James Gray

Birthday: 1969, New York City, New York, USA

Writer/director James Gray made his first film Little Odessa (1994) at the age of twenty-five. The film, which starred Tim Roth, Edward Furlong, Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell, received critical acclaim and was the winner of the Venice Film Festival's prestigious Silver Lion Award in 1994.Miramax Films released James Gray's second feature, The Yards (2000) starring Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Faye Dunaway, Ellen Burstyn, Charlize Theron and James Caan in fall of 2000. The film was selected for official competition at the 2000 Cannes International Film Festival. Prior to "The Yards" and "Little Odessa", Gray attended film school at the University of Southern California. It was there that his student film Cowboys and Angels was first seen by producer Paul Webster, who encouraged Gray to write his first feature script.As a child growing up in Queens, New York, Gray aspired to be a painter. However, when introduced in his early teenage years to the works of various filmmakers, including Francis Ford Coppola, Gray's interests expanded to the art of filmmaking. The Yards returned Gray to Queens where the story takes place. Show less «

Apparently I'm the dramatic version of Jerry Lewis. Someone wrote that I'm the object of Gallic feti...Show more »

Apparently I'm the dramatic version of Jerry Lewis. Someone wrote that I'm the object of Gallic fetish. Show less «

There's superb television, but it's not for me because - first of all - the two of three-hour format...Show more »

There's superb television, but it's not for me because - first of all - the two of three-hour format is just perfect, because it replicates best our birth-life-death cycle. 'The Sopranos' was genius television but it went on forever, and it never seemed to culminate in anything, and then everyone was pissed off at the ending. That's exactly why TV cannot substitute for a great movie, because the swell of the architecture of a movie is part of what makes it the most beautiful art form. Show less «

[about how he chose Marion Cotillard for his film The Immigrant (2013)] I had never seen anything sh...Show more »

[about how he chose Marion Cotillard for his film The Immigrant (2013)] I had never seen anything she'd been in. She is the life partner of Guillaume Canet, who wanted me to help translate dialogue for this movie Blood Ties (2013), which is showing in Cannes ironically enough. We would go out to dinner, and so I met her, and I thought she has such an amazing face. My wife said, 'You don't know who that is? She's an actor, she's won an Oscar.' I know it seems unlikely, but when you have young children, you really never go to the movies. We have a seven, five and three-year-old. But I loved her face and I loved her attitude because she was quiet, but she had a total feistiness that somehow came through anyway. And her whole role is conceived as someone who says very little, but somehow conveys will. I watched every film of hers I could get my hands on. And then I knew I had to write something for her. So that's the genesis of this thing [The Immigrant]. And I say this at my own peril, but Marion is the best actor I've ever worked with. Show less «

[on getting inspiration from the brawl scene in Rocco e i suoi fratelli (1960) for The Yards (2000)]...Show more »

[on getting inspiration from the brawl scene in Rocco e i suoi fratelli (1960) for The Yards (2000)] I ripped off [Alain] Delon. I wanted to recreate that scene even better. Show less «

What's very much in vogue is ever since around '81, '82 in cinema seems ironic distance from the cha...Show more »

What's very much in vogue is ever since around '81, '82 in cinema seems ironic distance from the character. And I'm anxious, as pathetic as this sounds, to turn back the clock a little bit. George Eliot once said, 'The purpose of art is to extend our sympathies,' which I think is such a beautiful idea - that's why the Catholicism in the film started to creep in because I had done some research on the Polish immigration process on Ellis Island and I was told 98% of them by 1921 were Catholic. Then I started reading about St. Francis of Assisi. But I started to think at the core of it, no matter how wretched we might think somebody is, they're never beyond forgiveness because so much of the culture today, it seems to me, is vicious. It's always fingerpointing. So I wanted to do something that was the opposite of snark and the vicious condescension that has creeped into a lot of the culture. This all sounds very pretentious, but I feel like love is a very important subject. Show less «

