You know what I mean? I remember when I was doing research for the Diamond District, I found myself wearing more jewelry and a different style of clothing so that these people would accept me. You get to moonlight or almost cosplay as a PI. I’s not like it’s work that you feel like, “Oh, I have to go do this,” it’s actually very fun. Joshua Safdie: The first drafts are usually imaginative and you do need a certain element of research just to get the stuff on the page, but then the drafts that really cement it as something that’s shootable involves so much research.
Kevin Garnett, Lakeith Stanfield, and Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems (A24)
#Josh safdie uncut gems movie#
I think sadness doesn’t work as much, because if you hear someone crying in the middle of a movie you’re like, “Are they crying, why am I’m not crying?” You know what I mean? I think that horror is a genre that works really well with an audience because you can feel the collective scare. Joshua Safdie: I think movies are unique in the sense that you can create a real-time experience for somebody.
But, again, it’s world-building, and then you try and watch how the world creates itself. No one wanted to talk to him anymore.īenny Safdie: Sim City was cool. Joshua Safdie: Yeah, we ruined our dad’s profile. We would just go up to people, go up to the bros, they’d just be talking, and we’d be like, “Penis.” Eventually, people would be like, “Oh my God, there’s the weird purple elephant.”īenny Safdie: This is what a six and eight-year-old does when they get into the chat, they’re like, “Oh, what are you talking about? You want me to say it again?” Joshua Safdie: WorldChat! Our dad had a profile, and he clearly used it in a serious way, and had interesting deep conversations with people. And that, to me, sounds like a lot of fun. So then you can just watch all the people eat it and then die. It killed anyone who ate it, and they sent an invite out to a party to all the other city people, but then they didn’t show, they just left all the food there. I never played this game, The Sims, and someone made up a meal, right? And the meal was poisonous. I was recently reading about a something that someone did. And you’re like, “Well, how will these people who we know so well react to a scenario like that?” And it kind of becomes a little bit of you don’t know what came first the chicken or the egg? You can set it in a really absurd scenario, like a basketball player - seven foot tall guy - getting stuck in a vestibule, and then you work your way backwards from that. But then, of course, there are a handful of overarching narratives, and there are ways you set the arena. So, once you know these people, you can find their actions dictate themselves to you. ‘Cause you move things around like, “Oh well that happened to Howard because we wrote it out in detail,” or Dinah, or Julia’s character, or even Kevin’s character, or Demany’s character.Įach character had their own detailed biography. So we were able to go back and amend the character biographies and they were so intricate and there were so many different versions of the script that actually ended up playing into the biography. Joshua Safdie: It always comes out of the character, you know what I mean? And if you’ve done enough work and research … obviously with this one, we had a lot of time, not by design, but we just had a lot of time. From waiting to land Sandler - at one point, Jonah Hill was even attached - to getting sidetracked by past films (see: Heaven Knows What), the journey to Uncut Gems is as long and winding as that of Howard’s opal. Not only did their own father work in the Diamond District, but they’ve also been building up to this film for over a decade. Much of that intimacy stems from the fact that Uncut Gems is a personal pet project for the two. It’s another survival parable from the Safdies, and while it’s their most expansive production to date, it loses none of the intimate anxiety that fuels their gritty catalogue. As Howard Ratner, Sandler haggles his way throughout New York’s Diamond District as a Jewish jeweler drowning in myriad debt. Their latest catch is Adam Sandler, who delivers - as you’ve no doubt heard by now - the performance of his career in Uncut Gems. The five-star table-setting is as much a juxtaposition for them as their tightly-wound dramas are for the A-listers they attract. They’re uninterested in any of it, though.
So, it’s only fitting that the two New York filmmakers would be talking from Chicago’s Waldorf-Astoria, on a swanky couch, surrounded by fruit, coffee, the works. Their films are flooded with it vivid, dense, frenetic pictures. Josh and Benny Safdie are no strangers to style.
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