Josh and Benny Safdie's UNCUT GEMS starring Adam Sandler as a jewelry dealer with a gambling habit

I’d like to start very generally: How did you get involved with the movie?
Well, maybe you could ask me questions.

Sure, yeah. Did you audition for this?
I auditioned for the movie, but I was in a prior movie working with the Safdies before.

Cool. Tell me about the audition.
The audition was with, I think, Jennifer, a young lady.

Okay. And do you remember what you read, or what the experience was like?
No, I don’t remember.

“So when Amos came on set, we were talking, he asked if Sandler was there yet, and I said he’d be there soon. He said, ‘We were gonna work together a long time ago. Whatever happened to that golf movie?’”

Wonderful conversation on the Jewishness of Uncut Gems

https://jewishcurrents.org/an-unserious-man/

V good

Here’s a tease of one of the songs from Stuart (and to some@extent Mitch) Wenig’s UNCUT GEMS full 10 track album made for the film... spoiler: it’s amazing. R. Stevie Moore-esque pic.twitter.com/hpbfE9AR0g

— SAFDIE (@JOSH_BENNY) January 17, 2020

untouched by man

heard a clip of that same song in a podcast and was o_O that Stuart just cranked out a disc of music "they could use in the movie"

amazing side talent on these guys

i felt a pang all the times he questioned why they didn't want to use it in the movie :(

Very good. I don't understand people who "couldn't take the intensity" though. Sandler is excellent, but I can't get *that* invested in ambulatory garbage.

I think their last one was its equal? Except maybe not quite cuz Benny didn't have to act.

didn't realize Francesa was not gonna play himself; perfect casting tho

I really wish I'd have taken a moment to see this with an audience.

I saw it with a miniscule matinee audience ($10 cheap)

Opening title music was very early '90s cable

I like Good Time, but it's pretty much a bunch of crazy scenarios strung together with little rhyme or reason. Uncut Gems has several actual characters with legible motivations.

Yeah, I'm also in the camp of this one being a major step up.

Opening title music was very early '90s cable

totally agree with moodles post there. this was a whole experience.

I loved the pawn broker who was concerned about whether Ratner was doing okay. This after Ratner had surely tried to screw him a hundred times.

Saw it again today at the big fancy theater. Still excellent. I’m likely about to repeat myself but the opening drone shot is still impressive, great timing and choreography. The whole Ethiopia sequence felt important to me this time now that I knew what all comes afterwards: a dose of the real world, before the gem refracts space and time around it.

Julia’s walkaway after the fight with Howard after the nightclub is a wonderful shot, her yelling at people.

Only clumsy thing I thought was KG in the locker room at halftime fingering the stone, it breaks the illusion created by the game footage a bit too much and there’s no teammates there, just the coach in VO, so it feels super stagey. And we already know he likes the rock!

“who’d you call, your Boston friends? Is this your guy?” a fine moment.

this was great: well cast, well acted, well written, well paced, well directed. Sound design was A+, really captured the NYC experience through and through. my gal lasted about 45 minutes and did the "too stressful" thing.

literally everyone in this is playing at top level but bogosian was downright genuinely creepy.

I would like for their next movie to have one of the following settings:
- oil rig
- whaling vessel circa 1850-1880
- Florida

sorcerer remake

RE: seeing this with an audience, my DC-area audience full of the usual yammering old people didn’t appreciate it. I’m sure they resent movies where the characters talk more than they do. I wasn’t surprised to learn afterward about the low audience scores.

*SPOILERS*

Probably a dumb question, but why does Arno's pal shoot Howard and Arno at the end? Was it just because he was pissed off about being locked up and wanted to rob them?

Er yeah. Try locking an enraged gangster in a cupboard for a bit and see if it does you any favours lol

- oil rig
- whaling vessel circa 1850-1880
- Florida

Great ideas, love it, we can work something up, love your whole vibe. One quick note: can the oil rig / whaling vessel circa 1850-1880 / Florida be in New York City?

gotta be florida

This after Ratner had surely tried to screw him a hundred times.

Well, it's 47th Street.

Was Garnett's postgame interview where he mentions "the rock" shot for the film? If not, wtf?

"rock" is a common slang term for the basket ball

*SPOILERS*

Probably a dumb question, but why does Arno's pal shoot Howard and Arno at the end? Was it just because he was pissed off about being locked up and wanted to rob them?

― paolo, Sunday, February 2, 2020 5:53 AM bookmarkflaglink

I feel like it's that, but also, he considers Howard a little peckerwood that has defied Arno and him throughout the movie, no matter what violent action or threat they make. so the motive for him is easy.

as for Arno, I feel like he shot him because he tries to escape, and perhaps he thinks Arno might go to the police, but also, at this point he also probably considers Arno weak for letting Howard walk all over him. probably figures hey, for all the trouble this prick has put me through, let me kill him too, then we'll get not only the money that was originally owed Arno, but maybe the million that Howard's girlfriend just won.

*SPOILERS*

Probably a dumb question, but why does Arno's pal shoot Howard and Arno at the end? Was it just because he was pissed off about being locked up and wanted to rob them?

