Moments before he’s presented with the Stockholm Visionary Award at the Stockholm Film Festival, we sit down with director and actor Benny Safdie to chat relaxed sets, learning from the greats and his new film, The Smashing Machine
Benny Safdie is earning a reputation for finding Oscar-buzz-worthy performances in unexpected places. The director’s latest (uncut) gem: Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock), who portrays real-life mixed martial arts legend Mark Kerr in The Smashing Machine, Safdie’s first feature written and directed without his brother Josh. How does he do it? “What it comes down to is just if you get along with the person and if they trust you,” says Safdie, who comes off as the sort of guy who would get along with pretty well anyone. “And I really got along with Dwayne and he really trusted me implicitly, and I trusted him.”
Looking dapper in a black Prada suit (“I got it when I went to Venice and they didn’t ask for it back and I’m very happy they let me have it, cause I love it,” he says) Safdie is sitting in a wood-panelled meeting room at a hotel in Gamla Stan, fresh off a slightly delayed flight from Los Angeles (“I was pretty chill about it,” he says of the flight delay). He’s in town screening The Smashing Machine at The Stockholm Film Festival, where he’s also being awarded the Stockholm Visionary Award. The statue itself is a very heavy bronze Dala horse. Safdie first set eyes on the award in 2009, when he presented his film Daddy Long Legs at the festival. “I always thought, like, ‘Who gets that?’,” he says (back then, it was Luc Besson). “It’s gonna go right on my shelf in my office. I don’t get awards that often, so when I do get one, it’s like, ‘Hey!’ Especially one that looks cool.”
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Still of Dwayne Johnson as Mark Kerr in The Smashing Machine. Photo: Eric Zachanowich / A24