Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm stud FORGOSO. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show today. I'm joined by writer, director, and actor
Speaker 1: Benny Saftie. Up until a couple of years ago, Benny
Speaker 1: had primarily been one half of a directing duo alongside
Speaker 1: his brother Josh. Together they made pulse pounding, anxiety inducing
Speaker 1: films like Daddy Long Legs, Good Time, and most recently
Speaker 1: Uncut Gems starring Adam Sandler. But then suddenly, over this
Speaker 1: past summer, in GQ magazine, Benny announced that he wouldn't
Speaker 1: be co directing the next movie with his brother. The split,
Speaker 1: he said, is a natural progression for how things have happened.
Speaker 1: And really what's happened is that since the pandemic, Benny
Speaker 1: has emerged as an excellent supporting actor. Since twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: he's been enlisted by all tours like Paul Thomas Anderson
Speaker 1: for Liquorice Pizza, Claire Denie for Stars at Noon, and
Speaker 1: of course, Christopher Nolan for what has become a Best
Speaker 1: Picture front runner in Oppenheimer. His latest project is called
Speaker 1: The Curse, which Benny co created with comedian Nathan Fielder,
Speaker 1: set in a small New Mexico town, The show follows
Speaker 1: a newlywed couple struggling to bring their vision for eco
Speaker 1: conscious housing to life. Their seemingly well intentioned efforts emphasis
Speaker 1: on seemingly, are then complicated by Dougie, a reality TV
Speaker 1: producer played by Safti, who sees a potential HGTV program
Speaker 1: in their story. Here's a clip from the trailer.
Speaker 2: There's no such thing as a perfect city, but to me,
Speaker 2: this city is as close as it comes. That's why
Speaker 2: we're proud to call Espanola my home. Oh shit, our home?
Speaker 3: All right, you got it, It's okay.
Speaker 2: This isn't your typical home slipping show. My homes are
Speaker 2: reflecting the local community. And were husband and wife.
Speaker 1: A girl.
Speaker 3: Just grab a quick shout? Are you giving money to
Speaker 3: that little girl over there?
Speaker 1: We're doing good here?
Speaker 3: We are good people.
Speaker 1: We're really good.
Speaker 3: Got it? So? All I had on me was that
Speaker 3: one hundred dollars bill. That's not fair, show me. Let
Speaker 3: me go get changed.
Speaker 1: And what is that?
Speaker 3: That's nothing?
Speaker 1: This is you need to see this. Why did you
Speaker 1: snatch back the money? Why did you just.
Speaker 3: Give her the hunterred?
Speaker 1: I was going to buy six of them for twenty dollars?
Speaker 1: What did she say that was from the Curse. You
Speaker 1: can stream new episodes of the show every Friday at
Speaker 1: midnight on Paramount Plus or the Showtime on demand app.
Speaker 1: We untangled this new show a bit more at the
Speaker 1: top of our conversation, but it's a fitting next step
Speaker 1: for Safti, who's long interrogated our ideas of authenticity and
Speaker 1: realism and film. It's an obsession that dates back to childhood,
Speaker 1: he told me coming of age in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: as Josh and him split time between his father and
Speaker 1: Queen's and his mother in Manhattan. We talk about all
Speaker 1: that as well, and then finally we discussed Benny's affinity
Speaker 1: for Fielder's previous program, Nathan for You, his full circle
Speaker 1: moment of playing an astrophysicist in Oppenheimer, and how making
Speaker 1: deeply person arsenal films has reconfigured the way he views
Speaker 1: his past and is present. That's all coming up next
Speaker 1: with actor, writer and director Benny Safty. Benny Safty, Hello,
Speaker 1: Pleasure to meet you.
Speaker 3: Pleasure to meet you as well.
Speaker 1: How are you feeling?
Speaker 3: I am okay, A little tired.
Speaker 1: Best way to start a podcast?
Speaker 3: Yes, no, no, no, it's I was actually just thinking
Speaker 3: of There was a stand up I used to do
Speaker 3: as a character Ralph Handel, and one of the opening
Speaker 3: jokes was, Hey, everybody, how you all do it? And
Speaker 3: Everybody's like whoo, And then I'd be like, how am I?
Speaker 3: And then everybody would wait for the punchline. I'd say, Hey,
Speaker 3: I'm a little tired, a little hungry, but I'm okay.
Speaker 1: Can we start with this new show of yours. It's
Speaker 1: called The Curse? Yes, you co created it with Nathan Fielder. Yes,
Speaker 1: but Fielder is someone whose work you've long admired, right, Becaues.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty sixteen, you wrote an essay in CinemaScope Yes,
Speaker 1: about his show Nathan.
Speaker 3: Free You long too. I was watching Nathan for You
Speaker 3: when it was linear. I was waiting week to week
Speaker 3: for this thing, and this was about smokers Allowed, Yes,
Speaker 3: which I thought was an unbelievable thing, and it was just,
Speaker 3: I don't know, it was interesting because I'm obsessed with realism,
Speaker 3: you know, and so that's part of just something that's
Speaker 3: always in my head. And then when I saw that episode,
Speaker 3: I was like, Oh, this guy is also into something
Speaker 3: kind of similar, you know, And I was really excited
Speaker 3: that but so in this essay.
Speaker 1: Which I'm happy to quote from, go for it.
Speaker 3: You're right.
Speaker 1: When you become obsessed with creating realism, you create something fake.
Speaker 1: Fielder is truly a national treasure. He has somehow melded
Speaker 1: Jack Tati and Mark Cuban.
Speaker 3: So when that's pretty good. But it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you. I want to start
Speaker 1: here when the curse came together, how did you reimagine
Speaker 1: this collaboration between the two of you. Did he play
Speaker 1: Tati and you played like James Dolan.
Speaker 3: It's funny because after this he had seen.
Speaker 1: I think it was good time. Doesn't take the bait
Speaker 1: on the Dolan slander.
Speaker 3: No, no, please please. I love the Knicks. We're figuring
Speaker 3: things out and I think we're gonna be a good
Speaker 3: team this year.
Speaker 1: They've been figuring things out way like my mom would say,
Speaker 1: I'm figuring things out with your third stepfather.
Speaker 3: Yes, but eventually things will work out. You'll find the
Speaker 3: right person, you'll click, and then you'll have a happy
Speaker 3: life together. Oh sound this tape of my so but so.
Speaker 3: Basically what happened was is we kind of just met
Speaker 3: up as mutual I guess fans of one another. And
Speaker 3: every time I was out in La we would just
Speaker 3: meet up and talk and and it was just in
Speaker 3: these initial meetings that kind of we came up with
Speaker 3: the idea for the show, just like accidentally.
Speaker 1: You said that like it was a question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, because it's like it was weird because as
Speaker 3: we came up with it, we were like, yeah, this
Speaker 3: isn't gonna work.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It was so backhanded, offhand that we kind of just
Speaker 3: let it go, and then we would text one another,
Speaker 3: just compounding on the idea every once in a while.
Speaker 3: And I think at some point we were like, I
Speaker 3: think we have to make this thing. You know. That's
Speaker 3: kind of where it ended up.
Speaker 1: So, now that it's out in the world and it's
Speaker 1: being released every week, how would you explain what this is?
Speaker 3: I don't know if I want that responsibility. I guess
Speaker 3: it's it's about it's hard because I don't want to.
Speaker 3: I don't want to like pigeonhole it into any specific.
Speaker 1: If I do this for you as an act of generosity, yes.
Speaker 3: And maybe then I'll jump in and I'll.
Speaker 1: Have to return. So it's set in New Mexico, Yes,
Speaker 1: in a town called Espanola. Yes, there's a couple the Seagulls,
Speaker 1: played by Fielder and Emmastone, and they're creating a sort
Speaker 1: of HGTV pilot.
Speaker 3: Okay, so here now I can take over, because I
Speaker 3: thought you wanted me to get really deep and like
Speaker 3: philosophical about it. I can summarize.
Speaker 1: We start on the surface, can we go?
Speaker 3: So essentially it's about Whitney and Asher Siegul. They have
Speaker 3: a HGTV show and they want to kind of figure
Speaker 3: out a way to increase the environmental sustainability of a community,
Speaker 3: but doing so without any consequences regarding gentrification or anything
Speaker 3: in that neighborhood. So they try their hardest to not
Speaker 3: do that. The show is called the show is called
Speaker 3: Flip Lanthropy, and it's a mix of flipping homes and
Speaker 3: flip lanthropy flip philanthropy. It's like from now and now
Speaker 3: I can't even think of the word philanthropy without saying fhliplanthropy.
