We all know our favorite John Turturro roles. Maybe it’s the Cannes actor-prize-winning purist screenwriter in “Barton Fink,” one of several memorable Coen brothers characters. (Turturro’s crossing his fingers they are getting back together, as we all are.) Maybe it’s purple-jumpsuited Jesus Quintana in “The Big Lebowski,” whose motto is “Nobody fucks with the Jesus.” Or pizza worker Pino in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” another frequent collaborator. He’s also directed a number of delicious indies, from Cannes Camera d’Or winner “Mac” to “Illuminata” and “Romance & Cigarettes.”
This year Turturro scored raves in a leading role in “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” (Sony Pictures Classics, October 23) which broke out at Sundance and is playing the fall festival circuit from Telluride to New York. That’s because SPC believes they have a shot at landing Turturro a Best Actor Oscar nomination. He’s long overdue. Shockingly, he’s never been nominated. But this 69-year-old Italian American New York theater, film, and television actor has built affection and respect 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 ensemble of 24 actors, nabbing the most applause. During filming, they sat across from each other at a square table, having memorized their dialogue, a transcription of the actual conference of climate change experts in 1980. The back and forth is fascinating and disturbing, as you can see exactly why the world could never come together to address this existential crisis.
Turturro’s MIT nuclear expert projects a series of charts that show how rising temperatures from CO2 in the atmosphere will explode if fossil fuels aren’t cut back dramatically. And later on, he crashes a wedding and hits the dance floor, dancing with the sexy stenographer (Nina Arianda). The movie is challenging but fun.
We sat down at the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day Weekend.
Anne Thompson: Your new movie “A Statement” is playing the New York Film Festival but won’t come out until next spring.
John Turturro: This was the week before Reagan became president. So the words are the words of the real people. 75 percent of the movie is a transcript edited down, 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 kind 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 about why people do or don’t solve large sociotechnological problems. [Tom McCarthy] made it entertaining. It creeps 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 did you think of writer-director Noah Segan’s screenplay?
It was a beautiful script about aging, the analog world, how everything is changing. I thought, “Let me read this again. Is this as good as I think it is?” It had a delicacy to it, and I also liked the time frame 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 with you in mind.” And I said, “Let’s start talking about it.”
So you dove into the world of pickpockets?
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 it was interesting where they came from. And then I read about the history of pickpockets: they were everywhere, and a lot of them were abandoned orphans. It was the idea of not doing heavy crime and you take the money, but you could throw away the wallet or put it in the mailbox or whatever. And then I worked with this guy Apollo Robbins. He’s a magician pickpocket, and he was helpful too.
You had to practice?
Yeah, but his hands are like a concert pianist’s. He can take your watch off. You don’t feel it. It’s got to be with one hand, and you can’t just let it flop, and you can’t press. So you have to let it go, or you put your finger in someone’s pocket, and you don’t take it, just hold it. And they worked in teams. Sometimes the woman would be the setup. Sometimes it was two women.
Your pickpocket is taking care of his incapacitated wife. I found that moving.
This guy never has taken care of anyone. Maybe he blew all his money on good clothes or gambling, and now he’s actually taking care of someone. We talked a lot about the previous relationship, and as you get older, you do take care of people, and I’ve been an official guardian and an unofficial guardian, so I understand that’s an unsung, isolating position to be in, but it means something to someone who’s led not an admirable life.
And his daughter [Tatiana Maslany] is letting him know that. She’s not going to let him off the hook when she confronts him.
That’s right. Tatiana brought it. People want forgiveness, they want something, and she doesn’t. And I thought, “well, then you have to find someone else to be generous to.” And that was a tricky scene, but it could be a good one. We were nervous about rehearsing, and we blocked it, and we shot it. Tatiana, who I’m working with now, again, we’re 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 the city.
We went to every borough. I grew up in Hollis, Queens, Rosedale, and I had relatives on the Lower East Side and in Brooklyn too. I’ve lived all over the city, with school upstate and New Haven [Yale Drama School]. During filming a lot of times I was in these new ethnic neighborhoods where I was in a hair salon, and that was my dressing room, or in a little store, or in someone’s apartment we rented. So it was that kind of movie. We had 26 days to shoot. It was one of those collaborative experiences. And so you want to give everything you have, and you want to take the elevator down to the subbasement if you can.
The prime prop in this movie is your big overcoat.
The coat. Well, that’s because I did a Zegna show. We were going to do a peacoat, 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 these black and white movies, like “Out of the Past.” I’m a big Robert Mitchum fan.
It is a Robert Mitchum coat!
His shoulders are that big. But Robert Mitchum had this vulnerability, he had a lot of self-doubt in who he was. In a book about him, he turned down so many great parts because he thought, “I’m not good enough to do it.” Well, there’s a noirish aspect to this, without it being overt.
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 survive and take care of this person that he cares about? I felt there was a humanity to it. It’s a hard thing to do on film sometimes, because people aren’t that interested in it. Out of delicacy, there’s discovery. And you discover things about yourself too.
I left my house in L.A. as these bricklayers were working on our exterior wall. I thought of your movie “Mac,” a tribute to your dad.
Yeah, and to workers, builders, people who don’t destroy things. But it drives me crazy when I think how many movies have been made about the Titanic, and no movie was ever made about the Brooklyn Bridge, which stands and serves people every day. So, the working class is unexplored. There are certain professions in movies, and then there’s other things that just aren’t. People have seen “Mac,” but not a huge group. I think, “Okay, I made it, I did it, I did something.” And maybe if Bingham Ray’s October Films would have released it instead of Samuel Goldwyn— they wanted it. I got outvoted. That film was shown a lot on HBO for a while.
Where does that movie live now?
It lives somewhere. Sony owns it now. It was on Criterion for a while. They had a few of my films on Criterion; they lease them for a period of time. They had “Illuminata,” “Mac,” and “Romance & Cigarettes.” They 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 some laser discs, but I don’t have a laser disc player.
I finally got rid of my VHS.
I tried to replace all of them with DVDs. Couldn’t do it. You can’t necessarily find everything, even old popular movies.
Anything coming up with you and Spike?
Well, there were talks. There were things that he wanted to do that he didn’t do, and I have something that I don’t know if he’ll want to executive produce or not. The things I’m interested in, I always think they’re entertaining, but they’re always a little bit off the beaten track. And so, people are gun shy for a lot of things. You write something about, class, race, sex? We see it every day. You know, why not? Why not explore it a little bit? I’m trying to do the things I really want to do now. I’ve always tried to do that as best I could. I still did some stupid movies. You know what I mean? Which people enjoy.