And it has to do with suffering and trying to understand your life.” -Josh Safdieīy 2015, Josh recalls, “there was this urgency to cast that part up to get a bigger budget.” William Morris Endeavor, which represented the Safdies, recommended its new client: Kobe Bryant. “There’s a strong correlation between Judaism and Knicks basketball. But then development on the project stalled and the Safdies moved on to other things, including Lenny Cooke, a 2013 documentary about the former high school basketball phenom who at one time in the early 2000s was a higher-ranked prospect than LeBron James. “We had Amar’e come to a table read,” Bear-McClard says. In the original script for Gems, Stoudemire’s acquisition of an Ethiopian Jewish tribe’s black opal was going to spur his string of 30-point games. It also didn’t hurt that he’d just begun to embrace Judaism. Stoudemire’s run was perfect Safdie script fodder. ![]() Early in the 2010-11 season, the newly arrived All-Star forward set a franchise record by scoring at least 30 points in nine straight games, the first eight of which were Knicks victories. And like countless desperate Knicks fans in that era, they were smitten with Amar’e Stoudemire. “He said, ‘Sign it for my son.’ So I had a Doc Rivers and Walt Frazier basketball for a very long time.”Ī decade and a half later, the Safdies were young filmmakers who somehow hadn’t renounced their favorite team. “Our dad just threw a basketball at him as hard as he could and Doc just instinctively just grabbed it and caught it and looks at him like he was a psycho,” says Josh, who remembers Alberto then tossing Rivers a pen. The then-injured point guard, who was wearing street clothes after badly injuring his knee in December 1993, was walking toward the tunnel to the locker room when Josh and Benny’s father, Alberto, attempted to get Rivers’s attention. After Knicks legend/broadcaster Walt “Clyde” Frazier signed their basketball, the Safdies spotted Doc Rivers on the court. At Madison Square Garden one evening back in the early 1990s, they went autograph hunting. When the now 30-something Safdie brothers were kids, they had an NBA team that was actually fun to root for. But bringing such a uniquely specific, sports-soaked story to the big screen was a nearly decade-long odyssey. Uncut Gems contains actual game footage, real players, and one of the best acting performances by an athlete ever. What follows is a hardcore NBA fan’s fever dream. The stone grabs hold of the former MVP- it speaks to him-after which Howard, always looking for an excuse to gamble, decides to go all in on backing KG. While visiting Howie’s shop early on in the playoff series, KG becomes obsessed with a rare black opal that was smuggled in from Ethiopia. Garnett costars as a younger version of himself in the film, which focuses on Boston’s 2011-12 Eastern Conference semifinal against the Philadelphia 76ers. However, in Gems, Howard’s existential anxiety revolves not around the Knicks but rather the Boston Celtics. “And it has to do with suffering and trying to understand your life.” “There’s a strong correlation between Judaism and Knicks basketball,” Josh says. You know what kind of sick fuck would go to a Knicks game by themselves?” “The other day Josh went to a fuckin’ Knicks game on his own,” says Bear-McClard, who’s known the brothers since high school. After all, they’re lifelong New York Knicks fans-big ones. It’s fitting that the Safdies, who grew up in Queens and Manhattan, would make such a deeply bittersweet cinematic love letter to their favorite sport. But beyond that, it is also a rumination on family, gambling, faith, and, most of all, basketball. Howard is a schmuck, forever cursed by his own thirst, recklessness, and inability to say “when.” Moving at a blinding speed, the movie is a tale of one man’s endless descent. In Uncut Gems, the follow-up to the Safdie brothers’ frenetic 2017 caper flick Good Time, Adam Sandler plays Howard Ratner, a New York jeweler on a path of self-destruction. ![]() Between Take 1 and Take 5, you’d be like, ‘Ohhh shit, is this gonna match? Because he is a sweaty fuckin’ mess.’ It was incredible.” To Garnett, the Safdies were Doc Rivers, and Uncut Gems was Game 6 of the NBA Finals. He was on set sweating like it was the fourth quarter of a playoff game. “And that’s what’s really fucking special about him. “You realize how hard he worked in acting-he must’ve worked three times as hard on the court,” producer Sebastian Bear-McClard says. “He called Josh ‘Coach’ at one point,” Benny says. We’re resurfacing it now as the film begins streaming on Netflix.ĭeep into shooting Josh and Benny Safdie’s film Uncut Gems, it became clear that for Kevin Garnett, old habits die hard. Editor’s note, May 25, 2020: This story was originally published during Uncut Gems ’ theatrical run.
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