Speaker 1: After watching the show, you almost never want to think
Speaker 1: of philanthropy.
Speaker 3: Ever again, because philanthropy is now, is it? I guess
Speaker 3: it's a bad word. Yeah, it's cursed. And so it's
Speaker 3: funny because there was a long, a long discussion between
Speaker 3: me and Nathan is it flip lanthropy or flip land
Speaker 3: thropy and we wanted to have the D or not
Speaker 3: have the D was a very long discussion regardless.
Speaker 1: The log line is saving the world one kilowatt at
Speaker 1: a time.
Speaker 3: Which is true. And then I play the producer of
Speaker 3: that said show, and the curse follows us as we
Speaker 3: moved through the town of Espanola in New Mexico, Santa
Speaker 3: Fe and what it's like to just kind of be
Speaker 3: in that area. So that's the surface discussion, and it's funny,
Speaker 3: it's not scary, and it's sad. Basically what happened was
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, so, what was it like when
Speaker 3: you first moved to La And He's like, oh, I was.
Speaker 3: I had just moved here and I didn't even have
Speaker 3: an American cell phone because I don't know if anybody
Speaker 3: knows Nathan Fielder is from Canada, yes, so yeah, and
Speaker 3: he needed to get a new cell phone. So he
Speaker 3: on his way to the cell phone store, somebody asked
Speaker 3: him for money and he said, oh, I'm so sorry,
Speaker 3: I don't have anything, and then they said to him,
Speaker 3: I curse you, and he kind of took that went
Speaker 3: onto the store, and it made him feel very uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: so he then left, went to an ATM, took out
Speaker 3: twenty dollars and gave it to the person who was
Speaker 3: on the street, and said, is the curse lifted? And
Speaker 3: they said, yes, it is. So then the conversation became, well,
Speaker 3: what if it wasn't What if she wasn't there? You know,
Speaker 3: I said to him, like, what if you went to
Speaker 3: the ATM and came back and the person wasn't there,
Speaker 3: then would the curse still be there? Would it affect
Speaker 3: your mental state for the rest of your life. That
Speaker 3: was the seed of it. And then we realized that
Speaker 3: became a good kind of template for something. And I
Speaker 3: guess at the time I had been in a doctor's
Speaker 3: office a lot, because I guess it was my wife
Speaker 3: was their first child, and I was there a lot.
Speaker 3: I was sitting in the waiting room, and it was
Speaker 3: just HGTV all the time, House Hunters, flip or Flop,
Speaker 3: all these other things. And what you end up seeing
Speaker 3: is is that, yes, it's reality television, but there's only
Speaker 3: so much you can hide from the cameras. You can
Speaker 3: get a kind of really good sense of the relationships
Speaker 3: between the two people in the show, you know, you
Speaker 3: can really understand if there's marital issues or if there's
Speaker 3: tension because they're not really spending that much time. They're
Speaker 3: really moving quickly, so you could get at like little
Speaker 3: glances and you'll understand who they are. And that's also
Speaker 3: just in Nathan's work in general. So it kind of
Speaker 3: again was this amazing synergy between the two of us
Speaker 3: of like, Okay, what can we bring to this, and
Speaker 3: it was an amazing kind of collaboration. You mentioned your
Speaker 3: character Dougie, Dougie Scheckter glad we have the full name
Speaker 3: on record here. He's this long haired producer with rectangular glasses, yes,
Speaker 3: who's especially good at seating conflict between the central couple
Speaker 3: played by Fielder in emmastone. He's good at manipulating the
Speaker 3: setting and sometimes even re creating events and filming them
Speaker 3: as if they were happening extemporaneously. And I wonder did
Speaker 3: playing this part bring you back to your early upbringing
Speaker 3: in Queens where your father would often instigate trouble the
Speaker 3: way Dougie does creating home movies with you and your
Speaker 3: brother Josh, waking you up in the middle of the night.
Speaker 3: To reenact fights you had the day before. I'm thinking,
Speaker 3: when you're making this new show, were you brought back
Speaker 3: to all of that. Yeah, it's definitely, well, I grew
Speaker 3: up in Queens and Upper West Side Manhattan, but I
Speaker 3: don't know where I'm pulling what from. There's definitely probably
Speaker 3: something like that in there. Dougie's this guy who's who
Speaker 3: was always wants everybody to be happy, you know, and
Speaker 3: that means he'll say one thing to one person and
Speaker 3: another thing to the other person, and then he believes
Speaker 3: both exactly the same, and then when he's on his own,
Speaker 3: both of those disappear. So he truly is a mover
Speaker 3: in a shape in that sense, and I think he
Speaker 3: just really wants to be successful. His ambition there is
Speaker 3: just kind of naked, and he will literally whatever I
Speaker 3: got to do to make this thing interesting or fun,
Speaker 3: because when I'm watching here sucks. So it's like, I
Speaker 3: just want to do the best thing I can, and hey,
Speaker 3: that's conflict, you know. I got to find out the
Speaker 3: conflict here. And I guess with regards to the whole movie, Yeah,
Speaker 3: he just wanted to make something interesting, you know.
Speaker 1: But it is my homeo. You me and your father. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you find it interesting as a kid?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like I was just like, what, I'm waking up
Speaker 3: and what are you filming me for?
Speaker 4: It?
Speaker 3: And it is interesting. I do the same thing with
Speaker 3: my two sons. I'll film them and then once a
Speaker 3: while they're like, what's going on? What do you film
Speaker 3: me for? We're literally doing nothing. But I'm always like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is going to be interesting for them in some
Speaker 3: way because I'm more appreciative of it now.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what I want to talk I want
Speaker 1: to talk about growing up because now you're a father. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I wonder if you've been like reprocessing some of
Speaker 1: those memories.
Speaker 3: Well, I definitely had a playbook of what not to do.
Speaker 3: But there is just this idea that everything can be
Speaker 3: interesting in some way, you know. But then again that
Speaker 3: goes back to you can look at certain movies. You know,
Speaker 3: you have the neorealist movies. You have the Iranian cinema
Speaker 3: where all these people are making movies about reality or
Speaker 3: they're with people. They know. You have bicycle thieves literally
Speaker 3: using the people coming out of the stadium and incorporating
Speaker 3: that into the show or into the movie. And so
Speaker 3: I guess there's this idea that your life can be
Speaker 3: interesting or whatever it is that you're experiencing or feeling
Speaker 3: is important, and so if it's just a matter of
Speaker 3: how you frame.
Speaker 1: It, I want to understand. Growing up, your father would
Speaker 1: often say that the answers to life's questions are found
Speaker 1: in movies.
Speaker 3: He never said that. He never said that.
Speaker 1: Josh phrased it once as that that was an interpretation
Speaker 1: and interpret because I don't think he was as aware
Speaker 1: of what he was doing there.
Speaker 3: He was just filming, right. I think that's an important
Speaker 3: distinct though, is that he was never like, this is
Speaker 3: what I'm doing right, I'm making this, I'm making that.
Speaker 3: It was just a byproduct of that.
Speaker 1: But when your parents separate, yeah, he does show you
Speaker 1: Cramer versus Cramer.
Speaker 3: Well, they were separated from when I was very young,
Speaker 3: so six months, yes, So basically at one point when
Speaker 3: things were getting back into us kind of going back
Speaker 3: with our mom, he showed us Cramer versus Creamer. Yes,
Speaker 3: to frame the situation positively in his favor. So so
Speaker 3: it is propaganda, yes, one hundred percent propaganda, And that's
Speaker 3: not fair, you know, it's like, I'm too young. I
Speaker 3: shouldn't be watch I shouldn't even be watching the movie now.
Speaker 3: It's so traumatizing, but it's it's great when you watched
Speaker 3: that film, Yeah, and you were going back and forth
Speaker 3: between like Queens and Manhattan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did you make sense of what you were watching.
Speaker 3: As a kid, It's simple, it's not, I guess now
Speaker 3: when you watch it you see the complexies of it.
Speaker 3: But as a kid, he's good, she's bad. That's what
Speaker 3: you get. So that's what he knew was going to happen.
