John Turturro and Tatiana Maslany have one scene together in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. When Harry (Turturro) shows up on her doorstep, it has been years since they’ve seen each other. Both actors prepared for the scene, but Turturro had an idea to keep it raw. At Deadline’s Contenders Film Los Angeles, he shared what he told writer/director Noah Segan on the day of the scene.
“I just suggested to Noah, let’s just block it, let’s not rehearse it,” Turturro said. “They haven’t seen each other in such a long time. So we never rehearsed it. The rawness is evident. We did the master, then Tatiana and myself.”
Harry is the pickpocket of the title. It becomes apparent through their conversation that Harry was not around and resented her for moving out of the city.
“The writing is so elegant,” Maslany said. “There’s a lot of space between moments where things are unsaid. I just thought it was a really gorgeous scene. The idea of doing a scene with so much history in it, when you have only four pages or whatever to do it.”
Maslany did her own preparation, but said she remained present to respond to what Turturro had prepared.
“I bring everything that I’ve worked on, obviously, to that day but then it’s about being present with that person opposite you,” she said. “John is so full up on this character. He’s so deep it was very easy to feel that history even though we only had a morning to do it.”
Harry lifts a flash drive from tech guy (Will Price) connected to the mob. He spends the day trying to get it back. With mobsters in pursuit, there is violent crime in the film.
“The violence in the movie is usually offscreen but the cost fo the violence, the effect of it is on screen,” Turturro said. “That’s what we carry with us.”
For one confrontation at gunpoint, Turturro recalled a terrifying incident from his past. In the ‘70s, at 2 a.m. one night, he pulled up to a basketball court where a man was shooting hoops. That man was a police officer who pulled a gun on Turturro, concerned he was suspicious at that hour. Turturro cleared it up and they ended up playing.
“I could barely move my legs, I was so full of lactic acid,” he said. “I remember the gun to my head. There’s no more dignity left for this particular guy so you have to give the performance of your life but it’s real.”
For Harry’s day job, Turturro studied pickpocketing methods with magician and pickpocket Apollo Robbins. Harry works alone, which is unusual.
“Usually they work in teams,” Turturro said. “A man and a woman would work together. Usually, it was the woman who would pickpocket. They had their own morality. They didn’t rob people who were inebriated or handicapped or really old. They found a mark who was wealthy. The idea is you don’t pull something out. You set them up in a way they don’t feel it. You move the person. The person doesn’t feel it’s gone.”
Check back on Monday for the panel video.
