Benny Breaks Out: The Safdie Brother on Going Solo, Making You Squirm With ‘The Curse’ and What He Learned From Christopher Nolan and PTA

variety.com:

Benny Safdie is late. Frantic and a bit sweaty, he arrives at Westside Restaurant 40 minutes past our 10 a.m. breakfast, and just five minutes after I email his publicist, “Did Benny forget about the interview?” Benny forgot about the interview.

Out of breath, he profusely apologizes, offering a Mad Lib of an explanation: “I was spray-painting a Tin Man costume in Central Park.” (Hours after we meet, he’ll visit “The Tonight Show” covered head to toe in sparkling silver, an absurdist comedy bit that seems to puzzle even Jimmy Fallon.) Before that, Safdie spends three and a half hours answering my questions, legs cramping in a tight booth, metallic-smudged hands dancing around a heated corn muffin. “This place is awesome,” he says after a stack of plates shatters on the old tiled floor, as servers bark omelet orders across the narrow restaurant.

Safdie, 37, grew up bouncing between his divorced parents in Queens and the Upper West Side, and says he’s been coming to this particular spot since his teenage years, when it used to be open all night. “Diners have had a lot to do with the things I’ve created,” he says.

Those things include 2017’s “Good Time” and 2019’s “Uncut Gems,” the gritty, heart-pounding crime thrillers he directed with his older sibling, Josh, which turned the duo into the bro idéal of indie filmmaking.