Speaker 1: So do you believe that in your life about your
Speaker 1: own parents?
Speaker 3: No, of course not. You know, that was what I
Speaker 3: was told in that moment, and so of course she
Speaker 3: was very upset, and of course my stepfather's upset where
Speaker 3: he's like, what are you doing? Like why are you
Speaker 3: coming here with this like this attitude? And then everybody
Speaker 3: finds out and it's it's definitely insane. But as a kid,
Speaker 3: you you associate yourself with the kid in the movie,
Speaker 3: and the kid in the movie is sad, so that's
Speaker 3: what you feel.
Speaker 1: This is a clip from the nineteen seventy nine film
Speaker 1: Kramer Versus Kramer's.
Speaker 5: Well The problem is is that your mommy and I
Speaker 5: both want to live with us. See, so that's why
Speaker 5: we decided to go see this fancy who I told
Speaker 5: you is the judge, and we let him decide because
Speaker 5: he's very wise and experience about these things.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 5: We talked of for a few days, and after that
Speaker 5: we asked him what he thought. You know what he said,
Speaker 5: he'd be with mommy, be a terrific idea move in
Speaker 5: with her and live there from now on. And I'm
Speaker 5: really lucky because I get to have dinner with you
Speaker 5: once a week and two times a month. We spend
Speaker 5: the weekends together.
Speaker 3: Where's my bedroun? You am I gonna swep?
Speaker 5: Oh, Mommy's figured that all out. You have your own
Speaker 5: bedroom at her place.
Speaker 1: We're all my toys, gonna be the mommies. We're gonna
Speaker 1: take all your toys over there.
Speaker 5: If you play your cards, so I'll get you to
Speaker 5: bias some new ones.
Speaker 3: Who's going to read in my bedtime stories?
Speaker 1: Mommy?
Speaker 6: Will You're not gonna kiss me the nine anymore?
Speaker 2: Are your dad?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 5: I will be able to do that, but you know
Speaker 5: I'll get to visit.
Speaker 3: Are your parents divorced?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, I mean I was gonna say your parents
Speaker 1: put up six months, mine were ten months. Okay, you
Speaker 1: are the first guests to beat me. Well, this is
Speaker 1: the way I say it's the worst race to run.
Speaker 3: It is the worst. Well, think about it as a
Speaker 3: race to existence. We just snuck in. Clearly something happened
Speaker 3: where it was like either let's give it one more
Speaker 3: shot or whoops, I guess let's see how this pans out.
Speaker 3: Not gonna work its effect on me?
Speaker 1: And well you've made a lot of films about it.
Speaker 3: Yes, to go back to that what I said, are before,
Speaker 3: if there's a kernel of truth withinside of you or whatever,
Speaker 3: it's easier to talk about or make something because you
Speaker 3: understand where it's coming from, you know. So that's just
Speaker 3: like what's my motivation?
Speaker 1: You know, growing up with a video camera always around
Speaker 1: recreating events, living out moments of your life on tape
Speaker 1: when you didn't know you were being filmed. Obviously that
Speaker 1: would tie into later movies that you two would make.
Speaker 1: But do you remember the first time you and Josh
Speaker 1: commandeered the camera and like began making your own projects.
Speaker 3: Well, there was a weird smoking commercial I remember, and
Speaker 3: it was just like we knew he watched the tape,
Speaker 3: so we did something to likea yeah, it was something
Speaker 3: like that. But I think that there's something about I
Speaker 3: guess that's early nineties that this was happening, and I
Speaker 3: guess that was the first consumer cameras that were out there,
Speaker 3: So I think a lot of people from that time
Speaker 3: period did grow up under this idea that there's more
Speaker 3: accessibility to something that felt so far away. And again,
Speaker 3: there was also this weird moment I think early on
Speaker 3: when point and shoot cameras started having video on them
Speaker 3: and people didn't necessarily know when they were being filmed,
Speaker 3: so there was a lot of honesty that you could capture.
Speaker 3: I think people now are a little bit more aware
Speaker 3: of cameras and stuff like that, but there's been kind
Speaker 3: of so there was this moment where nobody knew they
Speaker 3: were filming. Then there was this moment where everybody knew
Speaker 3: that they were being filmed and they were always on
Speaker 3: watch and always vigilant. And now I feel like there's
Speaker 3: this yeah, I'm being filmed. I'm just going to say
Speaker 3: fuck it, I'm just going to live life. I don't care.
Speaker 3: That's yeah, we've been worn down exactly, so it's like
Speaker 3: I can't and it's the kind of thing. Also, it's
Speaker 3: like I remember there was one time where I was
Speaker 3: in I guess I was on Bleaker Street and I
Speaker 3: walked by where Robert Frank lived and I saw him
Speaker 3: on his bed, laid back in repose, and I was like,
Speaker 3: this is unbelievable, love Robert Frank. I also take photographs.
Speaker 3: I happened to have my medium format camera with me,
Speaker 3: so I take out my camera and I go to
Speaker 3: take a picture of him in this kind of state,
Speaker 3: and some hand comes in and says, how dare you
Speaker 3: and she slams the door, And the picture I ended
Speaker 3: up getting was of this hand pulling the door closed.
Speaker 3: It wasn't him who slammed the door, whoever closed the door.
Speaker 3: I was like, this is what he did all the time.
Speaker 3: All he did was sneak photos of people. That was
Speaker 3: like the first version of the home video camera. You know,
Speaker 3: the fact once the camera was given to people and
Speaker 3: you can capture I think Gary Winegrad is a good
Speaker 3: example where you have all of these photos of interesting
Speaker 3: things people and they're captured in a way that is
Speaker 3: just like, oh my god, that's artistic, that's art or whatever,
Speaker 3: or maybe it's not. Maybe it's just but he had
Speaker 3: a very specific, specific knack for finding these these moments,
Speaker 3: and Lee Friedlander's one, William Egleston, Joel Myerwitz. You know,
Speaker 3: you have all the Helen Levitt and you have all
Speaker 3: these people who were finding these moments. And at that
Speaker 3: time it was very weird to have a camera and
Speaker 3: go and take pictures of right, in Helen Levit's case,
Speaker 3: a whole family crammed into a phone booth. You know, like,
Speaker 3: that's an amazing picture, and it's an amazing moment, and
Speaker 3: you could even say it's an amazing movie because you
Speaker 3: can see all the people's emotions on their faces. So
Speaker 3: there is this idea of watching and being watched that's
Speaker 3: definitely in the curse. You know that there is this
Speaker 3: idea that somebody's always there looking. You know.
Speaker 1: I would say that naturalistic, impromptu spirit is embedded in
Speaker 1: all the movies you've made, and so like in beginning
Speaker 1: talked about how your dad used film as like a
Speaker 1: two of propaganda. At some point when you two start working,
Speaker 1: you and Josh, did it feel like an act of rebellion?
Speaker 1: Did you feel like you were creating in contrast to.
Speaker 3: That, I guess with the propaganda element was just you can,
Speaker 3: for better or worse, use movies to connect to your
Speaker 3: emotional state of mind. I think you can go to
Speaker 3: the Russians and see that they looked at movies as
Speaker 3: a way to essentially as a form of warfare, you know,
Speaker 3: and like propaganda where you have all these films that
Speaker 3: are speaking about the Russian way of life and this
Speaker 3: idea of the power of movies to tell you what
Speaker 3: to feel and think. And so it's in that long
Speaker 3: lineage of things, and it was just a matter of
Speaker 3: you're trying to understand stuff. You can make it up,
Speaker 3: you can mess around, and you just want to understand
Speaker 3: what's Sometimes it might be oh, how do I say
Speaker 3: this better in this technology? Or is this funny if
Speaker 3: I hold it here? Is this good? You know? So
Speaker 3: you're just kind of trying to understand it. You just
Speaker 3: have to always be looking around and listening. And when
Speaker 3: you cast somebody, that changes things. And I think specifically
Speaker 3: with The Curse, we were told like, oh, you can't
Speaker 3: really cast real people in a television show. It's different
Speaker 3: in a movie because it's a one time thing or whatever.
