#Margaret Anderson

[candle-1-1-shine]

Today's Quote

“The great thing to learn about life is, first, not to do what you don’t want to do, and second, to do what you do want to do”

Margaret Anderson

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Extracted from Margaret Anderson's 'The Unknowable Gurdjieff'.

“We have always assumed that man is born with a soul, that this is the endowment which distinguishes him from animals. But now in my vision I saw that you can’t say a man is born with a soul any more than you can say that he is born with an art. A man may be born an artist—that is, with an art tendency—but he won’t have an art until he has worked at art, developed it through an organic process of growth. He must live a life of Art. In the same way, a man can’t have a soul until he has lived a life of the Soul.

So I began to understand at last—after how many years? —the reason for the Gurdjieff ‘exercises’: you work with them to make the soul function just as a painter works with colour and design to make his painting function. This ‘great discovery’ seems so simple that you can’t imagine why you haven’t always known it, especially since it has been suggested to you from the beginning. But when it strikes you as a piece of original thinking—as it struck me that long-ago morning—it’s as if you had solved the whole mystery of the world.”

[mariocki]

New Scotland Yard: Perfect in Every Way (1.9, LWT, 1972)

"You come here and you tell me my... dear man is dead. Your friend is dead, a good man - a good man, that's what they always tell me - you come here and you say he's dead, and, and 'Who did it? Oh, we must find out who did it, we're all good policemen!'... You're ruthless. Like he was."

"You don't mean that."

"Oh, he was a good man, wasn't he? Well, that's just what he wasn't. He was never allowed to be, he was a policeman! A perfect officer of the law, morning, afternoon, evening and night. Sometimes he wouldn't speak to me for weeks, we - we lived a terrible, terrible life."

[swiftzeldas]

The X-Files 3.23: Wetwired

[seraphinesaintclair]

Margaret Steele Anderson, “The Mystic.”

[viceandmature]

Mood when celebrating Margaret Thatcher being dead

[fredbydawn]

Oh my… let toxic yuri October begin I suppose…

[idasessions]

Jewish girl angst: a trilogy

[eye-candy-film-enjoyer]

Wes Anderson Movies + textpost part 6/11 (or until I give up)

Rushmore Edition

[fromdarzaitoleeza]

“Should is a futile word. It’s about what didn’t happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It belongs in another dimension of space.”

— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”

― Jamie Anderson

"Almost , is a big word for me, I feel it everywhere, almost home, almost happy almost change, almost ,but not quite yet ,soon maybe ."

—Jaun beaur

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 6 thoughts

sighs as if i just ran a marathon.

so, you know i take a LOT of notes. but this episode was SUCH a ride that i'm gonna try a new method of copying all this down. stick with me and let's see how it goes.

okay here we are. back after our brief and sorrow-filled separation yesterday, in which i had no time to watch an episode. it’s Scully hours. hopefully.

first thing we see is mulder walking into his place in the rain. first thing i do is pause and see if i can analyze the art on his walls. they’re some sort of prints of houses? not noticing anything in particular in terms of style or artist. and it’s definitely a new place where he lives, rip the sleep couch from s1

he takes off his jacket and listens to the message she left him and oh fuck. oh fuck. her voice. the sound of duane yelling. shattering glass.

he goes to her house and sees blood and the open window!!!! the TERROR that man must have been feeling. and he uses that FBI id to sneak right in there.

now he’s prowling about her house in search of clues and looking at her blood and hair left behind which is fucked up, even by my standards 

it was at this point i wrote "he’s like a bloodhound" which is a statement i stand by and can elaborate on if prompted

OH! we see a familiar face. he meets scully's mom. while his hands are soaked in her daughter’s blood. that's okay that's fine (said in a shaking and squeaky voice).

