19 Burst results for "James Grey"
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"So how do we educate people to start to expect it? Well, first of all, I'm going to just say this and nobody's going to listen, but it's fine. This is my one outlet, right? Let's start teaching all kinds of movies in high school. When you have to take art that also your art teacher shows you. The conformist, right? So I think if that starts to become part of the tradition, which by the way, it is in France. They have an understanding actually of the long-term implications of cinema as a cultural product, which is why there are government financed subsidies in cinema there. Now I'm not sure that's the answer because it's not like that's led to some amazing explosion of a new French new wave or something. But I think we have to start thinking in these terms because the cinema is part of who we are as Americans. It's part of our cultural seed corn. This is not just some business that you cast off after it stops making money. This is part of our outreach into the world. So I think that these big blockbusters are great for the industry, but it doesn't mean that it's the only kind of movie that we should be making. So you asked me the question, do I have optimism about a really or what do I do? I think I keep fighting and I keep trying to make the films I want and love to make and need to make. And then you let the chips fall where they may. It can not be the filmmaker who does the self censoring. An executive consensus me. Right now, I'm trying to just express myself as best I can. We'll keep up the good fight and thank you so much for the films and for doing this and you're welcome. Really appreciate it, thank you. You're so welcome. I really enjoyed this. Thank you. Thanks very much for tuning into awards chatter. We really appreciate you taking the time to do that. And would really appreciate you taking a minute more to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or your podcasts app, and to leave us a rating as well. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, you can reach me via Twitter at Twitter dot com slash Scott feinberg. Until next time, thanks for joining us.
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"The point of it is the extension of our compassion so that we can look into another soul and find that point of commonality. If you shut that off, if you say, only a person who is X can play X, then all of that beauty that comes from that distance, I am not that person, but I am going to now sympathize and empathize that for all of that beauty is gone. Part of the beauty of artistic representation is that distance. So I would ask of those people whose intentions, by the way, are laudable in many respects, to contemplate that what rage should be focused at American corporate life is now being unjustly focused on the artist, the artist is the friend, not the enemy, of compassion. Right. Well, my final question is just, you know, you ventured into just before I'm a get in time a larger scale kind of filmmaking, which you had the experience that we've talked about. You've come back to what I guess would be called a mid range budget independent. This movie type movie a smaller than mid range bedroom smaller. And yet I wonder it feels like this kind of film is not getting easier to make and yet you don't want to from what I gather necessarily go back to the larger scale. So what's your outlook? Outlook at the moment, knowing that this is the sort of landscape of the business at the moment. I go back and forth, it depends on what day you get. Some days I'm more optimistic in some days and more pessimistic. I like to keep fighting for the cinema that I love because I think we need it. Now, whether it has a staying power, I just don't know. It's funny. I actually think there are an enormous number of tremendously talented filmmakers. We are not going
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"I'm Jewish and he's not. And my family had a view of the world, which was that we were under siege. Right. And I think that this is an important subject because we like to simplify things in life. But the truth is, privilege is multilayered. And I've spoken of this before about how we can be both oppressor and oppressed at the same time. But it is not without worth noticing that being Jewish in America, part of it is that you're between two worlds, the world of being literally a numerical minority, but also being strangely, I guess, white, and our position is tenuous, and I think that that's probably the key difference between my own sense of displacement in the world, and Donald Trump's drive towards killing everybody who doesn't give him what he wants. I was never brought up with the idea like, you know, that I'm going to be a captain of industry. I was brought up with the idea that I should try to thin in as best I can to survive. Right. And it is amazing again, just the timing that this movie comes out at a moment when anti semitism is unfortunately surging. It is an issue of such it is a moment of such profound sadness to me and I must say I don't fully understand it. I suppose it was always there, but I grew up in a moment where I didn't think it was likely or even quite possible in America, and sadly I've learned that the opposite is true. It's very troubling, totally. And I will just say I find it, I will say this because you may not. You may not want to, although, feel free to jump in. If you want, but this nonsense about who can play members of your who you can cast to play your own family, which a few people have made an issue of. I mean, I find that the same way there's a Golda Meir project, apparently in the works where they've cast Helen marinus signed on. And I think I'm Jewish. I think it's fantastic. Find a better actress to play golden mayor. It's acting. I don't need a old Jewish lady to play Golda Meir in the same way that if Anthony Hopkins can play your dad or your grandfather rather and do it in a way that makes you happy. Who cares? Who else who else is business is that? It's a sadness to me that people, in some small numbers, by the way, but they tend to be, I guess, loud, but it's a very silly, dispute really. Because think of the absurdity of the argument in any kind of historical context. That you walk through the Prado and you see Velazquez's renditions of Jesus, and you say he has no right to paint Jesus, he himself was not a sephardic Jew, he was not present at the resurrection, the arguments would then be unending. Can you not put on a production of king Lear because you have to make sure that whoever plays king Lear has Alzheimer's disease? The ending, where does it end? Right now there were people upset that it's there's not a 600 pound actor playing Brendan Fraser's character in the whale. It's not possible.
