James Gray

Professions :

Born :

1969

If we continue as we have for the past 20 years in California, in the year 2020, everybody in the State will either be in prison or running one.

running past years

Life affirming doesn't mean good things happen. by James Gray

Life affirming doesn't mean good things happen.

life-affirming good-things mean

The audience cares what the movie looks like, not about the sleepless night you had worrying about the thing getting developed.

worry night looks

You should just write the movie based on people you actually know and then just see who wants to play it. Cast the net.

play writing people

Actors want to work with you but they want you to do their thing. Actors, whom I love with a blind partiality, sometimes they want to be soloists in the symphony, not a part of the orchestra.

orchestra symphony actors

Actors do want to work with me and I'm very grateful for that, but you never know. I could write parts for them that they don't want to play and then all of the sudden they don't want to work with you that much.

grateful play writing

The simplicity and the beauty of myth( is it) has such a hold on us ; such power, and there's a reason it does. It's elemental and direct.

If you're making a science fiction movie, they( the audience) can't have any of those assumptions. You're creating an entire world, so, then you have to hang your clothes on a clothesline that has a very simple mythic through-line.

I don't think there's anything out there, if there is Ad Astra's far ; so far we'll never get there, or we can't communicate with Ad Astra. Now if we are by ourselves, is that a bad thing ? Some people think it is. My own view is it's not so bad.

I'm sorry to get sententious on you. by James Gray

I'm sorry to get sententious on you.

It was the greatest thing ever. by James Gray

It was the greatest thing ever.

I asked James Gray a basic question, is the story a tragedy ? by James Gray

I asked James Gray a basic question, is the story a tragedy ?

You can't really shoot there, there are 62 uncontacted tribes, and they will have your head. And even if they wouldn't have your head, if you had a common cold, for example, and you shook their hand and gave them it, they would die. They have no resistance to a lot of the diseases we have.

I tried not to think of the people who are obsessed with Jack Fawcett on 1925, it would get me panicked that I would screw it up... If I thought about it it'd destroy me.

The key to humor is often self-loathing or sarcasm. In a sense, that's how self-loathing is made palatable.

key how sarcasm humor

Melodrama is one of the most stunning art forms. These are stories where the emotions are big, and the situations are big, and the artists believe in the situation dramatically. There's no irony or distance.

emotions situation believe art

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.

island go you people

The decision about digital or film is going to be made for us. I think the answer is that film is gonna be gone, although I think it'll make a comeback; it'll be like vinyl records or something.

think comeback digital decision

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.

feeling like wife obsession

What a director really does is set the emotional temperature and the mood and the level, amount, or lack of, distance between the action and the character, and the character and the audience.

distance mood action character

Alex Graves

Brad Furman

Bryan Singer

Bruno Dumont

Bruce McDonald

Bruce Brown