Speaker 3: But like in a show that's over seventy days, it's
Speaker 3: going to be very difficult. I'm like, why, what's the
Speaker 3: big deal? So it became that, like if somebody was
Speaker 3: submitting a tape, the more vertical video that you got
Speaker 3: on the street, that's what we looked for was somebody
Speaker 3: who never ever thought about being in a movie or
Speaker 3: a TV show or anything. That's who we wanted in
Speaker 3: the show. And so we cast a lot of people
Speaker 3: just from the area. And then as you're doing that,
Speaker 3: you're talking to them, you're trying to understand, you're changing
Speaker 3: things with them. So Nathan and I were always rewriting
Speaker 3: it to fit the people who we were casting. It's
Speaker 3: just again, it goes back to this idea that you
Speaker 3: can use this to understand people or things better.
Speaker 1: By literally incorporating people. I mean, again, your body of
Speaker 1: work is going from Daddy Long Legs to heaven knows
Speaker 1: what the short films before that, the implementation of street casting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with you and you know and.
Speaker 3: So important and all those people.
Speaker 1: Where do you think that came from? Is that is
Speaker 1: that the Brisson naturalism?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think it's there's there's the Brisson, there's the neo
Speaker 3: realist you know. And it's also in these in these
Speaker 3: documentaries from the sixties, you have all these like I
Speaker 3: think if you look at high school textually just showed
Speaker 3: at an Nyu I played Wiseman's High School. There's this
Speaker 3: one moment where this this father is in the principal's
Speaker 3: office and he's so upset that his daughter got a
Speaker 3: failing grade on her exam and yet on the paper
Speaker 3: the teacher wrote the word fabulous something like that. And
Speaker 3: he's sitting there and he's got this really small shirt
Speaker 3: tie like literally he's a massive, like a big strong guy,
Speaker 3: and he's sitting in the chair and he could barely
Speaker 3: like move because he's tie. He's going to the principle.
Speaker 3: So he put on his tie and he put on
Speaker 3: his button down, and he's sitting there and he's in
Speaker 3: just complete disbelief, and he's like, she said, fabulous, she
Speaker 3: said it, what's going on here? I don't understand She
Speaker 3: gets an f but fabulous, what's going on? And he
Speaker 3: won't stop. But he's such a character. So there's this
Speaker 3: idea that people kind of are iconographic of themselves in
Speaker 3: a lot of ways, and so you can use that
Speaker 3: to enhance the emotions of a story. And in the
Speaker 3: early short films, I remember I was like, Okay, here
Speaker 3: I am, and if I'm going to be in them,
Speaker 3: I have a relationship with this person, just purely on
Speaker 3: a level of practicality. I know I can get a
Speaker 3: good performance because we're friends. So it's like we can
Speaker 3: just talk. We could forget about that thing over in
Speaker 3: the corner filming this.
Speaker 1: Those early first three films. In terms of the dynamic
Speaker 1: between you and Josh, you said once that we help
Speaker 1: each other see something different, a full vision of truth.
Speaker 1: He'll let me see things I don't see, and I'll
Speaker 1: help him see things he doesn't see. We compliment each other,
Speaker 1: We fill in each other's blind spots. How would you
Speaker 1: describe your blind spots and how would you describe his?
Speaker 3: I guess, like, for example, with let's just take Daddy
Speaker 3: longlegs for example, I was very quick to be critical
Speaker 3: of my father for the things that he did, and
Speaker 3: he would be more forgiving of those said things. And
Speaker 3: by putting those two perspectives together, you're able to get
Speaker 3: kind of a truer portrait because you're not just saying
Speaker 3: this is bad, and you're not just saying this is
Speaker 3: the best thing in the world. So it's just a
Speaker 3: matter of complimenting different points of view and just taking
Speaker 3: that into consideration really, which some people don't do. You know,
Speaker 3: it's my way or the highway is a lot of
Speaker 3: people's mentalities. So just this idea that you can get
Speaker 3: at a deeper thing through like that collaboration. You know.
Speaker 1: There's a line in a twenty twelve short film of
Speaker 1: Yours The Black Balloon. Yes, and a character says, I
Speaker 1: love you as a human being, but I hate you
Speaker 1: as a person.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can like the idea of somebody right and
Speaker 3: hate them. I think that's probably you know that you
Speaker 3: can you can think back and be like oh, because
Speaker 3: I guess also with distance comes that you know that
Speaker 3: where you're I don't know if you've ever had somebody
Speaker 3: in your life where you're like, the longer you go
Speaker 3: without seeing them, you're like, I really miss that person, right,
Speaker 3: and then you see them you're like, oh, fuck that person.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like it's kind of that where it's the moment
Speaker 3: you're in the room, you remember everything it was that
Speaker 3: made you so upset or angry. There's that phrase, so
Speaker 3: and so something makes the hart heart grow fonder, right,
Speaker 3: Distance makes the heart grow fonder, that's very true.
Speaker 1: And familiarity breeds contempty.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. So these are cliches for a reason, right,
Speaker 3: So I think that's what that means there.
Speaker 1: Gus, do you have this quote that that's been really
Speaker 1: nagging me this whole week? I want to understand it.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Daddy Long Legs. You said, the whole point
Speaker 1: of Daddy Long Legs was to relive our childhood, but
Speaker 1: it kills it at the same time. What was that like?
Speaker 3: Well, what was that like? What to kill your childhood?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I means therapy, right, that's therapy is you're reliving it
Speaker 3: to kind of close it up and understand it because
Speaker 3: there's a lot of loose ends and loose emotions, and
Speaker 3: by going in and trying to I guess I said
Speaker 3: when I say recreating it is.
Speaker 1: When you become obsessed with creating realism. Yes, you create
Speaker 1: something fag Yes.
Speaker 3: So it kind of ties into that where once you're
Speaker 3: going so deep into the understanding of where something comes from,
Speaker 3: and how do you do it to get that, how
Speaker 3: do you do it to the level of something on
Speaker 3: the screen. There's so many steps that you have to
Speaker 3: break down who's it going to be, how are they
Speaker 3: going to say it? What are the lines they gonna
Speaker 3: say it? When then when they say the lines, that
Speaker 3: sounds bad, you got to change it. So you're literally
Speaker 3: getting so granular into the actual thing that it's dead,
Speaker 3: you know, so you forget the original emotion that was
Speaker 3: there because now it's this new, different thing.
Speaker 1: It's complicated by a more technical process.
Speaker 3: Yeah, once you put it all out there and you
Speaker 3: look at it and you try and understand it, you
Speaker 3: get granular in a way that kind of kills the
Speaker 3: haziness of it. A memory is such a beautiful thing,
Speaker 3: but it's also very sad because you're never going to
Speaker 3: be able to go back there. So you have this
Speaker 3: fleeting moment of recognition and it's sad. It's sad when
Speaker 3: that's a way. But when when you think of nostalgia,
Speaker 3: you have that moment and then it's still nostalgic because
Speaker 3: it would be fun thing if you're like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: going to completely recreate that exact moment. I want to
Speaker 3: create deja vu. Whenever you go and try and do that,
Speaker 3: it's not the same. You know, you can go back
Speaker 3: and watch the shows that you watched as a kid,
Speaker 3: but it's not going to be in the same exact
Speaker 3: situation and feeling that you're in that you watched it.
Speaker 3: And I don't know what day long. This is very
Speaker 3: important because it was confronting a lot of things that
Speaker 3: maybe weren't confronted, like what emotional childhood stuff. You know,
Speaker 3: it's not it's not fun.
Speaker 1: It's a hard Yeah, I rewatched it.
Speaker 3: It's there's specifically, there's like an argument that's happening on
Speaker 3: the phone in front of the two kids that I
Speaker 3: just was like, it's intense, sage, we'll shaken. What's happening, kiddo?
Speaker 4: Very good, very good? Listen listen, listen, listen, and you
Speaker 4: put your mom on, but you put your mom on for.
Speaker 6: Me, it's dead, Plenny.
Speaker 4: Well, you know it's six o'clock. I'm making dinner.
Speaker 1: What's up.
Speaker 4: Again that I've got Carmen coming tomorrow? No, no, no, what
Speaker 4: tomorrow is a half day and I've got plans to
Speaker 4: take the kids to see why folks this weekend. Okay,
Speaker 4: so it's not going to happen. It's a half day, right,
Speaker 4: and I've paid Harman in advance. She's coming to get
Speaker 4: the kids. So it's not going to work. I understand
Speaker 4: that you miss the kids. That's great, But you know what, frankly,
Speaker 4: you're lucky you even see the kids.
