You see what Howard’s life is other than the part we have in addition to the matches. Josh: It’s a pause from everything that’s happening. What do you want the audience to take away from the scene? Everybody who was partaking in that scene has a long tradition of sitting at Pesach dinners. The only non-Jewish person on camera was Eric Bogosian. We’re such inclusive filmmakers that we encouraged everyone to bring a piece to the scene.ĭid you have to explain Passover to anyone on set? It would have been boring to hear.īenny: are important to the holiday, but not to the plot. We didn’t film the four questions because it seemed too obvious. Scott Rudin was very adamant, he’s like, “We can’t have Idina Menzel in this film and not hear her sing! We need to film Sandler and her singing ‘Dayenu’ together. Josh: The plagues seemed to be most relevant for the film.
How did you decide which parts of the seder to include?
#Uncut gems josh safdie movie#
Josh: What’s great about the movie is Idina’s sister says, “I hate you, how can that still fit you?” And Idina’s character says, “I was 20 pounds overweight!” That was personally upsetting to me because I definitely can’t fit into my bat mitzvah dress. Ronald Bronstein, who we wrote the movie with, something his mother would do every passover is she would try on her bar mitzvah dress every year to show it still fit. Josh: Growing up, the only other thing we had was the “Rugrats” Passover special. Showing that part, the post-dinner relaxation where everyone is just talking - it’s a strange holiday where you have all of these people talking about suffering and plagues and you have to be together with family at the same time. You have the kids’ table because they’re not men yet - when you’re bar mitzvahed, you can sit at the adults’ table.īenny: Even having an afikomen scene. The way Jewish assimilation has happened, you have these xeroxed Haggadahs, one person has the nice Haggadah. Josh: Once we landed on Passover itself, you start to mine your own personal experiences with Pesach and certain intricacies of thousands of years of tradition connected to this barbaric story. What specific experiences did you bring in? This particular holiday, you’re supposed to derive much meaning from suffering, in a movie about a guy where your hero is enduring and suffering. The fact that the movie takes place around Passover, the holiest of holidays, is so apt. Form always follows function, and I believe mysticism follows function as well. When Kevin Garnett became the character, we centered it around a playoff game, which coincidentally coincides with the Jewish calendar when Passover takes place. The high holiday depended on which basketball player we were going to write around. Josh: The movie was developed over the course of 10 years, but we had always written in some sort of Jewish gathering. It was a cognitive discussion about Howard not backing down and always being tougher than you’d expect. In particular, the Jewish characters in the film are either related or they’re working with each other.īenny Safdie: In this case, we wanted him to be a very strong character because a lot of time in film, the Jewish characters are a little bit nebbish or weak. No character becomes any character by accident. The Safdie brothers talked to Variety about how they brought Passover to the big screen in “Uncut Gems,” which is playing in theaters nationwide.Ī recent New York Times profile of Adam Sandler says “a character does not become Jewish by accident.” Do you agree? “It’s one of those creative fate situations,” Josh Safdie says. That’s because timing happened to intersect with an NBA playoff game set in 2012 that proves pivotal in the film. But the Safdies attest it’s a coincidence they landed on that particular gathering. Passover, which commemorates the Israelites’ freedom from slavery in Egypt, helps illustrate the suffering of a putz like Howard. The Safdie brothers stuffed the scene with nods to Jewish culture, including reciting the 10 plagues, reading the Haggadah and searching for the afikomen, a stashed piece of matzo that’s found for a reward.
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