THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER16, 2019 31
baselines, he spotted James Dolan, the
team’s widely reviled owner, sitting next
to a muscle-bound young man whom
he recognized as Dolan’s son, Quentin,
a bodybuilder, to whom Safdie had once
anonymously AirDropped a photograph
of a monster flashing a devil’s-horn
sign—he likes sending strange pictures
to strangers.
A young boy was sitting directly in
front of the Safdies, and Josh made a
semi-successful effort to moderate his
language. (“Move the ball! What the
fuck are you doing?”) Seated next to
the boy was a man eating French fries,
who soon became the unwitting star of
a short film. Josh, raising his iPhone,
zoomed in on the man’s fingers: he was
neatly applying a line of ketchup to each
fry, like toothpaste on a toothbrush. The
brothers are always looking for ways
to combine scripted storytelling with
scenes from everyday life. They typically
cast experienced actors alongside first-
timers, which is to say, “real people”—
although the Safdies would probably
object that the term insults the first-
timers, by implying that they’re not act-
ing, and also the professionals, by im-
plying that they’re not “real.” Still, view-
ers who found themselves transfixed by
the faintly menacing professionalism
of the bail bondsman in “Good Time”
might have been pleased to discover
that he was played by the proprietor of
American Liberty Bail Bonds, in Kew
Gardens, Queens.
Sometimes the Safdies seem to know
everyone in the city, although not ev-
eryone in the city knows them. When
they were recognized at Madison Square
Garden, during the fourth quarter, it
was by a student from New York Uni-
versity’s graduate film program. “I just
want to say, you guys are my favorite
filmmakers in the world,” he said, be-
fore shyly sprinting away.
“I swear to God we didn’t plan that,”
said Benny Safdie, who is short-haired
and clean-shaven, and a bit bigger than
Josh. Benny is the quieter of the two,
but he is the more dedicated performer.
For a few years he tormented the city’s
comedy clubs, in character as a fretful
failed comedian named Ralph Handel;
naturally, the brothers captured these
appearances on film. (Nowadays, Ben-
ny’s schedule is slightly less flexible: he
is married, with two young sons.) When
the brothers are on set, Josh generally
takes a position behind the monitors,
shouting out suggestions to the actors.
Benny customarily holds the boom mi-
crophone, talking quietly to the actors
and—directly into the microphone—
even more quietly to his brother.
“Yo, Kane!” Josh shouted. “Kane
Fitzgerald!” He had identified another
referee.
“I’m telling you, they’re like the
Queen’s guard,” Benny said. “They’re not
going to pay attention.”
“No—I’m telling you, I get them,”
Josh said.
“Enough,” the guard finally said,
sternly.
Josh turned plaintive. “We’re not al-
lowed to cheer?”
When the game was over—a one-
point Knicks loss, not that it mattered—
Josh couldn’t resist descending a few rows
to talk to the guard who had shushed
him. Like many people who like to get
into a bit of trouble, Josh has a corre-
sponding knack for talking himself out
of it. The guard, turning conspiratorial,
told him, “If it was me, I don’t give a shit.
It’s an N.B.A. rule. You’re not allowed
to bother the refs, and you can’t bother
the players during time-outs.”
The brothers were listening intently,
but they were also watching, noting not
just the guard’s pungent white-New York
accent but also the fit of his jacket, and
the purposeful way he gripped the rail-
ing when he descended to the section
below. Maybe one of these days they’ll
need someone to play a Madison Square
Garden security guard.“
S
andman!” Josh Safdie said, picking
up his phone. “What’s going on?”
He and his brother were in a sound studio
in midtown, making last-minute alter-
ations to “Uncut Gems.” On the screen, an
image of Sandler, in character as How-
ard, was frozen in mid-patter. Josh talked
quietly for a few minutes, then hung
up and turned to his brother. “Sandler
couldn’t believe we were back in the mix,”
he said. The Safdies love crosstalk and
ambient sound; they hate the idea of
forcing actors to deliver credible dialogue
in artificial silence. Now they were pre-
paring a special mix for the Dolby Atmos
system, which allows filmmakers to cre-
ate the sensation that sounds are ema-
nating from specific places in a room.For years, the brothers were do-it-
yourself visionaries, finding ingenious
ways to make their little movies seem
big; they used the city as their sound-
stage in part because it was free. When
they began shooting “Uncut Gems,”
last year, Josh was annoyed to see that
his crew had posted flyers with filming
permits on Forty-seventh Street; he was
hoping to keep a low profile, in order
to capture life in the district. Then he
saw the platoon of trucks parked around
the corner and remembered that he was
involved in a major production, much
too big to be surreptitious. For street
scenes, the Safdies assembled about a
hundred extras, who mingled with peo-
ple going about their business. If the
extras caught someone gawking at San-
dler, or at the camera, they were in-
structed to create a simple distraction:
approach the gawker and, posing as a
tourist, ask for directions to the nearest
subway station.
“This is very new—this whole expe-
rience,” Benny Safdie said. For “Uncut
Gems,” they commissioned a score by
the electronic musician Daniel Lopatin,
who records as Oneohtrix Point Never.
The sound is neoclassical, inspired, at
various points, by Haydn’s Symphony
No. 88 and by Vangelis, the pioneering
synthesizer wizard. And yet the most
memorable sound is the raspy buzzer of
Howard’s shop, which serves as the film’s
irregular heartbeat. On this day, the
brothers were trying to make the mix a
little clearer, to allow viewers to separate
the voices from the noise. They worked
for a long time on a moment near the
end of the first act, when an African-
American character named Demany,
played by Lakeith Stanfield, issues a
pithy summation of Howard, the hero:
“He just a fuckin’ crazy-ass Jew.”
The Safdie brothers spent a decade
trying to make “Uncut Gems,” driven
by their abiding affection for Howard,
who is, some early reviewers have no-
ticed, something of an asshole. A critic
on IndieWire called him “the most con-
temptible character” Sandler has ever
played, which means that he outranks
both title characters of “Jack and Jill,”
Sandler’s 2011 comedy, about a man with
an annoying sister, which currently has
a three-per-cent positive rating on the
review site Rotten Tomatoes. Sandler
says that he was impressed by the script