“We developed our own language”: the director who created a cinematic shorthand with Woody Harrelson
Plenty of actors and filmmakers have developed a shorthand between them, but it usually unfolds gradually over a number of years and multiple projects together. Foregoing that notion, Woody Harrelson only needed one movie to stumble upon the other half of what quickly became a hive mind.
It was a fruitful, if brief, partnership that only lasted for two films. In most respects, it would be ridiculous to even suggest that two talents on opposite sides of the camera could become so synergetic they don’t even need to verbalise their feelings, but Oren Moverman was adamant he and Harrelson were instant kindred spirits.
When the filmmaker made his directorial debut on The Messenger, it quickly marked them out as a winning partnership. The intimate war drama earned Harrelson ‘Best Supporting Actor’ nominations at the Academy Awards and Golden Globes, with Moverman shortlisted at the Oscars in the ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ category.
Having hit it off from the earliest days of principal photography, then into the shoot and onto the promotional trail in support of The Messenger‘s release, Harrelson and Moverman had become virtually inseparable. When the director began crafting his follow-up feature, Rampart, he knew there was only one person he was ever planning on turning to.
“When I came on board to direct, I only had one actor in mind for Dave Brown: Woody Harrelson,” he told Filmmaker Magazine. “He has the ability to explore masculinity on so many levels, he has so many layers as a theatre, film, and television actor, and he has so much depth as a man, a father, a husband, an activist, a goddamn vegan, that I never really thought of anyone but him.”
Clearly, the love-in was in full effect, at least until Rampart was released. Harrelson was solid in the role of a corrupt cop struggling with the aftermath of the titular incident that cast the LAPD in a very bad light, but he ended up being “depressed beyond words” after the film emerged from the editing suite looking completely unrecognisable.
He’s never worked with Moverman since, which may or may not be telling, but at the time, the director thought they’d be together forever. “Of course, it helped that I knew him from The Messenger and that we spent so much time on the road that we developed our own language,” he continues. “I wanted to keep our dialogue going and find new ways of expressing it.”
Since Rampart, they have found exactly zero ways of expressing their cinematic shorthand after calling it quits on their blossoming relationship after two pictures, which obviously wasn’t Moverman’s intention when he’d spoken so highly of the brainwaves he and Harrelson were sending back and forth that nobody else was capable of decoding.
