John Turturro on Pickpocket Homework, a Film He Had to Rescue and the Knicks

John Turturro came within inches of actually pickpocketing a stranger on the New York subway. "I had my hand, like, right, sort of almost in the bag," the actor told Variety's Awards Circuit podcast. "But then I felt like, well, then I would have to give it back, and I could get arrested."

That is where the homework ended for the star of "The Only Living Pickpocket in New York," the Sony Pictures Classics drama written and directed by Noah Segan, a Rian Johnson regular. The rest of the training happened under Apollo Robbins, the sleight-of-hand artist Turturro describes as part concert pianist, part psychologist.

The film runs a tight 90 minutes. Turturro plays Harry, an aging thief caring for his disabled wife in a city that no longer has much use for him. Steve Buscemi — his co-star across "Miller's Crossing," "Barton Fink" and "The Big Lebowski" — and Giancarlo Esposito round out the cast.

How do you train to be a pickpocket?

Robbins "gave me a course," Turturro said, explaining that the magician understands "how someone approaches another person, from the social sphere to the personal to the intimate." On set, Turturro practiced constantly by lifting things off the crew, occasionally getting caught. "The whole idea is that you don't feel it," he said. "It's kind of a magic trick."

Segan, an actor before he became a director, earned praise for his openness. "He's not cynical. He's an open-hearted fellow," Turturro said, adding that he used the director's playlist of songs on set. Cinematographer Sam Levy — once Harris Savides' assistant — brought in 1970s-era lenses, tests with which gave the film its period feel.

Turturro has known Buscemi for more than 30 years, and Esposito nearly as long. "There's a comfort zone and a shorthand," he said. "They're both wonderful actors, and that makes the fabric of the film really rich."

Why the restraint?

The film is emotional without tipping into sentimentality, and Turturro — who has been a caretaker and guardian himself — said the balance is deliberate. "My phone is surrounded by a lot of ghosts," he said, describing the losses that accumulate by a certain age. "You're putting your attention on the other person, and you're doing it for them. It's not about you."

The film "creeps up on you emotionally," he added, noting that Rian Johnson told him it gets him every time. Then the quote that doubles as a credo: "When someone goes for your jugular, sometimes you can recoil. But when someone opens their heart up and offers it to you, it allows you space to enter."

What about the Oscar-shaped hole?

It has been a strange and lovely year. The Bronx-born Knicks fan who fell for the 1969-70 and 1973 championship teams watched his franchise finally win another title. "The afterglow hasn't left," he said, praising Jalen Brunson's "incredible footwork and smarts." He called it "a real team victory, and that's beautiful in life because people don't celebrate the collective."

Turturro, 69, is the only figure in this awards conversation with a best actor prize at Cannes (for "Barton Fink"), Emmy nominations for "The Night Of" and "Severance," and zero Oscar nominations. He is unbothered, mostly. "That's the cherry on top of the cake," he said of accolades. "That's not why you do it." Would recognition be nice? Yes, he conceded — "if it gets more people to see the movie, that's even better."

Why did he buy back his own musical?

Turturro's 2005 musical "Romance & Cigarettes" nearly vanished after United Artists and MGM were bought by Sony, a regime change that left the film in limbo despite a planned 800-theater release. Executive producers Joel and Ethan Coen held final cut and urged the studio to "see it with an audience," but, in Turturro's telling, "they had a couple of old geezers who saw it, and they just didn't understand the movie."

So he fought to get it back, put together money — including his own — and distributed it himself. Critics responded, and in some countries it played for a long time. "That's something I'm quite proud of," he said.

On "Severance," whose success he credits to Ben Stiller's execution and Dan Erickson's premise "about having your brain split," he even got to suggest a casting: Christopher Walken.

What's still on the shelf?

Turturro holds the rights and a completed screenplay for Philip Roth's "Sabbath's Theater" — "pretty wild, racy, about sex and death," tested successfully with an audience as a play. He also wants to adapt Susan Sheehan's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Is There No Place on Earth for Me?," a book about mental illness and the families it splinters, a system he knows "really well personally." Studios balk, he said, because "people always want a story where someone gets better."

"As you get older, time is precious," Turturro said. "I believe in the audience, and I believe in the young audience, too." With the film opening via Sony Pictures Classics and his name circulating in the awards race, that belief is about to be tested again — and, on current form, it usually pays out.