[on the look of The Immigrant (2013)] I took Darius Khondji to the Met [Metropolitan Museum of Art i...Show more »

[on the look of The Immigrant (2013)] I took Darius Khondji to the Met [Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York] and we walked through the halls and we saw some autochromes [earliest forms of color photographs that used separate plates of tinted glass to appear as a spectrum when put together]. They have this muted, oaker, faded look and we saw those, some of them and they're amazing looking and he's like, 'Yeah, that's good.' Then they had a bunch of Caravaggio's and I guess that's what he gravitated towards because we were talking about the religious aspect of the story quite a bit. What also is true is you find the color palette comes from a lot of the research that we did. Global warming is a coming catastrophe, but the air in 1921 was so much worse than it is today. You have to realize almost all electricity was from burning coal. The air was so filled with particulate, it was a miracle that the sun came out, even in cold weather, and that's the basis for what Vilmos Zsigmond did for Heaven's Gate (1980) which is who we stole a lot from and we looked a lot at the opening [of that film] in England. But after we had been told this by a guy at the New York Historical Society, Darius kept saying, 'You have to feel the air. You have to feel it.' Show less «

The idea that if your film takes place in 1988 it should only have music from 1988 shows a totally l...Show more »

The idea that if your film takes place in 1988 it should only have music from 1988 shows a totally limited sense of history and how history is an accumulation of details. Is all your furniture from 2007? Show less «

[on The Lost City of Z (2016) and cinematic influences] Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972) is a masterp...Show more »

[on The Lost City of Z (2016) and cinematic influences] Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972) is a masterpiece, I think, and I'm going to try my hardest not to rip it off. It is really hard, because it is a masterpiece. I don't think I will rip it off, because it involves a lot of European history as well, in a way that is not really connected to "Aguirre". "Aguirre" is, in its enclosed, beautiful way, quite different.[2012] Show less «

[on his feeling when a new production starts] Well, it's almost exclusively terror. It's funny: I do...Show more »

[on his feeling when a new production starts] Well, it's almost exclusively terror. It's funny: I don't actually derive much pleasure from making a movie. I derive a lot of pleasure from having made a film. I'm very excited; it's going to be a huge challenge. But I'm very scared, and I'm under no illusions that I'm going to go to the jungle and have a great time and it's going to have a party. I mean, it's going to be an epic struggle, and I'm going to try and do my very best. I have many, many ideas. The project's been gestating for a long time, and, in some respects, that's a challenge in and of itself, because you have many, many ideas, and you want to make sure the project has a unity and a singularity and a uniqueness and a consistency. So, if it's gestating for a long time, you worry that you won't have that.[2015] Show less «

I think the studios have done a brilliant job of creating the audience they're now attempting to sat...Show more »

I think the studios have done a brilliant job of creating the audience they're now attempting to satisfy. There is a difference between the satisfaction and the exploitation of public tastes. If you give - and I've used this analogy many times, but it's true - if you give somebody a Big Mac every day, and then give them salmon sushi, their first inclination is not to say that salmon sushi is the most delicious thing they ever ate, their first inclination is to say, 'That's weird and I don't like it'. And it's very hard to get them back. Show less «

[on American cinema] I think the reason movies are no longer relevant is not because they don't make...Show more »

[on American cinema] I think the reason movies are no longer relevant is not because they don't make money, because they make more money than ever. They're not relevant because the self-appointed cognoscenti have nothing to go watch. Norman Mailer, if he were alive, would see a movie from Europe. Show less «

What I find troubling is, I'll read conversations between A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis [in the New ...Show more »

What I find troubling is, I'll read conversations between A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis [in the New York Times] and I find that they're extremely erudite, and I love what they say. But sometimes I feel like the subtext is them trying to convince themselves and each other that the state of cinema is not so bad. And what neither of them has ever really addressed, and I have not read it anywhere else either, is the troubling disappearance of 'the middle'. Which is not to say the middlebrow - that exists with flying colors. But there is tremendously interesting cinema being made that is very small. What I don't see as part of the discourse is a discussion on the economic forces that have forced out the middle. Show less «

