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We all know our favorite John Turturro roles. Perhaps this is the purist screenwriter who won the Cannes actor award in “Barton Fink”, one of several memorable characters of the Coen brothers. (When Turturro crosses his fingers they get back together, as do we all.) Maybe it’s the purple-jumped Jesus Quintana in “The Big Lebowski,” whose motto is “Nobody fucks with the Jesus.” Or Pino’s pizza worker in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” another frequent collaborator. He’s also directed several delicious indies, from Cannes Camera d’Or winner “Mac” to “Illuminata” and “Romance & Cigarettes.”
This year Turturro won raves in a lead role in “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” (Sony Pictures Classics, Oct. 23), which debuted at Sundance and is playing a fall festival circuit from Telluride to New York. That’s because SPC thinks they have a shot at nominating Turturro for a best actor Oscar. It is far too late. Surprisingly, it was never mentioned. But this 69-year-old Italian actor of theater, film and television in New York has earned respect and admiration from his peers.
You felt the Turturro love at the October 3 press screening of Tom McCarthy’s “A Statement” (Sony Pictures Classics, Spring 2027) at the New York Film Festival. (The press conference is here.) Turturro proved the MVP among the sprawling collection of 24 actors, receiving the most praise. During filming, they sat across from each other at a square table, after recalling their dialogue, a transcript of the actual conference of climate change experts in 1980. The back and forth is interesting and disturbing, because you can see exactly why the world could not come together to deal with this urgent crisis.
Nuclear expert Turturro at MIT is designing a series of charts that show how temperatures rising from CO2 in the atmosphere will explode if fossil fuels are not cut back significantly. And later, he crashes a wedding and hits the dance floor, dancing with the sexy writer (Nina Arianda). The film is challenging but fun.
We sat down at the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day weekend.
Anne Thompson: Your new film “A Statement” is playing at the New York Film Festival but it doesn’t come out until next spring.
John Turturro: This was the week before Reagan became president. So the words are the words of real people. 75 percent of the film is an edited rewrite, so we were all in a room most of the time. 24 actors, Amy Ryan, Nina Arianda. It’s really about democracy: how can people come to some sort of consensus, if not unanimity, and how difficult it is. And it’s funny. My character is an MIT nuclear engineer and anthropologist. I had to do a deep dive into scientific research on why people solve big socio-technological problems or not. [Tom McCarthy] he made it enjoyable. It blows up on you.
I’m an old New Yorker, so I got a big kick out of “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York,” which I saw at Sundance. What do you think of writer-director Noah Segan’s screenplay?
It was a beautiful script about getting older, the analog world, how everything changes. I thought, “Let me read this again. Is this as good as I think it is?” It was good for him, and I also liked the time table because it was Aristotelian, it wasn’t 24 hours but it’s 36 hours: “Well that makes it a pressure cooker and it’s still delicate.” I met Noah and he said, “I wrote it in your mind.” And I said, “Let’s start talking about it.”
So will you enter the world of pockets?
He gave me all these books. “Whiz Mob” was by an anthropologist. He interviewed pickpockets in the 30s, 40s, 50s, men and women, sometimes teams, and he was interested in where they came from. And then I read about the history of the pockets: they were everywhere, and many of them were abandoned as orphans. It was an idea not to commit a serious crime and you take the money, but you could throw the wallet away or put it in the mailbox or whatever. And then I worked with this guy Apollo Robbins. It’s a pocket wizard, and it was helpful too.
You had to use it?
Yes, but his hands are like a musician’s piano. It can take your watch off. You don’t feel it. It has to be one-handed, and you can’t just let it move, and you can’t squeeze. So you have to let it go, or put your finger in someone’s pocket, and you don’t take it, just keep it. And they worked in teams. Sometimes the woman would be a setup. Sometimes it was two women.
Your pocket takes care of his incompetent wife. I found that moving.
