What’s the pitch?JS: From the beginning, we made it clear that
we love Howard. He does things that may be
quote-unquote ‘unlikable,’ but we love him. You
can’t help but root for the guy. We weren’t shy
about how obsessed we were with his stand-
up records, either. On Good Time, whenever we
were standing around waiting for something to
happen, I’d say, ‘I’m hitting the record button
now!’ in the voice of his character Barry Lakin,
who’s in ‘Sex or Weightlifting’. He found out
we were serious fans. To me, there’s really no
difference between Happy Gilmore and Punch-
Drunk Love. Only he could do it.BS: He has this ability to internalise the most
absurd problems and make the audience care.
Even in a ridiculous scenario, you’ll believe
that this man has to overcome it and succeed,
which is exactly what we needed for this movie.
We felt a closeness to him. It was his idea
to play up Howard and his family, which I’ve
come to realise is really important. He wanted
more with the wife and kids. That allows the
audience to understand Howard a little better.JS: One thing we vacillated on a lot was the
girlfriend. Was she a secret? Does the wife
know about it? When Sandler got involved, he
pushed us and Ronnie as writers to show that
the marriage had begun to fall apart before
this relationship started. The wife knew about
it, and it bothered her, and he had too much
pride in saving the family to actually talk to the
kids about it. He’s dragging his feet through
the split. That gave us a lot, and came from
Sandler’s pushing. But he did let us know early
on, ‘I want to do your movie.’So much of Howard’s life involves getting
himself out of the corners he’s painted
himself into. Does that mirror the process
of scriptwriting?JS: The scene where Howard shows up in
his auction, looks in the catalogue, sees
his gem in it, and just kind of sighs to see
something he’s worked so hard on listed with
a price — that’s our little metaphor for making
small independent movies. Weirdly enough,
the cost that they estimate for the gem was
$200,000, and that’s the exact same budget
as Daddy Longlegs. That was subconscious,
but it was cool how that turned out. You sweat
over something, it unlocks truths in your life,
you see so much meaning in it, to you it’s
priceless, and then you release it. It goes to
a festival. It’s in a program, and you’re one ofone hundred titles. Maybe critics say it sucks.
No offence! Critics are valuable. But all this
takes some of the air out of you. A person
spends all this time creating something,
and then it’s out in the world, and it’s just
an object. You ask how much of Howard’s
struggles resemble our own; the movie can
stand in for our process itself, but I don’t want
to harp on that too much. I remember that
Rocky was originally about a screenwriter, and
everyone was like, ‘Dude, nobody wants to see
that, let’s make him a boxer!’ All the same,
we can see ourselves in these other people.
If he’s not a writer, he’s a boxer. If he’s not
a boxer, he’s a jeweller. It’s a transference.BS: When Howard gets painted into a corner,
clearing a way out is the fun. Everything’s so
connected that changing one thing means
changing everything. You pull on one thread,
and the sweater comes apart. The helicopter
service, Blade – that’s a screenwriter’s dream
when you need to get someone from A to B
and don’t know how. When we were in talks
with Joel Embiid, we took a copter from New
York to Philadelphia. We started hearing rich
people say it: ‘Hop on a Blade!’ The higher
up you go economically, the closer you get to
teleportation.JS: The vestibule that locks from both sides,
that’s the first thing you experience when
you visit one of these diamond shops.
You realise you’re entering a place of
maximum security, to the point of paranoia.
The split second between the first doorlocking and the second door unlocking,
we were like, ‘Oh, this is a very vulnerable
feeling.’ That struck us as something useful,
a way for Howard to keep a character in a
scene and unable to touch him. And it fits
with the trappings of overcompensation.
If I can keep myself safe like this, I’m
untouchable. That’s the gambler’s mindset.
The filmmaker’s, too018 The Uncut Gems Issue