Benny Safdie on 'The Curse' — and performing goodness

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2024

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Director and actor Benny Safdie is probably best known for co-directing the film Uncut Gems, but he's also acted in Oppenheimer, Licorice Pizza, and one of host Brittany Luse's personal favorites: Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. In his latest project, Safdie co-created and acts in Showtime's The Curse. It's an intensely uncomfortable examination of the smoke and mirrors behind your favorite home improvement shows, but it's also a marriage drama – and it picks apart our desire to seem like good people, rather than being good people.

Host Brittany Luse sits down with Safdie to learn what makes home improvement shows both soothing and sinister — and the difference between do-gooders and seem-gooders. They also play a game where they're forced to distinguish reality from fiction.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for this NPR podcast and the following message come from MD Anderson Cancer Center,
0:06.0	again named Number One in the Nation for Cancer Care by US News and World Report's best hospitals rankings.
0:12.0	Choose the nation's leader first.
0:14.4	Learn more at MD Anderson.org.
0:16.8	Hello, hello.
0:21.4	I'm Brittany Loose and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about
0:25.8	what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Are you just want to appear to be a good person?
0:37.6	Are you a good person or do you just want to appear
0:40.7	to be a good person? That's a major question asked by one of the
0:44.8	weirdest shows out there and I mean that in the nicest way. I'm talking about
0:49.8	the curse. This Showtime series is about a couple of house flippers creating an HG TV show in their gentrifying New Mexico town.
0:59.5	And this isn't your typical home-flipping show where everything's about making a profit.
1:05.0	It's a marriage drama that picks part this couple's need to be good but also pokes
1:10.0	fun at the smoke and mirrors behind home improvement shows.
1:13.0	But we really believe that gentrification doesn't have to be a game of winners and losers.
1:18.0	Their names are Whitney and Asher, played by Emma Stone and the show's co-creator Nathan Fielder. P.
1:23.3	M. Stone and the show's co-creator Nathan Fielder.
1:24.0	And they're rounded out by their skisie TV producer Doug,
1:28.0	played by my guest today, Benny Safi.
1:30.5	Just look at Whitney and just roll your eyes and say, oh, you're being so uptight.
1:35.0	I'll get a camera right on her face getting a reaction.
1:38.0	I'm not going to say that.
	...

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