John Turturro had to stop New Yorkers from coming into his fake pawn shop

Even the spot that doubles as his friend Ben’s (fellow Brooklynite and Big Lebowski castmate Steve Buscemi) pawn shop brought a bit of the community together. “I love being in Sunnyside, I was out on the street a lot,” he said. “I don’t remember where it was, but even when we shot outside, people were walking by, looking, but they were on their way to work. There’s a lot of energy. People wanted to come into the pawn shop. We said it was closed. When we broke the door, they were concerned that it was robbed.”

The intersection of community and economy give both a timely and timeless quality to Harry’s story. “One of the strengths of the film is that it’s got this tension that someone is struggling to survive, but in a world [where] everything has changed around him personally, professionally, the technology is really difficult for him to absorb,” says Turturro. “There’s a lot of people who are lower middle class who don’t have access to computers and smartphones and all that stuff. It’s hard for them to navigate certain things.”

In addition to the ever-changing world around him, Harry must also be there for the people in his life, a lesson he’s had to learn the hard way after his daughter distances from his chaotic life of crime. “It’s about someone not changing, but growing and saying, ‘Well, now I’ve finally come to the realization that to love someone is to care for them, and I’m going to be responsible for that,’” the actor explains of the relationship Harry has with his wife, who needs around-the-clock care. “Maybe they were a team together before that, and they went out dancing, and they had a fun life, but there are people struggling to survive, as most people are. It really resonated with me as a person of my age and thinking about all the things that you’ve gone through as a child, as a parent, as a brother or a sister, as a husband, and all the losses that you’ve accumulated in life. And what do you have? What you have is your relationship to your family, to your friends, to people on the street. They’re not just strangers.”

With this melancholy theme and its doomed character stuck in circumstances beyond his control, The Only Living Pickpocket In New York has its roots in some of the classic film noirs and neo-noirs of yesteryear, and Turturro cites influences like The Friends Of Eddie Coyle as inspirations for his somber performance as Harry. “[Robert] Mitchum played a lot of characters [like] in Out Of The Past, [where] he was doomed,” he says. “It was a vulnerable guy who made certain choices in his life. I mean, the whole film noir thing explores all that. But Mitchum was a great example of that kind of guy. He’s a massive contradiction: a mass of humanity, because he has a gentleness, and he’s this huge man, a very sexy man too. My wife [and I] were watching a movie where he takes his shirt off with Deborah Kerr, and she goes, ‘That’s the most obscene thing I’ve ever seen in my life.'”

The noir-like story was part of the appeal of The Only Living Pickpocket In New York, and Turturro has high praise for his writer-director Segan. “I was moved just reading the script,” he says. “I was like, ‘Wow, if we could get the right people to do this, maybe we could do something. If Noah can execute it—which he did—it could be something that people see themselves in.'” He’s already ready to work with Segan again, too. “I knew by the time we hit the first day, he was very confident that he had done his homework and what could be done in 24 days or 25 days, which we did,” Turturro says. The dream of working with Segan again could mean that the filmmaker directs a new project that Turturro himself has adapted, even though the actor also wants to direct another film (his last effort, The Jesus Rolls, came out in 2019). “It’s never easy, but this has been a little bit of a miracle,” he says. “We made this movie, and everyone has responded to it. We have worldwide distribution, and I want to share it with people because that’s why you do it.”