Director<\/strong> : James Gray \u00a9<\/b>Courtesy of Neon<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Press Conference with Director James Gray, Actors Adam Driver & Miles Teller<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Q : To my left, writer, director James Gray, Miles Teller, Adam Driver. I’m gonna start off with some questions before we turn it over to you. I’m just gonna start at the beginning. I like the origin question. And in this film, it’s working on so many levels. I’m wondering if it’s possible for you, if you remember, if there’s an originating idea. Is it a mood? Is it a particular personal story? Is it a theme? And then how the film develops from there.<\/strong><\/p>\n James Gray : You know, it’s funny, it’s almost impossible to articulate why you get to do something that you do. And I feel very fortunate because the way it starts with me is I wanna communicate something. Usually it’s an incident or something connected to a larger emotional idea. I frankly, as corny as this sounds, uh, I started out saying I wanted to make a movie about love and how difficult it was to love somebody.<\/p>\n And I don’t mean obviously in a romantic way only, although that’s part of it, but how things in life get in the way of our relationships with each other. So it sort of started with that notion, and then to rip off stuff from my own past really. Somebody said to me once, they said, “Oh, instead of therapy, you make films,” which I like a lot.<\/p>\n I think that’s a sign of victory because that means that I’ve put myself, as disgusting as I am, into the work. I feel like that’s my job. Now, it’s your job to like it or hate it, tell me I’m good or shitty or whatever, but it’s my job to show you, warts and all, who I am, I think. So it started really there, that impulse.<\/p>\n Q : And then, if you can, just how you develop, bring things in as you’re writing. Just a little bit more about your writing.<\/strong><\/p>\n James Gray :Well, I’m at\u2026You know, for lack of a better way of putting it, I like a classical narrative structure. I feel that it affords you tremendous latitude with subtext which I think is a little bit of a lost art, to be honest.<\/p>\n A lot of times I see films where I know exactly … And sometimes they work very well, but I know exactly what they’re trying to tell me right up front. And my memory of going to the film, movies really, not just in this theater, but all around town as a kid, was seeing, frankly, movies where, whether they were from the United States or elsewhere, where they couldn’t actually say what they wanted to say directly, either because of the production code or because some Soviet guy was saying, “You can’t do it,” whatever the case was.<\/p>\n So they sneaked in the message, if you wanna say that. And that classical structure to me allows that. I like that enormously, and it actually stays modern for me for that reason. So, what I do is very mechanically, begin with index cards, on bulletin boards all around my office, and I start writing ideas for scenes down on index cards. And after I have about 60… I know this is riveting.<\/p>\n Q : I’m interested. I don’t know about you.<\/strong><\/p>\n James Gray : You’d be the one, Rachel. So, after about 60 of them, you see a connecting line almost always. Now, it doesn’t mean the story’s there, but you see something, an idea that sort of begins to be connected. In this case, the idea was boiled down, and as pretentious maybe as this is to the Aeschylus quote, you know, uh, “Let there be wealth without tears,” the whole idea that the system tries to tell us to get more, to grow, to get richer, to get rich the American dream. And that sometimes has noxious side effects. So it started with that concept. I could see the through line there. And it takes me a long time. I’m really slow, which is abundantly clear to everybody in this room.<\/p>\n Q : You’re remarkably consistent in interviews through the years-Oh, great … downplaying your talent for working with actors. So let’s dig into that a little bit.<\/strong><\/p>\n James Gray : I talked about this just last night at dinner, by the way, but go ahead. What are you gonna ask?<\/p>\n Q : Well, your films have such remarkable performances. Can you parse..<\/strong><\/p>\n James Gray: Let me talk myself up then- Okay.. since this seems to be what you want. If you get great actors, you let them do what they do. That is maybe not as easy as I thought it was. I don’t actually do much with these guys. They’re great. So it’s like- I don’t… They really are. So it’s like it, and it’s sort of like you know what it is? I’ll tell you what I am good enough to do, since you think I have such a suppressed ego. I don’t say, “I have my vision.<\/p>\n Adam Driver: You’re gonna say the line exactly..<\/p>\n James Gray : As I wrote it,” which I think is catastrophic. You have to be open to what the actor will bring, and you want the actor to do something you didn’t expect. I mean, very famously, Diaghilev said, “\u00c9tonnez-moi.” Surprise me. So when I get to set, I don’t have a preconceived notion of the way the scene should be played.