Actor, writer and director Benny Safdie talks about his passion for physics, and how it influences the way he sees the world
This article is taken from the Spring/Summer 2024 issue of AnOther Magazine:
“I don’t think physics and storytelling are that far apart. When you look at the universe in general, you always want an explanation of something because that’s how you understand it. But we need to grapple with things we can’t understand, that’s just part of human existence. In science you can never prove anything – you only prove that you can’t disprove it. It’s like you’re existing in the strangest place, where you must accept a certain level of openness. And you wouldn’t think that something like science would be so open to interpretation. I remember, when I was filming Oppenheimer, there was this scene where a lot of the background actors were real scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. And so, after I did my bit I would talk to them – one thing I asked about was this video with [the Nobel prize-winning physicist] Richard Feynman that you can find online, where he talks about how rubber bands work. And his whole point is, if you look at the world, it’s basically a ‘dynamic mess of jiggling things’. That’s a mission statement for what I believe – it’s incredible how physics can get you to a place where the solid seems insubstantial. So I asked one of the physicists on set, ‘Is it hard for you to look at the world and not see it for what it is, but to see it beyond what it is?’ And his answer was, ‘I actually think that’s the right way to look at the world, and the way you look at the world is not how it actually is.’ So what I accused him of he just spun right back around and accused me of. I thought that was great.”
When Benny Safdie was at high school, his teacher marked two points on a piece of paper and drew a long, squiggly line between the two. “Now,” he said, “if you can walk me from point A to point Z, you’ve done your job. It doesn’t change just because somebody can look back to figure out how they got here. All that matters is you went along for the ride and understood your way forward.” Safdie is describing his early passion for physics, a subject he quit on a “coin toss” to study filmmaking at Boston University. “But looking back I’m like, ‘That’s a lot like how I approach narrative.’” With his brother, Josh, Benny’s freewheeling studies of the lowlifes and hustlers of his native New York (Uncut Gems, Good Time) have become bywords for cinematic cool, plugged into this era’s mood of free-floating anxiety. Next, he’s flying solo with The Smashing Machine, a mixed-martial arts drama starring The Rock. But it’s his performances in front of the camera that have been turning heads of late: as sleazy director-for-hire Dougie in The Curse, a cryptic black comedy he wrote with Nathan Fielder and starring Emma Stone, and as Edward Teller, father of the H-bomb, in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. The latter was a kismet moment for the actor, director and erstwhile physicist, who calls the role the fulfilment of a “childhood dream”.
Photography captured on Polaroid 1-2 Instant Camera. Production co-ordinator: Lino Meoli. Post-production: Samy’s Camera
This story features in the Spring/Summer 2024 issue of AnOther Magazine, which is on sale now. Order here.