With his latest film, writer-director James Gray steps somewhat outside his comfort zone, and the criminal-familial narrative preoccupations that informed the informal trilogy of his first three movies — Little Odessa, The Yards and We Own the Night. The acutely sketched love-triangle drama Two Lovers stars Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw, and opens in limited release February 13. Gray spoke to a small roundtable group of reporters last week, and excerpts from the conversation follow below:

James Gray: (looking at recorders) Wow, I remember when I started making movies they were these huge things, you know, with tape cassettes. Now all of a sudden they’re these tiny little things. Pretty soon you’ll be all like putting like a little dot in the middle [of the table], then after a while you’re not going to put anything down, you’re just going to go, “Oh no, it’s implanted in my ear.”
 
Question: So you’re known as a New York filmmaker. What is it about New York on film that you think speaks not just to you but to audiences in general?

JG: Well, it’s hard to say what speaks for audiences in general; I wish I knew. If I did, I’d be in different shape. I can only say the one thing you’re really striving for I think — at least that I am — is to bring a certain emotional authenticity to the work. And I guess the best avenue I have is to make it as personal and as autobiographical as I can. I grew up in a semi-attached row house in Queens in New York, with my family. And my grandparents and my father are from Brooklyn, so you’re essentially an outer boroughs kid, growing up. You’re trying to view the world really through rose-colored glasses. It’s difficult because Manhattan is so fantastic and it’s nine miles away and all these cool rich people live there and have great lives, and you live in a semi-attached row house in Queens. I suppose that you try to steal from your past and try and make it as personal as you can. So that’s part of who I am, and I suppose that’s why it’s made its way into movies. And New York is very different from anywhere else in the country. You know, New York was settled mostly by the Dutch so the cultural tradition, I think, of New York — they say it’s an island off the coast of the United States or something. And I think the reason for that is really because the rest of the country, or at least certainly New England, was founded by the Puritans and has an English background. I think that New York itself feels different. I hope this makes some sense, you know? But it feels very different from Boston for example. Boston has an almost patrician, puritanical [feeling], while New York is a very different place. So all of this interests me, and winds up making its way into the movies.

Q: Well, there’s also certain relationships that can only happen in New York, because you can just happen upon people, and be shouting across the way from people. That just wouldn’t exist in L.A.

JG: That’s so true. I have two young children and it’s always very… upsetting is the wrong word, but it concerns me that they grow up here because a very good way of experiencing life, a very important aspect of human development and imagination is the ability and the idea of [making creative] connections. So if I’m walking down the street with my son in New York — he’s three years old — and all of a sudden there’s a zydeco band playing in Lincoln Center, which has happened, and he says, “Daddy, what’s that music?” Now I have Zydeco music at home but I’d have to think about it beforehand, take it out of the CD rack, put it in and play him zydeco music. In New York he can discover zydeco music without me having to bring it up. Or I’ll walk down the street and in the window there will be a book about the sculpture of Barnett Newman or something that I never thought about. I have a book, but I’d have to look it up. In other words, there’s a constant flow of ideas in New York. Los Angeles has everything you want, the opera in Los Angeles is excellent. It’s not as big as the Met, obviously, and they do like nine [concerts] a year or whatever as opposed to 25 but they’re great. You just have to know about them, get in your car, drive, park, get out, go — as opposed to walking down the street in New York, and you see a poster and say, “Oh, that’s at the Met this week,” and you can get out and see it. So I think you’re quite right. It’s a wonderful and very earthy way to experience living. It’s funny because people have said to me, “Oh, the movie has a very acoustic feel, it’s like a ’50s movie — people are yelling out of windows across the way.” I’m thinking, I went home to see my dad who lives in the same house, and he opens the window and says, “Seymour, Seymour!” He’s yelling down the street to a neighbor, life hasn’t changed. It’s changed for a bunch of people who live in Manhattan and make $700,000 a year or whatever, but that’s not most people. So yes, I think there’s a very earthy thing about living in New York, which is true in some metropolises, but certainly not this one obviously. Los Angeles is a very different culture.

Q: But not even just New York vs. L.A. — a suburb in middle America is still isolated in the way people meet.

JG: Oh, I meant New York as opposed to anywhere else. Obviously if you’re living in a suburb in Winesburg, Ohio, you know, obviously life is a very strange and different experience. I think the automobile all of a sudden kind of becomes a major factor [in life and social interaction], and where I live I don’t even have sidewalks. 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.

