Photo: Niko Tavernise/Niko Tavernise
If there’s any lesson to be had from the movie Caught Stealing, it’s to never say “yes” to pet-sitting for your neighbor unless you really trust them. Set in 1998 New York, Hank (played by Austin Butler) gets dragged into a mess after agreeing to watch his neighbor’s cat while he returns to London. While Hank’s city skills get tested as he’s thrown into the criminal underworld between cops, mobsters (including a red-haired Bad Bunny), and the Orthodox Jewish community, through it all, he leans on his kind-of girlfriend, Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz), an EMT and real New Yorker, until he can’t anymore.
While the plot is entertaining and fast-paced, the best part of the film is how it serves as a love letter to the East Village in the ’90s. And with that, the costumes created by Amy Westcott have a chance to shine. Some key moments of the film hinge on the clothing and props, including when Hank traces a lost key back to a pocket of an unhoused neighbor or discovers a murder based on a lighter. (Just see the film; it will make sense.)
“It’s ironic to see some of these trends come full circle,” says producer Dylan Golden. “We would work incredibly hard to make sure our costumes and sets were accurate to the period, but then we would be shooting in the East Village or Chinatown, and it would be impossible to tell who was an extra and who was just a fashionable passerby.” Between the clothing and the replication of some notable establishments, we venture back to a time that the filmmaker, the production designer, and Westcott all lived in, which is why it all feels so real. With the resurgence of ’90s fashion, it felt even more important to make it authentic to Westcott and the team.
Photo: Niko Tavernise/Niko Tavernise
What were your initial thoughts when you were approached to do this movie?
It didn’t take much convincing. It’s quintessential New York in the ’90s, and we were all there. I hate to age myself, but Mark Friedberg, Darren Aronofsky, and I all lived through this time in New York history. So I read the script, and I wrote him back, like, “Baseball, cat, boy who loves his mom … I’m in.”
The theater in which I saw the film, people literally cheered when Kim’s Video popped up. Obviously, the ’90s were a big influence, but in terms of clothing, where else did you look for inspiration?
I used a lot of real photos: of me and my friends, of anybody else who would give me photos of themselves, and of people in bars. The ’90s styles are coming back now, but it’s different. It’s like a cleaned-up version. So, it was about getting back to the gritty ’90s and how things were in New York at that point, and what people did differently than what they do now.
What are some of the things you think are the big differences between the actual ’90s and today’s ’90s style?
Now it’s almost like a cuter version, because back then, things were a little awkward. This was before low-waisted jeans came in, so jeans didn’t fit the same. They were a dumpier fit. That reminds me that another place I drew a lot of inspiration from was music. Not only things that were happening in New York, but what was happening throughout the country and London. Russ (Matt Smith’s character) is from England, and he listens to a whole different kind of music. So what does that look like when he switches back to New York, and that atmosphere, because that was when bars were filled with live bands.
That’s so interesting, because in the first scene, when they’re at the bar, I remember Hank is like, “No dancing in the bar.” And I was like, That’s weird. Was that a thing, that you couldn’t dance in bars?
There was an actual law; you could not dance. I used to go to a bar in Alphabet City where you’d go to the basement and you’d be dancing, and they would flick the lights if the police were coming in because you weren’t allowed to dance, so everybody had to stop what they were doing. It was illegal. It was like Footloose.
I did not know that. Everyone’s always like, “Oh my God. We love the ’90s.” But now I’m like, I don’t think I’d like that so much. Was there a character’s outfit that was really hard to figure out?
There was a tough one, and it was probably not what you think it was. It was actually the Russians, the two guys who were played by Yuri Kolokolnikov and Nikita Kukushkin. We didn’t want to have stereotypical Russian tough guys always in a black jacket. Instead, it was, What would they spend their money on? They’ve been in America for a little while. What are they gonna buy? Nikita did a lot of research, and we decided his character would be flashy at times. My favorite costume that he wears is at the very end, when he has the shiny leopard shirt on, and he takes off this leather jacket, and he has black leather pants on, and it was just like, This is exactly right. This is how somebody would dress when they were spending their money in America, and it’s new money, and they had a lot of it.
Niko Tavernise/Niko Tavernise.
Niko Tavernise/Niko Tavernise.
I want to ask about whenever Russ takes Hank to his little bunker, and he has all these leather jackets. Where did you source all of that? Was that all vintage leather?
We bought a few great punk jackets at Search and Destroy. I ended up going there with Matt and with Darren at various times, because it’s such an amazing place. A lot of it we just sourced from other vintage stores. It was all in New York. That was important for me, that it felt real and came from here. The only time that we had to diverge from that was if we needed multiples of something, like if somebody got bloody, but really all the principal things, and most of the background stuff, came from New York.
Was there something that was really hard to find?
Matt’s jacket was no easy feat. We made a few. We got a few from Search and Destroy. We ended up finding a great one and added studs and things to it. So it was just this sort of evolution.
Was there one specific item you hope people take away from this film, almost like the Challengers “I told Ya” tee?
Definitely the Giants hat. We had several of those, and we aged them so that they looked like they were several years old. Even though we had so many of them, Austin used the same one almost the entire time; it was just part of his thing. Sometimes, you give an actor a bracelet, a necklace, a lighter, or something, and it helps them become the character. In Austin’s case, it was definitely the hat, and it helped him become Hank.
Here are some portraits by photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders for your viewing pleasure:
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.
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