Most of us go about our business in the urban hustle and bustle with little time to notice the “incidental” people around us. In the case of the homeless, we ignore them willfully or subconsciously. In some cases we make a concerted effort to avoid them by altering our sidewalk route and/or not making eye contact.
Director/writer Oren Moverman, though, with his feature Time Out of Mind (IFC Films), connects us to homeless people, particularly a character named George portrayed by Richard Gere. Moverman brings us into George’s world in an observational manner as the camera—often from afar—tracks him adrift on the streets of New York City.
George is a desperate man who descends into homelessness. He seeks refuge at Bellevue Hospital, Manhattan’s largest intake center for homeless men. It’s a harsh environment fraught with marginalized souls. But George befriends a seasoned shelter dweller (played by Ben Vereen). At that juncture, Gere’s character begins to harbor hope of reconnecting with his estranged daughter Maggie (Jena Malone).
Time Out Of Mind—with a screenplay penned by Moverman and Jeffrey Caine—made its wide U.S. release last month. The film earned the International Critics’ Award at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.
Time Out Of Mind is the third full-length theatrical film directed by Moverman. He made his feature directorial debut with The Messenger which earned him an Academy Award nomination (with Alessandro Camon) for Best Original Screenplay. Starring Ben Foster, The Messenger debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for Best Screenplay and Best First Feature at the 2010 Independent Spirit Awards. It received the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival, and Moverman earned the Spotlight Award for Best Directorial Debut from the National Board of Review.
Next came the 2012 release Rampart, which Moverman directed and co-wrote (with James Ellroy).
Moverman has also co-written such films as Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There, Alison Maclean’s Jesus’ Son and the Bill Pohlad-directed Brian Wilson biopic Love and Mercy.
SHOOT: How did you become involved in Time Out of Mind? Provide some backstory.
Moverman: It all started with Richard Gere. He had been developing this project for a long time off of another script. He really stuck to it. He was obsessed with playing this homeless character. I ran into Richard at a party. We were catching up. I knew him from I’m Not There [which Moverman co-wrote]. He told me he couldn’t quite figure out how this story should be told. I could see that he was going somewhere very different in his work, that he was going into a space which required new exploration and experimentation. I was drawn to what he was trying to do.
SHOOT: What was the biggest creative challenge that Time Out of Mind posed to you as a writer and director?
Moverman: The challenge is to be as truthful as possible, to avoid the cliches and the expected. The challenge was to turn the viewer’s attention to a guy who in normal life he or she wouldn’t notice. I wanted to avoid the conventional narrative. There are no good guys, no bad guys—just everybody living life, dealing with their own circumstances and challenges.
We took an observational approach. From the very beginning, we wanted to make a movie about a guy whom we—including myself—wouldn’t bother to notice in our everyday lives. Yet like all people, this guy has a story. The movie is from a city’s point of view. Instead of going onto the character’s point of view and showing things from his perception, really the effort the movie made is to find him, to get closer to him and his story, to peel away layers of the onion. It’s a story that explains him to you but not too much. We see him from far away perspectives, dealing with the layers, the barriers that separate us from him in an urban environment.
We strategically hid the camera, put it in places where the general public wouldn’t notice it. We’d then throw Richard [Gere] and Ben [Vereen] into these live environments. We wanted the city to move around them. We start very far away with very long lenses and slowly get closer and closer as the character gains our empathy and compassion.
Physically the challenge was making a two-hour movie in 21 days, having to move fast and in a very deliberate kind of way. Shooting in live environments is always complicated. You can only plan so much. You have to react to things as they unfold.
SHOOT: All three of the features you’ve directed have been shot by DP Bobby Bukowski. Why did you gravitate to him again for Time Out of Mind and what did he bring to the project?
Moverman: He is my partner in these movies, a true artist, an incredibly loving and sensitive person. He really understands cinema, the actors, the process. Together we create the visual worlds in these movies. I trust him 110 percent on everything. At this point we work telepathically. We clicked from the day we met and know what we want to do on every project.
All of it is planned with the idea that things will go differently. With all the shot listing, location scouting, figuring things out, we’re still not locked in. We feed off of each other and are flexible enough to be very spontaneous.
Bobby bought into the observational approach for Time Out of Mind. We shot from remote places with long lenses—from a cafe, a store, a tent, an apartment or on a rooftop, observing Richard and Ben from afar. Our approach was also inspired by still photographs of New York City, many by the late Saul Leiter where you would see all these reflections and layers of the city. After studying these stills, we wanted to create an energy with the frames since the camera wouldn’t be moving. The idea was to shoot reflections—we would often shoot through a window—to add layers of movement to the scenes.
SHOOT: You also again collaborated with editor Alex Hall. He cut your first film, The Messenger. What did he bring to Time Out of Mind?
Moverman: The same answer that I had for Bobby but for a different person. Alex is a great artist, an excellent editor. He has become a good friend and a trusted collaborator. He has done a lot of high quality work in TV on top of documentaries and features. He does it all but doesn’t apply the same methodology to everything. He understands the work as it is and approaches it based on that understanding. We connect in our conversations. We are on the same wavelength. Yet by the time I look at his cuts in the editing room, I see different ideas emerging, sometimes ideas that I wouldn’t think of but love. He’s always finding the movie, exploring it and massaging it.
SHOOT: Is there an example you can cite of something new he brought to Time Out of Mind?
Moverman: Alex knows how I feel about music. For a rough cut, he started loading up with music, most notably for a scene in the bar. We needed a song there and he came up with The Velvet Underground’s “Candy Says.” He intuitively came up with the ideal song for that scene so we started the long process of getting the rights to that song. Everything Alex does helps to tell the story.