THE OPENING SAID SOMETHING DIFFERENT: DENY EVERYTHING. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

(at this point i made a note expressing concern that we were gonna watch scully get tortured for 45 minutes straight and thank god that isn't what actually went down. because i would have been deeply upset if that had happened and would have launched upon an unstoppable rant for the next few generations)

scully's mom dreamed about her being taken away and Mulder WRAPS HIS ARMS AROUND HER. again. while still covered in her blood. what a way to meet her family. not how anyone had pictured this going down.

so it's the next morning and alex is in this meeting while mulder is having a come apart. don’t wish him to be here. and no, alex does not get the respect of being referred to by his last name like a good agent on MY account where i make the rules and the rules are that he sucks.

when rationalizing what duane is going through, skinner said “so he’s following orders from the alien voices in his head? That’s an interesting spin on the Nuremberg defense” and yeah! i chuckled. was he wrong there?

skinner made me laugh with that little remark but then went back to pissing me off by telling mulder he was too close to the case and needed to go home. like yes, he’s right, but mulder's gonna put his bloodhound skills to destructive purposes. he's gonna rip up the couch if left home alone. in a dog metaphorical sense.

so alex takes him home which was bad enough (alex must know where mulder lives to do that) and we see CIGARETTE MAN IN THE BACKGROUND????? my original notes had a lot stronger language at this reveal that i felt i needed to tone down but i will keep the "i'll have ur head im sooo serious" part in

okay, back to duane cam. he’s cruising. he cranks his window down when he’s pulled over which is still funny to me. crank windows. how novel. but don't think i've forgotten the situation at hand just because 90's technology is funny to me.

a cop pulls him over and i felt a flicker of hope inside my chest but i knew deep down it was still too early in the episode for anything to be resolved. still, duane pulling out his gun and SHOOTING the cop made my jaw drop

(my jaw kept dropping this episode to an extent that was painful. i just got my wisdom teeth out and while i love enjoying this show, the constant twists and turns are NOT leading to a pleasant mouth experience)

SCULLY IN THE TRUNK REVEAL? <- that was all i wrote when i saw here in there. i feel it sums up the situation.

mulder, somehow, taps into where she's located and gets a visual on her. he is intensely effected and this is why i support his bloodhound-like tendencies being channeled. the man gets results.

alex, don’t ask how he slept. you are a rat and should be banished from his presence during his state of mourning and forever after. 

mulder: doesn't route 229 lead to the blue ridge parkway?

alex: I don’t know <- okay lmao I get that. i get that alex. like directions are hard. you haven't won me over but you did make me laugh here.

mulder figured out where they’re going and says GET THE CAR ALEX and that “he’ll deal with skinner”. ohhh i wanna see this furious mulder deal with skinner. OHHHH i'm so on the edge of my seat this sleep deprived man is gonna <- didn't even finish that sentence due to the next reveal

WHO THE HELL IS ALEX TALKING TO ABOUT “HOLDING HIM OFF” WHY IS CIGGY MAN HERE (can you hear the desperation in all of the notes i was taking. also i don't know his name and i don't care. that's cigarette man or ciggy man if i need to use shorthand and his government name is probably "rat bastard" but i don't care enough to use it)

mulder was, at this point, falling asleep and almost hitting a truck but insisting he can still drive. wild. on the one hand, i get it, because alex is probably gonna drive them off the road and something, but then on the other hand buddy. u almost got plowed in the negative context. someone fetch him a red bull

(and yeah i googled "red bull origins" to see if that would have been possible at the time for mulder to have a sip and can confirm it would have been IF he had gotten it imported from another country. because it wasn't in the us yet. i am a scholar)

alex is listing how many awful things are caused by sleep deprivation. which i understand and again, a good argument to be made, but this grease weasel just wants to get behind the wheel so he can total the thing and i'm not having it 

(he said some like after this and it was just “there’s our turn off” but my hatred for him reached a crescendo at this point like I could have started pummeling)

so they get to the place on the mountain that takes you up- the ski lift thingy. and the guy who works it is like "you can't use it, we don't test it in the summer" and wow. when i tell you what happens next, i hope you are seated. because i had to pause and breathe for a bit.

