It’s so neglected, and creates so much wealth. Howard’s adjoining office was “secondary to the showroom, totally different,” says Anderson, and “it has the most character in the end,” from all the stuff in there. They're the type of details with a point of view that help create a world. Because the Safdies shoot so tight, some set microdetails didn’t make it on screen, or barely did, like the office sneaker boxes or pulled-up carpet and tile glue in the cleaning station, though they helped flesh things out for the actors. They got in good enough to know the dealers, cast some in the film, and take stylistic cues from them, “pulling marble from one shop, shelves from another, and a color scheme from another” to make a sort of representational pastiche set (kind of like how Howard’s Ferragamo belt didn’t come out of nowhere).
#Uncut gems budget movie
Nearly half the movie takes place in Howard’s KMH jewelry showroom and office, built out as a set by Lisenco, with research amassed through the years the Safdies spent schmoozing and politicking in the district. It’s always been a movie about the world of diamond dealers, with a fidelity to that physical universe that has stayed just as constant.
While the particulars of Gems changed over time- Amar’e Stoudemire and Kobe Bryant were both considered for the lead-the settings have been relatively constant. It stayed enough of a work in progress that characters with bit parts in Uncut Gems found their way into other films, Lisenco says-and the same is true of Safdie-world objects, with scenes in Good Time functioning like preparatory sketches for the same aesthetics and world created in Gems. The more you look, the more frenetic it is and the louder it gets.įamously, the Safdies had an idea for a movie set in the Diamond District for over a decade, before two other feature films, and enough iterations existed that a version of the script a decade ago included Elliott Gould as the lead. The sets work almost like a parallel cast of characters, talking over each other, making things feel like Midtown at rush hour, even indoors. These are spaces conceived and executed by production designer Sam Lisenco and set decorator Kendall Anderson as expressions of that thirst for wealth and of its display. Throughout, Howard operates out of zones of lived-in excess-his armored showroom, his son’s gaudy room, his wife’s pastel kitchen, his in-laws’ den of wealth. Gems, their first film with a healthy budget, focuses on wealth, and displays it. It’s less of a sensory overload and more how the New York in the Safdies’ films functions: a hectic, Bad Lieutenant, 2 A.M.-in-Midtown type of universe. Everyone dresses loudly: Julia, Howard’s employee-slash-mistress, in Christian Lacroix jeans at the nightclub or bright colors for work Howard in Ferragamo and Hugo Boss an assistant in Balmain. When he’s not asleep, everyone-Howard, his creditors, his family, his clients, his colleagues-seems to be talking at once, or over each other.
There’s so much going on in Uncut Gems at all times-that’s pretty much what the movie is about-that it’s still loud in the rare instance where Howard accepts some quiet. The camera pans out, almost resigned: He’s done this before. He pulls a blanket out of a dresser, a pillow out of another, and lies down, resigned, on a black chaise. Then there’s the plexi box in the corner, where earrings get cleaned.
On his desk there’s a Tom Otterness sculpture, one of the little gold men from the 14th Street A/C/E station, and behind it, on the wall, are signed and framed basketballs and baseballs. It’s in the back of his jewelry showroom on 47th Street, in Manhattan’s Diamond District, and is a mess: black Herman Miller–type office shelving covered in stickers, a big aquarium, sneaker and Apple and big-screen-TV boxes on the floor, a plasma globe, a New York–shaped mirror on the wall. He can’t stay at the Upper East Side apartment he keeps in town (and splits with his mistress), so he goes to crash at his office. There’s a scene in Uncut Gems, the new Josh and Benny Safdie movie, where Howard Ratner, Adam Sandler’s jeweler with a gambling problem who owes money all over town and is in over his head, has a bad night at a nightclub.
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