34th Street: What made you decide to work on The Messenger? Oren Moverman: From my point of view, this is a project that started with an idea that my co-writer Alessandro Camon and I developed. ... Our intention at that stage was basically to shine the light on the people who have to live with the consequences of war. This was at a time when these images were not allowed to be shown, when there was no discussion about what’s going to happen on the home front when people come back or when families are torn apart.
Street: How did your own experience in the military influence your work on this film? OM: ... I served in a different military in a different time, but I felt that I could communicate the emotional landscape of a soldier who comes back from battle or from a combat zone to “normal” life and the troubles readjusting. I felt that that was an experience I lived through, and in the movie we refer to it as “coming back from another planet.”
Street: Ben Foster makes a very believable Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery in the film. How did you know he was right for the role? OM: I just looked him in the eye when I met him. He’s someone who is so honest about who he is that it was clear to me that he could play an emotionally charged, intense role and keep it together. He’s obviously a fantastic, sublime actor so there was no doubt for a second about his ability to do it acting-wise. But when I met the human being and saw the depth of his character and intellect and emotions, it was just a very easy decision to make…and he’s very sexy, too.
Street: As one of the writers, in what ways did The Messenger turn out how you expected and in what ways did it surprise you? OM: It surprised me because we were very open in the process, so I was actually surprised every day. We were improvising; we were working off a script that I really believed in, that everybody believed in — that’s what drew everyone to the project — but once we were all on board, we found that we had a tremendous group of people on both sides of the camera. We could actually explore and ask each other questions and come up with new ideas based on the ideas that were specified in the script. For me, that was the greatest joy, the greatest gift, and probably the biggest surprise in the whole process: that underneath something that we all knew was really good, we found even better things.
