Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? The obvious unforeseen obstacle, crisis, and unpredictable event we had to respond to in making Willie Nelson & Family was the pandemic. But the impact on the process was surprising. As most people know (if they don’t, they will after seeing the five-part documentary film), Willie Nelson lives on the road. He always has to be on the bus, on […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 4, 2023The Ticket, premiering today at the Tribeca Film Festival, is Israeli filmmaker Ido Fluk’s first American film, dubbed a “morality fable” exploring all the various behaviors that manifest in a blind man who mysteriously, one day, gains his vision. Dan Stevens plays the suddenly social-climbing, newly-sighted man, and Malin Akerman is the old-model wife who may no longer be enough for him. Writer/director Oren Moverman is one of the film’s producers, and, below, Fluk talks about how that collaboration came to be and how he visualized a movie about a man new to vision. Filmmaker: What inspired this story of a blind […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 17, 2016The following interview was originally published in Filmmaker‘s Summer, 2015 issue. It is appearing online today for the first time. Time Out of Mind opens today via IFC Films. Alongside his biggest professional success as a screenwriter — he co-wrote Bill Pohlad’s hit Brian Wilson biopic, Love & Mercy — Oren Moverman returns to theaters this summer as a director with an equally striking yet very different film. Time Out of Mind, which premiered last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival, joins Moverman’s previous features — The Messenger and Rampart — in its politically aware depiction of compromised masculinity, […]
by Ira Sachs on Sep 9, 2015May 9, 2012 My friend Arnold Barkus and I decide to collaborate on a script about the true-life relationship between outsider artist Joseph Cornell, a 59 year-old virgin who still lived at home with his mother and crippled younger brother, and Joyce Hunter, a 19 year-old waitress and teen runaway. January 17, 2013 Arnold and I submit a draft of our script, titled The Story of Joseph Cornell and Joyce Hunter, to the Hamptons Screenplay Lab. March 18, 2013 I receive a voicemail from David Nugent, the artistic director of the Hamptons International Film Festival. He informs me that our […]
by Caveh Zahedi on Jun 10, 2013Rampart is a hard-slamming action film … a disturbing portrait of a goon gone-amok … a subtle investigation of a sensitive man … an incisive dissection of a raging numbskull … a shrewd portrayal of a terribly wounded soul. Rampart is a film of extremes and subtleties swiftly moving yet rich in detail. If not expertly crafted and intricately woven, Rampart would quickly implode. Set in 1999 Los Angles, Rampart is about a dirty cop rushing into a train wreck with reality. The cynical and enraged 24-year LAPD veteran is locked in a whirlwind of events that rip him to […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Feb 7, 2012The Rampart scandal, which caused a huge black eye for the LAPD in the ’90s, has been sensationalized on TV shows like The Shield and movies like Training Day, but if The Messenger showed us anything it’s that Oren Moverman is not interested in embellishing anything in his films, so his latest, Rampart, should be no exception. For the film he reteams with The Messenger star Woody Harrelson who plays a corrupt LAPD cop who must come to terms that with the scandal the fun is now over. And if having Moverman and Harrelson making a film together again isn’t […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Sep 10, 2011In its 12th year the Sarasota Film Festival has established itself as an important regional festival stop. Wedged between SXSW and Tribeca, Sarasota’s 10-day event is filled with festival circuit favorites, access to industry folk for the area filmmakers and lots of parties. [Full disclosure: I’m on the jury for the Independent Visions award this year.] Kicking off last night with Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini‘s The Extra Man, the film stars Kevin Klein and Paul Dano as unlikely roommates living in Manhattan, one an aging playboy (Klein) the other a dreamer trying to find his place in life […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Apr 10, 2010Leading up to the Oscars on March 7, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Ira Sachs interviewed The Messenger co-writer-director Oren Moverman for our Fall 2009 issue. The Messenger is nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Woody Harrelson) and Best Original Screenplay (Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman). The two Iraq war soldiers played by Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson in Oren Moverman’s astonishing directorial debut, The Messenger, serve in a different kind of military theater. It’s not in the Middle East but at home, here in […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Feb 18, 2010The following interview appeared originally in Filmmaker‘s Fall, 2007 print edition. We don’t cover enough screenwriters in Filmmaker, but that’s not entirely our fault. This magazine is devoted to independent film, and for many, the director is also the writer. Or the script has emerged from improvisation or some other nontraditional means. And while there is a new breed of independent-minded screenwriters today — Charlie Kaufman, Capote’s Dan Futterman and Juno’s Diablo Cody come immediately to mind — many of the “marquee screenwriters” still work almost exclusively in the studio world. By virtue of the unique niche that screenwriter Oren […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 1, 2007