Interview (Video): Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie

An extended Q&A with the co-witers and directors of the movie Uncut Gems.

The Safdie brothers, Ben and Josh, have shown a unique create flair making movies such as Heaven Knows What and Good Time. Their latest, co-written with Ronald Bronstein, is Uncut Gems starring Adam Sandler.

IMDb plot summary: A charismatic New York City jeweler always on the lookout for the next big score, makes a series of high-stakes bets that could lead to the windfall of a lifetime. Howard must perform a precarious high-wire act, balancing business, family, and encroaching adversaries on all sides, in his relentless pursuit of the ultimate win.

Here is a 50+minute post-screening Q&A with the Safdie brothers along some of the film’s other crew members as part of the 2019 New York Film Festival.

In a recent GQ interview, the Safdies were asked this:

I know you guys created really detailed character bios for Good Time. Did you do that for this film?

Josh: Absolutely. We did it for every character. For Sandler’s character, for instance, there was a photograph on the wall that Howard took with Miles Davis, but a late-period Miles Davis, when he got kind of scary looking. And Howard kind of idolized Miles Davis, and he convinced everyone he was friends with Miles Davis based off this one picture. He would go around showing it to people, telling them he was a good friend, when really he just saw him on the street once and took a picture with him. There was a lot of stuff like that. There was a thing about Howard showing up in a Puffy video.

This is a good screenwriting takeaway: Immerse yourself into the lives of your characters so much you can write a detailed bio for each of them. The details of their personal history — everything that’s happened to them in their lives — can inform their backstory — key narrative elements which come into play in their unfolding story.

As Quentin Tarantino said of his story’s characters:

“I need to know where these people come from. It’s a universe I’m creating, and I have to know my universe backward, forward, and sideways. The audience doesn’t need to know, but they need to know I know.”

Here is a trailer for Uncut Gems:

Movie Website

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