<\/p>\n You know, I have been to sets where I see directors and they’ll … I’ll watch them watch the actor, and I’ll see them going and I’m always disturbed by that, because they’re seeing the actors say the line either as they should or not. But you know, there’s a very famous story, which I’m sure most everybody in this room knows, about when I was a kid, I was very fortunate, ’cause my father was clueless about the movies. But he did say, “There’s a Stella Adler woman who teaches acting downtown. And if you have any sense at all, if you wanna do this directing garbage, you’ll go and you’ll sit and you’ll listen.” So I did sit in on Stella Adler, which was totally amazing. I mean, this is like 1981 or 2, I forget the year exactly, which was on, I believe, Lafayette Street. It was right across from where NoHo Star used to be.<\/p>\n And which had the best pancakes, and it’s gone. And, and she was amazing. She told this story, which is actually now quite famous, about telling a group of actors, some of whom were quite famous, “You’re all chickens, and a nuclear bomb is about to annihilate you.” Do you know this story? Yes. Yeah. It’s totally great.<\/p>\n And she said, “Go.” And all the actors are going, “Blah-blah-blah-blah,” going nuts. And then there’s Marlon Brando sitting in the corner like this. And she says, “Marlon, what are you doing? Didn’t you hear my directive?” And he says, “I’m a chicken. How do I know there’s gonna be a nuclear bomb?” So the story is funny, but it’s also great because it tells you that the actor cannot play the preconceived idea that’s from above. \u00a9Courtesy of Neon<\/p>\n Q : Let’s do that.<\/strong><\/p>\n Adam Driver: James tells us what to say, how to say it. That was bad, ’cause this is my set. Do it how I told you.<\/p>\n Miles Teller: He’s very mean.<\/p>\n Adam Driver: Yeah.<\/p>\n Miles Teller: He’s very mean about it as well.<\/p>\n Adam Driver: I think he articulated it pretty well, which I think is rare to especially if you’ve written it, to not have ownership over it. And you know, always an atmosphere of the set comes from the top down. You know, whoever’s in charge, who’s leading it, they kind of set the precedent for how the crew is working on it and how focused the actors are on it. And, and he sets all the things that he just said, he really does embody on set, where he creates an atmosphere where you can’t make a mistake.<\/p>\n And if we do it, you know, he’s made sure that we have enough time in the schedule if we don’t, you do it right. If there’s another option, we’ll, we have time to, to do it. But he also, when he does give direction, it’s succinct and it often not literal. iIt’s something always internal and kind of abstract.<\/p>\n It’s not like something technical or very specific. And if it has to be\u2026he’s very apologetic that it has to be, which for me it’s fine. Sure, I’ll just look this light way if it is telling the story better. But when that happens, it’s like he’s always almost offended that he has to ask, and I’m like, “This is nothing.”<\/p>\n But, for example, there’s a scene in the car where he, he just had this kind of boxing image that he was thinking about. That for me was great. That felt like an active no. I don’t quite understand it, but it felt like an active thing to play. So we would try a take like that, and he was like, “Great.<\/p>\n Well, let’s try something else.” I mean, it seems obvious, but it’s, it’s often… And people, I feel often aspire for that kind of attitude on set. But, James really does embody it. He really does.<\/p>\n Miles Teller: And, and James wouldn’t be afraid to, if a scene wasn’t necessarily working, he would say, “It’s not your guys’ fault.<\/p>\n It’s the writer’s. Of course, and then he would sit and tinker with it a little bit. But yeah, I mean, we didn’t have a ton of setups every day. It was probably the least amount of setups I think I’ve ever had on a film. He’s very available, and there’s elements of this story that are autobiographical in James’ words. And he’s just a really lovely, articulate person who really does love movies as much as anybody that I’ve ever met.<\/p>\n Adam Driver: You do just want someone who’s a great audience member. Yeah. You know like, who’s watching the monitor and is seeing everything. When you feel as an actor that someone isn’t then you start to do that job also, and it kind of takes you out of the scene.<\/p>\n If you trust, you know majority of these choices are all about taste, and, you know already going into it before we’ve even shot anything, because of his films or the choices that he’s made with such attention to detail about costume, what he lenses are, how he’s shooting it, where we’re shooting it. He’s paying attention,” which again seems obvious, but it’s all about taste that’s the end of that sentence, period. It’s all about taste.