This guy had never paid attention to anyone. Maybe he blew all his money on good clothes or gambling, and now he really cares about someone. We talked a lot about the previous relationship, and as you get older, you take care of people, and I’ve been an official guardian and an unofficial guardian, so I understand that it’s a lonely, lonely position to be in, but it means something to someone who hasn’t led a wonderful life.
And his daughter [Tatiana Maslany] he tells him. She’s not going to let him off the hook when confronted.
That’s right. Tatiana took it. People want forgiveness, they want something, and she doesn’t. And I thought, “Well, you’ll have to find someone else to be generous with.” And that was a sad scene, but it could be a good scene. We were worried about it repeating itself, and we stopped it, and we shot it. Tatiana, with whom I work now, again, we are doing “Rhinoceros” the play [in Cambridge] with Paul Giamatti. [It closed September 27.] It’s good to go back and do your humble rituals. [Both Maslany and Giamatti are also in “A Statement.”]
You shot all over town.
We went to every town. I grew up in Hollis, Queens, Rosedale, and had relatives on the Lower East Side and in Brooklyn as well. I have lived all over town, with the upstate school and New Haven [Yale Drama School]. When I was filming many times I was in these new ethnic neighborhoods where I was in a hair salon, and that was my dressing room, or in a small shop, or in someone’s apartment that we rented. So it was like that movie. We had 26 days to shoot. This was one of those collaborative experiences. And so you want to give everything you’ve got, and you want to take the elevator down to the basement if you can.
The main prop in this movie is your overcoat.
The coat. Well, that’s because I did the Zegna show. We were going to make a peacock, and Noah fell in love with it, but the collar was too big. We talked to them, and they said, “Hey, we’ll make you a coat.” And they made me a coat. It reminds me of all those black and white movies, like “Out of the Past”. I’m a big Robert Mitchum fan.
It’s a Robert Mitchum coat!
Her shoulders are so big. But Robert Mitchum had this vulnerability, he had a lot of self-doubt about who he was. In a book about him, he turned down so many good parts because he thought, “I’m not good enough to do it.” Well, there is a nutritional side to this, without being obvious.
I agree. Your character is vulnerable and sad.
He’s at the point in his life where he’s at these crossroads, and how can he live and take care of this person he cares about? I felt that there was humanity. It’s hard to do it on film sometimes, because people aren’t that interested. Out of sweetness, there is discovery. And you will discover things about yourself too.
I left my house in LA because these bricks were working on our exterior wall. I thought of your movie “Son,” as a tribute to your father.
Yes, and for workers, builders, people who do not destroy things. But it bothers me when I think how many movies have been made about the Titanic, and no movie has ever been made about the Brooklyn Bridge, which stands and serves people every day. Therefore, the working class is unexamined. There are certain roles in movies, and then there are other things that aren’t. People have seen “Mac”, but it’s not a big group. I think, “Okay, I did it, I did it, I did something.” And maybe if Bingham Ray’s October Films had been released instead of Samuel Goldwyn – they wanted it. I got out to vote. That movie was shown a lot on HBO for a while.
Where does that movie live now?
He lives somewhere. Sony owns it now. It was on Criterion for a while. A few of my films were on Criterion; they rent them temporarily. They had “Illuminata,” “Son,” and “Romance & Cigarettes.” They will disappear. You don’t know where. You used to go to the video store, and you could rent or buy a VHS.
Do you keep a DVD collection at home?
I still have DVDs. I even have a laser disc, but no laser disc player.
I finally got rid of my VHS.
I tried replacing them all with DVDs. I couldn’t do it. You can’t necessarily find everything, even popular old movies.
Anything coming up with you and Spike?
Well, there were talks. There were things he wanted to do that he didn’t do, and I have something that I don’t know if he wants to do an action result or not. The things I’m interested in, I always think they’re fun, but they’re always a little off the beaten path. And so, people are gun shy for a lot of things. Are you writing something about class, race, gender? We see it every day. You know, why not? Why not explore it a bit? I’m trying to do the things I really want to do now. I have always tried to do that as best as I could. I still made stupid movies. Do you know what I mean? That people like.