MULDER PULLS HIS GUN OUT AND THREATENS THE DUDE WHO SAYS HE CAN’T TAKE THE CABLE SKI THINGY UP OHHHHH MY GAWDDDDD 

so he gets access to the lift thingy and he locked alex out… yes exactly right!

the lift operator is like "don't go over 15 miles per hour" and we all know what mulder is gonna do next. he cranks it up way too fast and he’s gonna fall into the mountain and i’m looking around my room like what is going on here. the cuts to Alex’s snaky eyes are freaking me tf out. Why is alex reaching for his gun. WHAT THE FUCK WHY FID HE KNOCK THAT GIY OUT HE CIT THE GENERATOR AND LEFT MULDER UP THERE WHO IS HE CALLONH 

(<- leaving that one verbatim from my notes, too, because i feel it really captures the experience, if you can work out those typos. basically alex took his gun out and knocked the lift operator out, leaving mulder stranded on the ski lift in the sky, then called someone like "i've got him trapped" and i. was experiencing all of this very quickly.)

scully cam. she’s still in the trunk.

so the power's cut on the ski lift and mulder is not gonna just sit around and wait for somebody to help him! he's climbing up the tower and once he’s up there ALEX TURNS THE MACHINE BACK ON SERIOUSLY WHAT IS GOING ON

mulder survives the journey to the mountain's peak, despite almost falling off because he was hanging from outside!! and alex looks soooooooooooo mad.

sad man in the rain finds a car with blood in the wheel and...

HER NECKLACE IN THE BACK!!! AN EPISODE 3 CALL BACK!!! to when he knew eugene tooms was going after her because he found her necklace. oh i'm gonna be SICK

back to our worstie duane, who is in the woods screaming that they took her and that he’s free and I had to pause to breathe a lil. because if mulder lost scully and his sister to aliens...... 

after what was intended to be a commercial break and some wrestling on behalf of mulder, we see duane in custody, but receive no answers on what exactly is going on. he is, however, in a small room with mulder, who looks entirely diabolical.

mulder is stalking this guy- "stalking" in the sense that he is like a predator waiting for a chance to pounce on a rabbit- and he gets up and SEES SCULLY'S BLOOD AND HAIR ON DUANE'S HOSPITAL WRISTBAND???

next occurs what i described in my notes as the "DID YOU HURT HER SCREAMING AND TORTURE SESSION. JAW IS ON THE FLOOR" (my poor jaw. who will think of her in these trying times)

again, mulder is in his animal era, because he starts choking duane. REALLY choking him. i'm shocked. between this and the showing his gun to get to the top of the mountain, we are really seeing how he will throw all of the rules to the side and spit on them to keep the people he loves safe.

(i was also thinking to myself at this point, his ass is gonna get fired)

duane was taunting him, saying "i hope they’re not hurting her too much with the tests” which is. obviously evil. but HOW evil? it's still unclear if he is lying about the whole alien thing, because remember, scully said the bullet in his brain makes him a liar who is unpredictable. and i guess a bullet could maybe do that. i have no experience in such matters.

mulder says everyone STAY OUT OF THERE and yet. alex goes in to see duane. and is like "well i went in there because he was gagging". sure yeah. suspicious. why were you close enough to hear him gag? how do you know the sound of another man gagging, alex? heard it before?

okay this next part was. pretty messed up. i'll let my reactions from being in the moment speak for themselves because i have little desire to relive the matter:

SCULLY IN A WEIRD ASS ROOM???? THE ALIENS? What the hell I’m deeply uncomfortable are they blowing her up like a balloon. Oh I got chills. Negative 

(i never want to see a character blown up like a balloon it's just not for me. i am always gonna be good on that front)

((who is blowing her up and why. i was convinced it was aliens at first but now i think it was actually the Evil Government which has me thinking, what kind of situation led them to developing that technology in the first place?))

mulder pulls alex out of the room “NO ONE is to interrogate the suspect” “except you?” “except me” <- mulder with a god complex because scully is missing and he will do ANYTHING to find her. oh yeah that's juicy. i'm gonna dive into that at a later date.

skinner yells at mulder. yeah he had it coming. even if i enjoy his character arc i do think choking your only suspect comes across as a bit. well. unprofessional, shall we say.

mulder is shocked that duane is gagging like he didn’t just choke the guy and he might have KILLED his own best lead and has to live with whatever knowledge duane had on her whereabouts dying with him 

mulder staring at the corpse. cause of death: asphyxiation. oh he killed that dude. he is gonna be in trouble. 