Q: You should live in Little Armenia where I live, you can walk around everywhere.

JG: I like Little Armenia. I love Marousch. Have you ever been to Marousch? I love Marousch. My wife doesn’t like Marousch because I reek of garlic for seven years after eating it, but it’s great.

Q: Does it inform you aesthetically too? Obviously, I mean there’s probably some New York films that you love…

JG: Oh I love New York movies, but New York movies inform my aesthetic less. I try not to read very much about myself, for a variety of reasons — not least of which is I always come off sounding like an idiot, as my own fault — but what little I’ve sort of come across they usually [refer to] Coppola, Lumet, Scorsese [in describing my work]. I love Coppola, and he and Scorsese are obviously formative in the movies I love, but I think about them, consciously anyway, much less than you might think. I mean, what I really am in love with is trying to reproduce the kind of expressive direct emotions of ’50s movies from Europe, particularly Italy, which is really what I love. So I don’t know how much it’s informed by aesthetic. Certainly copying from reality, my father opening the window and going “Seymour!” calling down the street, that of course informs what you do, but I think in terms of the New York movies, which I do love, consciously they don’t inform them as much as I guess people have said.

Q: Joaquin’s character is also a photographer in the movie, too.

JG: Well, he is [an aspirant] photographer. That’s sort of a quasi-autobiographical thing. I mean, it’s close to painting, it’s close to cinema. I had wanted someone who had some measure of art
istic dream, which I thought was important.

Q: So you’ve worked with Joaquin in three movies. What was your reaction when he announced his retirement?

JG: I was befuddled. I mean… look, he’s been doing it for much longer than most people think. He’s been acting literally for 30 years, so at a certain point you have to respect entirely the person’s wishes, but for totally selfish reasons I was very disappointed. He and I get along very well together on the set. Actually, I shouldn’t say that because we fight a lot, but in a good way. We have a wonderful working relationship, and he and I have very similar tastes so it’s very upsetting. You don’t really find that that often where you feel totally sympathetic and empathetic with another actor, so if he’s quitting that bums me out a lot. I also think he’s just really great. The world’s not filled with actors who are wonderful so, for the sake of movies, I hope he’s lying.

Q: Did you get a sense from him while you were shooting that he was kind of burned out on acting?

JG: I did, at that end. People don’t realize. It sounds like you’ve heard this before, [about] people like Daniel Day-Lewis and other actors who get so into character that they begin to disappear as people, and Joaquin is really one of those guys. I mean he does a tremendous amount of work. I would come to set at 6:00 a.m., and the actor doesn’t have to be there until 9, and Joaquin would be there sitting on set in the corner with tears rolling down his cheeks. And I’d say, “What’s the matter?” And he say, “No, I’m preparing for the day.” And at the end of the shoot I remember sort of saying, “What kind of thing do you want to explore next?” And he just said, “Man, I’m tired. I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to do it anymore. I’m tired of it. I can’t take it.”

Q: And then your film goes down in history as his last.

JG: Yeah, but then it’s like being Woody Allen in Manhattan, where Meryl Streep then has become, like, a lesbian. You’re like the person who made Meryl Streep go away from being heterosexual.

Q: Are you bothered at all by the fact that easily 80 percent of the press so far for this movie has been about Joaquin’s retirement, his hip-hop career and, oh yeah, then that he’s also in a movie called Two Lovers?

JG: It doesn’t bother me really because… I hope this doesn’t offend you guys, because I do have a real awareness of how important press is for a movie, but this is my fourth movie, and at a certain point you realize that the life of the film is a marathon and not a sprint. What’s written today about a movie is not really the story of the movie. I mean, you don’t know how much money — maybe you do, I would be very impressed if you did — how much money Chinatown grossed or something, or what the original reviews are for Klute. At a certain point all that stuff goes away and if I focused [only] on that aspect I would be very depressed. Being totally candid, on my first two movies I would read the clippings that the publicist would send, and I would get ultimately very thrilled and incredibly depressed when people said the movie sucks or whatever. Or that they say it’s about this when you meant it to be about that or whatever. At a certain point it gets very wearying, but then what you find is it’s not really ultimately what it is in the end. So with Joaquin’s, as my mother would have called it years ago, mishegoss, I have to respect whatever it is that he wants to do, and I must just say the film is what it wanted to be. It doesn’t mean that I think I’m super deluxe genius or that it’s perfect or anything. I just mean that it’s what I wanted to make. And at a certain point you can’t be unhappy about that. If the film is what it wants to be then in a way I’m much more at peace now than I’ve ever been. So I’ve tried to be a little bit zen about it, and after The Yards, We Own the Night and this, I haven’t read any reviews or press or anything. I try to ward myself off. I hope that answers your question.

