Giancarlo Esposito was about 12, a Black kid riding the train into Manhattan for school, when he got turned around on the floor of Grand Central Terminal. A White Irish police officer walked straight toward him. Esposito braced for trouble.
"He said, 'You need a little directional help, Chief? What's going on, Chief?'" Esposito recalled. "That empowered me to feel like I was somebody."
That story, told at the international press conference for "The Only Living Pickpocket in New York" in Toronto on Sept. 14, is the movie in miniature. Noah Segan's crime drama is about a city that keeps changing and the small human moments that survive the change.
John Turturro plays Harry Lehman, an aging Bronx pickpocket working a trade that disappeared when New Yorkers stopped carrying cash. When he lifts the wrong man's property, he ends up racing across all five boroughs with a crime family on his heels. Esposito plays Detective Warren, Tatiana Maslany plays Harry's estranged daughter, Kelly, and Karina Arroyave plays Rosie, the wife he cares for. Steve Buscemi, Will Price, Victoria Moroles and Jamie Lee Curtis co-star. Sony Pictures Classics opened the film nationwide Oct. 30.
'Please look up just a little bit'
For Turturro and Esposito, who both worked with Spike Lee and shared the screen in "Do the Right Thing," the film is a return engagement. Turturro said that is rarer than people think.
"It's great when you're able to share something with someone, like I am with Giancarlo and Steve," he said, "because we don't always get return engagements."
He said the New York he loves still lives in passing moments: a doorman who talks to you, a cab driver, someone who holds a door or makes a joke. The problem now is that everyone is staring at a phone. "Sometimes I go, 'Please look up just a little bit,'" Turturro said.
Esposito picked up the thought. Grand Central's ceiling, he said, is "the most amazing view of a ceiling you've ever seen," and very few people bother to look up at it. That is where his Chief story began.
Everyone has their New York
Segan said the film started with the city, not the plot. He grew up in the era of subway tokens and now taps his phone to ride. "Everyone has their New York," he said. "In my mind, I think my New York is really one that sort of exists partially in the 20th century, partially today." Harry, a man whose skills belong to a city that no longer exists, became the way to tell it.
Asked for their own New York, each man gave a different answer. Turturro said the only constant is change, and you can't be a foreigner there. "If you take the seven train into Queens, it's like you're in the United Nations," he said. He misses the revival houses and small theaters he could afford when he was broke.
Esposito described a city of rhythm. "You can tell a New Yorker by the way they walk," he said. "It's a cacophony of sound, language and movement."
Segan went small. His New York is an egg cream from Ray, a man in his 90s who came from Iraq decades ago and opened a candy store on Avenue A. It's also B&H, the tiny East Village dairy diner where they shot a scene. It's still kosher certified, he said, but it's run by a Catholic Polish woman and her Egyptian Muslim husband, and a Latino cook works the counter. Turturro owns one of its T-shirts.
The film carries that idea all the way to its final images. Segan said he wanted to show New York "from New York," not the postcard skyline seen from New Jersey. That's why the film travels through all five boroughs, including Staten Island, "not just the big hits."
A caregiver who never gets an award
Harry spends his money on Rosie's care, and Turturro said that is what drew him in. He has spoken publicly about caring for his older brother.
"As you get older, you either inherit that, or you run away from that," he said. "You don't get best caregiving awards, you don't get any of that stuff. It's very solitary, but it's a big thing."
He said Arroyave worked hard to build Harry and Rosie's backstory with him, and that their scenes became the core of the film. Esposito compared a moment of Harry carrying Rosie to Michelangelo's "Pietà." "It's the ultimate sacrifice," he said. "You can't turn around. You can only go forward."
One day, no rehearsal
The scene that changes how audiences see Harry is his attempt to reconnect with Kelly. Turturro gave the credit to Maslany, who came in for one day.
"Both of us looked at each other, and we said, 'Let's not rehearse it at all. Here's the blocking, and that's it,'" he said. "It was like an out-of-body experience." He said one performance like that "can change the whole temperature of a film."
They're still working together. Turturro and Maslany starred this summer in Diane Paulus' production of Eugène Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is headed to Broadway with Roundabout this spring.
A ticket in 36 hours
Segan said he never imagined landing this cast. "I thought we're going to make it for $8 on the street," he said. "I'm going to grab a guy on the street. I'm going to be like, 'You're the pickpocket.'"
He sent the script to Turturro expecting silence. Instead, Turturro asked to have lunch two days later. Segan called the friend and longtime colleague who produced the film in a panic. The answer was a plane ticket in his inbox and orders to get to the airport. "I got on a flight, and we had lunch," Segan said. "Here we are. That's the whole story."
He said the film wouldn't exist without these actors' earlier work. "I can track the conception of this movie all the way through the beginning of these guys' careers," he said, "which is an incredible gift."
A real pickpocket's hands
Turturro trained with Apollo Robbins, the magician and pickpocket whose skills now go into designing magic, events and security work. Turturro found him through a profile in The New Yorker. "His hands are like a concert pianist," he said.
Turturro has seen the other side, too. He's been robbed in his apartment and on a train, and his wife and mother were both pickpocketed. As a bartender, he split his tips into different pockets so that if he was held up, he could hand over a wad of singles and keep the rest.
Learning a skill for a role has a downside, he said. "I learned how to ride a horse, but then there's not a lot of Westerns," he said. "Now I'm good at it, and I can't do it anymore."
'A twerp villain'
Segan called the film a mix of genres: a samurai movie, a Western and a New York crime picture. He named Akira Kurosawa, Budd Boetticher, "Across 110th Street" and "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" as touchstones. "These characters deserve that dignity," he said.
Will Price plays Dylan, the young heir who wants his property back, and Segan said he plays him as "a twerp" on purpose. "I love a twerp villain because it doesn't mean they're not dangerous," he said. "I always like a villain who doesn't have to smack you around."
Turturro boiled the conflict down to wardrobe: Dylan's Balenciaga windbreaker against Harry's black-and-white Zegna. "It's a battle of coats," he said.
'I'm a New Yorker!'
Asked how it felt to bring the film to Canada, Esposito praised Canadian kindness, then admitted it can be a lot for a New Yorker. "Would you like some more coffee?" he said, mimicking a server. "No, I don't want any more coffee!"
Then he said he was trying to adopt it. Turturro said that if Esposito ever runs for mayor, he'll support him all the way.
"The Only Living Pickpocket in New York" is rated R and runs 88 minutes. It's in theaters now from Sony Pictures Classics.
Quick answers
Who is in the cast of 'The Only Living Pickpocket in New York'? John Turturro stars as Harry Lehman, with Giancarlo Esposito as Detective Warren, Tatiana Maslany as Kelly, Karina Arroyave as Rosie, Will Price as Dylan, Steve Buscemi, Victoria Moroles and Jamie Lee Curtis. Noah Segan wrote and directed.
When did 'The Only Living Pickpocket in New York' come out? Sony Pictures Classics opened it nationwide in theaters Oct. 30, 2026. It is rated R and runs 88 minutes.
Who taught John Turturro to pickpocket for the movie? Magician and pickpocket Apollo Robbins trained Turturro. Turturro said he found Robbins through a profile in The New Yorker.
