{"id":34816,"date":"2026-08-09T17:20:51","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T12:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=34816"},"modified":"2026-08-09T17:20:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T12:20:51","slug":"james-gray-talks-dream-quality-of-cinema-ahead-of-locarno-honor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=34816","title":{"rendered":"James Gray Talks Dream Quality Of Cinema Ahead of Locarno Honor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/james-gray\/\" id=\"auto-tag_james-gray\" data-tag=\"james-gray\">James Gray<\/a> continued his festival tour with <em><a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/paper-tiger\/\" id=\"auto-tag_paper-tiger\" data-tag=\"paper-tiger\">Paper Tiger<\/a><\/em> this weekend setting down in the <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/locarno\/\" id=\"auto-tag_locarno\" data-tag=\"locarno\">Locarno<\/a> Film Festival to receive an honorary award ahead of the film\u2019s Swiss premiere on its landmark Piazza Grande.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meeting the press ahead of the screening on Sunday evening, Gray gave an insight into his vision for cinema and how that in turn shapes his filmmaking.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cTo me, movies are the most beautiful art form because it\u2019s the closest thing we have to a dream\u2026 ? Your REM sleep is one and a half to two hours per night, if you\u2019re lucky,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He pointed to how quickly cinema had evolved as artform relative to fine art or music. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe first full-length sound film is I think 1928. Between 1920 and 1933, you have in the first five years of the art form\u2026 as we know it now, you have an ocean of masterpieces. <em>M<\/em> is what? a year and a half after the first full length sound film,\u201d he said referring to Fritz Lang\u2019s Berlin-set mystery thriller.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat does that tell you? What\u2019s the gap between the cave paintings of Lascaux and perspective in 1482 or whatever it is?\u2026 In music, it takes a thousand years for the scale to develop the way it does. Why cinema so quickly?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBecause when you look at Bosch\u2019s cryptics or when you hear Des Nibelungen by Wagner, you see artists trying to get past that art form. They\u2019re trying to get to cinema. So what does that mean? It\u2019s like a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMy view of cinema is, I understand that there is a commercial context in which we all have to work. I understand that it is for, I like to say, an audience, not the audience, but but for me, what makes it beautiful is that it is the clearest window into somebody else\u2019s consciousness, somebody else\u2019s dream.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He added that this meant he had to oscillate between being \u201cvery narcissistic\u201d to get his films off the ground and being \u201cvulnerable\u201d on set. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI try to show you a version of my own dream, my intimacy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gray returns to his old home stomping ground of New York for <em>Paper Tiger,<\/em> starring \u00a0Adam Driver and Miles Teller, with support from Scarlett Johansson, as two brothers whose pursuit of the American Dream puts them on the wrong side of the Russian mafia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In answer to a question on how he works with actors, Gray suggested his approach was to leave his cast space to build their performances, contrasting it to the old school representational acting method of the likes of Alfred Hitchcock.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen I go to the set, I let the actor always tell me what they want to do. I have in mind exactly the way I want to shoot. But I have the actor tell me what they want to do, what\u2019s comfortable to them,\u201d he said. \u00a0\u201cThen I try to make sure that my original idea of what needs to be communicated in the story is in line with how they\u2019re moving in the scene. I want to make sure they\u2019re comfortable. That\u2019s the first thing,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe second thing is I want to make sure they\u2019re listening to the other actors. I always shoot the rehearsal because messiness is always interesting. I\u2019m either using take one or take 25 is usually, and I just try to make sure that they are totally comfortable to be excellent. I have no acting talent. I\u2019m not a good director of actors. It is all about how good they are and letting them have the freedom to be themselves in the scene and to listen to each other. That is the key and the core to acting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alongside showing <em>Paper Tiger<\/em> to a 8,000 capacity crowd on Locarno\u2019s Piazza Grande, Gray will also give a masterclass on Monday, while the festival has also shown two classic titles from his filmography: <em>We Own the Night <\/em>(2007) and <em>Two Lovers<\/em> (2008).<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Locarno Film Festival runs to August 15.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Gray continued his festival tour with Paper Tiger this weekend setting down in the Locarno Film Festival to receive an honorary award ahead of the film\u2019s Swiss premiere on its landmark Piazza Grande. Meeting the press ahead of the screening on Sunday evening, Gray gave an insight into his vision for cinema and how&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/deadline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_6463-rotated-1.jpg?w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}