Robert Pattinson as Connie Nikas and Talia Webster as Crystal in a scene from Good Time. Credit:Hi Gloss Entertainment "When Rob reached out to us we had plans to make a different project, but he didn't fit any of the roles. One of our producers said, 'just go talk to him', so we did that," Benny says. "It became clear there was something interesting about him. There was this fear of being seen, this fear of being caught – we wanted to work with that idea, and that's how the film started." Good Time, which premiered at Cannes in May, is a street-level crime film about a pair of working-class brothers whose love is both genuine and corrosive. Pattinson's Connie Nikas is a hustler, looking to make a score in the name of securing a better life for himself and Benny Safdie's Nick, who with his mental disability and hearing impairment is vulnerably trusting even as he towers over Connie. "If you get communication between the directors and the actor and you can get things deeper. We've had plenty of meetings where the person is nice but you walk away knowing nothing will ever come of it. Here it was apparent that something would happen," Benny says. "We filtered our ideas through Rob. If you're trying to run away from aspects of movie stardom you can fall flat on your face, but if you embrace an actor's personality things work better." From the film's opening, where Connie yanks Nick from a therapy session and involves him in a bank heist, the story accelerates into self-destructive choices that are played with a momentum and attitude whose quintessential New York nature recalls the works of Martin Scorsese (Mean Streets) and Sidney Lumet (Dog Day Afternoon); you don't know everything's out of control until after the impact.

"We're making a crime movie. There are dangerous elements and it moves at the speed of a genre movie. We desperately wanted it to be 90 minutes, but we got as close as 100," Benny says. "We wanted it to move fast, so you felt like you were being dragged like Nick through this world and there's no other option, and that it's only at the end that you realise the consequences." Pattinson discovered the Safdies, who like him are both in their early 30s, through a single image from their previous feature, 2014's Heaven Knows What. He wanted to work with whoever had captured the look he saw on the face of the film's star, Arielle Holmes. At the time Pattinson, who'd been working with auteurs such as David Cronenberg and Werner Herzog, had no idea that Holmes was making her acting debut, having encountered the Safdies while living on the streets of Manhattan as a heroin addict (she's since gone through rehab). The Safdies, together with Josh's co-writer Ronald Bronstein​, used the experiences of Holmes and her fellow street denizens as the basis for the striking Heaven Knows What. Their stories often unwind at the fringes of society, but the Safdies' work is always immersive and without judgment so that there's no sense of cultural tourism. "We never want to feel in any way condescending," Benny says. "Whenever you speak to these people there's a romanticism about the lifestyle they lead, but there's also a certain circular quality – they feel trapped and they regret that, but they acknowledge it. You have to be true to that." They tried to cast someone with a developmental disability as Nick, but realised the emotional demands of the role and tight schedule would require them to manipulate the performance and induce tears or anger before turning the camera over. They were unwilling to do that and Benny took the role, but elsewhere in a scene involving a fight inside a correctional facility they deferred to an extra named Jerome Frazier who'd gone through lock-up.

"Jerome had experience in that environment and he told us exactly how that would happen: this guy would be sitting here, this guy would wait and then do that," Benny says. "He orchestrated the blocking, so we said to our first [assistant director] and stunt co-ordinator, 'let's go with it'." "It's a matter of being open to people," Benny adds, "because people know things." Good Time opens nationally on October 12.