THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER16, 2019 37
The group headed across Seventh
Avenue, into the heart of Times Square,
doing their best to act like strangers:
just two human statues and a handful
of onlookers with cameras, who could
easily have been tourists. Eventually, the
two statues had a confrontation, with
Sandler shoving Benny Safdie down
the street. Spectators gathered, tensing
slightly the way people do when disor-
der is erupting. Sandler retreated to a
side street so that Josh could capture
some more footage, but Benny stayed
put and stayed in character.
“Everybody was looking at me, like,
‘Was that real?’” Benny said, when he
rejoined the group.
Josh was grinning. “Someone came
up to me and was, like, ‘Was that guy
with you?’” he said. “I was, like, ‘Nah.’
He turned to his wife and said, ‘That
was real violence!’”
“The whole point is for people to go
home thinking it’s real,” Benny said.
The brothers are compulsively pro-
ductive, which is why they were mak-
ing a tiny film even while finishing their
big film. They admit that they had been
dreaming of “Uncut Gems” for so long
that they hadn’t really planned on what
to do afterward. “It feels like we won,
but we lost—because it’s not ours any-
more,” Josh said, at the Lincoln Center
première. The brothers have a few new
projects under way, including a roguish
travel show for television, partly inspired
by “Fishing with John,” the 1991 cult
classic. A few years ago, they began work,
with the comedian Jerrod Carmichael,
on a remake of “48 Hrs.”; since then,
the planned remake has evolved into a
stand-alone film that could be their next
major directing project. They may pro-
duce another documentary, and they’re
also thinking about a movie set in the
world of rare-animal smuggling—the
turtle project got them hooked.
“Uncut Gems,” which is distributed
by the indie-film powerhouse A24, opens
on December 13th. The Safdies haven’t
yet figured out how much the film will
change their lives, although the early
signs are encouraging. It earned five nom-
inations at the Film Independent Spirit
Awards, including Best Feature and Best
Director, and last week, at the New York
Film Critics Circle Awards, the broth-
ers were jointly named Best Director.
Ted Barron, their former professor, at-
tended a première in Toronto, and
searched for an appropriate comparison.
“The reaction to ‘Reservoir Dogs’ re-
minds me of the way people seem to be
reacting to ‘Uncut Gems,’” he said. Ex-
cept that the Safdies are already veter-
ans. “They’ve been so much more pro-
lific than Quentin Tarantino was at that
stage of his career,” Barron said.
Back at Elara, the brothers filmed
Sandler in the building’s grimy first-
floor washroom, rubbing gold off his
face. Josh Safdie pounded on the door,
and Sandler roared, “Somebody’s in here!”
Benny offered a note. “A little bit more
relaxed on the ‘Somebody’s in here,’ ” he
said. “Like you’re kind of dejected.”
Afterward, Sandler went upstairs to
get cleaned up, and the brothers headed
back outside to shoot some more. They
walked to Herald Square, and suddenly
they seemed to be filming a different
movie: the area was largely deserted, ex-
cept for a volunteer serving soup to some
hungry people who looked as if they
didn’t have anywhere to go. Josh Safdie
filmed scenes of his brother, still in sil-
ver paint, walking down Thirty-fifth
Street. There was a police car, with its
lights on, sitting behind a truck that was
making a delivery to Macy’s. The backof the truck was empty and unattended.
“Benny, get in the truck,” Josh shouted.
“What for?” Benny said.
“It’s your home.”
So he climbed in, sat down, and hung
his head. He sat there for a long time,
his shiny suit illuminated by red and blue
police lights; when the driver returned,
he asked Benny to stay there longer, so
that his boss could see the spectacle.
If you spend enough time in the
brothers’ world, the city starts to seem
like one of their films. As they walked
back to their office, some of the hungry
people formed a chorus, singing an im-
promptu theme song: “Silver man! Sil-
ver man! Herald Square!” Benny passed
a father with his young daughter, who
prevailed upon him to do a brief show,
and who didn’t seem to notice that his
miming skills were distinctly second-rate.
“That was amazing,” Benny said,
when the father and daughter had gone.
“That kid was, like, over the moon.”
“It’s like a Superman cape,” Josh said.
They figured they probably had enough
footage for their short movie. “It looked
beautiful in the truck,” he said. “It’s a
little showy, but—”
Benny finished the thought: “But
sometimes that’s O.K.”“Before I fight this dragon and rescue you, can I ask a few
questions? Like, do you want kids? What’s your passion? Where
is ‘home’ to you? Do you have a financial philosophy?”