Noah Segan on Pickpockets, Turturro and Defending Old New York

Noah Segan's "The Only Living Pickpocket in New York," starring John Turturro as an aging pickpocket named Harry, premieres in theaters on October 23 after debuting at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. The film is, by Segan's own account, an ode to a vanished New York — the city of the 1980s and 1990s in which the fourth-generation New Yorker grew up and where, as he put it, "crime was still a big part."

Speaking during Sundance, Segan traced the project's origins to his taste for the analog and the handmade. "I have always been drawn to things that are tactile. I'm a collector. I'm a lover of analog things. I love magic. I love the idea of skills," he said. The pickpocket idea preceded the New York setting: he asked himself "What is magic in the real world?" and answered that Harry is a magician — "He's Ricky Jay."

How long did the film take to make?

Roughly eight years. Segan wrote the script while staying home with his infant daughter, during her naps, after his wife returned to work. He finished it just as Rian Johnson was preparing the first "Knives Out." Johnson read it and, in Segan's recollection, said: "You know, I think if things go well with this movie, maybe we could start a company and this could be the kind of thing the company could help make."

Casting began with Ricky Jay in mind — the late magician was, Segan said, a student of criminology as much as of magic. "There was only one Ricky," Segan said. "Then when it came time to cast the movie, I was like, 'Well, shit, there's only one John Turturro.'" Turturro asked to meet for lunch the next day; Segan flew overnight from Los Angeles. "We had some soup and fell in love."

What does the film say about the city?

Shooting on the streets split the crew. New Yorkers treated the production as an adventure, Segan said: "By the skin of your teeth, we make it happen." Non-New Yorkers asked whether you rent a subway. Locations were personal: his grandfather's Bronx neighborhood near Arthur Avenue, Queens where his brother lives, the Prospect Park South and Ocean Avenue area of Brooklyn where Segan was born, and Staten Island — where he spent more time shooting than in his previous 40 years — for the view of the city from the Verrazano Bridge.

His references ran from "Desperately Seeking Susan" and "The Linguini Incident" to "Mikey and Nicky," Nicole Holofcener's New York, and, shared with Turturro, Robert Mitchum's "sensitive masculinity" in "Out of the Past" and "The Friends of Eddie Coyle." He also cited "Ganja & Hess," "Across 110th Street," and the films of Hal Hartley and Whit Stillman as underappreciated New York touchstones.

The film's resistance to technology mirrors Segan's own. "I don't want to lose what we have," he said. "And that means I don't want to lose the city that we have." He framed it as a question facing film and television itself: "How do we protect these things we love?"

One scene stands out: Turturro dancing to "Native New Yorker." Turturro, a trained dancer, sent Segan an early video of himself rehearsing in his office. The scene was shot with only Segan, cinematographer Sam Levy, Turturro and Karina Arroyave, who plays Harry's wife Rosie. "The four of us just got to have a little party," Segan said.

Some things escaped the frame — Papaya King, Yonah Schimmel's knishes — but the film opens at B&H with a plate of matzo brie, with the diner's real staff on screen. For a director defending the city's tactile remnants, that was, in his word, a win.