(that was my first thought, anyway. i wasn't picking up what mulder was putting down, requesting a toxicology report. to me, if you show a scene of a guy getting choked, and then he dies a few minutes later, it's another situation of "i don't know enough about medical stuff to dispute that". mulder, however, WILL dispute that)

next part is copied and pasted from the rough notes again because it's funny:

"alex go fuck yourself i don’t even wanna look at you. getting in the car with ciggy man. “what about scully?” “we’ve taken care of that” ARE YOU THE MFER BLOWING HER UP LIKE A BALLOON CIGGY MAN???? alex is questioning things but idgaf if he’s morally conflicted"

(i saw the seeds of an alex redemption arc being sown here and i didn't care for it. condemn him. to the dungeons.)

mulder’s super insistent that he did NOT kill duane and again i was like. well are you sure. because it kinda looks like you did.

they want him to take a lie detector test which always makes me cringe. if polygraphs have no haters its because i'm dead.

mulder believes that duane was actually poisoned by the government to hide Something and he presents this theory to skinner and his panel which was Bold but you know our boy mulder. bold is what he does.

“why are you so paranoid Mulder” asks some random guy from the council in an annoyed fashion << terribly insensitive thing to say to guy who just had his best friend kidnapped

“I find it hard to trust anybody” (cutscene to asking Alex for his keys) NAURRR YOU CANNOT TRUST THE WEASEL 

alex gives him the keys and leaves with a long lingering stare. okay. freak.

mulder's going to the senator!!!! i was hoping we would get more info on that whole deal- why does this guy sponsor mulder? why does he do it if he knows it's a bad idea? how do they even know each other? is he a republican? - but we really don't gain any insight. he runs into Deep Throat 2.0, who I believe to be a handsome fellow, and he says that They will deny everything

who is they, i mumble quietly to the screen. why do they know all the things??

mulder is in visible and irreparable agony when getting in the car but he still has a funky tie on. despite the horrors his swag must persist.

GASP!! Mulder opens the car drawer and sees the cigarettes of famed ciggy man. alex is too pretty to smoke...

Mulder puts two and two together FAST and accuses alex of being a rat to skinner (which he’s right about!) he says he stands behind his accusation on the record and skinner tries to call alex up

(which was so funny to me because if he was a secret double agent- which he is- and mulder is accusing him of something adjacent to treason- what is a talk in skinner's office gonna do to solve the problem? again skinner is giving me high school principal energy. ur not gonna talk that one out babe but it's sweet you gave it a go xx)

mulder says that scully got too close to whatever the truth is when she had that little tracker thing and so they got her. i find myself agreeing with the guy who believes elvis faked his death. funny how he's often the level headed one

skinner, to my surprise, is taking this accusation of his agents being of the double variety quite well. he actually seems pretty reasonable about the whole thing, and like he truly believes there is some ulterior motives at play here.

but sympathy isn't enough for mulder: “What CAN you do” he asks Skinner, thrusting a finger in his face. “There’s only one thing I can do,” skinner sighs, and he... REOPENS THE X FILES?

(now this did shock me, but i was excited! don't get me wrong, i was just a bit surprised. i was thinking maybe he'd call up ciggy man and try to have a nice dignified chat since he seems so hell-bent on solving things through the power of discussion, but i suppose that reauthorizing the investigation into aliens while a top agent is missing for doing just that is. certainly an approach to the problem at hand?)

mulder walks sadly beneath a water fountain. it was sad enough as it was but then scully's mom walks up and things get even More sad

to somewhat break the air of tragedy: for some reason his face is crystal clear but hers is superrrrr blurry. like i've mentioned before, some shots are normal tv quality, and others look like they were ripped from a VHS. it throws me off each time.

but back to the matter at hand: he gives her scully’s cross necklace and he’s like "why did she wear that if she was such a skeptic" (which is a question i keep pointing out!!!!!!) and we learn the answer:

it was a gift from her mother on her 15th birthday. which i can and Will analyze in depth at a later date. the gift of a religious object to further solidify the need from her family to be Perfect and never fail and do exactly as they say. but scully choosing to wear it anyway, decades later, to hold her family close, no matter the pain of disappointing them. when she mindlessly reaches for the pendant to roll in her fingers, does she feel the warmth of family or the chill of their expectations she can never meet?

but. mulder tries to give her the necklace. and she says that he can give it to her when he finds her. not if. when.

he goes to a hill and looks up at the sky.