Q: Well, but in the short term, and for the careers of everyone involved, it’s obviously better if the movie makes more money. So do you think that all this mishegoss, as you say, has helped bring more attention to Two Lovers, or is it the wrong kind of attention?

JG: I don’t know. I don’t know. I think it’s probably brought more attention. It’s a small film, you know? And it doesn’t have a print and advertising budget that Spider-Man 3 does, or whatever. So any attention it can get is fine. I know that’s not why he’s doing it. And would I be thrilled if the attention were all about the film? Sure, that would be wonderful, but whatever it can get is great and there are a whole host of other small wonderful movies that don’t get half the attention.

Q: Well let me just ask you one more thing along these lines, because obviously Joaquin raps a bit in the movie. So did he come to you with this idea and say this is something that I want to go into long-term, or was this just a random improv?

JG: No, that was an improv thing. Well, sort of improv. We talked about it before shooting. In the character of Leonard, we had wanted not the traditional nerd, we had wanted a person who actually was appealing and probably 10 to 12 years before might have been considered a hip dude. There was a certain element of his that might have been cool in school, but that he had lost that and heartbreak had kind of ruined him in a way. And that’s based on a person that I know, actually. So we were trying to come up with ways (to convey that), and he says, “I had a crew, I had a crew. This is what we used to do.” And then the break-dance routine that he does in the club, which is sort of kind of good but not great. It’s sort of imperfect and it’s simultaneously embarrassing, but you can see why the girls might like it. We did this in the spirit of a person who used to be happening but is now damaged. So whether he used that as a springboard for his current escapade, I have no idea. What I can say is that it felt authentic to that character.

Q: Did he just make up the rhyme off the top of his head or…?

JG: We worked on it a little bit. He sort of made it up and then we….there’s literally about 20 minutes of film on that and so I chose what I felt was best, [when he says] “I’ll blow up your face like Louis Armstrong” — like, totally absurd! So I picked and chose what I liked best about it.

Q: And now you’re also attached to a film called The Legend of Z?

JG: Oh, The Lost City of Z. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With Brad Pitt [attached], yeah. It’s totally different from anything I’ve done. It’s of unbelievable ambition, and I love Brad for that reason — he does not lack for ambition. He had sent me the article from The New Yorker by a guy named David Graham, about a guy named Percy Fawcett who was sent to South America to. The history of the mapping of the world is recent history — the last hundred years or so, or at least the accurate map
ping of the world obviously. So, the British had sent this man down to South America to mediate a border dispute between Bolivia and Brazil because the rubber trade was huge back then, 1905 to 1906, because of B.F. Goodrich and the advent of the automobile. So the borders were not clearly delineated and they needed somebody, a third party, to chart the borders correctly so that Bolivia and Brazil wouldn’t argue anymore about who had what. So he went down there and rather quickly lost his appetite for mapping, which he did with wonderful success. But he quickly became aware of the possible existence of El Dorado, the city of gold, and a lost civilization in the jungle. And he became obsessed with archeological issues, and to be direct about it went quite mad. The story is quite sprawling. He went back to fight in World War I, where he was injured in the Battle of the Somme. Basically he was attacked with chlorine gas and eventually went back to the Amazon and brought his son with him to finish the exploration and find this lost city. They disappeared. They were never seen again. It’s a fantastic story. I mean, it’s unbelievable. And I think it has the potential to be something really quite powerful. I’m about three-fourths of the way through the fist draft of the script now and I’m going to give it to Brad when I’m done, in probably about another two months I’d say.

Q: When Brad came to you, did you have to kind of stop and figure out what you visually could bring to it because it’s so different from what you’ve done previously?

