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A pack of debt collectors are on his trail, but he compulsively romantically, maniacally keeps placing bets.
Will Kevin come back with the black opal Howard loaned him as a token of good luck?
If Howard can auction it off, is it worth as much as he says?
All of this is a box we put ourselves into, Benny says.
We say, Oh wehadto do this, wehadto do that.
We didnt actually have to shoot with a real basketball player and use real games, we chose to.
Josh Safdie:I was trying to explain the whole gems uncut, cut my gems thing to someone.
They were like, I dont get it.
I was like, Well, this is my take on it.
You want to know my take on it?
Hunter Harris: Yes.JS:I want to know your take on it first.
No, no, no.
Yes, that means my gems are uncut.
Am I on edge?
Yes, my gems are uncut.
Do I have depth underneath the surface?
Yes, my gems are uncut.
If my gems are cut, Im like naked, ready to be seen.
Uncut is very dangerous, but cut isextradangerous, because it can have a sharp point.
My value is hidden if my gems are uncut, so I have a deeper, bigger value.
I might be a little flawed, but Im worth it.
And yes, my gems are uncut.
Benny Safdie:Its also, like, Who areyouto cutmygems?
Sort of, Have you no decency?
it’s crucial that you understand him to really love and know who he is.
In the jewelry trade, uncut gems are major gambles.
You have to be a genius with your eye to find one [that is actually valuable].
BS: Its not easy to do.
If you see a stand-up person, sometimes that can make you feel a little bit uncomfortable.
Its like, Oh, Im not that good.
Its beautiful to see a solid take the form of a liquid with a diamond.
But its the general PR huckster-ism of the diamond industry.
Ultimately, theyre kind of boring … Ill take an Indian Star sapphire any day over a diamond.
Ill even take like, a cats eye.
But like opals in general I mean, a pigeons blood ruby,whoa.
It was a big moment in the geological world.
The Australians, who are known for their black opals, were actually really pissed about it.
Theyre like, Uh-oh, we cant corner the market anymore, so they started an anti-Ethiopia PR campaign.
And, sadly, the Ethiopian opals didnt have longevity to them.
They started to craze and crack, they were less valuable, which was unfortunate.
JS: White opals are very unlucky, but the black opals are very lucky.
you might see the color in them.
And they dont have the superstition against them that white opals have.
BS: Some people are afraid of them.
JS: Not black opals, no.
JS: White opals are predominantly very unlucky, yes.
Particularly the Italians, they fucking hate them.
They wont go near them.
But, the black opal was considered the antithesis of the white opal.
Anyway, thats why I prefer a black opal to a diamond.
I want to talk about basketball.
Thats when we started the project.
Black opals, which were found by a Jewish tribe in the Beta Israelites in Welo mines.
Amare is a very spiritual person.
He calls himself the spiritual gangster.
But Kobe they didnt understand the themes of the movie.
Hes a West Coast person, we needed East Coast games.
Because we had to write around the reality of the games.
Sure.JS: But then I was like, You know what?
Theres thisone game at the Gardenthat Kobe dropped 60 points.
Lets make that the gem game.
In that version, Howards like trying to reclaim his initial win.
Around Kobe?JS: Around Kobe.
And then our agents are like, No, no, no.
He doesnt want to act anymore.
He wants to direct.
And Id just spent two weeks fucking writing this thing!
Hes like, Yeah, were not going to send it to him.
I was like, What the fuck?!
So then we ended up with Joel Embiid.
Because we were like, You know what, were going to update the movie.
Its going to be a contemporary film.
You want to use a contemporary player.
And Joel Embiid presented himself.
Before he was even playing in the NBA,he was a legendary Twitter user.
Hilarious, you know what I mean?
And, so I was like, He could be interesting.
He could play into the comedy of the film, because his humor is dry and droll.
We ended up meeting him through his manager, and his manager ends up in the film.
This is the way the cosmos works: shes studied psychiatry, and worked at a needle exchange.
She weirdly sawHeaven Knows What[the Safdies 2016 film].
No one in the sports world sawHeaven Knows What, but she did.
She was like vouching for us to Joel, and then we became friends with Joel.
And I started going to the Sixers games, and working with Joel, and understanding.
Then the themes of the movie became even more overt, with an African player.
I was just like, Oh, this is about reclamation, this is about being empowered by reclamation.
Joel was into that, things were moving.