this episode was intense, and i will be gnawing on it like a bone for a while. seeing mulder and scully's mom together made me incredibly emo. seeing him break all the rules to find her also made me emo. trying to figure out if skinner is a real one and the ratio to which alex is genuinely evil vs just stupid were some serious cases of mental chess. and duane. we all wanna know what his deal is. and where is alex! he doesn't have to come back, don't get me wrong, but... did he fall off the face of the earth? go back to massachusetts for a dunkin run? i know that smug new englander look he has about him. don't sit here and tell me he grew up in kansas i won't buy it.

anyway, i saw the description of the next episode- so we're going back to an x file. i find it hard to imagine that mulder will have emerged from bloodhound mode by then, so maybe he thinks it's connected somehow and will go on a quest for answers in that direction- a vampire direction? hmm. guess i'll just have to tune back in!

[theersatzcowboy]

Something Wild (1986)

Jonathan Demme delivers downtown cool and Feelies-soundtracked bacchanalia in this late 80s alt classic starring my beloved Melanie Griffith (and a star-making supporting turn from a dishy, sociopathic Ray Liotta).

Director: Jonathan Demme

Cinematographer: Tak Fujimoto

Starring: Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels, Ray Liotta, and Margaret Colin

[seraphinesaintclair]

Margaret Steele Anderson, “The Night-Watches.”

[omjitskailay]

Gillian Anderson give off such tall energy. Every time I see her in something she just radiates runway supermodel tall.

And then I see her standing next to any other human being and I'm like oh yes, she is in fact a smol bean

[denimbex1986]

'As a director, Benny Safdie makes sleazy movies about hustlers and gamblers and criminals and strivers. Films that teem with violence and drugs, while a pulsating anxiety yanks you through a gritty underbelly of a New York you thought no longer existed.

But today? We’re about as far from that seediness as you can get. On his suggestion, we meet up at the Upper West Side deli institution Barney Greengrass. The tree-lined blocks around here are stately and idyllic, tucked between Central Park and the Hudson River. Safdie, 37, is dressed in full dadcore: glasses, striped tee, jeans, Tevas. (Tevas!) He has the personality to match, with a warmth and gregariousness that initially catch you way off guard. This is the guy responsible for Uncut Gems?

“My go-to meal here was pastrami, eggs, and Mun-chee cheese. But Mun-chee cheese doesn't exist anymore,” Safdie laments. “Nobody bought it.” He opts for a sesame bagel with butter instead.

This neighborhood is his home turf, and his favorite place in the world. He spent his childhood ping-ponging between an unstable environment with his father in Queens, then comfortable normalcy with his mother and stepdad on the Upper West Side.

As a younger man, he did a brief stint living downtown. “I looked out, I'm like, There's no trees. I didn't realize how important that is to my sanity,” he remembers. Now he and his wife, Ava, are raising their two boys, Cosmo, 7, and Murray, 4, up here.

Safdie made his name in tandem with his older brother Josh, the two perpetually mentioned in the same breath for their idiosyncratic, independent films reminiscent of the heyday of New Hollywood. Daddy Long Legs (2009) was mined from their own misadventures with an irresponsible father. (Safdie says he tends to have a more critical view of their upbringing than Josh and, though he still talks to their dad, “it can be strained.”) Good Time (2017), with Robert Pattinson as a small-time criminal and Benny as his mentally disabled brother, raised their profile.

And then came 2019’s Uncut Gems, the heart-pounding thriller starring Adam Sandler as a diamond-dealing gambling addict, which planted the Safide brothers firmly at the center of the culture. The success that followed changed everything.

“That was the first time where I had a vision beyond four feet in front of me,” Safdie says.

What does that vision look like? For Safdie, it means pursuing an increasingly successful acting career. He’s branched out on his own, diverging from the brother he’s been working with his entire life. Many actors go on to become directors; it’s much rarer for the opposite to happen. Even the few who do make the jump—say, John Huston—end up being remembered more for their first career.

Safdie, though, possesses a chameleonic talent, so much so that every role of his feels like a genuine surprise. Perhaps you saw him pop up in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘70s Valley vibefest Licorice Pizza as Joel Wachs, a closeted councilman. Or in Claire Denis’s Stars at Noon as an eerily nefarious CIA man (character’s name: CIA Man). Or as a Jedi in Obi-Wan Kenobi. Or, earlier this year, in—wait a second—the film adaptation of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Judy Blume’s seminal tome about a preteen girl coming of age.

