Casting director Heidi Levitt has spent decades working in close collaboration with many of the most acclaimed directors of their era on some of the best — and most perfectly and audaciously cast — movies of all time. Movies like “JFK,” “Natural Born Killers,” and “Nixon” for Oliver Stone, or Michael Bay’s “The Rock,” and multiple films for Mark Pellington, Wayne Wang, Wim Wenders, and others. She never seriously considered becoming a director herself, however, until her husband Charlie was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease in 2019.
“I always say this is not the movie I wanted to make, this is the movie I had to make,” Levitt told IndieWire in a recent interview about her new documentary “Walk With Me.” A personal portrait of Heidi and Charlie’s quest to better understand and find treatment for his condition as it progresses, “Walk With Me” is both a moving portrait of the evolution of a marriage and a potent piece of advocacy for more open discussions of Alzheimer’s and the role of caregivers in America.
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“Everybody’s afraid when you mention that word,” Levitt said. “They start looking at you differently. You’re not Charlie; you’re the guy with Alzheimer’s. And I was really afraid of that.” Levitt realized that her background and experience — not just in film, but in journalism, where she began her career with the intention of becoming a news producer — put her in a privileged position to tell Charlie’s story, so she reached out to documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, with whom she had worked on a project that never saw fruition, for feedback.
“I wrote a proposal and sent it to him, and he was super enthusiastic about it,” Levitt said. “Then the pandemic hit.” Although the pandemic and other factors put the brakes on Levitt’s initial plan to get Gibney to produce the movie through his HBO deal, she was determined to keep shooting. “It really became a coping mechanism for me, and it gave Charlie purpose. The biggest thing a person loses with Alzheimer’s is purpose, which is what makes it so scary to talk about.”
Levitt spent four years shooting every few months between her and Charlie’s homes in Los Angeles and rural Vermont, raising funds as she went along and relying on the expertise of an accomplished crew that included director of photography Lisa Rinzler (“Menace II Society,” “Buena Vista Social Club”). Rather than simply shooting around the clock and finding the movie in the editing room, Levitt wanted to be precise and intentional, both for personal reasons (shooting constantly would have been too invasive) and to build on her knowledge as someone who had been working in narrative film since the 1980s.
“I really thought about everything in terms of characters and story and narrative arcs,” Levitt said. “I knew I wanted to show time, and I wanted to show change. I structured it as a filmmaker, like I was writing a story.” Levitt also brought her experience as a casting director to the film when it came to choosing other people who had dealt with Alzheimer’s, from patients and caregivers to doctors, to feature in the story, opting for laser focus in her selections so that there would be fewer but more insightful and impactful voices in the piece.
Levitt also applied what she had learned about working with actors from Stone, Wenders, and others to “Walk With Me,” attempting to create an environment that would yield the best results from her subjects — starting with her own husband.
“I didn’t know that Charlie would be so good on camera,” Levitt said. “That was a lucky, amazing thing that happened.” In scenes with other participants, Levitt tried to create the same kind of circumstances she would in an audition for a dramatic film.
“In an audition, I feel I get the best performance when we’re intimate and it feels like we’re just having a conversation,” Levitt said. “So I did that a lot with the doctors. I needed to guide them into the comfort zone to talk with me.” One thing that Levitt learned from directors like Stone was that getting the best results from an actor requires a wide array of techniques — sometimes ones that are quite manipulative.
“Every great director I’ve worked with has figured out how to get the best out of everybody, from the art department to the actors to me,” Levitt said. “And sometimes it’s incredibly manipulative, but that’s how they keep their eye on the prize. The way Oliver got great performances was he figured out everybody’s soft spot and he picked at it.” There was one “actor” in Levitt’s movie who she knew would not give her great results with that kind of manipulation, however.
“With Charlie, I just had to create an environment and let him be, because if I tried to direct him, he would feel like I was bossing him around,” Levitt said, adding that during the editorial process she had to learn to view Charlie and herself from a certain distance, as characters. That said, sifting through the archival footage — home movies she interspersed with the new material shot both in 16mm and digitally — had unexpected and welcome effects on the director.
“It was an opportunity to fall in love with my husband again, because this disease is so awful and keeps changing who he is,” Levitt said. “That archival stuff was a real comfort.” Although Levitt largely tried to present herself as a character, she did feel that it was important at one point to show herself editing the film, reminding the audience that she’s not just a character but the person telling the story.
“It was hard to figure out where I fit into the story’s trajectory,” Levitt said, noting that finding the balance between focusing on Charlie as an individual, on their marriage, and on the larger, overriding issues having to do with Alzheimer’s and caregiving was one of the central challenges of the film.
“Perspective is something that I need in my life. I get so invested in saving Charlie or in trying to figure out what to do that I lose myself a little in the process. So I think showing myself watching the film as I’m editing it is a reminder that you have to find your way back a little bit.”
Now that the movie is finding its way out into the world, Levitt is finding herself increasingly in the role of advocate for Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers. Tuesday night, she’s screening the film in Washington, D.C. for members of Congress in an attempt to begin a national conversation about Alzheimer’s, and she hopes to make more films that shed light on the topic.
“I don’t want to tell the same story over and over, and I don’t want to see the same ‘oh, woe is me’ story we’ve seen before,” Levitt said. “This is a part of life, and I’m thinking about other stories we can tell, hopefully in a fresh way, that provide that perspective.” Levitt concludes by reasserting that her own perspective as a filmmaker was deeply informed by her career as a casting director, which makes her extremely happy about the Academy’s decision to finally honor the profession with its first Oscar this year.
“Being a casting director is one part anthropologist, one part actor, one part director,” Levitt said. “I couldn’t have directed this movie as well had I not been a casting director.”
“Walk With Me” will screen on Thursday, November 20, at Cinema Village with Heidi Levitt in attendance for a Q&A, followed by a North American release from Outsider Pictures.
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