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"What it is that I love about the cinema. And I thought, okay, keep the budget small. Keep the risk to everybody low, pay myself and the act is nothing, which is exactly what we did in the movie was very, very cheap movie. And go and do something where if the risk is low, put all the risk into the art of it, and to do something challenging and screwed up and showing how complex things can be, and not giving an answer to the audience all the things that I thought maybe some people might love it, but even if they didn't love it, maybe they would love it the second or third time around, because all of these layers would reveal themselves over time. That was really what I thought, okay, that's what my dream was for cinema for movies to do something which had a lasting some kind of lasting impact. And I don't mean impact like, oh, I want to be famous. I mean impact meaning that moves people makes them think. And maybe at first blush, it's a little uncomfortable troubling like, wait, did that fully work or what? But the truth is, the thing that would bother people was what the film was saying, not that the film wasn't working. There's a very different things. So that was, I remember thinking, that's my sort of, if I have this chance to rediscover that part of me and to keep the risk, like I said, financially low, then that's what I'm going to do. So that was the sort of MO on the movie. And to make it again as personal and this time, personal and autobiographical as I could, to try and make up nothing to try and say, this is three months of an extremely important period in my life in American what I think are underratedly in American history, recent American history, and let the audience debate what it is.
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"There to Amazonian, of course, also to the UK, it was a split production. And actually, it was not that expensive a movie. I mean, it was $19 million. Was how much we were given. And I think with tax break stuff, it was more than that. But that was the money we raised. And really, it was an epic for that amount of money of a huge undertaking. I think I kind of think I went a little nuts on it, perhaps like Karzai. Well, not quite like that. But I will tell you that when you're, you know, it's week three and four and 5, or whatever, and you're standing in the Don Diego river up to your knees and you see, you know, caimans swimming around and bats are right over your head and monkeys are howling it. It really, you're not supposed to be there. Well, so that was that one. And then on the heels of it was at Asher, which you have said, quote, creatively it became a very torturous experience. Why was that? In fact, I think prior to that, you had been looking at a different one with Brad, right? You were you were going to do. I had read at one point the gray man. No, that's right. With that, that, unfortunately, didn't last very long. You know, as a concept, that was right around when I was working on the immigrant. I had been sent that book and the script by the people at new regency. And Brad wanted to do it at the moment. I had some fantastic action sequences, and I was really interested in doing a very subjective kind of action film, but it very, very different from the film that they finally made with Ryan Gosling. In fact, it bears no resemblance whatsoever ultimately. But the creative difficulties on ad Astra were basically this if you are the person who writes and directs the film, but you're not the person with the most important opinion in the room, you're going to face problems.
