Trivia / Good Time

• Amateur Cast: Nick, Crystal, Ray and Caliph are played by non-actors, and in Nick's case, the co-director of the movie.
• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • Robert Pattinson got involved in Good Time because he was enamored by seeing a banner ad for the Safdies' previous film, Heaven Knows What. He was obsessed to a point where he offered to do anything for their next film, even catering.
  • Likewise with Oneohtrix Point Never, along with an element of Promoted Fan Boy.
• Billing Displacement: Nick and Corey are actually rather small parts in the film compared to Ray, but Benny Safdie and Jennifer Jason Leigh are billed second and third respectively.
• Cast the Expert:
  • The bail bondsman was originally played by Eric Roberts, but the Safdies decided that the scene came across as too artificial, so they reshot the scene with a real bail bondsman. They noted with satisfaction that he added a line, "Lovely," when he knew that his character would be receiving information from the jail over the phone. The guards and inmates at Rikers are also essentially playing themselves.
  • Ray’s actor was formerly an ex-criminal, which explains why his character felt more like a real person.
• Descended Creator: Co-director Benny Safdie as Nick.
• Directed by Cast Member: Benny Safdie who plays Nick also co-directed the movie.
• Fake American: Robert Pattinson is British.
• Method Acting:
  • Pattinson lived in a squalid basement apartment, wore Connie's clothes and spoke exclusively in a Queens accent throughout the whole shoot.
  • This is how Pattinson and Benny got into character and formed a relationship as Connie and Nick. They did things like sending letters to each other and working at a car wash together in character to develop the dynamic between them.
• The Other Marty: The Safdies shot and edited the bail bondsman scene with Eric Roberts, but decided that they didn't like combining a Mr. Exposition scene with actor artifice, so they reshot it using a real bail bondsman.
• Production Posse: The Safdie brothers re-enlist co-writer/co-editor Ronald Bronstein, cinematographer Sean Price Williams, producers Sebastian Bear McClard and Oscar Boyson, casting director Eleonore Hendricks, and actors Buddy Duress and Necro, and work with Daniel Lopatin for the first of numerous times.
• Refitted for Sequel: Variant; the character of Nick was originally created by the Safdies for a 2010 project with Bronstein about a court appointed psychiatric therapy group, but it was scrapped for one reason or another.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to Robert Pattinson, each draft was radically different than the last. The first draft was more of a comedy with Connie getting out of jail, joining an acting class with Ray, his brother in this version, and using the latex masks to rob banks, while the second draft had a "Freaky Friday" Flip.
  • The Safdies considered using a mentally disabled actor for Nick for a while, but the role was ultimately recasted to Benny. This is mainly both because the Safdies were concerned with having such an actor in this type of movie and Benny himself believing that the role would be a challenge for his acting abilities.
  • Iggy Pop was not their first choice of guest musician for the soundtrack's big final number. That honor would have gone to Lewis Baloue, were he not so elusive that the Safdies and Lopatin felt it would be rude to keep trying.
• Word of God: The Safdies wrote up a complete life story for Connie, literally from his birth to the opening scene of the film. This includes backstory stuff like his relationship with family and his crimes as a teen, but it was mainly used for Pattinson to inform his acting.