Everything is ready to welcome "Caught Stealing," the latest film from the acclaimed Darren Aronofsky, into theaters, and the feeling of being faced—once again—with a crazy and unconventional project is already palpable. After the Oscar success of his previous film, "The Whale," and its credit for reviving the career of the nearly forgotten Brendan Fraser, the director has decided to return to an atmosphere closer to his early films, offering a crime thriller set in 1990s New York, starring the charismatic Austin Butler.

The first official presentation of "Caught Stealing" took place last April during CinemaCon in Las Vegas, where Aronofsky revealed the story of protagonist Hank Thompson: a promising baseball player living on Manhattan's Lower East Side, forced to abandon his dream of a career in the sport after a leg injury. While working as a bartender in a bar, the boy agrees—on a seemingly ordinary day—to do a favor for his friend Russ. From that moment, he still has no idea of the criminal world he's about to be dragged into: mistaken for someone implicated in the theft of four million dollars, he becomes the target of dangerous gangsters, forced to arm himself with all his cunning to survive.

The film, produced by Sony and produced by Aronofsky with Protozoa Pictures, is an adaptation of Charlie Huston's 2004 novel "At Your Own Risk," the first installment in a literary trilogy centered on the character of Hank Thompson. Butler stars in a stellar cast that includes Matt Smith, Zoë Kravitz, Regina King, Vincent D'Onofrio, Liev Schreiber, Bad Bunny, and Griffin Dunne.

Regarding the connection between his personal experiences and the film's setting, Aronofsky stated in an interview with Vanity Fair: “This film is full of outlandish characters. They're part of my personal experience and the reason I love the East Village so much. It's still a magnet for unusual people. Everyone thinks the East Village belongs to them. And it's funny, because I think the East Village belongs to me. I've been going there since I was in high school. I was a Brooklyn kid, and it was the coolest place ever, especially because it was one of the few neighborhoods where they served alcohol even to minors. We always ended up getting up to all sorts of mischief there.”

Regarding the decision to direct a film so different from his previous works, he added: “I was really frustrated because I couldn't figure out what my next project would be. I needed something fun. Looking back at my projects, I thought: the funniest one I have is the Charlie script!”

While promoting the film, Austin Butler shared several anecdotes from the set, such as literally inhabiting one of the locations for a night: “I had the entire apartment to myself. I listened to music, danced around, and ate Chinese food. It made me feel like I was actually living there. I slept there all night and woke up when the crew arrived, still in my underwear.”

Clarifying the reasons behind this choice, he explained: “It made me feel like it wasn't a set anymore. There are so many things conspiring against you when you're shooting a film. You have the lights, the camera, and the set doesn't have a ceiling because you have to light it from above. You're tempted to look around and break the illusion. So the more I can fool myself, the more important it is.”

Regarding the biggest worry he experienced during filming, the actor admitted: “It scared me. One of the reasons I started acting was that I'm really shy. Playing characters allows me to step into someone different's shoes, use a different voice, and become a different person. That made me feel free. But playing a character that feels close to me left me with no room to hide and made me feel vulnerable.”

Butler also said he miraculously escaped a series of injuries, such as one during a fight scene with actor Nikita Kukushkin, in which he was headbutted so hard he nearly fractured a rib. He confessed to Men's Health: "It was an incredible blow; for a moment I thought I'd really hurt myself." Regarding another scene in which he was thrown onto a table, he added: "Every time they threw me on top, I had no protection because I couldn't hide anything under my clothes. In the end, I accepted the bruises in order to make the scene more realistic."

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