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"Now the thing that I wonder is prior to the immigrant. Had you ever used CGI? Have you ever directed anything with CGI before? Because what I know that it's not like it's in your face CGI, but in order to recreate part of the period accurately, that had to be there. And then I wonder because your next two projects were just on such a larger scale and that was more of a presence there with some to some degree with lost city of Z in 2016 and at Astra in 20 19, I just wonder did that give you any idea of what you were getting into with the subsequent two. To your point, let me answer very straightforwardly. It was not my first experience with CG. And in fact, there was a very major experience I was CG, which was an altogether great one, was on a car chase that I did for a movie called we own the night, which of course predates this. Yes, yes. And all of that rain was CG. We had bright sunny skies every day we shot it over a 6 day period. And I didn't know what to do because that was a major source of the story. So all of that turned out to be the brilliant work at a company called digital domain, which is sadly no longer with us. And those guys were the greatest. So I had that experience under my belt by the time I decided to do the immigrant. The immigrant was a great deal of fun in that way. Because the whole idea was you're watching a movie and you don't know about any visual effects. I see about 6 shots, which really bother me in the immigrant. Really? Yeah, and by the way, this is always the case. You make a film and there's always like four or 5 or 6 shots that torture you that you notice, but nobody else.
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"I like it because I had an amazing experience with them and I felt very connected with the actors and Jeremy Renner two and Darius kanji's work in it. And so I think back on that film with just a tremendous amount of affection. And then once it was done, then you ran into Harvey Weinstein again. Well, that was not my fault. Yeah, no, I know you weren't, but the first time the first time was my fault, because I sold the script to him. This time, I made the film with just an independent money. I had final cut. And then I heard that he bought the film. And I didn't understand why he did, I was crestfallen. Because we didn't have a great relationship on the first one. I didn't think he would like this. I thought it should be, you know, Sony classics or searchlight or one of these places. And the next thing I knew, he had seen the film, and of course, hated it.
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"The tropes of independent cinema. In other words, they stay inside the system but subvert it. So I have huge admiration for that. At the same time, it doesn't mean that everybody should be doing the same exact thing. Because you don't go to a restaurant, they say, here's Scott, here's the menu, and you have one dish, right? That would be pretty enraging. You at least want three or four. So my attitude is you do what it is you can do to contribute to this mountain of human endeavor that we call progress. In my way, is to try to communicate my personal state of soul as best I can. Absolutely. The one thing I do want to follow up on though, because it leads into the next movie that came along chronologically in 2013, the immigrant, the idea of now and in the last few years, it's been the topic of immigration has been made front and center by certain political figures who I know you and I both dislike quite a bit. You're nodding your head. Well, it's just such a sadness, you know, it's like think of who we were in this way and where we've come to. But I guess, so clearly you're thinking about the immigrant experience way predates that. And you mentioned your grandparents, I think you said came in 1923 to Ellis island, the immigrant, I believe, is 1921. And I have to say that I very much liked all of your movies, but that one somehow really affected me as much as any of them. And part of that, as you say, you've got these two incredible actors with you, Joaquin and Marianne cotillard. But it's just I think it humanized that immigrant experience of that era in a way that I'd never thought about. Obviously this one from everything I've been able to gather is not very much based on your own families, immigrant experience in terms of what happens to Marianne's. No, that's true, but there were a lot of a lot of it is ripped from the stories of my grandparents. Because what happened was my great grandfather.