Speaker 3: What I look at in my life is like, there's
Speaker 3: certain things that happened to you and allow you to
Speaker 3: understand them, because I feel like if I was on
Speaker 3: one track, I'd have no way of making sense of this.
Speaker 3: You know, I'd be a total I'd be in the
Speaker 3: corner drooling, you know, which sometimes I am. But when
Speaker 3: I went with to my mom and my stepfather, it
Speaker 3: was a very different world, you know. It was very
Speaker 3: much more structured, and it allowed me like this kind
Speaker 3: of safe place to then look back and understand what
Speaker 3: was good what is bad, and then as like a
Speaker 3: coping mechanism, though I'm gonna just look at this good stuff,
Speaker 3: you know, and then later on in life you look
Speaker 3: at the bad stuff. But it allowed me the ability
Speaker 3: to put put a sentence together. I guess.
Speaker 1: So you've put a series of compelling sentences to get
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Just now. We'll be right back with actor,
Speaker 1: writer and director Benny Saftie. After you made Long Legs,
Speaker 1: there's a Heaven knows what which Robert Pattinson fell in
Speaker 1: love with to the point where he emailed you out
Speaker 1: of the blue and asked to work on something. But
Speaker 1: until that point, you and Josh were trying to find
Speaker 1: your way in New York making movies. And this is
Speaker 1: how your collaborator Ronnie Bronstein described those years before Pattinson
Speaker 1: showed up. We'd been existing like a strand of saliva
Speaker 1: hanging from a barnyard animal, blowing in the wind, waiting
Speaker 1: to snap. There's a saliva again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's the saliva.
Speaker 1: Is that what it felt like?
Speaker 3: Well, no, there was definitely. So after Daddy Long, it
Speaker 3: was like, oh, great, got this thing Spirit award, You're
Speaker 3: you're in the industry. And then it's just fall flat
Speaker 3: on your face.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Literally, I stood in front of IFC Center with a
Speaker 3: billboard over my body like one of those sandwich boards,
Speaker 3: convincing people to go into our movie over Ken Losh's movie,
Speaker 3: which is what IFC was putting all their money behind,
Speaker 3: because I was dedicated to making our movie held over
Speaker 3: in theaters. So I would literally stand online and tell
Speaker 3: people what are you seeing? And they say, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: go see this, And I said, oh, you should think
Speaker 3: about going to daddy long. They said why, and I
Speaker 3: was like, well, I made it, you should go see it.
Speaker 3: And they were just like excuse me. And I remember
Speaker 3: the IFC people like, oh, this is cute. This guy
Speaker 3: is like it's a little some sort of a entrepreneurial.
Speaker 3: It wasn't entrepreneurial. I think they were a little bit
Speaker 3: more dismissive of it, like, oh, isn't this cute. He's
Speaker 3: going to be here for a couple like an hour
Speaker 3: and then he's going to leave. I was there for
Speaker 3: eight hours a day, committed. I had a spot in
Speaker 3: their in their closet where I would keep my stuff
Speaker 3: and I would come back the next day and do
Speaker 3: the same thing. Because I was it had to be
Speaker 3: held over. And I think it played in that theater
Speaker 3: for a long long time. But it was just that's
Speaker 3: where I was kind of first confronted with this idea
Speaker 3: that like, just because there's something that you find interesting
Speaker 3: doesn't mean the world is going to discover it. They
Speaker 3: need to find out that this thing exists. You know,
Speaker 3: like we all thought making that that this was going
Speaker 3: to be divorce. Fifty percent of people we were convinced
Speaker 3: this was going to be like the TBS Movie of
Speaker 3: the week, you know, but it wasn't. But it did.
Speaker 3: It did give us something. But then when that didn't
Speaker 3: work out, you're just like, okay, well now what you're
Speaker 3: kind of back to square zero and you're trying to
Speaker 3: make something.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Then I think there was a documentary Lenny Cook that
Speaker 3: started that was in that process, and then that took
Speaker 3: a long time, three four years to finish that. So
Speaker 3: each movie you make, you're like, okay, now this is
Speaker 3: this is going to be the springboard, and it's not,
Speaker 3: and then you kind of fail. And it came to
Speaker 3: me basically right after Good Time, where it was like, okay,
Speaker 3: I just had my first son. If this doesn't work out,
Speaker 3: it's over. I'm not going to be making movies anymore
Speaker 3: because it's not fair. It's not fair to my wife
Speaker 3: who was working. It was almost like this fallacy that
Speaker 3: I had because everybody was We kept doing all this
Speaker 3: stuff and it kept kind of it had an impact,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't allowing me to make a living, you know.
Speaker 3: So I had to confront that and say, well, what
Speaker 3: is it? And so if that didn't work, it would
Speaker 3: have snapped and it would have been all over you
Speaker 3: know God, well, yeah, you know so, but each one
Speaker 3: was just enough to get a little bit more. But
Speaker 3: even but with heaven knows what, it was less money
Speaker 3: than Daddy long Legs. So it was it was going backwards.
Speaker 3: And then the documentary was nothing. It was just we
Speaker 3: had gotten this footage from the producer and he had
Speaker 3: been filming Lenny back then. He's like, I don't know
Speaker 3: what to do with this. Can you help me?
Speaker 1: And then an old family friend of yours.
Speaker 3: Yes, this guy Adam Chopcorn, and he he had all
Speaker 3: this stuff, but he stopped filming after he didn't make
Speaker 3: it into the draft. It was like, so what happened?
Speaker 3: That was became the question and then you have to
Speaker 3: sit with it and figure out how to best tell
Speaker 3: that story.
Speaker 1: But it's funny because the story of Lenny Cook is
Speaker 1: this young basketball player ye who was like high school ranked, Yeah,
Speaker 1: played against Lebron and carmilaw Anthony was better than them
Speaker 1: at times.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the story is heartbreaking in many ways because it
Speaker 1: doesn't work out the way you'd help it.
Speaker 3: Lost potential is one of the most upsetting things specifically
Speaker 3: in America.
Speaker 1: Yes, but it happens very quick for him. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: what you're describing for you and Josh is that it
Speaker 1: happened in like fits and starts. It was gradual.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I guess because think about it. Two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight is when we made Daddy Long Legs. Good
Speaker 3: Time came out twenty sixteen, and then Uncut Gems came
Speaker 3: out in twenty nineteen. That's a long time. It's almost
Speaker 3: eleven years, you know. When when I want to look
Speaker 3: back on Daddy Long As, I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: that was ten years ago. That was in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: I remember, there was in twenty and fourteen. I think
Speaker 3: it was. It might yet might have been twenty fourteen, Yes,
Speaker 3: because it was right before Cosmo, my son was born.
Speaker 3: I went to Melbourne and they did a retrospective of
Speaker 3: our stuff and I was really kind of like weirded
Speaker 3: out by that because I'm like, is this it? This
Speaker 3: is the end? Like what are they doing? And it
Speaker 3: just felt very strange because it was weird because yes,
Speaker 3: like these fits and starts, I didn't I was like,
Speaker 3: oh wow, and we'd made all these short films and
Speaker 3: it was just kind of we were always trying to
Speaker 3: figure something out. You know, you're constantly moving forward, trying
Speaker 3: to just experiment.
Speaker 1: But up until Good Time, you said this thing, if
Speaker 1: it doesn't work here, it's not fair to my family.
Speaker 1: It's not the side of my wife.
Speaker 3: Yes, when you would.
Speaker 1: Have those conversations with her, would she go, maybe it's
Speaker 1: time for something else.
Speaker 3: Well, that was it was me saying, because it was
Speaker 3: just Cosmo was two weeks two weeks old when we
Speaker 3: started shooting Good Time, and then I was literally editing
Speaker 3: with the baby monitor on his naps because I was
Speaker 3: at home editing on that, and then i'd bring the
Speaker 3: foot at with Ronnie and I was editing other scenes
Speaker 3: and that we were literally working separately, but I was
Speaker 3: working out of home from home, and I just was like, okay,
Speaker 3: it's not fair that like she can't experience this the
Speaker 3: same way that I am. And I kind of felt
Speaker 3: like I was like a deadbeat in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: Even though I was making stuff. There was just something
Speaker 3: about like, Okay, if this doesn't work, it's like how
Speaker 3: long am I going to keep going? Thinking that this
Speaker 3: is like it's definitely like oh, you always say like
Speaker 3: keep going, do what you love all the thing. But
Speaker 3: when you're confronted with the realities of the world. Sometimes
Speaker 3: I just felt like it wasn't it wasn't fair for
Speaker 3: her to keep carrying me. You know. I was like,
Speaker 3: all right, maybe I'll take a break and I'll hey,
Speaker 3: I wanted to be a physicist when I was before film,
Speaker 3: so maybe I'll go and go back and do that.
