The writer-director missed old-fashioned, unabashedly personal films.
So he went and made one, a tender look back at his own New York City youth.
), and what Mozart and Mark Rothko can teach us about movies.
Anne Hathaway, director James Gray, and Jeremy Strong at the Cannes Film Festival in May.LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Where did the idea ofArmageddon Timestart for you?
JAMES GRAY: In some ways, it’s your whole life, right?
I was very lonely and having very strange dreams.
Focus Features
I had made two films back to back that were extremely difficult on me physically.
Anyway, so I thought to myself, What are you doing?
And I just started to think of a movie by Federico Fellini calledAmarcord.
Banks Repeta and Anthony Hopkins in ‘Armageddon Time’.Anne Joyce / Focus Features
It’s a bit of a fantasia not his life, really, and yet it is.
And I hate to get too political, but I saw an analogous line between Mussolini and Trump.
And it lends a kind of darkness to what is also funny and beautiful.
I was a screwy kid in many ways.
And so I started planning it then by myself in Paris, of all things.
I’ve given you way too long an answer.
[Laughs]
Well, you covered a lot.
And the more specific it becomes, the more authentic it becomes.
Paul Thomas Anderson says it’s because we’re all getting old.
[Laughs]He said it as a joke but I think that’s at least part of it.
Four hundred thousand people lined the streets for Verdi’s funeral.
Puccini actually died before he could finishTurandot, that was 1925.
The reason I’m bringing that up is that, you know, cinema may not be here forever.
I’m not bad-mouthing comic-book movies or anything it’s great to have them as part of the mix.
And so you have an audience that’s actually been inculcated only to enjoy those kinds of movies.
And then you start to get a smaller and smaller box for the art form.
I’m not shitting on that.
What I am saying is that there has to be more.
Let’s say you walked into the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
It’s that incredible range, which is what makes us human.
It’s what makes us dare I use the word beautiful.
Everybody was at home watching them.
Like a school teacher, right?
It’s a very virtuous job, but it doesn’t pay anything.
So what do you do when a society does not prioritize integrity in any way?
You get Donald Trump, a totally transactional figure.
Yeah.It’s a Wonderful Lifewas a disaster!
It almost destroyed [Frank] Capra’s career.
It kind of did, actually.
To get back toArmageddon, how hard was it for you to recreate the Queens of your childhood physically?
New York obviously didn’t stand still for 40 years.
The truth is we went back to my street.
Where the kid lives in the movie is 90 feet south from my house.
The public school that they’re walking outside in the beginning, that’s my public school.
And the truth is, Queens is physically more or less untouched.
Culturally, it’s very different it used to be Archie Bunker Central.
We were the lone Jewish family on the block.
[Laughs]I quite like Queens now more than I did when I grew up there.
Well, after I wrote the script I went off and cast it, and then the pandemic hit.
And everybody’s schedule got totally screwed up.
I actually think Bob De Niro and Cate Blanchett are credited [in the final film].
Bob was very helpful to me on the script, he was very involved.
He actually helped me get the film made.
But then he went off to do Marty Scorsese’s movie, which shot for a long stretch.
“Fine, Bob!”
[Laughs]Yeah, I mean, what am I gonna say?
“Don’t do that”?
And with Oscar, the same thing happened.
the project he was working on got pushed over because of COVID.
But you know, it’s weird with movies sometimes they get made the way they should get made.
My father’s father was more of a bruiser, a plumber in Brooklyn.
So I had to rewrite the character.
But when Tony came on board it unlocked a lot of the story.
And it became totally true to what the story actually was.
I confess to you, I did not know Jeremy [Strong]’s work.
I thought, Wow, this guy’s great.
And Andy [Anne Hathaway] was in it from the beginning.
But she was so great.
She was like, “Darling, I’ll do a green screen on the weekend in Berlin.”
But then Jessica [Chastain] became available.
What was it like to get that seven-minute standing ovation at Cannes?
Did you have your Sally Field moment, “They really like me”?
Well, Cannes, I have a love-hate relationship with.
And I like to say they love movies there like a dog loves meat.
This is a confession: Everyone said to me, “Oh, you were crying.
Were you moved by the ovation?”
No, I was tearing up because my father had died a month before that of COVID.
Oh, I’m so sorry.
Did he get a chance to see a cut of the film before he passed away?
No, it is a shame.
It’s a regret.
I mean, he was quite old and we were on very good terms.
But honestly, I felt like I escaped like, Okay, good.
They didn’t boo.
So you keep hearing,thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack.
And you live in terror that that is what will happen to you.
So you asked how I felt, my feeling is relief.
He said actually he’d really embrace it, because he loves the possibilities there for longer-form storytelling.
And I see that you have a credit for an episode of an upcoming Norman Mailer series on IMdB.
Are you hearing the siren call of TV too?
I mean, Sergey Bondarchuk madeWar and Peacefor Russian television, and it was eight hours long.
Can you distribute it?"
There’s no way that he could.
Then I checked my phone.
I wanted to reheat the shrimp jambalaya I had yesterday….You know what?
I’m gonna watch the second half tomorrow."
Youneedto see what’s gonna happen."
That was a Monday.
Tuesday, you gotBen Hechtto rewrite the scene.
Wednesday, you got Cary Grant off stage seven and Ingrid Bergman off stage nine.
You brought them back in to reshoot, right?
So the stories functioned brilliantly.
They kept perfecting them.
Reshoots are the unsung hero of those old movies.
Today, you cannot do reshoots unless you have an exorbitant budget.
It’s impossible to get everybody together again.
And also of course, the stars of that era were often locked into their studio contracts.
They literally couldn’t say no.
They could not say no.
He offered to pay back the studio out of his contact.
He said, “yo don’t make me do it!
This is comedy, I’m a serious actor.”
The rest is history.