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"Note with those, we own the night returning to sort of the immigrant experience in a way, to lovers, the Jewish experience, things that I find it interesting just that maybe I don't know if this was something you conscious of when you're picking projects or what you want to focus on, but the themes that run through the work right through from the beginning through Armageddon time are clearly there. Is there any rhyme or reason, I mean, everyone's shaped, of course, by their family, their religion, their different things like that. But is there something you're trying to figure out in terms about yourself, your own identity, your own experience, you know, often even set in Queens, these stories are around queens, or Brooklyn, where my Brooklyn, so just do you think that the reason you keep returning to those themes, not that there's anything wrong with doing so and they've been great, but I wonder, are you trying to answer something for yourself? To the degree that that's the case, I hope I never come up with the answer because that would mean that I was lying to myself to the n-th degree. I don't think life provides you with an answer. I think the closest thing that you come to a that's an answer is actually right when lockdown started with COVID, my very young my youngest kid who was, he was 11, I think at the time, and he said, daddy, come outside, I want you to see something and we're not to the garden, and he showed me beautiful praying mantis. And he was talking about, you know, the iridescent wings and I started taking he took my phone, he took all these pictures, I still haven't, all these pictures of the praying mantis. And at first, I said, what am I doing here? Looking at a praying mantis. And then I realized that he actually did have the answer that there was such a gorgeous in the simplicity of his view of the world, and he was appreciating the glint of light on its wings. And that to me was the answer. So the degree to which I find unanswered in the riddles of my identity, I don't think that's ever going to come to pass, but I do think it's the principal struggle of each and every one of us. Now, how conscious we are of that is a different issue. Some people go through life, basically pushing the idea of their mortality to the side, and they do an excellent job of it, right? Focused on Thursday evening is poker night or whatever. And I'm not declaiming this. This is a great thing in life if you're able to focus on that. Others suffer terribly at the idea of knowing that he or she they will die. So we each handle this differently. Right. And my own view is that the work should reflect your personal commitment. So the degree to which you see a similarity between just thematic. No, I know exactly what you mean. I know exactly the thematic thread is there. And may I say risking sounding like I have great hubris on the matter, it's maybe the one thing I'm most proud of because that means I'm trying to put myself into the work. Totally. And to me, that's what I'm supposed to be doing. Now, there are people who work in a commercial context who are able, for example, I've always admired hugely Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg and people like that who are able to convey to me their personal state of soul without resorting to certain tactics
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"Palme d'or winner, for example, where an American was not running the jury is, I think, over 30 years ago. Yeah, and even Marty and one other, I think, are the two. Well, Martin's cresse one for taxi driver and Tennessee Williams was the head of the jury. Okay. So well, I mean, Marty, the movie. Oh, the movie Mario. That's how far back we're going, yeah. No, I think it's probably if memory serves its Barton think. I believe was Polanski. But Polanski even had worked within the American system. My point is not to know boo hoo hoo. Why doesn't the movie win prizes? What I mean is that it is very much a place where American cinema is adored by French critics, but it is not a place where it's chosen necessarily to be celebrated. Right. And so I'm reluctant to take the films there. But because you're quite right, the films tend to be for whatever reason, extremely successful financially in France and critically, that it becomes very important for the French distributors to have that little palm frond at the beginning of the movie, which of course Americans don't care at all about. So I always wind up going through this same unwanted ritual where I go to the can to go to the closet. You know, but it's not just me that thinks this, by the way. I mean, Steve Soderbergh said something completely hilarious about it once to me. He said, showing your movie in can. Is like having to sit through your movie and watch every frame last for 30 seconds. But you know what's also true is that I think it is a bad place. And I'm going to say this. I think it is a bad place to assess a film. You have to watch in the best case as you will tell me this as a critic, I don't know. But as I certainly as I've been on the jury, and on the jury, you have to watch two and three pictures a day, and sometimes the first screening is at 8 o'clock in the morning, and especially me from LA, I have jet lag, and your perception does become clouded. It does. Totally. And so the critical evaluation in can is often a strange and unrepresentative bubble. Well, you're just a button for one second. I know that you've had extremes on both ends of that, right? Where I think it was two lovers, right? Where they were pretty mean, and then it was fine out in the real world. Oh, when it came out, it got very good reviews, much later. Right. That's a perfect example. Because let's face it. In that case, in the case of two lovers, you're talking about a very narrative movie, but of deceptively narrative movie, it's a very dark movie. It's he plays a very troubled person. But in the context of something where, you know, and I don't say this disparagingly, by the way, because I think he's made beautiful films, but like Lars von trier is the movie right before it. You can see the way that the context is all of a sudden so off for your movie.
