TRANSIT FOLK HERO
Man with Asperger’s who makes a habit of taking joyrides in N.Y.C. trains and buses the subject of Hot Docs film,
New Yorker Darius McCollum loves the city’s subway trains, the weight of his ring of keys to the off-limits, hidden places in stations, the shrill of his official whistle, the MTA badge on the sleeve of his pressed blue shirt.
Trouble comes when McCollum, who has never worked for the transit system, drives off in a bus or a subway train.
The compulsion that sends the 51year-old man behind the controls is the result of Asperger’s syndrome and a fascination from childhood with transit, especially subway trains. And since he knows everything there is to know about vehicle mechanics, protocols, systems and routes, McCollum knows exactly how to do each job.
He had his first chance at the controls when a transit worker let the lonely 15-year-old kid who was always hanging around to talk trains get into the operator’s cab and drive for several stops — alone.
His compulsion has landed McCollum in jail repeatedly. He’s spent more than half his life inside after more than 30 arrests for joyriding and impersonating transit staff. His story has made McCollum something of a folk hero — and headline laughingstock in New York’s chippy tabloids. When Toronto-born director Adam Irving stumbled on this “very quirky but sad story” it seemed an irresistible documentary subject, something like Catch Me If You Can.
Irving’s film Off the Rails screens at Hot Docs Friday, Saturday and Sunday, fresh off winning Best Documentary at the Newport Beach Film Festival.
The story is also getting the Hollywood treatment. Variety reports Julia Roberts may star as McCollum’s lawyer in the courtroom drama Train Man.
It took Irving, 34, a while to persuade those close to McCollum to allow him access. Dozens of film- makers had expressed interest prior, but never went further, to McCollum’s disappointment. “Darius loves attention, especially media attention,” explained Irving.
Jude Domski, who wrote a play about McCollum called Boy Steals Train, agreed to help Irving make contact in 2013. McCollum was in jail at the time and since Irving lives in Los Angeles, they corresponded until McCollum was released. Finding opportunities to shoot when his subject wasn’t in jail was an ongoing problem.
Off the Rails explores the larger issue about “a mentally challenged, harmless person spending more time in prison than someone for sec- ond-degree murder,” said Irving the day before his film screened at Hot Docs.
Toronto’s mysterious, long-abandoned Lower Bay subway platform stands in for the New York System in Off the Rails. Irving uses the station for re-enactments with actors filling in McCollum’s story. McCollum provides his own character’s voice, acting as narrator for the recreations.
Irving, who is also cinematographer on the doc, used an iPhone filter to give a scene set in McCollum’s childhood appear to be vintage film stock. A colourist removed the red from train interiors to make the TTC cars look authentic to New York.
Irving says these storytelling techniques may be seen as controversial by “older, more purist, traditional documentary filmmakers” who may consider this style “too slick” in the use of fiction film devices.
“I don’t care what they think,” Irving said, adding this is the modern approach to doc making and “I believe in going with the times.”
How did McCollum get onto the buses and trains to drive them? Off the Rails details a disturbing pattern among some MTA workers who “took advantage of (McCollum) out of laziness and selfishness” and helped him cover for them on the job.
To this day, he refuses to identify any of them. “No matter what, he will never give up the people who are kind of screwing him over,” Irving observed.
McCollum has never had psychiatric treatment in jail and, because he is all but homeless when he’s out, sleeping in shelters and abandoned trains in rail yards, he can’t afford it.
He’s mostly gentle, although deviating from routine can make him upset. And while he applied twice for jobs with the transit authority as a young man, they refused to hire someone who had taken a train.
Irving said it makes McCollum feel good to be helpful and to show off his insider knowledge. He has a nurturing sense of responsibility for passengers, from ensuring a safe ride to making welcoming announcements.
To him, media attention is like “a drug,” Irving said.
McCollum, who has been in jail since November, accused of taking a Greyhound bus for a joyride, has yet to see Off the Rails.
Irving admitted he’s “disappointed I haven’t been included more in the process,” of making a feature film, but is hopeful a courtroom drama will bring attention to “the literal injustice of (McCollum’s) situation and that perhaps can lead to legislation being passed or modified to prevent another Darius from having a life like this.”