{"id":117648,"date":"2026-01-30T18:17:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T18:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/117648\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T18:17:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T18:17:10","slug":"the-only-living-pickpocket-in-new-york-was-a-real-nyc-location-shoot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/117648\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Only Living Pickpocket in New York’ Was a Real NYC Location Shoot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writer\/director Noah Segan\u2019s \u201cThe Only Living Pickpocket in New York<\/a>\u201d is a love letter to a bygone era of the city he grew up in, as he follows an aging pickpocket (John Turturro) through the rarely filmed working-class neighborhoods of the five boroughs.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, you see a New York movie, it\u2019s New York with a couple of B-camera shots of the city,\u201d said executive producer Rian Johnson <\/a>when he stopped the IndieWire Studio, presented by Dropbox, ahead the film<\/a>\u2019s premiere at the Sundance<\/a> Film Festival. \u201cYou watch this movie, it\u2019s steeped in New York. It is just drenched in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Added Segan, who has been friends with Johnson since starring in his first film \u201cBrick<\/a>\u201d (and who has appeared in all of Johnson\u2019s subsequent films, including the \u201cKnives Out\u201d trilogy), \u201cIt was all location shooting. There were days we rode the subway around and just shot the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PARK<\/a> \"Courtney<\/a> <\/p>\n

Segan, Johnson, and producer Leopold Hughes were joined in the studio by stars Turturro and Giancarlo Esposito, who together have starred in some of the greatest New York films ever, including Spike Lee\u2019s \u201cDo the Right Thing<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[John and I] are both New Yorkers, and New York has an energy and a feeling, and in a way it\u2019s a character in our film,\u201d said Esposito.<\/p>\n

Turturro is also reunited in the film with his old New York acting buddy Steve Buscemi<\/a>, having co-starred together in various Coen brothers\u2019 films, but until \u201cPicketpocket,\u201d where Buscemi plays Turturro\u2019s character\u2019s longtime pawn broker, have never shared much screen time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were lovers in \u2018Miller\u2019s Crossing,\u2019 but you never saw us,\u201d said Turturro of the subtly implied, but never made explicit, relationship between his and Buscemi\u2019s characters in the Coens\u2019 1990 crime film. \u201cAnd that was the flaw of the movie, that you never saw a post-coital scene between Bernie [Buscemi] and me. \u200aI always thought that would\u2019ve been really helpful for the audience to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watch the complete conversation with the \u201cThe Only Living Pickpocket in New York<\/a>\u201d team above.<\/p>\n

Dropbox is proud to partner with IndieWire and the\u00a0Sundance\u00a0Film Festival. In 2026, 68% of feature films premiering at Sundance used Dropbox during production. Dropbox helps filmmakers and creative teams find, organize, secure, and share the content that matters most to any project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Writer\/director Noah Segan\u2019s \u201cThe Only Living Pickpocket in New York\u201d is a love letter to a bygone era…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3056,749,51892,9,56,63,65,64,49968,50938],"class_list":{"0":"post-117648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-festivals","9":"tag-film","10":"tag-indiewire-studio-2026","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-ny","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-nyc-headlines","15":"tag-nyc-news","16":"tag-sundance","17":"tag-the-only-living-pickpocket-in-new-york"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}