yourself, sir.
The goal was to keep doing unusual things. But I’m not a genre writer. That’s not what I’m known for, but I do have jobs where I work as a re-writer on existing scripts. And sometimes they get made, and sometimes I get credited on them, and sometimes I’m not. I’m not going to tell you the ones I’m not credited on. [Laughs.] But that’s part of, I believe, the way you get jobs in this town.
Your screenplays don’t possess a lot of levity, largely because they tackle very heady subject matter. Do not like comedy, or are you just not interested?
I am hugely unfunny. I think comedy is really hard. I wouldn’t know how to write a proper comedy. It’s also not my instinct to go for comedy. I like dramas, I like certain kinds of storytelling. There are people who are much better than me at writing jokes. I’ve never been a joke writer. I don’t think I remember one joke I’ve heard in my life.
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Witney Seibold is a contributor to CraveOnline and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
