‘The Outside Story’ is the perfect movie to ease you back outside

Welcome to Thanks, I Love It, our series highlighting something onscreen we’re obsessed with this week. 

The Outside Story centers on a man who’s been stuck at home for some ungodly period of time, who is now being made to venture out and try to interact with other humans again. But it’s not about our current process of slowly returning to “normal” life after a year of social distancing. At least, it wasn’t meant to be.

“I don’t even feel like I’ve fully processed how much it echoes our current reality,” writer-director Casimir Nozkowski says on the phone with Mashable. “The fact that the film connects to the pandemic, connects to something that’s so epic, so devastating, so ridiculous — I don’t even really know what to do with that information.”

The Outside Story was shot in November 2018, well before the first reports of COVID-19, and its protagonist’s reasons for staying home have nothing to do with disease. Still, the parallels are obvious. 

“I had a friend say, you know, if you just slap a new date on the front of the film, this film could take place right after the pandemic. It’s about this guy who stayed inside, he was super paranoid, didn’t want to catch the virus, and now here he is, venturing outside,” Nozkowski recalls. “So around there, it started to dawn on me that there were some themes that could be resonant.”

In the movie, Charles (played by Brian Tyree Henry) is stays home because he feels stuck. He spends his days editing video obituaries for recently deceased movie stars, his own filmmaking aspirations having fallen by the wayside. He avoids social gatherings (all the better to avoid the dreaded “So what have you been working on?”) and orders in from the same spots night after night. 

His homebody ways have gotten so unbearable, in fact, that they’ve driven away his girlfriend, Isha (Sonequa Martin-Green) — adding a freshly broken heart to Charles’s growing list of excuses for staying on the couch. It’s not until he accidentally locks himself out of his apartment without his wallet or shoes that he starts to connect with the people around him, out of necessity at first but then, as the day goes on, sincere curiosity.

It may not be exactly the experience we’re going through right now, but Nozkowski’s gentle charmer does serve as a reminder of the joys of going out and meeting people again. As Charles shuffles around the block in his polka dot socks (and an oversized cardigan that probably looks just like the one you spent much of 2020 huddled under), The Outside Story paints a sweet-but-not-too-sweet portrait of a Brooklyn where people might be prickly at first, but reveal more interesting depths over time. 

That includes Charles himself, who gradually opens up as the day goes on. He gets advice from an exasperated upstairs neighbor (Michael Cyril Creighton) whose sexy encounter with a visiting Norwegian couple (Nadia Bowers and Paul Thureen) keeps getting interrupted by Charles’s pleas to buzz him into the building. He befriends a lonely teen piano prodigy (Olivia Edward) struggling with an overbearing stage mom (Maria Dizzia). He helps an elderly widow (Lynda Gravatt) with her online dating profile after she tries to get him some shoes. “I think the point of this movie is that people are actually inherently kind when you deal with them,” says Nozkowski. 

It’s not the type of movie where anything earth-shattering happens; unlike in Henry’s other recent release, no one unleashes a robot monster capable of leveling an entire city. But that’s the beauty of The Outside Story — especially now, when the thought of social life can be a bit anxiety-inducing. “For me, the film is about all the things we take for granted in our lives,” says Nozkowski. The Outside Story, he tells Mashable, is one of “someone falling back in love with life” by reconnecting with the people around him. 

Bit by bit, Charles becomes a better version of himself, with a more generous view of himself and a more expansive idea of the world around him. “Ultimately, that’s what the people in your community around you are able to do, is center you, ground you, bring you back in line with what life is,” says Nozkowski.

Which might sound like a lot — but in The Outside Story, as in real life, those connections can start small. Throughout the film, Charles, who’s been working on an obituary for a movie star named Gardner St. James, asks the people he encounters what their favorite Gardner St. James movie is. It’s small talk, but his genuine interest allows them to let down their guards for a moment: A traffic cop (Sunita Mani) commiserates with him over their shared obsessive streak; two movers share in his dismay over another star’s sudden death. 

“I feel like when people have nothing in common on the surface, people doing totally different things, living totally different lives, ultimately it’s pop culture that I think becomes the language that we have in common,” says Nozkowski. “I can think of hundreds, thousands of times where I was talking to a stranger in the most random place, like my car getting towed, and I’m talking to the tow truck guy like, ‘Yeah, but did you watch [Godzilla vs. Kong]?’ Things like that, talking about that stuff gives people this kind of common language.”

So if the idea of diving headfirst into social life again is too intimidating, start by asking your deli guy what his favorite Brian Tyree Henry movie is. Tell your GvK-loving friend-of-a-friend about Henry’s new little indie film. Chat with your upstairs neighbor about your favorite celebs while you help her carry a heavy box up the stairs.

And as you do, remember: “Embrace it. Do like Charles. You know, want to go out again. He sees the value of being outside, like we all should,” says Nozkowski.

“It’s going to be wild. It’s going to be crazy summer.”

The Outside Story is now streaming on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play, and more.