Now this is the Joel Embiid movie.
When I was writing the scenes, I would send them to Joel.
I dont know if this is too much.
This scene might be too much to ask of him.
I got a little nervous about that.
But in the end, I knew he was such a cocky guy that it would have been fine.
And then the schedule pushed into the NBA season, and we couldnt use an active player.
So then we had a list of other players who were recently retired.
We went back to Amare.
BS: The list wasnt likethis[gestures widely] long.
JS: Amare wouldnt shave his head to match the games that we had to cut in between.
We say, Oh wehadto do this, wehadto do that.
Because how else do you make this movie?BS: Thats the point!
But everybodys, Oh, just cast an actor.
JS: Someone did make a run at push that on us.
BS: Really, that is an idea that was put out there.
Im like, Maybe you dont understand.
As a Knicks fan, I was so, like, We cant put Kevin Garnett in the movie.
He can get people to despise him, based on his performance on a nightly basis of 20,000 people.
He went from high school to the pros.
I was just playing myself.
Thats a very difficult thing to do, because you have to be comfortable.
JS: Hes playing the self that he created for the NBA.
To do that on a stage was out of necessity.
We couldnt physically shoot in a real jewelers place.
We wouldnt have had a lease long enough, and getting up and down in these buildings is insane.
JS: The lease wasnt the problem.
BS: No, it was mainly just getting in and out of [a jewelers shop].
Theres a certain amount of elevators, and theres so many people going up and down all the time.
We wouldnt have been able to get all the stuff in there to build it out.
By bringing a bunch of people there who worked in the district that are in the movie.
Even though we were having a footprint there, we didnt want to disturb it.
We kept it open, which you have to.
Legally youre not allowed to wrap up the street, because its business.
We embraced that fully.
Theres people just walking in and out of the frames, all the time.
And, over time, those clippings became a little bit more impressive.
They do a lot of business with athletes, and a lot of athletes were talking about the movie.
They also stay on WorldStarHipHop, and the trailer blew up on WorldStar.
I actually brought Lenny to the diamond district once, because he used to go.
He went toJacob the Jeweler.
But there was another guy named Joe Rodeo.
I had a friend, and the friend has since passed, but he was a realcharacter.
He was from New York.
His name was Tuna.
Finally I was in, because I was now with someone who was buying stuff.
When I got to go to the back rooms, I took photos.
I tooksomany pictures the first time I went in there.
I probably took like a hundred pictures of the weirdest stuff
BS: How about Joe?
JS: This guy.
His name isnt even Joe!
We met him and someone called him that, and they just went with it for a while.
They were just like, Yeah, Joe.
It was so strange.
Joe owned a building 20 West 47th.
His son Alon married into a very big family on 47th street, the Nektalov family.
Theres a greatNew YorkMagazine pieceabout Nektalov.
Nektalov was murdered on Sixth Avenue.
Its a crazy story.
Oh my God.JS: So the Nektalov family is Leon Diamonds, and they were huge on the block.
They were very hard to get in with.Richie Nektalovended up helping [us].
Thats whose Rolls Royce it is in the movie that Judd Hirsch gets into.
BS: Thats Richie Nektalovs house, too, and hes also in the Passover scene.
JS: So, the tentacles were wide, you know?
Eventually I got in with Joe and his son Alon.
And Joe was very skeptical of us.
Like, Who are these guys?
Can we make money off of them?
And I was just trying to earn my place.
They showed us this huge penthouse.
I have pictures of it.
This guy had a bunch of meat hanging up from the ceiling.
BS: This is on Sixth Avenue and 47th Street, in the middle of Manhattan!
JS: Hes curingmeat!
Id told them I knew all these interior designers and architects.
So I ended up hiring an architect.
I brought in this legendary interior designer, who weirdly has also since passed,Jim Walrod.
The design of [Howards shop] is just crazy to get into the details.
We could design parts of the space to be a certain height, based on Kevin Garnetts height.
So when he goes in, he looks much bigger.
JS: We made the ceilings about half a foot shorter, to make him look taller.
BS: Basically we have this whole space outfitted to look so real, and yet its totally fabricated.
Every light was on its own color temperature, its own brightness.
It was the most complicated lighting setup you could possibly have.
JS: This has nothing to do with 47th Street.
BS: It does.
Its about capturing the vibe.
You literally go so far to fake it, to make it look real.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