Speaker 3: So it was just because there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: that comes up when you have a kid, and also
Speaker 3: just like motherhood, and and she was working and she
Speaker 3: had you only get four months or three months of
Speaker 3: paternity of maternity leave, and that's not a lot of time.
Speaker 3: And you're leaving just as the kid is starting to
Speaker 3: kind of really see the world and it's a very
Speaker 3: hard place to be, you know, to watch that and
Speaker 3: then to leave. And then it was like it was
Speaker 3: the kind of thing where I was with him, So
Speaker 3: there was this kind of there was something nice there,
Speaker 3: but it was just I felt guilty.
Speaker 1: You know, that's the thing, the normal feeling. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: post good time, it works out, you're sort of like
Speaker 1: fortified in this pursuit of film. Yes, you're not going
Speaker 1: to go back to trying to be an act astrophysicist.
Speaker 3: Although I did end up somehow, I did end up
Speaker 3: crossing paths with physics. Yes, you know on Oppenheimer, which
Speaker 3: was that was the craziest thing for me. I was like,
Speaker 3: when I was talking to Chris about it, I was
Speaker 3: just like, what, you don't even know? I said, literally,
Speaker 3: I was. I was studying elementary particle physics standard model.
Speaker 3: I was doing it all. I almost did that.
Speaker 1: Pattinson's not good in the movie. You could be right
Speaker 1: back there exactly. Okay, So when you're making uncut gems
Speaker 1: you did time. I'm curious about your specific role in
Speaker 1: this triptych you, your brother and Ronnie have created, because
Speaker 1: everyone I've asked about you and your work they all
Speaker 1: mentioned one thing over and over and over again, which
Speaker 1: is you need to ask him about his role as
Speaker 1: a boom operator. Yes, and why you do that, because
Speaker 1: it's it's fairly unusual, and for people who don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe you could describe what that is and why you
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 3: Well specifically on those you know, there was this just
Speaker 3: by pure necessity. But in college, I've always loved sound
Speaker 3: sound design, so I would always learned it, loved it,
Speaker 3: and then when it came to making I guess heaven
Speaker 3: knows what. It was so low budget. I was essentially
Speaker 3: running boom and recording sound almost like a documentary, you know,
Speaker 3: I had a full on doing it. And then while
Speaker 3: you're directing, Yeah, because when the thing is is what
Speaker 3: people don't realize is except for boom ops, is you're
Speaker 3: right there. You're in the action with the actors. You're
Speaker 3: the only person who's really allowed to be in the
Speaker 3: room with them. And there's something that it did for
Speaker 3: specifically on Uncut Gems. Misseo was the camera operator and
Speaker 3: Masso was the cinematographer on the Curse. We developed like
Speaker 3: an amazing kind of shorthand because when he was doing
Speaker 3: steady cam, I'm right next to him. But you see
Speaker 3: the full body language. You're not just like looking at
Speaker 3: this specific frame. You're seeing how best to look at
Speaker 3: a scene and block a scene and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: and it just gives you another view and access point
Speaker 3: into the action that's happening.
Speaker 1: How do you think doing that job informs both the
Speaker 1: way you direct and the way you act.
Speaker 3: It's very because you're listening, you're hearing everything. You just
Speaker 3: get a better sense of performance, and when you're acting
Speaker 3: in a scene, you can direct from within because you're
Speaker 3: in control of what you say and how you respond,
Speaker 3: you know, and so you can navigate in a way
Speaker 3: that's helpful. And I think that that's just that was
Speaker 3: a running boom was away for me to do that.
Speaker 3: It's also just like it's very helpful because I'll also edit.
Speaker 3: So there's something about the sound and the way that
Speaker 3: it hits your head and your brain that when you
Speaker 3: hear it you can kind of be like, Okay, that's
Speaker 3: the cut point. And I don't know, it's just it's
Speaker 3: you're almost in post production in your head. You know,
Speaker 3: in some way.
Speaker 1: Has it shaped you as an actor? I mean, you've
Speaker 1: done since uncut Gems, You've had this like four years
Speaker 1: of really wall to wall performance.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, the thing is I like acting, and part
Speaker 3: of what I like about directing is I love performance,
Speaker 3: and I think performance is a very it's fleeting. You know,
Speaker 3: there's something about being able to recreate an emotion that's
Speaker 3: not there and that's not real, and being in that
Speaker 3: moment and it's it's almost like necromance. Isn't that like
Speaker 3: when bringing people back from the dead. You know, it's
Speaker 3: that element you're basically you're playing with something like that
Speaker 3: where you're and that's why it's not it's not healthy.
Speaker 1: Ronnie has this quote. He says he was trying to
Speaker 1: make a movie with you as an actor, but you
Speaker 1: wouldn't stop crying when trying to get into character.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what is that? Well, if you want to take
Speaker 3: it all the way back in acting, I've been able
Speaker 3: to get you. You are around a lot of different people,
Speaker 3: you know, and you're different actors, and you're able to
Speaker 3: learn from them and understand. You have conversations about craft
Speaker 3: and all that stuff. But I remember I was talking
Speaker 3: to Ellen Burston just about like crying and all this
Speaker 3: stuff and that how do you do that? And I said,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I kind of create an emotional tornado,
Speaker 3: or you kind of go into this weird place and
Speaker 3: you're thinking about all the stuff that happened to you,
Speaker 3: but you're kind of thinking around it in the situation.
Speaker 3: And she's like, oh, yeah, that's it. She's like, you
Speaker 3: think about the smell of something and that triggers a
Speaker 3: different memory in your brain. And it was like, Oh,
Speaker 3: there's an actual turn, Like there's an actual thing that
Speaker 3: you do and learn in that way that my emotional
Speaker 3: tornado thing was that. But again I don't necessarily know
Speaker 3: if you you don't have to do it to feel it,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, you can access something in
Speaker 3: your brain that allows you to feel it. And I
Speaker 3: guess with regards to performance understanding, kind of the subtleties
Speaker 3: and the details of something are helpful. You know, if
Speaker 3: I'm talking to you right now and I want it
Speaker 3: to be like I was upset, you know, what do
Speaker 3: you do when you're upset? You kind of you avoid
Speaker 3: eye contact and you'll just kind of like pause on
Speaker 3: your words and it gets really so the thing is
Speaker 3: what happens when you do that, Is it somehow taps
Speaker 3: into your brain of like, oh yeah, that's what I
Speaker 3: do when I'm upset. So then you kind of can't
Speaker 3: help it but get upset and you start crying. And
Speaker 3: it is also there's a lot of there's bad stuff
Speaker 3: that happened to me that you can kind of I
Speaker 3: can go to and be like, oh fuck, I don't
Speaker 3: want to have to feel that again. And yet I
Speaker 3: guess it's liberating to feel that way in front of
Speaker 3: people because you're always hiding those emotions, you know, you're
Speaker 3: always you never want to cry in front of anybody.
Speaker 3: So when you do it, it can be liberating. It's embarrassing,
Speaker 3: but it is a liberating feeling, you know.
Speaker 1: And when you described it as a tornado, I was
Speaker 1: just wondering, like, what what is in that flurry that
Speaker 1: comes to mind?
Speaker 3: You're thinking around bad things and you're putting yourself in
Speaker 3: that position. It's not a good place to be.
Speaker 1: So you said it wasn't healthy.
Speaker 3: In a weird way. It is healthy, but it's not
Speaker 3: healthy to go to dip into that when you don't
Speaker 3: want to. It depends on the levels of the tears.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 3: When I was working with Ronnie, it was weird because
Speaker 3: I was What was hard about that was the person
Speaker 3: I was playing was that was ended up becoming the
Speaker 3: guy in Good Time, you know, and that was based
Speaker 3: on a lot of my own experiences and issues with
Speaker 3: mental health and OCD and all these things. And it
Speaker 3: was kind of overwhelming because with specifically with that character,
Speaker 3: I couldn't verbalize what it was that was hard for me.