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"I mean, narian cotillard was a absolutely brilliant actor and Vanessa Redgrave is brilliant and but I loved this really nobody in any of the pictures. I loved, for example, I absolutely loved working with Eva Mendes and we on the note I thought she was fantastic and so giving and so generous and she was great and I loved working with of course I love Mark Wahlberg who's made two films with me. So there are a lot of people I'm feel simpatico with. And in the case of Joaquin, I think what he and I synced up on a lot was this notion of two things, really. The first is that when you say actor so and so nailed it. That we're actually against that idea because it means you're playing the role as expected. And what Joaquin is able to do in a unique way is surprise you while still making sense for the scene and still actually playing consistent to character. The choices are unique that he makes. And you'll watch him work. It's almost like live theater. You don't know what will happen. So you sit there and you say to him, this is what the scene's about. This is what is going on with the character. This is the mood of the scene. I understand, okay, let's go. And I always roll camera on the rehearsal. And it is always something that I did not expect. Now, sometimes rarely, I'll say to myself, I don't know if it's consistent with what I wanted here. I don't know if it helps me tell the story, but that is infrequent. What is much more frequent is I can't believe I didn't think of that way to play the scene. I love that. So that's what Joaquin gives me. And I read it was just a pure stroke of luck, right? Because he was dating. That's right. He was dating Liv Tyler. And Liv, whom I love as well, by the way. This is a wonderful person, and a very good actor. She got the script. I don't know who sent it to her. I want to say that Harvey Weinstein did, because at that time, they had just bought the script and started to send it out all over the place. And I got the call that Joaquin had just picked up the script basically and said the title of this is better than all the scripts I've been going. And he started to read it and really liked it.
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"You know, all these things would be applied to my father's story. And that was really all that was my way of trying to do something personal and in some ways autobiographical within a different formal context. Now your father was still alive then and actually through the making but not the completion of Armageddon time, right? Just because I can't help but wonder what did he make of his story being shown to the world in a way? He was a strange person, he wasn't an effusive guy, and I think part of him loved it to be honest because he loved knowing that his story was represented in some way, even if it was less than edifice. And in some ways ugly, I think that he thought it was great that I was telling his story because it meant he was heard. Interesting too, because in some other cases of the later pictures where like, for example, I made a film called the immigrant which there's no father figure in it and lost city of Z, in which the father figure is essentially an alcoholic and a gambler and is not really in the story. He actually literally didn't like those movies as much. And part of me wonders if that's the reason. Right. Well, I guess I have to also ask you about Joaquin Phoenix because what was the I can't say I know either of you very well, but I've seen a lot of your work and I don't know. To me, I would not have necessarily guessed that you guys would be, you know, it feels a little like an odd couple. I don't mean to maybe I'm very wrong about that. But how did you guys find each other? And why do you think it worked for, I believe, for so far? I connected with him immediately. I love your read as an odd couple. I think that's quite funny. But I'm not sure how odd couple we are. We have the same way of looking at the world and we have almost precisely the same opinions about films and works of art. And the way the world is, so in some respects, it's an odd couple thing, but it always is going to be with an actor and director, because actors tend to be more charming, better looking, more charismatic. And know more about the intimacies of human behavior than directors, directors tend to be like bullies, you know, we tend to be filled with that kind of grit and drive. I talked about, and we tend to be more openly megalomaniacal. So in that way, yes, we're not cool. But in that way, every actor director pairing is and in the real ways that matter, which is the how much we agree on artistic notions. Well, that's pretty much a 100% agreement, and I would probably make another film with him maybe sooner rather than later. I love working with him because he is he really is as close to genius as anybody as I've worked with in that arena. And I mean, I've worked with other tremendous actors, so he may be first among equals in the sense.
