The Big Picture · Interview
August 11, 2017/ 34 min/ Sean Fennessey
Sean talks to K. Austin Collins about why 'Good Time' feels like an instant New York classic, then gets Josh and Benny Safdie on the phone to talk shooting without permits, casting Benny instead of a disabled actor, and what's next with 'Uncut Gems.'
15 films across 2 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
K. Austin Collins on ‘Good Time’
Collins calls it a New York City instant classic, drawn to the texture of the streets rather than the monuments. Cinematographer Sean Price Williams bounces color off Robert Pattinson's face, and Collins compares the performance to Pacino's intensity.
Collins' clearest parallel: brothers, bank robbers, a hostage situation spiraling out of control.
What Collins says Good Time's sense of place recalls from an earlier New York.
The Safdies' previous film, built from Arielle Holmes' memoir, with Holmes playing herself.
Josh and Benny Safdie on ‘Good Time’
Shot over 37 days, often stealing shots even where they had permits, including a chase through Flushing's New World Mall while it stayed open. They wrote Connie's and Nick's biographies from birth to the film's opening scene before writing a scene of the script itself.
Their first feature. Josh: a critic once told him he wanted to see him get hit by a train.
Their basketball documentary. Benny says it taught them narrative: ‘you can't leave things out.’
The film that got Robert Pattinson's attention off a single production still, before he'd seen the movie itself.
The Tommy Lee Jones TV movie they watched instead of reading Norman Mailer's thousand-page book, a touchstone for Good Time's prison material.
The comparison Josh kept returning to: a brother pulled into a situation he didn't choose.
One of the genre touchstones they cited when talking about the tradition they wanted Good Time to sit in.
A specific reference to it is written directly into Good Time's script.
Their next film, in the works since 2010: Jonah Hill as a Diamond District jeweler whose gambling debts catch up with him.
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
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