I had written 'Two Lovers' before we started shooting 'We Own the Night.'
— James Gray
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.
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.
At least in America, the narrative is I'm a Cannes favorite. But, in fact, I've had my best experience in Venice, both with the audience and the jury.
If everybody lives in the same way, there's something almost narcotizing about it, but the true misery of economic class difference is knowing that you can't have what somebody else does.
The actor always must be in the scene, not above the scene. To communicate any larger ideas is my problem; it's how the narrative is constructed and directed that hopefully does it.
The first movie, I was 23; I thought I knew everything, but my ego soon took an irrevocable blow.
It's hard to run away from who you are, and when your taste is formed is a very important thing.
The closer you can get to being personal, the better the work is, or the more interesting the work is.
There's never really been a tradition of making films about Jewish themes or using Judaism as a constant.
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.
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'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.
I am an Ashkenazi Jew, and there are a whole host of genetic disorders that only Ashkenazi Jews have. I don't know if you know this, but 16 or 17 disorders that we carry the gene for.
Melodrama and melodramatic are not the same thing, and often people make the mistake of confusing the two.
I feel like it's a real shame that my generation doesn't make an appearance at the opera.
My grandparents used to tell me stories about their trip to Ellis Island from Russia and life on the Lower East Side of New York.
I start with a mood or an idea that comes from a personal place emotionally, and the narrative concepts come much later.
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.
William Atherton has a very different acting style to Bonnie Bedelia; she has a very different style than Bruce Willis.
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.
The key to humor is often self-loathing or sarcasm. In a sense, that's how self-loathing is made palatable.
The idea that the family is this locus of support but can also hold you back and keep you down makes for good drama.
I know this sounds phony, but I don't start out on a project going, 'I'm going to make an emotional work,' you know what I mean? You try to tell the story directly and honestly and with passion.
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.
For me, I get a part of an idea here and a little bit of an idea there, and then finally it accumulates into a movie.
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.
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.
I think true economic class unhappiness comes from when across the street someone has a new Cadillac and you can't get that.
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.
Most people don't watch a movie four or five times; they watch it once.
I'm telling you, every film I've ever made has been hated by the U.K. critics.
My grandparents, they came through Ellis Island in 1923, and you know, I'd heard all the stories.
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.
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.
I continually marvel at people who can make films that reach five hundred million people. How do you do that? Everybody's different - I don't know how that works.
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.