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"So that's part of the reason it was 6 years. It wasn't really. In fact, I shot the film three years. After little Odessa had come out, and I had to fight for the film. And in the end I lost a couple of battles of one of which was about the ending, which was by the way the principal focus of criticism when the film came out, and I was so saddened I didn't have final cut, there was no way I could get the film out there without that ending. But I remember being so upset because it was the thing I didn't want and it was the thing that was being criticized. And can we just note though going back a second, co written with Matt Reeves, who I know you remain always one of my closest buddies. And he was one of the people at USC who would go to these screenings. And other people who have my friend Brian Burke, who's the producer, you know, Bruce Star Wars with JJ Abrams. Well, so that's your co writer, your star. Is someone who you then would work with more than anyone else, I believe. In terms of the story, you've said sort of among the inspirations, Claude chabrol, and visconti, but also, it is hard to imagine that a story that involves a little bit of extra legal activities around railroad contracts, it can't not be in some ways inspired by the stuff we talked about with your father, right? Oh, of course. It was totally his story. Yeah. No, there's no doubt about it. I had wanted to make something about my father's situation with kind of the trappings of what you might call. This is really pretentious, but this is what I remember thinking in 1997 or whatever. It was like I was getting really into opera. And I had read all about the tradition of what they call verismo, which was originally actually started by the writer Emile Zola from this book, very much part of the struggle of working class people treated with tremendous dignity and beauty and a kind of epic scope lent to that struggle. And of puccini is la boheme is very small opera, for example. And so I wanted to do something like almost like channeling visconti and Francis Coppola, this kind of very operatic, almost Italian quality to the movie.
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"The time, I thought I was really great, really great. And I was watching dailies and I was saying, look at this. Masterful masterful. And then, as I'm fond of recounting, but it's all true. March 5th, 1994 happened. It's the day I walked to the studio. And the editor said, here's the assembly. And it was the worst thing I had ever seen in my life. Now is that you hear people when they see the first assembly of their film. It's never a fun, rarely a funny story. So terrible experience. Okay. It is such a humbling I was not prepared for it on any level. And I just, I remember seeing it going, I can't believe it. And that night, I went to bed, I lay down, and I started, you know, the expression you say, flop sweat. I started sweating. And I started breathing very heavily in my heart had palpitations, and I thought I'm dying. And I called my brother, who's a physician, he said, no, no, no, it's anxiety. You have big anxiety issues right now. And I thought that was when the sense of myself can crashing to disaster. I then had a kind of situation where I felt that I had to discover a film in the editing room, and so to make it in the editing room and make it work. And when I went to Venice, everyone told me, before we went to Venice that it was a terrible film, but I remember a wonderful man named gilot ponti corvo, who directed a true masterpiece called the battle of Algiers. And the Venice Film Festival. And he saw the film a night to this day, I don't know how. And contact me, he said, this is something incredible film. What are you? What are you? And I remember saying, what am I? What do you mean, what am I? What are you? And then he said, no, he wants to know who are you. I said, no, well, I'm just as my first niece, your first theme in credible. We want to show it in a Venice. Around the festival. So the next thing I know, I'm on a plane to Venice. I'm dressed absolutely wrong for every event. I'll never forget I said, this is Venice, how shall I dress? This always Savannah sees a very casual jeans, a T-shirt, this okay, and so I dress in a sport coat and of course everyone else is in black tie. Then my official screening comes up, that was for the opening night. My first screen comes up, black tie. I'm in black tie. Everyone else is in jeans and a T-shirt. They think I'm a waiter. They're giving me drink order. So I was just out of sync the whole time I was there. And I was so depressed that the screening ended, and it was like, like one person clapping and I thought, oh my gosh, it's a complete disaster. I got on a plane, went back and flew back to LA, and when I got off the plane, a man was holding a sign saying James grey called this number like literally right when you step off the plane into that little walkway. So I called the number, they said, no, the movie has won two prizes. You have to go and fly back. So I flew right back to Venice. Where I had dinner without Pacino, I remember who had won some lifetime achievement thing. And I was like, I didn't think I was great at the time Scott. The only thing I thought was, I survived.
