In Noah Segan’s The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, Harry (John Turturro) cares for his bed-ridden wife and makes a not-so-honest living taking from unsuspecting New Yorkers and tourists, but finds himself in way over his head when he steals from the wrong person and has to go to great lengths to retrieve what he took and sold before the collateral damage comes down on the people he loves most.
Awards Buzz spoke with Turturro about how Harry isn’t necessarily as colorful as past roles of his:
“I’ve played colorful characters, but sometimes, the richer character is not the one who is so overtly maybe more extreme. That’s the job. But I actually enjoy doing that, maybe more than the other thing now. But it was a great experience doing it and I’m very proud and pleased to be in a film like this with all these wonderful people. It really resonated with me personally.”
He dissected the correlation between what he does and his character’s chosen profession:
“If you study pickpockets, Apollo Robbins was a magician pickpocket training me, you’re sizing people up constantly. You’re doing a psychological study of, look at this person. Usually you work in a team. You set the person up, but yeah, you’re absolutely taking the vibe, how protective they are or not. You’re observing people constantly. I investigate people. I talk to them. I’m picking stuff up from them, maybe not their pocket, but maybe something to do with their essence or soul or sensibility. So maybe I am a pickpocket, you know what I mean, in some ways? And then you’re on to the next endeavor. This is something that I had a lot of time to do research about it and a lot of these people, they have their own code. Yeah, they violated people, but it was in a non-violent way. The really good pickpockets would say, we don’t even want someone to even feel it. Then maybe I send their wallet back in the mailbox. They were looking for that hundred bucks, two hundred bucks. They weren’t the kind of thieves that are stealing like now, the cyber thieves who are cleaning people’s bank accounts out. That’s a horror. They’re not Bernie Madoff. And a lot of them had agreements with the police. They were allowed to work certain shifts.”
Watch the video above to hear him reflect back on underrated roles of his and to compare this turn to the one he gives in another upcoming project, A Statement.
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York opens in New York and Los Angeles on October 23rd and nationwide on October 30th.