<\/p>\n Q : That leads into my next question, which was about a period, because I think recent period- I’m wondering if all of you can talk about that in terms of language. Were there things you thought about beforehand about being authentic to 1986?<\/strong><\/p>\n James Gray : I see no difference between 1986 and 1820 anymore. Have you been to the Gowanus Canal recently? When we were scouting, somebody said, “Well, are you gonna do the actual Gowanus Canal?” And I said, “Yeah.” And then I got there, and it looked like Osaka. I mean, it looks nothing like it did in 1986. People dress nothing like that. The hair with these perms and side, and it’s funny because I think people are almost out of the language of period and recent period.<\/p>\n My mother had that hairstyle, and it does look ridiculous, but it’s accurate to what it was. And the only thing we did do was limit the shoulder pads. Because in costume, what people actually wore in 1986 is especially for women, these shoulder pad things, we forget. They looked like they were, you know, about to play Joe Namath, you know bio film. The shoulder padding out to here, it was risible.<\/p>\n So the furthest we went was the hair. You have to try to get the details right, but you have to actually not do as much, because then it would look like parody. So it’s almost like the same thing is true, it’s funny with accents. I don’t think I have any accent, a New York accent, which is of course ridiculous. When I go to restaurants in Los Angeles with my kids, the waiter or waitress invariably comes over and says, “How are you today?” And I go, “How you doing?” And then the kids laugh, and they start going, “How you doing? How you doing, Dad?<\/p>\n How you doing?” But what I try to do is what was accurate and then a little bit less. But you still have to have it or else, it’s not accurate at all, then it feels bogus. So it’s a tricky and fine line, and there are some people who are gonna go, “So-and-so’s doing too much,” or, “So-and-so’s doing too little,” or so. The car is this too much or that.<\/p>\n People are really sticklers about that sort of thing, especially if you see IMDb goofs. So, we try to be as accurate as we can, but it is all in the end an abstraction because the movie is like a dream state. It’s not a documentary, and people looking for that kind of accuracy, I find that to be, if I may be candid, I find that to be kind of a little bit dunderheaded because it’s really missing the point of what a dare I use this dirty word, a work of art is supposed to communicate anyway. So, you just try to get it as accurate as you can, and leave no detail uncovered, knowing that you’re gonna miss something. That’s not really an answer to your question, is it?<\/p>\n Q : Oh, yeah. No, it sure is.<\/strong><\/p>\n James Gray : Okay. Yes. I don’t get out very much, so I have to ask.<\/p>\n Q : I’m wondering if the actors can talk about whether that I mean was it something that was part of your preparation for the role to think about the time period as opposed to now?<\/strong><\/p>\n Adam Driver: I mean, yes, but a lot of it was really clearly articulated in the script, and then Amy Roth, who did the costumes, did a mix of vintage things that were from the area and I get this guy’s name. I’ve been trying to remember who did the suits. It was amazing that gives you a lot of information, and it was pretty articulated in the script. I remember the era, but I was not in New York, so it didn’t really… You can’t transport back to the ’80s, so there wasn’t other than playing the character that kind of questions, I don’t know that I would’ve done anything much different.<\/p>\n I can’t play ’80s, and no one was in the ’80s thinking, “This is the ’80s, so I’m gonna…” But there is somebody, sometimes around the weapons that you would know, there are different ways that cops hold weapons now versus when they did then, things like that. They had different weapons, different holsters, different things. So I think all of the external stuff in a way informed the internal stuff.<\/p>\n Q : You’re like, “Same.” I’m gonna go back to a fuzzy esoteric question again for you, which Is that a threat? More of an excuse. I’m wondering if you can talk about, you know, you start with the quote from “Armageddon Time”… but the film feels very intimate and personal. And if you can talk at all about balancing those two levels of communication in the film.<\/strong><\/p>\n James Gray: It’s a great question, and I will answer it sententiously which the kid needed to learn at the end of the movie. I was at an art exhibit in Los Angeles maybe 10 years ago, and there was a quote that was on the wall of the exhibit, and it said, “History and myth always begin in the microcosm of the personal.”<\/p>\n Which I thought was really amazing, and articulated something that I’d long felt, which is that if you can be specific to your own story, and I’m not just talking autobiographically, although that does matter in my case. But personal, the difference between personal and autobiographical, put yourself into it emotionally, that hopefully a kind of greater mythic idea comes across.