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"Contemplate what that must have been like for him for anybody outside of the circle of people that we were. I mean, I know what it meant to me. I couldn't think straight. So the only thing that I can tell you now, looking back on it, is that I, it is traumatizing. I'm just not sure I thought about it at the time with the exception of my mother, and I don't think I thought I can handle it. I can deal with it. Now, the four year period that you referenced 87 to 91, I think is exactly the same time when you were off to the other side of the country to go to USC's school of film and tell us. That's right. So do you think that it made things that did it help or hurt you to be on the other side of the country when things were kind of in disarray? It's a great question. I've never been asked that. The only way that I can put it is this way. As with many things in life, the answer is a bit complicated. On the one hand it helped I think my survival on a day to today basis because I was so far away, and I felt a huge drive to succeed and like I said by a young age because I didn't know what was going to face me past a certain age. And I focused on that. And I focused on films, cinema was something I loved. I would I remember I didn't have a car, but the Norris cinema theater, which was on USC's campus, they would show like a bird Lancaster retrospective. And by the way, I would see these films with my friends, one of whom, very good friend of mine, was John singleton, who was in the FiLMiC riding program. And there were a lot of times when John and I would be the only people sitting in a Burt Lancaster movie like come back little shoe but you know something like that. I really made some very close friends in that time period as a result. And I was isolated from the catastrophes in New York. On the other hand, I would be lying if I didn't tell you that I felt terrible, terrible pangs of guilt. I was 3000 miles away while my mother was living her last few months, and my brother was in the thick of it, and my father with his brewing legal troubles. I felt in some cases that I had abandoned the effort. If we can go back for a second, where did the love of film the desire to even pursue it to the extent that you go off to USC? Where did that originate from? Usually you can't target things like with such specificity, but I can, in this case, it was the I can tell you it was the fall right before Thanksgiving, of 1981, so about a year after Armageddon time takes place. I was always into, I was always kind of pretentious and already party, as they say, I really wanted to be a painter first. And in the fall of 81, I was in some kind of trouble, as they say scuffling. And in
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"And he was not the kind of Hester street, by the way, which is the thing is a beautiful movie, but it was not that cliched now, cliche, you know, pickle salesman, low recite, like my name is moisturizer, some pickles. He was not like that at all. He always wore this fedora, which had gotten quite beaten up by the time he was an elderly and he always wore a jacket and tie, I remember knew exactly how to fold his handkerchief in his pocket. And he was the guy who I felt in my youth saw me. You know, he would sit with me and listen to me, and he would be inculcating me about moral and ethical foundations for me and it really spending the time with me that, frankly, my father and mother didn't. In some ways, I don't blame them. You know, you're talking about the period we're discussing is really the late 1970s, and I know that my father struggled mightily to pay the bills. And I think that my brother and I became sort of a secondary responsibility to actually getting food on the table. So it was left to my grandfather to raise us. So the struggles of your father, I think this may lead into the next question, which is a period, I guess, certainly after Armageddon time in your chronology, but before, well, actually probably more with to do with the yards in a sense. You had a short stretch of time when a lot of bad things happened, right? Just to tee it up because I've read and listened to you talk about this before and I think how could this not really shape a person, but your father had some legal trouble within just months later, your mother passes away pretty suddenly. You and your brother are off to schools, colleges, what did that feel like? That's a whirlwind when all of this suddenly hits at once, right? I haven't actually spoken to it all that much. I did do fairly recently a discussion with Terry gross on NPR and she brought it up, I was momentarily startled because it had been a while since I discussed it openly. I mean, by the way, not me, criticizing her. It's out there, and it's she has every right to ask me about it. I just, I just was surprised to be honest. And it was years after the film takes place. The army got in time takes place in 1980, and so this all came down, you turn up the yards, this all came down, I want to say starting around 1987.
