Words matter. These are the best James Gray Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The life of a film is very strange. Once the film is done, you wish you could forget about it and move on.
I had written ‘Two Lovers’ before we started shooting ‘We Own the Night.’
There are very few movies in English about romantic obsession told with a seriousness of purpose.
I was going to Studio 54 when I was 12 years old. It’s true. It’s crazy.
I’ve been a Yankees fan for a long time. When I was a kid in the mid-’70s, the Yankees were really great. They had Reggie Jackson in ’77. I was 8 years old at the time. He hit three home runs to win the World Series in game six against the Dodgers, and I was just hooked.
The word ‘operatic’ is often misused to mean over the top, where someone is over-emoting. And that does a terrible disservice because ‘operatic’ to me means a commitment and a belief to the emotion of the moment that is sincere.
Sean Penn has announced his retirement from acting about 72 times.
I have no interest whatsoever in pursuing acting or becoming a mogul. I love writing and directing; I see those two jobs as the most critical in the making of a film.
The closer you can get to being personal, the better the work is, or the more interesting the work is.
It’s hard to run away from who you are, and when your taste is formed is a very important thing.
Really, what I’m doing is an attempt to continue the best work of the people I adore: Francis Coppola and Scorsese and Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick and those amazing directors whose work I grew up with and loved.
I would love it if my films made a lot of money, and may I say that ‘The Yards’ is the only one that’s lost money.
At Ellis Island, I mean, you didn’t go there if you arrived in first class. It was only the poorest, the people in the worst shape.
I start with a mood or an idea that comes from a personal place emotionally, and the narrative concepts come much later.
The sad truth for American actors is that they really have no control whatsoever over the material that they get, or can do, particularly actresses. And if you’re over 40 and you’re an actress, forget it.
I feel that The American Dream is this fallacy that you come to the United States and win lotto. That’s a disservice to The American Dream because the American Dream is worth striving for. And it’s not easy.
The opera in Los Angeles is excellent.
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.
I began to see cinema as the perfect combination of so many wonderful art forms – painting, photography, music, dance, theater.
If you read about the astronauts who went to the moon – the 12 who walked on it, and the others who orbited – all suffered serious mental trauma of one kind or another.
I remember as a little kid, I would always feel comfortable if the light in the crack of my parents’ door was on at night. When it went off, that meant they were asleep. Then that terror and the fear of being by myself started to creep in.
Melodrama and melodramatic are not the same thing, and often people make the mistake of confusing the two.
I went to see ‘Star Trek Into Darkness,’ and J.J. Abrams, who’s a friend of mine, made this film, and I went to see it at the premiere. Believe it or not, I was really blown away by the comic timing of it.
‘Apocalypse Now’ poses questions without any attempt to provide definitive answers, and the film’s profound ambiguities are integral to its enduring magic.
It’s difficult because Manhattan is so fantastic, and it’s 9 miles away, and all these cool rich people live there and have great lives, and you live in a semi-attached row house in Queens.
The key to humor is often self-loathing or sarcasm. In a sense, that’s how self-loathing is made palatable.
Time can be very good or very cruel to films.
I have three young children, and I kind of stopped going to movies in 2006. I go to see some, but I’m a little bit out of touch, and I didn’t know who Marion Cotillard was.
Most people don’t watch a movie four or five times; they watch it once.
I’ve learned that you can never predict what will happen to a film. You can never predict if people will love it, if they’ll hate it. It’s an act of ego if you’re hoping for everyone to love the film and tell you how great you are.
When I was quite young, I dreamed of being a painter.
What I do have to get across is the truth of the moment within the given scene. It’s my job, as a director and screenwriter, to create the environment in which all those moments will come together eventually.
If everybody loves you, you must be doing something wrong. It means there’s no button being pushed… The only way that everybody loves you is toward the end of your career.
I feel like it’s a real shame that my generation doesn’t make an appearance at the opera.
To the extent that independent means you’re willing to attempt to put your own ideas, personality, and commitment to the material on screen, then of course I hope I’m independent until the day I die.
I suppose I’m always trying to break down the wall between my characters and myself. I’m trying to make the film as expressive and personal as I can, even if I can’t explain, for example, how important it is for me to be Jewish.
The conventional wisdom is that people come to the United States, and immigration is so great, and they say, ‘America, what a great country.’ And a lot of that is true.
I don’t think my parents told me enough how the world doesn’t really care about me. I think it’s important to tell children that the world doesn’t really care about you. You have to fight to be heard.
It’s weird, because American films in the 1930s and ’40s, particularly melodramas, were made for woman, from Bette Davis to Joan Crawford to Barbara Stanwyck to Katherine Hepburn, and for some reason we’ve taken a step backward in this sense.
The system is not really particularly amenable to filmmakers who write and direct their own work. It’s much more about the studio already having a property that has a marketable concept and then hiring the director on board.
