![]() When Garnett confronts Howard about his part in a cycle of oppression that exploits Ethiopian miners, he shrugs it off. He then uses the money to bet on the player’s performance in subsequent games. through a Black Jewish connection and loans it for collateral to Garnett. From that mine comes the film’s coveted black opal. The movie opens in an Ethiopian mine, where we see an exploited labour force and an injured worker whose leg is split open – the Safdies describe the health and safety at the location as horrible. Uncut Gems observes the relationship between race and economics: Howard makes money moves like hedge funds manager, and he treats the Black men in his orbit like both customers and commodities. In my review I compare the film to Good Time – not because both are delirious thrillers that put knots in my stomach but because of the way both tackle race. Happy Madison’s attention and paved the way for Uncut Gems. Good Time premiered at Cannes, wowed a wide audience thereafter, got Mr. “, we learned about pacing, genre, overt narrative plotting and multiple characters talking at the same time,” says Benny. His Connie is a criminal who leans on his own white privilege to get away with a lot of shit, while Black bystanders suffer in his wake. The brothers still didn’t have the budget for Uncut Gems, so they made Good Time, a nervy and exhilarating one-night odyssey scripted specifically for Pattinson. Heaven Knows What made the Safdies a known entity, attracting attention from Martin Scorsese (who executive produced Uncut Gems) and Robert Pattinson, who emailed the Safdies, enthusiastic to collaborate. “It’s still in Gems, but it was a lot bigger before,” says Benny. ![]() The toxic relationships in Heaven Knows What were initially intended to be a plot thread in Uncut Gems, between Howard and the two women in his life. “The addiction aspect deepens your knowledge of what it means to get lost in a cycle and not be able to see through to the other side.” “We couldn’t make Uncut Gems at that time, so we made a film about her life,” says Benny, adding that Heaven Knows What’s addiction theme influenced Howard’s self-destructive behaviour. She became both Heaven Knows What’s inspiration and star. After that, Josh went to the Diamond District to do research and met Arielle Holmes, a recovering heroin addict who was interning with a jeweller. The Safdies spent four years on Lenny Cooke, which informed the way they wrote Garnett’s role in Uncut Gems. “Once you can’t make something, your interests move to what’s in the script because you want to deepen your knowledge,” explains Benny during a joint phone interview with Josh. A decade ago, the Safdies couldn’t raise the budget required to make Gems, much less land a meeting with Adam Sandler, their first choice to play the lead. They wrote the first draft of the screenplay immediately after finishing another film inspired by their father, 2009’s Daddy Longlegs, starring frequent collaborator Ronald Bronstein. Uncut Gems is inspired from stories told by the Safdies’ father, who worked as a runner and salesman in the Diamond District. He places complicated bets on basketball games using loan money plans to auction off an Ethiopian black opal he believes is worth millions even though he has a ready customer in NBA star Kevin Garnett (playing himself) and navigates tumultuous relationships with his fed-up wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) and his younger girlfriend Julia (scene-stealer Julia Fox). Set in 2012, replete with period-appropriate iPhones, Uncut Gems stars Adam Sandler as Howard Ratner, a jeweller in New York City’s Diamond District who is addicted to risk. Together they laid the groundwork for Uncut Gems, a nerve-racking black comedy that connects the major themes from all their films: addiction, capitalism, toxic relationships, exploited labour and race relations. ![]() In the past decade, the New York-based sibling filmmakers directed the basketball documentary Lenny Cooke (2013), the addiction drama Heaven Knows What (2014) and the grimy crime thriller Good Time (2017). Josh and Benny Safdie are on a blistering film streak.
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