Awards Chatter
"james gray" Discussed on Awards Chatter
"Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to the 469th episode of The Hollywood Reporter's awards chatter podcast. I'm the host, Scott feinberg, and my guest today is a New York born LA based filmmaker who has been described by the Los Angeles Times as a director who has uncommonly carved a career on his own terms. By The New York Times, as an accidental maverick, an unrepentant traditionalist in a business that prizes newness and schtick. And by the French newspaper le monde, as one of the great American directors of our time. He has written or co written and directed 8 feature films over the last 28 years. 1990 fours little Odessa, 2000s the yards, 2007s we on the night, 2008s two lovers, 2013s, the immigrant, 2016s the lost city of Z 2019s ad Astra, and this year's Armageddon time. All of which had their world premiere at one of the world's elite film festivals, 5 at Cannes, two at Venice, and one at New York. I'm talking, of course, about James gray. Over the course of our conversation at his home in Los Angeles, the 53 year old and I discussed the turmoil that was going on at home in New York as he headed off to LA to attend film school and then at the age of just 23 to make his widely acclaimed first feature, the challenges that he has encountered along the way, both on Indies, including multiple run ins with Harvey Weinstein, and on studio films, including having a film taken away from him, why he has so often returned in his films to New York's outer boroughs and to the subjects of immigration, social class, and his own family, most recently, in Armageddon time, plus much more, and so without further ado, let's go to that conversation.
Filmspotting
Our Top 10 Films of 2019
"Last week on the show we focused on our out liar pixies or movies that were unique to our individual top ten list this week. It's what we're calling the consensus picks though as you'll hear in a moment a little bit of a misnomer because these things can never just line up perfectly. We do want to quickly recap the the movies we talked about last week on the show Tasha. You're the big winner with five movies as outliers. You were the only one who loved these movies that much which is to say. Some of US didn't appreciate these films but we didn't appreciate him quite as much as you did. Those titles were I did not realize I was winning but I will take this win They were wild rose the drama about the Scottish woman who wants to be a country and western singer. I lost my body. The French animated drama about a severed hand. Making its way through Paris Chris. The Documentary Hail Satan about the rise of the political group the Satanic Temple. Honey boy the style of movie where he plays his own father and tells his own. The story and the nightingale a harrowing rape revenge drama from Jennifer Kent Director of the Obama Duke tied for second place. Michael and Josh Michael Will Start with you. Four titles else that were outlined four titles ashes pure swathes Uson case great gangster film one child nation a terrific documentary About a filmmaker who goes back to her home village in China to explore the consequences of the government's one child policy that affected everybody in her family and her village waves the drama Rahmah from trae Edwards Scholtz his third feature and a great streak of threes on NFL. Nobody saw nobody knows present. Perfect from school of the the art institute graduate and it's a wonderful Colli picture of about a youtube stars in China and just come into the lives we learn about through all this phone footage Josh. You're foreign. I had Clerides highlife. Joanna Hogg's the Souvenir Takeaway. TD's Joe Joe. Rabbit and Pedro Element over Spain and glory so my top ten list. Apparently very boring and predictable. I only had three outliers. Safdie brothers Uncut Gems starring. Adam Sandler. Her was my number nine choice. Alex Perry's her smell starring Elizabeth Moss one of the best performances by an actress. This year I think was my number seven choice and I had James. Gray's Astra Astra starring Brad Pitt at number six.
News and Information with Dave Williams and Amy Chodroff
White supremacist to be executed in Texas for dragging death of black man
"A why? White man charged in the dragging convicted actually in the dragging death of a black man in east Texas is scheduled to die tonight. Clayton Neville says John William king is one of the three men connected to James birds death. The killing is considered one of the most horrific hate crimes in modern American history James bird dragged to his death behind a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas in nineteen ninety eight three white men charged in the killing the Jasper county district attorney guy James gray said prosecutors presented the chain that bird was tight to as evidence to prove the brutal nature of the killing the chain is probably a little larger and a little rougher than you would just like when you say a chain the killing prompted, Texas and congress passed hate crime legislation. John William king slated to die tonight. More than twenty years after the brutal