<\/p>\n But I don’t think you can plan that. “I’m gonna do something mythic.” I mean, maybe George Lucas did that, and it’s part of what made him a genius, that he was able to conjure myth in that way. But that’s not what I was… I can’t do that. I wasn’t going to do that. I wasn’t gonna try to do that. So I was trying to use my stories as a way to get at something bigger.<\/p>\n The whole idea of creating something I think, is the idea of being specific to yourself, to self-expression really, but hope that that connects to others, that they can see you a situation which compels compassion, So that to me is the sort of weird area where myth begins. This idea that extension of our compassion, and in that way, no distance between actor and character, director and movie, the spectator and the story.<\/p>\n So I mean people will think there’s a distance, some people won’t. That’s a personal thing. That’s about pace. That’s about how you shoot a film. That you can’t control. You can only control whether it is honestly from you. You might wanna get that. So my whole thing is how can I be as specific and true to myself as possible, and frankly, unflinching?<\/p>\n You know, showing that my mother hit my father in that way, and he fell, and all that, put that into the movie, and how my… I again, I don’t wanna say I’m blaming my parents for anything. For example, it would be ridiculous to ask my father to have extended knowledge of the Russian Organizatsiya(The Organizatsiya, also known as the Russian<\/b> Mafia or Bratva (meaning “brotherhood” in Russian),in 1986 when even the New York Police Department did not have a division for it.<\/p>\n I mean, nobody knew about what they called the Organizatsiya really until about 1991. So I’m not trying to blame my parents for things. I’m only trying to show it, and then hope that a larger idea comes into play. Is that making sense?<\/p>\n Photo by Nobuhiro Hosoki<\/p>\n Q : It is to me.<\/strong><\/p>\n James Gray: The other thing I will say, and then I know that I’m talking way too much, with these guys, the only thing I really hope to do is to fill them up, is to say, “You’re not playing only the surface of a scene.”<\/p>\n One of the great things about the cinema, as opposed to stage, and I really know that stage has great stuff that’s going on and always has, but for me, cinema is the art form. And really why that Is that Adam can say to Miles in an alleyway that, “I always carried you,” or whatever he says. And really he’s saying, “I wish that you loved me and could show me that you love me.”<\/p>\n Or Scarlett is saying, “Could you please put this away?” And she’s giving corn or spaghetti or whatever she is to Miles in the kitchen, and really what she’s saying is, “I’m sorry, too.” In other words, you have an ability in the cinema because of its intimacy, that it doesn’t have to be literal in the dialogue.<\/p>\n On the stage, no matter how, where you’re sitting, I’m still talking like this. And in cinema, it’s the most intimate. It’s like our dream. So because we have that ability, that power, the actor can always play and always think about what is underneath the text of the scene. So the story then gives the context for what they’re actually thinking and saying and feeling, not really only the dialogue.<\/p>\n Stop me if I’m not making sense. Okay. I’ll leave it there.<\/p>\n Q : Okay. Can you talk a little bit about how you develop your visual style of the film, but also the auditory style of the film? Both of which I think are quite remarkable in this piece.<\/strong><\/p>\n James Gray : Thank you. I already liked you, Rachel. I don’t think it’s right to just impose a style on a movie generally or to start there anyway. I mean, you’re always imposing a style, but you’re not starting with the style. It to me that has to be connected to the material. And I’ve always idolized filmmakers who are sort of like … I’ll say like for musicians here, I love I’m not a Buddy Rich guy, I’m a Tony Williams guy. I’m a Ringo guy.<\/p>\n I’m somebody who doesn’t love overplaying, but just trying to do what’s right for the piece. And so I don’t try to impose some massively ornate visual style on the movie, and I’ve found that that’s extremely hard to do. Like, just creating a scene which looks like it’s traditional or classical is really hard, at least for me.<\/p>\n It’s much easier for me to devise a move that goes like this and then goes overhead, I have found, and then to try and force the actors into that idea. Rather than say to the actors, which I do, “Where would you like to go this morning in the scene?” And then figure out, how can I accommodate that with where the camera should go for the story?<\/p>\n And that, to me, has been an unending challenge. So what I wanted to do was to do something that looked, I don’t wanna say period, but looked like it was a bit of a throwback in that way. One of the decisions we made, which caused a little bit of a headache but was great, was to use only tungsten lights.