James Gray makes the kind of movie that people like to say doesn’t exist anymore: the mid-budget drama for adults. That makes him seem old-fashioned to some, but to others, he’s one of the last holdouts of the New Hollywood tradition, turning out layered personal films in the vein of Francis Ford Coppola or Sydney Lumet. Over three decades, with detours to the Amazon and outer space, he’s been Hollywood’s great chronicler of working-class life in New York City’s outer boroughs. He’s even coaxed convincing regional accents out of the likes of Mark Wahlberg, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Anne Hathaway.
Gray’s latest, Paper Tiger, returns to that ground. It’s 1986, and two brothers — Miles Teller, a straitlaced engineer, and Adam Driver, a former cop — form a consulting business to help clean up the Gowanus Canal only to find themselves entangled with the newly formed Russian mob. The movie plays like a crime thriller, but its real subject is family. One of Gray’s starting points wasn’t a plot so much as a feeling: how hard it can be to love someone.
With its lush sets and amber glow, the film feels like a half-remembered dream as the American way of life circles the drain. Ahead of Paper Tiger’s opening this month at the New York Film Festival, we sat down with Gray to talk about his process and how he builds a world.
You tend to draw from your own life. Your father had legal troubles; your mother had brain cancer, as Scarlett Johansson’s character does in this film; and you’ve talked about filmmaking as a kind of therapy. At what point do you move away from autobiography and, for lack of a better phrase, start making shit up? Do you ever find yourself saying, “This is how it happened, but it doesn’t work for the movie?”
All the time. You’re not sitting there thinking, “I have to recreate this moment exactly.” I might veer slightly, or massively, from the factual truth. But I try not to.
Instead, you search for a kind of greater truth. It’s not a documentary. The facts of the case are roughly similar, but the emotions are there, and they’re honest. You’re trying to capture a feeling. That’s more important than anything, because movies are, first and foremost, an unbelievable delivery system for emotion. Everything else is secondary.
Your dialogue works a lot through subtext. One example you’ve mentioned with Paper Tiger is that, when Adam Driver’s character yells, “How long have I carried you?” he’s really saying, “I wish you loved me.” How does this happen in practice when you’re writing?
What you’re really talking about is the magic of movies themselves. Somebody says, “I love you,” but they really want to put a shiv in your neck, or vice-versa. You don’t have that on stage — or you don’t have as much opportunity to do it because the actor is so far from the audience. Even in the best seat in the house, you’re still 20 feet away. But in movies, you have such intimacy. The actor could be saying anything. What matters is what they convey with their face and eyes. If the actor isn’t thinking about anything, you can tell. That’s called bad acting.
In classical Hollywood, you often had a well-constructed story, and then the meaning underneath it. The Hays Code stopped you from saying exactly what you wanted to say, and in some ways that restriction was good. Today we have much more freedom of expression. Hypothetically, we can put all the nudity and violence we want into a movie. Now our subtext can be even richer because we can confront these things within the text. It doesn’t have to be about what would have been censored; it can be about our feelings.
To answer your original question about writing: You worry about the story. Then, when you’re on set, you tell the actor the meaning of the scene, and even if they only think it, you can tell.
Do you always tell your actors the meaning of the scene?
On set, I do always inform the actor of what the subtext might be. But I try not to talk too much about other actors’ motivations. I don’t know your motivations. You could be writing an article saying, “James Gray has too much hair product,” and that’s your agenda. Our ambitions are different. Actors can never play each other’s motivations for a scene. You have to almost keep them private.
You famously don’t take much credit for actors’ performances. Can you take some credit for the casting, at least? You’ve gotten actors you’d never expect to do great regional New York accents.
Miles is actually a Jersey boy — that’s close enough — and Scarlett grew up in Greenwich Village!
I was thinking about Mark Wahlberg, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Anne Hathaway most recently.
I look for actors who can understand some core of what I’m trying to express. Don’t put restrictions on them. Don’t say, “You have to hit this mark. You have to turn on this because the light is hitting your face this way.” You can’t be precious about that. When I talk about casting, what I’m really looking for is a certain authenticity of character. Everything follows from that. Not realistic, by the way; there’s a big difference between realistic and authentic. Authentic means being honest with your emotions.
On that note, I want to talk about the material textures of your movies, including Paper Tiger. Some big-budget period pieces have the right vintage clothing and props but don’t feel real — or rather, true. How do you keep a set from becoming a costume party?
The big problem with period movies is fetishizing the period by focusing on the superficial details. “Look at this: they had shoulder pads back then!” But in 2026, I might be wearing a suit I bought in 2017. My style isn’t immediately up to date. Most people have layers of history in their homes and in their clothes. You can’t design to a specific year; you have to design to the history of the person.
Cinephiles and movie buffs love spotting references in your films: a shot that recalls Lawrence of Arabia or a scene that feels like one from a 1960s Japanese samurai movie. Do you watch other movies when you’re making one yourself, or do you shut them out?
I used to watch movies all the time close to production and consciously steal from this and that. But over the past 5 movies or so, I’ve stopped because I’m ripping stuff off anyway. Even unconsciously, I’m going to steal. Now, I want to liberate myself from that. I want to be open to watching what’s happening and seeing how the scene plays out.
If I had to pick one key influence, it would be music. It’s very hard to articulate emotion the way music can. Stanislavski said it’s the most direct path to the human heart, and I think he was talking about its incredible range for conjuring emotion, something that almost goes beyond the verbal. My frame of reference is mostly classical, jazz, blues, and rock and roll up until 1990. But I’m constantly listening to all kinds, sometimes to very strange sources.
What’s considered a strange source?
Songs of Sephardim, Voice of the Turtle, Volume 2, for example. It’s not just Beethoven or some familiar opera. It might be a Spontini opera nobody knows or jazz musician Sonny Criss. It’s a very disparate set of inspirations. The more disparate they are, the more likely some random idea is going to come to you. That said, a movie can’t just be a collection of random ideas. If you have total freedom, it’s a problem. It’s like: If you can do anything, you can really do nothing. You need a box to play in.
I bet studio budgets give you some constraints.
But you should have creative constraints, too. There’s no great love scene in 2001. There’s not really a great action scene in Vertigo. That doesn’t mean those movies aren’t great. Not every movie can serve every master. You need to pick and choose what you’re going to do.
I’ve noticed that with young filmmakers’ debuts. It’s like they have one shot, and they go for broke trying to cram everything in: the love scene, the fight scene, their favorite song.
That’s folly. A work of art is very unforgiving. It sets up ground rules for you, and if you don’t follow them, you’re in trouble.
Your last movie about brothers in New York was We Own the Night 20 years ago, and there are some similarities there, of course. Do you ever go back and rewatch your work?
It’s not a pleasant thing for me to go back and watch my old work. I see my mistakes. I get really disturbed. I get depressed. How did I fail? I’m trying to get better, and that doesn’t really help me.
I had a great time with that movie, but it’s mostly receded into my memory, which is sort of sad to me. At the same time, it’s encouraging that I’ve been able to put it out of my mind. I’m trying to get at a greater truth this time. I just try to go forward.
Until your kids ask you to watch it.
Then it’s really painful. They always want to know, “How’d you do this? How’d you do that? Can I watch it with you, Dad?” My wife encourages it. “Bond with your children. Go!” And I’m like, “No.”