By the way, I really wish that people would begin to put cameras on tripods a little more. I don't k...Show more »

By the way, I really wish that people would begin to put cameras on tripods a little more. I don't know when the handheld camera became such a hackneyed device of the art cinema - I feel like the Dardenne brothers did it brilliantly and everyone's trying to steal from them now. Show less «

[on the detractors of The Immigrant (2013)] Well, my movie is an hour and forty-eight minutes and le...Show more »

[on the detractors of The Immigrant (2013)] Well, my movie is an hour and forty-eight minutes and lets scenes play, and I don't say this generally because I know it's not politically incorrect, but if the problem people have with the film is the pace, f***'em, because we're in Cannes, and this is not the place to be watching 'Transformers 3,' and they can go f*** themselves. It's not that much work, and they should be ashamed of themselves. I have no problem with hearing criticism, I have no problem with hearing people have a problem with the film, one way or another, but if the problem is like, 'Oh, it was slow,' they can go f*** themselves. Because movies are not barium enemas, you're not supposed to get them over with as quickly as possible. This is a place where films are supposed to be a certain thing where they take their time and you should think about them. It's supposed to be a place where cinema is something for thought, not fast food. If that's what they want they should stay home. Plenty of movies for them in the multiplex, is what I would say. Show less «

Unfortunately for critics and audiences alike I have made several films, and some films with really ...Show more »

Unfortunately for critics and audiences alike I have made several films, and some films with really terrific actors. And I say this at my own peril, but Marion Cotillard is the best actor I've ever worked with. Show less «

My wife thinks I have an obsession with social class. So I guess I have an obsession with social cla...Show more »

My wife thinks I have an obsession with social class. So I guess I have an obsession with social class. It probably stems from feeling like an outcast. You grow up a goofy-looking idiotic kid in a fairly working-class neighborhood that's very close to a very rich center of the universe, then I guess you feel like the outsider and that becomes a preoccupation. Show less «

[on the Oscars] It's like watching this huge, incredible party you haven't been invited to.

[why he didn't sit through The Immigrant (2013) at Cannes] See, the pleasures of watching of your ow...Show more »

[why he didn't sit through The Immigrant (2013) at Cannes] See, the pleasures of watching of your own movie are non-existent by that point. By now, you've seen it so many times, you see all of your mistakes, you see all of the patchwork that went into fixing that mistake, you hear things in the mix that you should've done better, you see things that you should've shot in a different way. I only see mistakes, so why would I subject myself to it? The movie starts, I'm in my tuxedo. As soon as it starts, I sort of walk out and go get a drink with my wife. Though, in that case, I think my wife sat through the movie; I did not. I mean, it's very painful, by the way, in Cannes. Steven Soderbergh once described it brilliantly to me. He said, "Watching a movie in Cannes is like having every frame of the movie last for 30 seconds." It just seems like the movie... because you don't know. You know, the movie could end and everyone would sort of hoot and boo. Especially in Cannes, that is a real possibility. So, while the film is playing, the only thing you can think of is, "When the lights come up, are they all going to boo me off the screen?" So why subject yourself to that during the movie? You might as well go outside and get a drink to relax or something.[2015] Show less «

I think I'm a very American director, but I probably should have been making movies somewhere around...Show more »

I think I'm a very American director, but I probably should have been making movies somewhere around 1976. I never left the mainstream of American movies, the American mainstream left me. What I'm doing is an attempt to continue the best work of the people I adore - Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick and those amazing directors whose work I grew up with and adored. Show less «

I'm just not willing to give up on myself. If I'm going to fail, then I want to fail to the limits o...Show more »

I'm just not willing to give up on myself. If I'm going to fail, then I want to fail to the limits of my talent. Show less «

James Gray's FILMOGRAPHY
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as Actor (2)
as Director (4)
as Creator (6)

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James Gray

James Gray's FILMOGRAPHY