<\/p>\n And so the film is shot on 35 millimeter film. You saw a print, yes? Yeah. Yeah. That’s a beautiful thing, you know? I had forgotten. Yeah, it’s really… It’s something special. They said to me, “Oh, maybe we make prints.” And I said, “Okay, well, I’m a DCP fan generally.” Because when I was a kid, used to go to this theater called The Thalia uptown on 95th and Broadway or someone’s laughing.<\/p>\n And you used to get like this giant hair in the gate and like this. And hair, you know, “This is the end. Apocalypse Now,” the palm trees are out of focus, you know? Like- So I don’t miss those days at all. But I went and I saw at the lab the 35 millimeter print about 10 days ago, and I was struck by a correctly projected 35 millimeter print, how it has a magic that is totally beyond what a DCP can give you.<\/p>\n And it’s almost like we forget it, you know? So I’m glad that they were able to do it. But in any event, we used tungsten lights, a certain warmth to the image and also the camera would not be… The idea of objectivity is ridiculous, but that the camera would never be intrusive to the actor and not distancing at all.<\/p>\n That it would be to embrace this idea that everybody had their own beautiful interiority that should be embraced. And so whatever formal decision is made, it is to, uh, embrace that idea. And you wanna… I know you, we have to go. So sound. Sound for me is very, very important. I always go over budget, on only one thing on every movie.<\/p>\n I’m always on time, schedule, all that crap, but the m- I’m always over on the mix. Because the mix is so important. It’s stuff that works unconsciously that nobody is ever aware of- There’s such weird stuff on the track of this movie. Like, there’s this thing in the car scene where they put the switchblade to, to, to my face, where the kid reaches over… Miles Teller: No, I’m just.<\/p>\n<\/ins>\n Q : I know you said, “To my face.”<\/strong><\/p>\n Miles Teller: Yeah.<\/p>\n James Gray : Yeah. Jesus, I’m sorry. To Roman’s face. And he opens the glove compartment, and on it we put a, uh, slaughtered pig sound. So it’s that kind of thing that you always wanna try to come up with, to use a pretentious term, an objective correlative for the emotion of the moment, and it’s never, ever literal.<\/p>\n I mean, I’m telling you, if you broke down what’s going on in the tracks, it would make you laugh hysterically. There are all kinds of gongs. There’s a tiger roaring. Paper Tiger, get it? But there’s all kinds of animal noises on the track. I was very much a fan. When I was a little boy, I had something very good happen, which is that my parents hated me watching movies late, which was great because I had this set of headphones that I could plug into this VCR that we had.<\/p>\n And I remember seeing “Raging Bull” with headphones. I watched it with headphones, and I was able to hear everything Frank Warner had put onto the track, which was all kinds of guttural animal noises and hits of a drum. And I mean, if you listen to what’s going on on that track, it’s quite amazing.<\/p>\n And also the sound from “Rosemary’s Baby”, which has tons of clocks and a fo- distant fog horns and stuff that is… it’s very evocative. And it doesn’t take Atmos and surround. That is nothing to do with the creative process of sound design. It has to do with choosing what you want to hear or don’t wanna hear, and it’s almost never what is actually on the screen for me.<\/p>\n I always watch it silent with the sound designer, and we start talking through, what is the emotion you’re trying to communicate here, and how can we screw people up on an unconscious level? Do we have to go?<\/p>\n \u00a9<\/b>Courtesy of Neon<\/p>\n Q : No, we don’t have to go. Oh. But we have to let someone other than me ask some questions. Oh. So that’s what we’re gonna do now.<\/strong><\/p>\n James Gray: I’m seeing people give signs.<\/p>\n Q : There will be people, coming to you with microphones. Oh. So please don’t shout out. Someone will come bring you a microphone to ask questions. We have a question over here.<\/strong><\/p>\n Journalist 1 : Can you talk about the relationship between Paper Tiger and your last film, “Armageddon Time”? Yes. I think I see a lot of relationships between them.<\/p>\n James Gray : The continuing adventures of..Well, they’re very similar in that you know, stolen from incidents in my own life and my own past. So yes, they’re very similar that way. This, this film, I wanted to pitch it differently. I’ve used this word before, but it’s hard to come up with another analogy. I wanted to get some Hitchcockian sequences into it.<\/p>\n Not as a grafted on, but because I felt a certain… as I got older in my house, I felt a certain tension, and I’m not going to say that I predicted my mother’s disease, but I always felt like my parents weren’t gonna make it, which is a very weird and bad feeling when you get to be about 16 or 17.