The life story of Arielle Holmes is harrowing, heartbreaking, and even a bit hopeful. And that story is just 19 years old.
Just ask Josh Safdie, a co-director of Heaven Knows What, a lightly fictionalized account of Holmes’ journey through drug abuse and depression on the streets of Manhattan that came together almost by accident.
In the film, Holmes stars as a young heroin addict on the streets of Manhattan struggling to cope during an obsessive relationship with a drifter (Caleb Landry Jones) who doesn’t seem to reciprocate her feelings. This leads to a series of perilous encounters and self-destructive behaviors.
The story behind the gritty and uncompromising film began when Safdie first met Holmes in New York, while he was doing research for another project he planned to direct with his brother, Benny.
“I was dressed like a Diamond District guy and she was dressed like a showroom assistant,” Safdie said during the recent South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin. “We kind of met each other in these disguises. We agreed to meet up again, because I wanted to find a role for her in the other film.”
At the time, Safdie was struck not only by Holmes’ alluring look, but by that fact that she rode the subway, which he thought was unusual for a showroom assistant. Of course, that’s not what she was.
“When I met her a week later, she was dressed completely different,” Safdie said. “I didn’t know what was going on. It became more apparent that she didn’t have a home, and she started talking about her boyfriend in this very intense way. I was intrigued and we became friends.”
Sometimes Safdie would meet Holmes for dinner, and other times he would just sit with her for hours while she was panhandling. He discovered, for instance, that she’s obsessed with black-metal music and with Harley Quinn, the girlfriend of Batman nemesis the Joker. She dropped out of school at 15 and taught herself to read and write by stealing books from dumpsters outside dorms at NYU.
“I got really sucked into her life and her stories. She seemed like she had a lot of potential,” Safdie said. “There was something unique about this girl and her perspective on things.”
Safdie arranged a job for Holmes so she could earn a little money, but she failed to show up. They drifted out of touch, until one day when Holmes finally called back.
Safdie’s recollection of that conversation is crystal clear: “She said, ‘I’m so sorry. I just got out of the hospital. I just tried to kill myself.’”
Around the same time, Safdie, 31, abandoned his other project and instead decided to pursue a drama about Holmes in the vein of the seminal documentary Streetwise. He started by commissioning a memoir from her that would reveal her most intimate details. And he insisted that Holmes play the lead role.
“She wanted to be an actress. She didn’t want to play herself,” Safdie said. “But now she’s very proud of the movie.”
Holmes wrote a draft of the book, which hasn’t been released yet, by standing in an Apple store for hours at a time before being kicked out.
One of the most harrowing sequences involves the time Holmes slit her wrist in the park, which she didn’t rehearse prior to filming. Instead, Safdie stood in for her during rehearsals.
“She was accessing this horrible time in her life where she kind of was trying to run away, but also so shackled by Ilya,” Safdie said. “It was very difficult for her.”
Jones (The Last Exorcism), a Richardson native, became close to the real Ilya and even lived with him on the streets for a while as part of his research.
Although Safdie shot plenty of documentary-style footage for the film — even filling some supporting roles with Holmes’ junkie friends from the streets around Central Park — he never considered making a documentary, preferring to tell his story in vignettes that blend fact and mood.
“It’s a drama about feelings and emotions, and you can’t capture that in a documentary,” he said. “I’m really interested in this middle-ground territory, where we take movie stars and put them in real situations.”
Still, the filmmaker said he hopes the authenticity of Heaven Knows What will help to change perspectives about drug addicts and the homeless.
“Getting so deep in that world has changed my life for the better,” Safdie said. “I want the movie to shed a light that there are lives like this being lived.”