Safdie’s downtown cred, the A24-ness of it all, maybe didn’t make him the most natural casting choice for Margaret’s dad Herb on paper. “It always delights me when people find out he's in the movie. Just their total shock,” the film’s director, Kelly Fremon Craig told me.

Rachel McAdams, who plays Margaret’s mom, told me in an email that she first met Safdie at a screening he hosted for Uncut Gems. “He was so lovely and effusive with such a gentle, open energy about him,” she said. “I remember my brain not quite being able to compute that guy with the same guy who just put me through one of the most stressful movie-watching experiences of my life.”

Safdie sees acting as a way to delve into certain aspects of himself that he hasn’t had an outlet for otherwise. Playing a dad, for instance. “That's a big part of my personality that I haven't yet had the chance to explore in my own work,” he says. His experience as a director also makes him considerably less neurotic about his own performances. Watching himself in the editing room? Having a big line in a scene cut? No problem—he’s been on the other side, and he gets it.

Now, Safdie has his biggest role yet, a meaty part in Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s wildly anticipated summer blockbuster about the father of the atomic bomb. Safdie plays Edward Teller, opposite Cillian Murphy’s J. Robert Oppenheimer. Teller was a controversial figure, a Hungarian theoretical physicist who would go on to testify against Oppenheimer in later years.

The cast of Oppenheimer is comically stacked: Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Gary Oldman, Rami Malek, to name a few. Nolan was looking for someone fresh and unexpected to play Teller. He had initially seen Safdie in Good Time and then Licorice Pizza. “I called Paul [Thomas Anderson] and I asked about Benny, and he gave him the strongest possible endorsement and pointed out that he's an incredible actor, but also just a wonderful guy,” Nolan told me.

There was also a bit of fate sprinkled in. Safdie had studied physics at Boston University—almost became a physicist, in fact, before he swerved off into filmmaking. Oppenheimer would allow him to combine his two passions, to dive into yet another deep interest that had otherwise not merged with his film career. It would also require him to wear layers of makeup, to have his hair straightened every day until he could hear it sizzle, and to do accent work for the first time. Safdie put off sharing his speech progress with Nolan for as long he could, until he couldn’t. Finally, he sent the director a voice memo of himself describing his breakfast in a thick Hungarian accent.

“When he sent me that recording, I listened to it about a thousand times and very much enjoyed it,” Nolan said.

Teller could have been written as a straight antagonist to Oppenheimer, but instead Nolan used him to inject rare moments of levity throughout the film. (There is one memorable scene in which Safdie slathers sunscreen all over his face before the first nuclear bomb test.) “For the tragedy of that relationship to have resonance, you have to have seen a warmth there and something between them that's more of a brotherly relationship,” Nolan said. “And I felt that Benny could really bring that to the role and give it that warmth.”

“[He’s] such a kind and gentle fella,” Cillian Murphy told me of Safdie. Much has been made of how intense the film is—take a look at any number of harrowing promotional shots of Murphy in character looking like the most haunted man of all time. In between takes, he said it always seemed as if he ended up talking to Safdie.

“You keep the atmosphere light and joke around because I feel you need to be in a relaxed state to act. Your heart rate needs to be low, your cortisol levels need to be low,” Murphy said. “And that's why I think I probably gravitated towards Benny.”

Safdie is obsessed with realism. It checks out, considering how so many characters in his movies were just ordinary people plucked off the street. That sensibility has followed him into his performances.

Eating, for instance. It drives him nuts when people don’t eat on camera. “I hate it when people don't eat,” he says, tearing into his bagel. “It destroys me.” When he filmed a dinner scene in Licorice Pizza, he made sure to eat in every take. “I don't know how many tiramisus I ate, but it must have been 30,” he says. Same thing happened in The Curse, his secretive upcoming Showtime series with Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone about a couple producing an HGTV show: “Sixty chips in one take, and we must have had nine takes…”

“It wasn't just the nine bags of chips,” Fielder told me in an email. “Any scene that involved food, everyone would pace themselves on the first take.… But Benny for some reason would keep shoving food in his mouth the entire scene ’cause he thought it would be funnier. And he was right. There was one scene where he ate an entire Chinese buffet plate every single take for 15 takes and he would always match the exact same volume of food. You'd think any sane person would eat a couple less popcorn shrimp each time as the takes went on. But he wouldn't.”