Speaker 3: I was just coming up against a wall and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I wanted to say it, but I couldn't, and that
Speaker 3: was really sad. So I would start crying all the
Speaker 3: time because I'd be in these situations that were making
Speaker 3: me uncomfortable, but by nature of the character, I couldn't
Speaker 3: express myself. And that's sad. You know, if you feel
Speaker 3: something really deeply in your head and you understand it
Speaker 3: but you can't say it, that's horrible.
Speaker 1: Which now I imagine I think many people go through
Speaker 1: life like.
Speaker 3: That exactly, and that's and I think that's that's the
Speaker 3: thing that is difficult because I have myself been in
Speaker 3: that position where I'm feeling something and I don't know
Speaker 3: how to say or verbalize it what it is that
Speaker 3: I'm upset about, right, And I think that with kids
Speaker 3: that's the case more, you know, because you don't have
Speaker 3: the ability to speak or verbalize your opinions. But I
Speaker 3: guess it's again this is going back to this idea
Speaker 3: of recreating reality or whatnot. It's you're kind of trying
Speaker 3: to recreate the emotions that you feel. And that's just like, Okay,
Speaker 3: what are these words that I have to say and
Speaker 3: how do they connect back into who I am? When
Speaker 3: Paul reaches out, I'm like, this is fucking awesome. Of
Speaker 3: course I'm going to do this. You know, he's one
Speaker 3: of the greatest ever and and licorice pizza, and it
Speaker 3: was like that was it was so unbelievable. And then
Speaker 3: of course what you see there you can't help but
Speaker 3: learn and take it in and then you know, it's
Speaker 3: it's it's amazing to kind of have that experience. And
Speaker 3: it was just so fun and there was a weird
Speaker 3: there was a pushing and pulling of wanting to be
Speaker 3: your best. That was so great. Then the same similar
Speaker 3: thing happened, you know when on on Oppenheimer everybody's kind
Speaker 3: of coming in at it, trying to do their best.
Speaker 1: Why don't we take a look.
Speaker 5: The fact that we built this bomb does not give
Speaker 5: us anymore anymore write or responsibility decide how it's used
Speaker 5: and anyone else.
Speaker 3: But they're the only people who know about it.
Speaker 1: I have tools simps in the various opinions of.
Speaker 3: The community, but that's your opinion.
Speaker 1: As it's used, nuclear war in the house, oh or.
Speaker 3: Becomes unthinkable until somebody builds a bigger one.
Speaker 1: We're talking about this chapter of yours, and it reminded
Speaker 1: me of this documentary that appeared on Criteria about you
Speaker 1: and your brother, and it was in pre production for
Speaker 1: Uncut Gems. Toward the end of the movie, you two
Speaker 1: are on the train and you say, it's one of
Speaker 1: the first times we can see one or two things ahead.
Speaker 1: And we always got the road ended at Gems. That
Speaker 1: basically every film you made up until that point was
Speaker 1: a stepping stone to Uncut Gems. And I guess I wondered,
Speaker 1: like when when that came out and it did what
Speaker 1: it did, given that you couldn't imagine the life beyond it,
Speaker 1: how did you go about mapping the road ahead?
Speaker 3: Well, that's the thing, is the practical meaning of that
Speaker 3: was after Daddy Lungigs, we wanted to make Uncut Gems.
Speaker 3: That was just the next thing we wanted to do
Speaker 3: wasn't in the cards, So we made a bunch of
Speaker 3: other stuff in between. Right. So when that was done,
Speaker 3: it was like, Okay, not only is what do you
Speaker 3: do next, but it's also just a matter of you
Speaker 3: now have the ability to do something next in the
Speaker 3: sense that you go back to like when I was before,
Speaker 3: is this something that I'm going to be able to do?
Speaker 3: Do I have to find another career to like provide right,
Speaker 3: And so it was the first time that that had
Speaker 3: happened that you have actually have you can see a
Speaker 3: little bit into the future, you know. I think it
Speaker 3: was just a matter of like, in that period there
Speaker 3: was also a pandemic and all that stuff that.
Speaker 1: Did the pandemic and all these like new roles coming
Speaker 1: about that we've talked about in the Oppenheimer. Did it
Speaker 1: make you rethink wanting to direct with your brother?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I was just kind of going with
Speaker 3: the flow, right, That's all it was. Is something came up, Hey,
Speaker 3: that sounds like fun. I would like to do that,
Speaker 3: you know. And then Jim Brooks calls me and says, hey,
Speaker 3: I want you to do this this movie the Judy
Speaker 3: Bloom Are you Their God? And Kelly calls me and
Speaker 3: she says she wants me to play a father. I'm like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, nobody's ever asked me to play a father.
Speaker 3: I am a father, you know. I'm like, I'm a
Speaker 3: father of two kids in a interfaith marriage. Like this
Speaker 3: is exactly what this movie is about, right, Nobody has
Speaker 3: ever asked me to do that before. So I was like,
Speaker 3: this is a great place for me to express that
Speaker 3: part of who I am. It wasn't necessarily a conscious decision.
Speaker 3: It was more like Okay, this is a way for
Speaker 3: me to explore right now, you know, and it's all
Speaker 3: about learning. I think it's all part of one larger process.
Speaker 3: But the whole thing is a struggle to verbalize your emotions,
Speaker 3: because that's what all this is. Whenever you put anything down,
Speaker 3: you're trying to say something and you're trying to do something.
Speaker 3: So it's just a matter of like you're trying to
Speaker 3: figure out the best way to do that, and in
Speaker 3: certain moments it's this, in other moments it's this. But
Speaker 3: I think that they don't. They do talk to each
Speaker 3: other and they allow you to get better and better
Speaker 3: yourself in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: So I wonder as we look back and then look ahead,
Speaker 1: you know, like Daddy long Legs, we said it was
Speaker 1: a way to relive your childhood, but it also killed it.
Speaker 1: And then thinking about Uncut Gems, I wonder, like if
Speaker 1: it had the same effect in some ways, Like it
Speaker 1: was a film that represented the shared ambitions and interests
Speaker 1: of you and your brother, literally starring the actor that
Speaker 1: raised you both and me, yeah, and like and in
Speaker 1: making it, I don't know, did it kill some part
Speaker 1: of a shared dream and did it open the door
Speaker 1: for something new.
Speaker 3: It's funny because I'm not thinking about it in that way,
Speaker 3: and when you pose the question, I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that maybe you know. But it's like, specifically with that movie,
Speaker 3: it was like we it had had all this pent
Speaker 3: up demand, you know, and everything was kind of like, Okay,
Speaker 3: now we have all these tools to tell this story,
Speaker 3: you know, and then you tell it and you're like,
Speaker 3: and again it's just now what kind of thing? What
Speaker 3: do you want to do? And so that that question
Speaker 3: just becomes kind of the guiding force. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: what do I want to do? I don't know.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: What's interesting is right before the Gems, Nathan and I
Speaker 3: actually pitched the Curse in twenty eighteen, and then it
Speaker 3: stayed dormant until after and then the pandemic hit and
Speaker 3: then there was all this time and then Emma came
Speaker 3: on board and it was a whole long process to that,
Speaker 3: and it was again it was it was an organic
Speaker 3: kind of thing where you're just kind of letting things happen.
Speaker 3: And maybe that's I guess the key is you don't
Speaker 3: want to set up a wall to avoid things that
Speaker 3: you don't necessarily know. You know, I'm far from like
Speaker 3: a Buddhist person. You know, I would love to be that.
Speaker 3: I have a hat that says be here now. You know,
Speaker 3: there's this idea that that's the place to be, And
Speaker 3: of course if you're an anxious person, that's impossible. You
Speaker 3: know you are there, but you're so in the now
Speaker 3: that it's hurts. And then you're also thinking about the future.
Speaker 3: What's this, what's that? Or what about the past? How
Speaker 3: this happened? And you're kind of asking all these questions.
Speaker 3: But if you're open to what the world is going
Speaker 3: to show you, maybe you will be in a better
Speaker 3: place because you'll listen.
Speaker 1: You know, I do well. I think as we leave
Speaker 1: that moment where you figured out what you wanted to do,
Speaker 1: do you remember that day in class you were like
Speaker 1: going to be an astrophysicist and your teacher explained to
Speaker 1: you sort of story structure. Oh yes, yes, like what
Speaker 1: happened that day to button this Oppenheimer thing up here.