<\/p>\n And, I always feel it was very tragic. You know, obviously it is, but my mother’s illness, which also led to this cascading thing, you know, going to the FBI, and she felt liberated to do that because of her illness and what that wound up meaning, So I was just trying to communicate a slightly heightened level of fear, frankly, and terror in my household that I was experiencing, bless you, in 1986.<\/p>\n So, I’m still trying to be autobiographical, but I guess I could say that my teenage life, older led me to a more pulpy place. Let’s leave it at that.<\/p>\n Journalist 2: Mr. Driver. I have followed your career since the very beginning, and I’ve always loved it, but since “Megalopolis”, I think there’s just an increase in your style and your swagger.<\/p>\n I think you played this role personally as a New York Big Willie. It kind of reminded me of listening to late ’90s rap records, you know, Volume 3 era Jay-Z, et cetera. How conscious were you in terms of the way you moved and your style in this film? And did it remind you of that, and was it difficult getting into that space?<\/p>\n Adam Driver: Well, thank you on a lot of fronts. I honestly, it’s kind of just the part that you’re being asked to play. I certainly wasn’t conscious of, you know, this is a moment for me to whip out my swagger or, I’m doing it now in case anyone can tell.<\/p>\n But it honestly, it was in the script, it’s in the costumes, it’s in who the person was, you know. It was pretty clear to me anyway. It was more like what was in the script and the character that you can only play what you’re asked and the world was so clear.<\/p>\n And the mentality of his internal life, again, we talked a lot about “Rocco and His Brothers” and philosophically, you know, to go off what he was talking abou. I feel like TDS and Ajax(refer to technologies used in various devices, particularly in security systems and 3D printing), these people who are like betrayed by the institutions that kind of made them.<\/p>\n You know, when Ajax was supposed to be promotion, was passed over promotion by someone with more swagger actually, and then killed a whole field of animals, you know? same thing with Philoctetes(Philoctetes was an archer who received the bow and arrows of Heracles and was left behind by the Greeks on Lemnos during the Trojan War), you know, this great warrior and gets injured, and he’s crying too much, so they leave him on an island.<\/p>\n And that kind of internal drive is what we talked about a lot with this person, someone who not long ago was kind of at the top of his game and had a lot of power and had this found family. And you know, he disappears for a little bit, has a little bit of a setback, and comes back to the same environment and is totally powerless and knows that he kind of carries this weight in his family.<\/p>\n And people can’t help but, you know, label you as the thing that they’ve always seen you as… and he kind of carries that weight of, “How do I get it back?” And, obviously, the devil’s in the best intentions, I think how one of those phrases goes. But, that’s what I was thinking about a lot, is this guy who at once was kind of a prizefighter, which was the image I was mentioning earlier. And now is totally rudderless and is kind of internally clawing his way back. And that was the engine.<\/p>\n James Gray : Yeah …’cause that’s great that you mentioned, Philoctetes by Sophocles, which is not a known, very well-known play, but it is amazing. And he’s in that cave, Philoctetes and he has a wound on his foot that is just getting worse and worse, and he has such agony. And the reason… I don’t remember us talking about Philoctetes. That’s great. The, the reason which-<\/p>\n Adam Driver: W talked more about Ajax<\/p>\n James Gray : Ajax, yeah. The whole idea of Philoctetes, which people should read, is that you have such profound sympathy for him as he’s in this cave and wounded, and crying out in pain.<\/p>\n And it’s the most sympathetic character in maybe all of history in dramaturgy. It’s like unbelievable how he was able to do that 2,500 years ago. And I had only read it, I don’t know when you read it, I read it during the pandemic, and I was blown away ’cause I didn’t really know what it was. But it’s a talk about compassion, how much compassion you feel for him in that cave, anyway sorry.<\/p>\n Photo by Nobuhiro Hosoki<\/p>\n Q : Well, I was just gonna- <\/strong><\/p>\n James Gray : Plugging Sophocles …<\/p>\n Q : Quick follow-up before we do the last question, which is to ask if you had similar conversations about the background of your character based in classic literature or…<\/strong><\/p>\n James Gray : for-<\/p>\n Q : For Miles, yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n Miles Teller: Not to that extent. Well, James was very clear. He was very open about his father, in certain aspects to him, but he wasn’t looking for any kind of impersonation by any means. If anything, he was really staying away from sharing any kind of audio messages or things of that nature.