JG: I didn’t, because the story meant a lot to me. I’m very interested in history and I’m very interested in an economic approach to history… I don’t want to say Marxist because obviously Marxism is absurd as a way to organize the world. It’s ridiculous. But in the way of looking at the world as a form as historical analysis, it bears some scrutiny. I mean, it’s certainly interesting. And the idea itself of civilization, the civilized world, is almost ridiculous, [as well as] the idea that everyone had called the indigenous population — I almost don’t want to use the word Indian because of what that really means — of the Amazon savages. Well, they’re basically savages because the Spanish and the English and everybody else went down there and essentially forced them into slave trade and treated them horribly. So when they saw a white man they quite reasonably had a violent response. It’s self-preservation. And the only time that this man really got injured was in the Battle of the Somme. I don’t know if you know about this. It’s literally like the end of the civilized world. It’s the thing that made the Geneva Convention, because the British had brought two regiments of Indian troops from India on horseback, and they would fit gas masks on the heads of the horses to gallop out of the trenches and get machine-gunned. It was insanity! So what interested me was not even the visual aspect at first. What interested me entirely was a narrative idea about a person who was on a certain quest about a lost civilization fueled, at least in part, with his disappointment about what his civilization had produced — a certain obsession with class distinction anyway. So I loved the story. The story itself was great, and the visual aspect of it, that comes for me second or even third. It’s not the primary thing I think about — which is maybe a flaw, I don’t know. What I think about initially — because I feel like if you want to be a narrative filmmaker, which is my dream — is the narrative muscle needs to be engaged first, the storytelling. I think that story is a wonderful and lost art. In fact, somebody told me last night that MIT was literally creating a program to teach story because they thought respect for story had become degraded, which I found really interesting and weird. “I’m majoring in story.” What does that mean? But story is transformative and quite beautiful and so the story itself is what drove me, and kind of the Oepedial, bizarre twist that he brought his 18-year-old son with him in the end. And they were never seen again.

Q: It sounds like you’re thinking about a real-world history approach.

JG: That’s what I’m trying to do. You know, Indiana Jones was based him. Of course it’s a totally different, Republic, B-serial approach to the character, and doesn’t bear any resemblance finally, but that’s who he sort of was — the basis for Indiana Jones. And the stuff in the book is unbelievable — like falling off a raft and starting to get eaten by piranhas. And he literally was the first person in western civilization to discover the Anaconda. They didn’t believe him. He said, “I saw a 30-foot snake that was eating deer.” People thought he was making it up.

Q: Sounds a bit like Herzog…

JG: The Wrath of God, yeah. You know wandering through the desert, or the jungle, and all of a sudden hearing opera and thinking you’ve gone mad, and guess what — you’ve reached the clearing and there’s a fucking opera house in the middle of the jungle that the Portuguese have built 150 years before. I mean, it’s madness but it’s great. Aguirre is a masterpiece I think, and I’m going to try my hardest not to rip it off. It is really hard because it is a masterpiece. And I don’t think I will rip it off because it involves a lot of European history as well in a way that is not really connected to Aguirre. Aguirre is, in its enclosed, oneric, beautiful way, quite different. I mean, a big set piece in this movie about two-thirds of the way through will be the Battle of the Somme, which I’m hoping I can do in a way that other people have not. I don’t know, I’ve been doing research on it. It’s just like hell on Earth. It’s awful.

Q: So I assume Brad will be disfigured for part of this film too, right?

JG: No, he was not disfigured. What happened was he was a crazy person. He was put in charge of 700 men and the generals came, and he was almost like Forrest Gump — Winston Churchill he came in contact with, and Archduke Ferdinand he was in contact with in Sri Lanka. Percy Fawcett was one of those guys who was always connected somehow to major figures. Churchill came down to the trenches and said, “A major problem — all of you have your hands in your pockets, and as soldiers you should be behaving for the king.” And everybody’s like, “What are you talking about? We’re getting mustard gas dumped on us.” So anyway, Percy finally was ordered not to try to take a particular territory. He said, “Fuck it, I’m going to be brave,” and he led these 700 guys into battle, but he wasn’t directly, physically injured except that he inhaled chlorine gas, which scarred his lungs. And then he began to have this horrible cough which became progressively worse.

Two Lovers opens February 13. For an interview with Joaquin Phoenix, click here. For an interview with Vinessa Shaw, click here.