James Gray Quotations

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.

Wait, this could really happen to me. There's no one watching out for us.

There are very few movies in English about romantic obsession told with a seriousness of purpose.

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.

Sean Penn has announced his retirement from acting about 72 times.

Most people don't watch a movie four or five times; they watch it once.

Obviously you can't commit a crime this heinous unless you've got a lot of hate and anger in your heart,

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.

My grandparents, they came through Ellis Island in 1923, and you know, I'd heard all the stories.

needed to do something dramatic that would attract media attention.

needed to do something dramatic in order to gain in their warped world respect for his newly formed gang.

I was going to Studio 54 when I was 12 years old. It's true. It's crazy.

I grew up in a semi-attached row house in Queens in New York. And my family and my grandparents and my father's from Brooklyn, and so you're essentially an outer boroughs kid, you're growing up.

I don't envy the job of people who have to watch five movies a day - that's insane.

I live up Laurel Canyon, and if I want to walk with my son, I have to drive to the park, which is so insane to me.

I had written 'Two Lovers' before we started shooting 'We Own the Night.'

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.

I feel like it's a real shame that my generation doesn't make an appearance at the opera.

We've gained something for disabled people in the province that they've never had before. Now they have rights.

He sees himself as a real hero, a star,

His work, though formal and precise, displays an exceptional understanding of the limits and uses of formalism and precision.

James Byrd at the time he was chained at the back of the pickup truck was alive, ... Not only was he alive, he was conscious at the time, and he was using his elbows and his body in any way he could to keep his head and shoulders away from the pavement.

I think to be a movie critic is troubling from one major respect. If you are forced to watch ten movies a week, it's really only something you can do for a few years. After a while, it's a bit too much.

I think true economic class unhappiness comes from when across the street someone has a new Cadillac and you can't get that.

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 think storytelling is a thing of beauty, and also very difficult. It's a craft you have to continue to work at.

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.

People are afraid of you guys, ... They're afraid of having their pictures taken. They're afraid of being interviewed. And they're afraid of serving on a big case like this with a lot of attention.

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.

My wife and I had been to the genetic counselor; my wife is not Jewish - she's the shiksha goddess type - and was negative for everything. But I was positive. I carried the gene for three genetic disorders, which, if she had been positive for, we would have passed down to the child.

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.

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.

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.

Melodrama and melodramatic are not the same thing, and often people make the mistake of confusing the two.

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.

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.

William Atherton has a very different acting style to Bonnie Bedelia; she has a very different style than Bruce Willis.

Time can be very good or very cruel to films.

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.

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.

When I was younger, I felt it essential to see every movie ever made. Now I feel as though I've got to read every book, see every art show, watch every play and opera and concert and so on. It does not end, and of course there is truth in the old cliche that the more one knows, the more one realizes one knows nothing at all.

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.

While it will take us some time to put on the finishing touches, the future holds a bigger, brighter, better space that will allow us to better serve you.

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.

Film is better than digital in every way. It has better contrast ratio, better blacks, and better color reproduction. It's a more organic image, which is more the way your eyes see.

When I was quite young, I dreamed of being a painter.

Baseball is the greatest thing in the world.

There's never really been a tradition of making films about Jewish themes or using Judaism as a constant.

I start with a mood or an idea that comes from a personal place emotionally, and the narrative concepts come much later.

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.

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.

The state of being in love is so inherently preposterous. It usually lends itself to romantic comedy. I think we've all been there.

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.

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.

Devils and monster faces and skulls and things like that are pretty consistent with somebody having a lot of hate in their hearts,

'Apocalypse Now' poses questions without any attempt to provide definitive answers, and the film's profound ambiguities are integral to its enduring magic.

'Apocalypse Now' does not alienate us or deconstruct itself. In fact, it welcomes us in.

Anyone who starts badmouthing Latino immigrants is not only a racist but ignorant. You need to refer them to what was written about the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, any group you want.

They stayed with the facts, and we're very pleased with it,

Americans have always been excellent at making romantic comedies - but dramatically, we don't really try to do it.

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.

At a certain point, you have to kind of realize that greatness is a messy thing.

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.

As ugly an admission as this is, I met my wife at a party, and if I had been to the same party and she were dressed in different clothes, I might never have talked to her. She might have projected something that I found distasteful, even if she otherwise looked exactly the same - a beautiful woman to me.

It's very difficult to put your finger on why a certain actor or actress will capture your attention, and you'll think they're right for a role. There's an essence to a person.

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.

It's the demand of all demands to do a car chase that's unique because there are so many... really since the beginning of film, even in the silent era, 'The Keystone Cops.'

It's hard to run away from who you are, and when your taste is formed is a very important thing.

It's much easier to make a movie with kind of stylistic pyrotechnics because you can hide behind that if there's a gap in the story.

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.

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.

There's virtually nothing made up in 'The Immigrant.' So much of the film came from somewhere in my family's past. All the details are from my own family.

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

The key to acting - from what little I know about that wonderful craft - is listening, and interacting with the other person in order to achieve magic. One way to do that is almost to provoke.

The corporate system dictates what gets made, and the movies are so bad because of the economic structure of Hollywood. The big business takeover of Hollywood is at fault rather than American storytellers - it's what keeps textured movies from getting made.

I'm not a website guy, although I'm not a Luddite, either. I have looked at a computer, but I don't go to PopSugar and Goop and all that.

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'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 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.

I have no athletic skills whatsoever. I'm just literally incompetent.

I'm telling you, every film I've ever made has been hated by the U.K. critics.

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.

If you've got a hanging black man on your arm, you're more likely to commit a crime against a black person,

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.

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.

Clearly there is a pattern of deceit, ... He (Brewer) crafted his story to try to imply James Byrd was dead before they started dragging him.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don't think anybody realized until last Tuesday that this was a Klan-type outfit, a white supremacist-type outfit, ... Most people thought it was just a bunch of guys getting drunk on Saturday night or a drug deal that went bad.

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.

I began to see cinema as the perfect combination of so many wonderful art forms - painting, photography, music, dance, theater.

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.

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.

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

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

Life affirming doesn't mean good things happen.

The life of a film is very strange. Once the film is done, you wish you could forget about it and move on.