<\/p>\n But for me, I think it was really about… I don’t know, we talked a lot about, about love, and I think feeling for Scarlet and I figuring out that relationship. And I just had a ton of empathy for Irwin, this man really with, you know, the best intentions. If anything, he makes the mistake just being too naive you know, a bit naive.<\/p>\n And it really because after that incident, that really… The triggering and cause of events that happens after that, and what happens with Hester and her illness and the kids, you know, going through that situation, it really the family will never be the same a-after that.<\/p>\n And his, his mistake, and that’s something that guilt that he’ll live with for the rest of his life. But I think for me with this, it was just really important during the prep like Adam and I figuring out that brother dynamic, what that felt like, what existed from, you know, basically from birth, and just making sure that it all…<\/p>\n I think at the home, because for the actor, you just show up and you’re like, “And this is the set.” But I think to feel that family dynamic and that love there and for it to really feel lived in, I guess, I think that was really kind of the focus. And James really hates sentimentality. He said don’t be..<\/p>\n James Gray : I do?<\/p>\n Miles Teller: Yeah, you said “Don’t be sentimental. Keep it… Yes, Especially with the stuff with the kids”. That was a big one.<\/p>\n James Gray: You just have to keep me away from me. I wanted to add one thing. I think there’s something at the end, ’cause I don’t think the film… Look, I’m insane. I don’t think the film is a downer at all, because I think…<\/p>\n First of all, I think Miles at the end when he talks to the kids, I think I know he’s here, but I think is incredible work. When he’s sitting there and says, when he says to the kids, and they’re kind of half listening ’cause they’re teenagers- I mean, that is hard shit to do. That is really hard, and it’s just on the edge.<\/p>\n And I don’t know if I said I hate sentimentality, but love and sentimentality are not the same thing at all. Love is everything, you know? And so I think he is going to manage somehow. That’s my impression. But that’s… Maybe I’m insane. I think he watches them go off. I think that they’ll somehow manage.<\/p>\n That’s the feeling I get. I don’t see it as a downer. But I do think that the work from these boys is really tremendous, and it is not an easy thing to do when you say, “Play some… Play… Do it warmly, filled with love.” That’s not really a direction, you know, and you can’t really do anything with that.<\/p>\n You have to find a way to get to that place, and they were good enough to get there, I think. It’s a shame Scarlett’s not here. She’s coming tonight. She’s on a plane, you know. She’s coming. She’s on set and you know, struggling to get here and across the tundra, you know. But, ’cause I think her work is so great, too, and she fortunately will be here tonight.<\/p>\n But, I just think they gave me so much. They were so generous with me. So when you asked me this first question, you know, are you good with actors or whatever the hell you said. I mean, t’s them bringing to me, whole lot of generosity and being willing to do that. And Miles being willing to be the guy who really screws up terribly, right?<\/p>\n His kids go, “Dad, we can’t drive a good car. We’re always driving crap.” And out of a kind of hole that’s created by that brings them into terrible misfortune. Now again, I don’t blame my father. I don’t blame the character. He couldn’t have known about all that stuff, and was naive to the dark underbelly. Sort of very Blue Velvety in a way, if you think about it. But even so, he has too much pride. Very Greek. That’s Greek. We have another question?<\/p>\n Q : No, I think that’s- No?<\/strong><\/p>\n James Gray : I quite like the questions thing. I think there’s something good about it.<\/p>\n Q : Thanks for being here.<\/strong><\/p>\n Photo by Nobuhiro Hosoki<\/p>\n If you like the Q&A, share your thoughts below!<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nProducer<\/strong> : Rodrigo Teixeira
\nScreenwriter<\/strong> : James Gray
\nDistributor<\/strong> : NEON
\nProduction Co<\/strong> : RT Features, LB Entertainment, AK Production
\nRating<\/strong> : R (Language and Some Violence)
\nGenre<\/strong> : Crime, Drama, Mystery & Thriller
\nOriginal Language<\/strong> : English
\nRelease Date (Theaters)<\/strong> : Nov 13, 2026, Limited
\nRuntime<\/strong> : 1h 55m<\/p>\n![\"Paper](\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Paper-Tiger-Poster-675x1024.png\")
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\nThe actor must play the reality in the moment. And I think if I had any skill at all, it would be good enough to let them do that rather than sit on them. I don’t know. You have two marvelous actors here who both of whom I think give brilliant performances in the movie. So you would have to ask them about that. I don’t know. I’m a little bit close to it<\/p>\n![\"Paper](\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Paper-Tiger1-1.png\")
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