And then there’s the crying. Safdie tends to cry when he gets into character—thinking of all the things he might be feeling if he were in that person’s shoes. When Adam Sandler, in Uncut Gems, had to weep, dejected, that he was “so sad and so fucked up,” it was Safdie who went into his trailer to pump him up.

“In a weird way, there's nothing better than being able to do that in front of people because it's usually a very private moment that you're ashamed of and you don't want to show anybody. But to actually get the opportunity to show people what it's like when you're really sad,” Safdie recalls saying. “And then I started crying. He goes, ‘You got to stop. Can you take it easy?’”

Before Uncut Gems, even with a handful of celebrated movies under his belt, a film career didn’t feel truly viable. At the back of his mind, he still thought he might have to go back to school and actually become a physicist. His wife was the primary breadwinner, and so when he edited Good Time, he’d set his son Cosmo in bed with a bunch of pillows surrounding him so he wouldn’t roll over, turn on the baby monitor, and work while he slept.

Last year, it was announced that Sandler would be working on a new movie with Elara Pictures, the Safdie brothers’ production company. The project would be set in the world of sports memorabilia collectors, with Megan Thee Stallion also reported to star.

Shortly after, news broke that Benny would not be directing the Sandler movie with Josh. “Elara is still there. We work on a lot of documentaries and there's just a constant flow of ideas,” Safdie says. “It just felt like, okay, there's things that I want to explore that don't necessarily align right now with Josh. So it's a divide and conquer mentality. He wants to tell this story, he can go and do that. I'm going to go and do a couple of other things. It seems like a natural progression for how things have happened.”

Mainly, he had gone away to act on several projects and work on The Curse. By the time he returned, Josh and their longtime third collaborator Ronald Bronstein, were already deep into working on the new Sandler movie. “It was just a matter of, ‘This works for me right now and this is what I've got to do,’” Safdie explains.

Elara also had a shakeup earlier this year. One of its founding producers, Sebastian Bear-McClard, was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women. A spokesperson for the Safdies had previously said they fired him upon becoming aware of the behavior in July 2022. “It’s disgusting, and when you find out something about somebody that you didn't realize, you just have to be much more careful,” Safdie says when I ask him about the incident. “It's a lot, and it's not something that you want to have happen to anybody. And when you find it out, the one thing that you can do is really just take control.”

When we speak, Safdie is just finishing up final sound editing on The Curse. The show originated through his friendship with Fielder. Safdie had been a longtime Nathan for You enthusiast, and had even written a Cinema Scope article about his love for the show. Fielder was similarly a fan of Safdie’s. “In those initial hangouts it was clear we were on a similar wavelength,” Fielder said.“We both think a lot about tone and realism. We weren't even intending to collaborate on a project actually, it just sort of happened organically the second time we hung out.”

“We came up with the idea for The Curse and we're like, ‘This is so stupid, but it's really funny,’” Safdie explains. They kept texting and texting about it, until the bit became real.

In The Curse, Fielder and Emma Stone play a couple, while Safdie is a long-haired, turquoise jewelry-wearing HGTV producer. “They live in an area called Española, which is close to Santa Fe. And that's where they're building their new homes. They have a very different way of gentrifying the community. They want to do it ethically, and they want to do it in a way that doesn't hurt anybody. So they want to make a show about that. And you follow their lives as they're doing it,” Safdie explains. “It started out as a 30-minute comedy and became an hour-long comedy-drama.”

So he filmed Oppenheimer in the New Mexico desert and then returned to New Mexico to film The Curse for several more months. While he emerged without any turquoise jewelry, he did leave the set having purchased a ton of props from production. “I do have an insane amount of Talavera dishware, which I love. I love it so much. It brings me so much joy to look down and see the bright colors,” he says.

This enthusiasm and attention to detail saturates everything. Directing, acting, physics—they’re all connected.

“All of it is just trying to understand what this thing is that we're going through,” Safdie says. “How in the world is the universe expanding and here I am, sitting here. What's 14 billion years ago? What's time? How much time is left?”'