― paolo, Sunday, February 2, 2020 5:53 AM bookmarkflaglink

I feel like it's that, but also, he considers Howard a little peckerwood that has defied Arno and him throughout the movie, no matter what violent action or threat they make. so the motive for him is easy.

as for Arno, I feel like he shot him because he tries to escape, and perhaps he thinks Arno might go to the police, but also, at this point he also probably considers Arno weak for letting Howard walk all over him. probably figures hey, for all the trouble this prick has put me through, let me kill him too, then we'll get not only the money that was originally owed Arno, but maybe the million that Howard's girlfriend just won.

*SPOILERS*

Probably a dumb question, but why does Arno's pal shoot Howard and Arno at the end? Was it just because he was pissed off about being locked up and wanted to rob them?

― paolo, Sunday, February 2, 2020 5:53 AM bookmarkflaglink

I feel like it's that, but also, he considers Howard a little peckerwood that has defied Arno and him throughout the movie, no matter what violent action or threat they make. so the motive for him is easy.

as for Arno, I feel like he shot him because he tries to escape, and perhaps he thinks Arno might go to the police, but also, at this point he also probably considers Arno weak for letting Howard walk all over him. probably figures hey, for all the trouble this prick has put me through, let me kill him too, then we'll get not only the money that was originally owed Arno, but maybe the million that Howard's girlfriend just won.

*SPOILERS*

Probably a dumb question, but why does Arno's pal shoot Howard and Arno at the end? Was it just because he was pissed off about being locked up and wanted to rob them?

― paolo, Sunday, February 2, 2020 5:53 AM bookmarkflaglink

I feel like it's that, but also, he considers Howard a little peckerwood that has defied Arno and him throughout the movie, no matter what violent action or threat they make. so the motive for him is easy.

as for Arno, I feel like he shot him because he tries to escape, and perhaps he thinks Arno might go to the police, but also, at this point he also probably considers Arno weak for letting Howard walk all over him. probably figures hey, for all the trouble this prick has put me through, let me kill him too, then we'll get not only the money that was originally owed Arno, but maybe the million that Howard's girlfriend just won.

lol

I think the moral of this story is that the consequences of your actions always take their toll. You can’t outthink, out perform or out experience what’s been promised. Everybody gets what they were told they were gonna get.

Except maybe kg but he is kg!

(Good fake out on the cancer scare btw... what IS it about Jews and colon cancer anyway?)

My companions at my rewatch advanced the “the gem is actually magic” proposition and the biopsy coming back clean seems like part of that thread to me thinking about it now. On the other hand if you attribute Howie’s charmed life to the power of Howie it might be that.

Lol stupid reposts

Big 'King Of Comedy' energy from this

At the end when Arno and the heavies are staring daggers at Howie, who's just oblivious to anything but the high of chasing his compulsion, I was like, what does this remind me of? And it's Jerry Lewis, staring daggers at Sandra Bernhard and Deniro, duct-taped on the table as these two powerless New Yorkers career off into their shoot-the-moon scheme, enacting their fantasy of control for one shining moment

I thought one point of the end is that Howard has been playing this like a game all along, but to the heavies with guns, this is not a game. That's why they have guns. So he thinks he's "won," his brother in law thinks he's "won," but these bad guys are bad guys and they don't give a shit. In a way when they take them out, *they've* won the game *they've* been playing.

Arno’s goon is just a hired goon, though. It’s not going to do great things for his feedback on goon Yelp that he murdered the last dude to hire him

who would leave the feedback tho

Hired goon or no, he clearly doesn't have an off switch. Kind of reminds me of, I dunno, "Out of Sight?" Where Albert Brooks throws his money around to pay for protection/hired goons, somehow not realizing that any allegiance is to that money, not to the man. Arno is not a real heavy - he doesn't have the (lack of) heart. And Howard might be a selfish, compulsive, self-destructive gambler, but he still cares about people, too. The heavy, though, he's truly bad, enough so that killing someone out of anger and frustration is worth more to him than whatever he is being paid. The jewelry he snags right after is just an afterthought.

Arno clearly got cold feet and was a liability, dude made a snap decision and killed him to prevent him from talking. honestly a snmart goon move imo

I kind of got the impression that the goons didn't have any particular allegiance to Arno. I imagined that Arno was like a wannabe gangster who probably was connected to an actual gangster who ordered his goons to provide Arno with some muscle, but they ultimately saw that Arno was full of shit.

and a pussy, as Howie correctly pointed out

There are definitely some hints that arno doesn't quite have the stomach for mob life.

Throughout. Exclusively.

It seemed like he was using the apparatus of enforcement to lean on Howie but but wasn't down with the actual ethos

You can just keep letting someone who owes you money slide! You've got to send a message. It was clear no message was going to be sent, no code followed, just... let the degenerate gambler pay us now. I can understand why his tough guy decided "fuck that" and killed

The heavy, though, he's truly bad, enough so that killing someone out of anger and frustration is worth more to him than whatever he is being paid.

After weeks or months of seeing Arno give Howard repeated, unwarranted second chances, and then being locked in a diving bell with a sweaty Bogosian for hours and listening to Adam Sandler free-extemporise throughout, who amongst us etc etc