I met him there that year, too, and he told this story about always being mistaken for Ben Stiller. He can do these really dirty jokes about his wife and his family, but he ultimately is such a grounded person who wants the best for everybody. And that says a lot about why Sandler is such a lovable person. But he walked up, did his bow, and then ran down to grab his wife and walked her up. They don’t let you walk up the stairs with anyone except for their designated people. I didn’t know that, as a Cannes filmmaker, you get this hotline number where you can get good seats, so I was sitting way in the back of the balcony, and I remember just looking at the screen when the red carpet arrivals happened and seeing Sandler arrive and being like, “This is the closest I’ll ever get.”īut he did this really endearing thing at Cannes on the red carpet. ![]() We couldn’t get the meeting with him, but I remember being at the Meyerowitz Stories premiere. We didn’t actually meet him there, but we both had films at Cannes. Eventually Jonah got carried away and got swept up with his own film and then the subsequent shooting of Maniac.įinally, we were like, “You know, let’s try with Sandler one more time.” In the meantime, we’d made a documentary called Lenny Cooke, we made a movie called Heaven Knows What - I discovered the main character working in the Diamond District - and then we made Good Time when Pattinson saw Heaven Knows What.īy the time we finally met Sandler, we were at Cannes together. But we couldn’t figure out a way to “youth” the character down. Jonah Hill wanted to work together, and we thought it’d be really cool to work with our contemporaries. Then Martin Scorsese got involved, which really elevated the profile of the project. We went down the road with Sacha Baron Cohen for a little bit. I said, “Okay, well, we’ll move the dates around.” And they’re like, “No, no, he’s unavailable.” So I said, “Okay.” In 2015, we tried to get him, and we were told he was unavailable for the dates that we needed him. Who did we think we were to even think we could get to Adam Sandler? Couple that with the fact that the script wasn’t ready to be even read by him - thank God he didn’t read it until after Good Time. Sandler proffers a jewel-encrusted Furby on a chain in Uncut Gems. And from the very beginning, we knew it was Adam Sandler. So we knew that we needed a character who you loved, who had this patriarchal quality, who was lovable and could be grounded in absurd scenarios. ![]() But in the end, his vision was righteous. We knew that in order for this person to realize his impossible dream, he had to do some things that were, in the moment, maybe unrighteous. That he can still achieve something greater than he actually is, so that he can prove that he belongs, kind of like in Rocky III. It always centered around one character who was doing everything he can to prove that he’s still got it. Ronnie got involved almost immediately after that, and then the script started to take the beginning of its shape. The first iteration of the script was somewhat episodic and unfocused - it was centered around our father and his boss. Me and my brother wrote the first version of the script, which was very much inspired by our nostalgic attraction to the types of stories that our dad would tell all the time, pulp-driven stories. The project started in 2009, after we finished a movie called Daddy Longlegs. So how did you get Adam Sandler in this movie? I know it was a long road. Our conversation, which has been edited and condensed, follows. I met Josh and Benny in New York City a few weeks before the film’s release to talk about how they signed Adam Sandler to their movie, casting Garnett, and how the movie changed over its decade in development. You can’t help but root for Howard - while wanting to grab him by the throat and shake some sense into him - and for the Safdies, whose command of their craft is pure pleasure to watch. It’s a thoroughly fun thrill ride, a perfect study of a man who’s both an eternal optimist and an irrepressible screw-up. He ends up in hot water when he lends an opal to Celtics player Kevin Garnett (who plays himself) for good luck before a game, then starts pawning possessions to bet on the outcome.ĭirected by brothers Josh and Benny Safdie, who drew on stories they heard from their father to make the film, Uncut Gems boasts the same heart-pounding intensity of their 2017 film Good Time, but with a bit more polish and panache. Adam Sandler turns in the performance of his career as Howard Ratner, a jewelry dealer in New York’s Diamond District who’s always on the hunt for the next big deal. Uncut Gems is a feature-length panic attack, in the best way.
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