Gould Is Noisy Subject of Thoughtful ‘Secret’

Exuberantly played by Ian Holm, Joe Gould is the loudest man in the quiet, carefully modulated namesake film, “Joe Gould’s Secret,” but he’d be loud even in a noisy one. A boisterous real-life bohemian in 1940s New York, a demanding presence always creating a ruckus, Gould was a significant bum, a street person with a pedigree, and wherever he went attention had to be paid.

It was the life’s work of journalist Joseph Mitchell (played with remarkable stillness by Stanley Tucci, who also directed) to pay attention to people like Gould. A faultless writer (“Up in the Old Hotel” was his final collection) of the kind of character studies that made the New Yorker the New Yorker, Mitchell turned out a pair of profiles about Gould published 15 years apart. Those two stories and what they say about the relationship between the two men are the basis for this graceful, small-scale but insightful film.

Homeless, disheveled-looking, carrying everything that mattered to him in a large, ratty portfolio, Gould is as distinctly an urban character as Mitchell’s urbane, top-coated writer, and the film’s opening voice-over goes out of its way to intentionally blur the distinction between the two.

“In New York City,” a soothing Southern voice begins, “in Greenwich Village, down among the cranks and the misfits and the one-lungers and the has-beens and the might’ve-beens and the would-be’s and the never-wills and the God-knows-whats, I have always felt at home.” Who’s speaking about whom? The next lines tell us it’s Mitchell (who turns out to be from North Carolina) we’re listening to, and something more as well. “Joe Gould told me that when I was first writing about him, not knowing I felt the same. As time went on, I would learn that this was not the only thing we had in common.”

“Joe Gould’s Secret” has more on its mind than commenting on these unlooked for parallels. Elegantly written by Howard A. Rodman (with uncredited work by Tucci), “Secret” deals in its meticulous way with questions like the surprising, often unwieldy nature of reality as well as the always complex relationship that can develop between a writer and a subject.

Mitchell first spies Gould in a neighborhood coffee shop in the village, absolutely demanding a free bowl of soup and then pouring most of a bottle of catsup into it. Played with marvelous brio and a hint of madness about the eyes by Holm (also memorable in “Big Night,” co-directed by Tucci and Campbell Scott), the tempestuous Gould has a fierce but erratic temper, an inability to accommodate to civilization and a great sense of his own importance. “Don’t think me stupid,” he pointedly tells Mitchell, “just because I am unclean.”

The picture of conventionality in his own life as the husband of photographer Therese Mitchell (Hope Davis) and father of two young daughters, Mitchell is mesmerized by Gould’s modus operandi. He’s even more fascinated when he learns about the homeless man’s patrician background and a life’s work that has garnered support from such intellectual bellwethers as e.e. cummings, Ezra Pound and painter Alice Neel (a Susan Sarandon cameo).

For Gould has dedicated himself to what he calls “The Oral History of Our Time,” preserving on paper what ordinary people were saying day in, day out for years. Gould likes to think of it as the “informal history of the shirt-sleeved multitude,” the fruit of thousands of overheard conversations carefully written down in composition books stashed around town for safekeeping. Its current length, the compiler says proudly, is 1.2 million words, three times longer than the Bible.

Gould makes no bones about considering himself an artist, and thoughts about an artist’s place in society are among “Secret’s” most interesting passages. “Only the artist is free because he is single of purpose,” the monomaniacal Gould insists. “He knows what he wants and wants only that and that frightens people.”

Once the first New Yorker piece came out, Gould got some of the recognition he thrived on, but things got more complex for Mitchell, who increasingly had to deal with the way Gould’s personal trajectory called forth uncomfortable echoes of his own life unrecognized dreams and adventures confronting reality. As wife Therese astutely puts it (and as every journalist eventually comes to know), “Stories don’t end just because the writer is finished writing.”

Tucci, working with production designer Andrew Jackness and cinematographer Maryse Alberti, has taken care to set his story in a meticulously re-created Manhattan. Though even Holm can’t quite give this delicate story the oomph of “Big Night,” “Joe Gould’s Secret” is, like that earlier Tucci film, a series of subtly interlocking character studies. While many directors are after the big bang, Tucci is after something quieter, and ultimately more meaningful. It’s the silences, the spaces between sentences when souls communicate without words being exchanged, that interest him the most.

* MPAA rating: R, for some language and brief nudity. Times guidelines: serious, non-exploitative filmmaking.

‘Joe Gould’s Secret’

Ian Holm: Joe Gould

Stanley Tucci: Joseph Mitchell

Patricia Clarkson: Vivian Marquie

Hope Davis: Therese Mitchell

Susan Sarandon: Alice Neel

An October Films presentation, released by USA Films. Director Stanley Tucci. Producers Charles Weinstock, Elizabeth W. Alexander, Stanley Tucci. Executive producers Michael Lieber, Chrisann Verges. Screenplay Howard A. Rodman, based on “Professor Seagull” and “Joe Gould’s Secret” by Joseph Mitchell. Cinematographer Maryse Alberti. Editor Suzy Elmiger. Costumes Juliet Polcsa. Music Evan Lurie. Production design Andrew Jackness. Art director David Stein. Set decorator Catherine Davis. Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

At selected theaters.