Speaker 3: Okay, So basically this is in high school. I was
Speaker 3: part of this extra curricular science program where it was
Speaker 3: so much work. It was essentially as much time outside
Speaker 3: of school as in school. I would go and learn
Speaker 3: with this teacher at Columbia University. He was trying to
Speaker 3: set up all of these particle detectors on every school
Speaker 3: in the city. You create these small kind of garbage
Speaker 3: can with a photoelectric detector in the top. You ligne
Speaker 3: it with aluminum. There's something called Charon Cough radiation for
Speaker 3: when these high energy particles hit water, it emits this
Speaker 3: radiation as light. The light is picked up by the sensor.
Speaker 3: The sensor goes to a computer which is on an acilloscope,
Speaker 3: and it shows you the moment. If you have a
Speaker 3: moment at exactly the same time, because these things are
Speaker 3: moving at the speed of light, which is exactly the
Speaker 3: same speed, you can then trace from that moment back
Speaker 3: upwards to when the particle entered the atmosphere. So this
Speaker 3: idea that the more of these things you have, the
Speaker 3: bigger the detector, because things will happen at the same time. Say,
Speaker 3: that was what he was planning to do, and that's
Speaker 3: what I was helping try and prove as a proof
Speaker 3: of concept whatever. But in that process I have to
Speaker 3: explain that to somebody else, and part of the class
Speaker 3: was teach it to other people and the process of
Speaker 3: taking that information that's internal in your head and having
Speaker 3: to say it to somebody else. That process is where
Speaker 3: you understand it. It's easy to understand, but to explain
Speaker 3: it is hard. So he was saying to me, he
Speaker 3: wrote down on the piece of paper. He's like, this
Speaker 3: is he said, I'm here at A. This is the
Speaker 3: end is at Z. And then he takes his pen
Speaker 3: and he just draws this horrific kind of spiral mess
Speaker 3: of like a snake, and then he finally ends up
Speaker 3: at Z. He goes, your job is to take me
Speaker 3: from A all the way to Z. Never let go
Speaker 3: of my hand, is what he said. Take me all
Speaker 3: the way along that path. And it's crazy, but if
Speaker 3: you get me from A to Z, I'll understand it.
Speaker 3: But then when you look behind you, you have no
Speaker 3: idea how you got there. But that's it. You understood it.
Speaker 3: So then I remembered seeing that, learning that, and then
Speaker 3: I think I watched The General by Buster Keaton, and
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, wait a second, this is the
Speaker 3: same thing. You know, you have this story that goes
Speaker 3: from A to Z and it's complete madness and craziness
Speaker 3: all throughout it. But he's walking you through. And then
Speaker 3: the jokes are almost like physical problems, and you're at
Speaker 3: that moment everything was kind of coming together in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways, and so I think what ended up
Speaker 3: happening was I went to school for both and I
Speaker 3: realized you can't do that. You have to pick one,
Speaker 3: and so I pick movies, you know. I went to
Speaker 3: be you. Josh said, come to this class. It was
Speaker 3: a class on this guy Ted Baron who was a
Speaker 3: teacher there, and he showed a neorealist movie and it
Speaker 3: was mind blowing, you know. So that's when I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: maybe this is the wrong place for me, because you
Speaker 3: can't toe dip with both feet, you know, because they're
Speaker 3: in opposite directions. So you have to choose, choose what
Speaker 3: it is that you want to do, and do that.
Speaker 3: It's still very present in my mind because the things
Speaker 3: I learned in physics tell me about narrative, you know,
Speaker 3: they tell me about story, and if you can explain something,
Speaker 3: then that also helps you with directing, you know. And
Speaker 3: because you can tell somebody, you can kind of walk
Speaker 3: them through the process. And so I like to think
Speaker 3: that everything is interconnected in that way. And it's a
Speaker 3: shame string theory is no longer longer like the right
Speaker 3: thing because it made sense, you know. Feinman said, the
Speaker 3: world is a dynamic mess of jiggling things, and it's
Speaker 3: only based on perspective of whether or not you see
Speaker 3: it or not. For example, when you see an old
Speaker 3: newspaper on the on the ground and a rubber band
Speaker 3: is around it, let's say it's sitting there for one
Speaker 3: hundred years. He goes, made the rubber band wouldn't last
Speaker 3: that long. But he goes, what's happening in that rubber
Speaker 3: band is you have all these particles banging when it's stretched.
Speaker 3: They're they're banging because it's getting heated up by the
Speaker 3: by the the stretching of the rubber band, and those
Speaker 3: particles are banging the rubber band and keeping that newspaper together.
Speaker 3: He goes, that's how he sees the world, and that's crazy.
Speaker 3: And I remember I actually asked somebody because in the
Speaker 3: there's in one scene all the scientists from most animals
Speaker 3: were actually in one of the scenes in Oppenheimer. It
Speaker 3: was a in like it was like a party, and
Speaker 3: so I was just talking to him and I said,
Speaker 3: that's something that I can't imagine going through the world
Speaker 3: like that. That would drive me crazy, and he looked
Speaker 3: at me and said, it would drive me crazy if
Speaker 3: I go went through the world the way that you
Speaker 3: saw it, because for me, there's some comfort in knowing
Speaker 3: that information and to each his own, you know. And
Speaker 3: he's right, He's like, I feel I understand the world
Speaker 3: in a very deep and meaningful way. And that's okay
Speaker 3: that I when I look at a rubber band, I
Speaker 3: don't see a rubber band. I see beneath the rubber band,
Speaker 3: and I see the particles moving, and that allows me
Speaker 3: to understand the world.
Speaker 1: Well, we started this conversation talking about the surface level
Speaker 1: nature of the curse.
Speaker 3: Yes, we have.
Speaker 1: Now gone so far below. Yes, and I think we
Speaker 1: have hit something true and honest. And I'm glad you
Speaker 1: held our hands.
Speaker 3: Okay, I hope so through the process everyone's in a while,
Speaker 3: I felt like maybe I let go and I look
Speaker 3: back and I was like, oh, wait, where I have.
Speaker 1: A long enough arm. And to the young kid in
Speaker 1: college wondering if they should jump in and not just
Speaker 1: dip their toe, I'm glad you jumped in. And I
Speaker 1: so look forward to seeing what's next.
Speaker 3: Amazing. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Benny Safty a pleasure. Thank you, and that's
Speaker 1: our show. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to
Speaker 1: leave us five stars on Apple, Spotify, wherever you do
Speaker 1: your listening. If you'd like to go above and beyond,
Speaker 1: sharing the program with a friend or posting on social media,
Speaker 1: all of that really does help new listeners find Talk
Speaker 1: easy special thanks this week to Haley Benden Gates, Reil Shulman,
Speaker 1: Jennifer Vendetti, Christopher Nolan, and Jason Birch. I'd also like
Speaker 1: to thank Liz Mahoney and Narrative pr Universal and Showtime.
Speaker 1: You can watch new episodes of The Curse weekly on
Speaker 1: Paramount Plus or the Showtime on demand app. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to learn more about the show or more about
Speaker 1: our guest Benny Safty, visit our show notes at talk
Speaker 1: easypod dot com. Once there, you'll find other great episodes
Speaker 1: with actors including Britt Marlin, oscar Isaac, Tom Hanks, Bill Hayter,
Speaker 1: and Bob Owenkirk. To hear those more Pushkin podcasts, listen
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Speaker 1: Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Jennixon Bravo. Our associate
Speaker 1: producer is Caitlin Dryden. Today's talk was edited by Caitlin
Speaker 1: Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by
Speaker 1: Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Chris Chenoy. Video and
Speaker 1: graphics by Ian Chang, Derek gaberzak, Ian Jones and Ethan Seneca.
Speaker 1: Photographs today are by Julius chu Alse. Want to thank
Speaker 1: our team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Snars,
Speaker 1: Kerrie Brody, Heather Fane, Eric Sandler, Jordan McMillan, Cura Posey,
Speaker 1: Tara Machado, Jason Gambrell, Justine Lang, Malcolm Gladwell, Greta Cohen
Speaker 1: and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening
Speaker 1: to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week
Speaker 1: with another episode. Until then, stay safe, and so long.