Top 50 James Gray Quotes

I have three young children, and I kind of stopped going to movies in 2006. I go to see some, but I’m a little bit out of touch, and I didn’t know who Marion Cotillard was.

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

At Ellis Island, I mean, you didn’t go there if you arrived in first class. It was only the poorest, the people in the worst shape.

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

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

I don’t think my parents told me enough how the world doesn’t really care about me. I think it’s important to tell children that the world doesn’t really care about you. You have to fight to be heard.

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

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

I’m just not willing to give up on myself. If I’m going to fail, then I want to fail to the limits of my talent.

I have no interest whatsoever in pursuing acting or becoming a mogul. I love writing and directing; I see those two jobs as the most critical in the making of a film.

What I do have to get across is the truth of the moment within the given scene. It’s my job, as a director and screenwriter, to create the environment in which all those moments will come together eventually.

If everybody loves you, you must be doing something wrong. It means there’s no button being pushed… The only way that everybody loves you is toward the end of your career.

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

Baseball is the greatest thing in the world.

I continually marvel at people who can make films that reach five hundred million people. How do you do that? Everybody’s different – I don’t know how that works.

For me, I get a part of an idea here and a little bit of an idea there, and then finally it accumulates into a movie.

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

I went to see ‘Star Trek Into Darkness,’ and J.J. Abrams, who’s a friend of mine, made this film, and I went to see it at the premiere. Believe it or not, I was really blown away by the comic timing of it.

The first movie, I was 23; I thought I knew everything, but my ego soon took an irrevocable blow.

My wife thinks I have an obsession with social class. So I guess I have an obsession with social class. It probably stems from feeling like an outcast.

The system is not really particularly amenable to filmmakers who write and direct their own work. It’s much more about the studio already having a property that has a marketable concept and then hiring the director on board.

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

My grandparents used to tell me stories about their trip to Ellis Island from Russia and life on the Lower East Side of New York.

The conventional wisdom is that people come to the United States, and immigration is so great, and they say, ‘America, what a great country.’ And a lot of that is true.

Unfortunately for critics and audiences alike, I have made several films, and some films with really terrific actors. And I say this at my own peril, but Marion Cotillard is the best actor I’ve ever worked with.

The decision about digital or film is going to be made for us. I think the answer is that film is gonna be gone, although I think it’ll make a comeback; it’ll be like vinyl records or something.

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

I suppose I’m always trying to break down the wall between my characters and myself. I’m trying to make the film as expressive and personal as I can, even if I can’t explain, for example, how important it is for me to be Jewish.

The films I grew up loving, and the art that I love, is not generally the kind of postmodern ironic winking stuff. What lasts is the stuff in which the artists are totally in league with the subject.

Really, what I’m doing is an attempt to continue the best work of the people I adore: Francis Coppola and Scorsese and Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick and those amazing directors whose work I grew up with and loved.

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

To the extent that independent means you’re willing to attempt to put your own ideas, personality, and commitment to the material on screen, then of course I hope I’m independent until the day I die.

I feel that The American Dream is this fallacy that you come to the United States and win lotto. That’s a disservice to The American Dream because the American Dream is worth striving for. And it’s not easy.

I am an Ashkenazi Jew, and there are a whole host of genetic disorders that only Ashkenazi Jews have. I don’t know if you know this, but 16 or 17 disorders that we carry the gene for.

Melodrama is one of the most stunning art forms. These are stories where the emotions are big, and the situations are big, and the artists believe in the situation dramatically. There’s no irony or distance.

I’ve been a Yankees fan for a long time. When I was a kid in the mid-’70s, the Yankees were really great. They had Reggie Jackson in ’77. I was 8 years old at the time. He hit three home runs to win the World Series in game six against the Dodgers, and I was just hooked.

The actor always must be in the scene, not above the scene. To communicate any larger ideas is my problem; it’s how the narrative is constructed and directed that hopefully does it.

I remember as a little kid, I would always feel comfortable if the light in the crack of my parents’ door was on at night. When it went off, that meant they were asleep. Then that terror and the fear of being by myself started to creep in.

The opera in Los Angeles is excellent.

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

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

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

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

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

The ending shot of ‘Queen Christina’ with Greta Garbo is amazing. She’s at the head of the ship, and she’s been through so much, and the camera gets so close to her face. That really sticks out for me.

Time can be very good or very cruel to films.

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

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

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

What a director really does is set the emotional temperature and the mood and the level, amount, or lack of, distance between the action and the character, and the character and the audience.