movie’s going to be out of focus. You know
that, right?’ We needed the best AC, and
we found this guy, Chris Solano, who told
us about the cult surrounding this piece of
equipment called the Light Ranger 2. Kubrick
was obsessed with it. He used it a lot on
Eyes Wide Shut, but the technology wasn’t
quite there yet. It looks like this giant thing
on a tripod attached to the camera. But it’s
really just a field that interprets your frame
and breaks it down like The Matrix, with all
these moving graph bars, and the AC has to
interpret them and figure out how to lock the
field in. It’s really, really hard.BS: There were times when his video feed
would go out, but Chris would still be working
the Light Ranger just by feeling it. He couldn’t
even see the levels, but he was like Neo,
he’d just know where the graph bars were
intuitively. His talent allowed us to get away
with not using marks. Chris was a master,
and we had a second cameraperson named
Olga who was also totally great, but then we
also needed a third AC for some splinter unit
stuff we were doing. That third one wasn’t
so good at it, and we instantly realised how
valuable Chris and Olga were. Smoke was
springing out of the guy’s ears – doing this
properly is that difficult.JS: Darius understood the type of
production that we wanted this to be.
We talked about 360-degree lighting.
We talked about Cassavetes.
We talked about this
Francesco Rosi film,
The Moment of Truth- incredible movie,
shot in Techniscope,
informed a lot of the Passover seder
sequence. Criterion lent us their screening
room to watch it with some of our crew.I developed a new appreciation for really
good below-the-line talent on this one.
Mia Neal, who did hair for the production –
I always thought hair was important, and I
respect when it’s done well in a movie, but she
showed us that it really is an art. She recreated
The Weeknd’s hairstyle from 2012, and made
Julia look like she’s her own precious gem in
every scene, and found the perfect shade of
black to dye Bogosian’s hair because he’s just
the kind of guy who dyes his hair. Spectacular
job, and she took so much pride in it. Gave us
a note at the end of production that made me
cry, along with a bottle of champagne that’s
still in my refrigerator.Not a champagne guy?JS: No, it’s just like, I get superstitious about
champagne and cigars. I never feel like it’s
time to celebrate. Whenever you think you
should start celebrating, something happens.
I’ll be, like, 80 and opening my fridge to find
five or six champagne bottles and a box of
cigars I’ve never touched. And even at that
point, I’ll be thinking, ‘Would drinking all this
champagne at my age be inviting death?’
Insatiable kind of thing.You mentioned that you’d shot all of
Howard’s office on a set. What’d you do with
the six months at the place on 47th, then?JS: We ended up using the building, and the
good faith with that guy. It’s, uh, okay. Okay. Let
me tell you about 47th Street: we produceda documentary called Everybody’s Street,
about street photographers. We were kind
of involved in the edit, too, and we met this
amazing photographer named Bruce Gilden.
We were shooting some B-roll with him near
47th Street – this was about eight years
ago – and I had already begun research of
the culture there. I suggested we get some
footage of him shooting on the street, and
he was like, ‘No, I can’t go there, someone
fought me last time I took a picture there.’
I was like, ‘Ah, just try it,’ and sure enough,
the second he steps on 47th with a camera
and snaps one photo, we’re being pretty much
attacked. A guy’s threatening to smash all of
our faces in. It’s a little barbaric, only because
privacy’s so important. They don’t want people
getting photos of what they have. It’s also the
most well-armed street in the tri-state area.
Our Dad worked there when we were kids, but
the only memories I have of that come from
his storytelling.But my point is that I wanted to get into this as
an adult, and found that I couldn’t get a point
of entry anywhere. There was one building,
25 West 47th Street, that this guy Joe Alishaev
owned. He believed in us, after we showed him
some photos of us with celebrities. This was
before we met Rob [Pattinson], by the way.
We had to give him printouts of our reviews
in the Times to prove that we were legitimate.
‘LeBron talked about our movie!’ Stuff like016 The Uncut Gems Issue