We spoke w/ ArmageddonTime director JamesGray about filming his own coming-of-age story, why he felt the most pressure with this film, and where the title originated from.
In James Gray’s latest film Armageddon Time, the director tells the deeply personal coming-of-age story of his own childhood growing up in Queens in the 1980s. The melancholic auto-biopic explores heavy elements of racism and the generational pursuit of the American Dream. Armageddon Time follows rising star Banks Repeta as the young Paul, who’s joined by an ensemble cast featuring Academy Award-winners Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway, and Jaylin Webb, Jessica Chastain, with Jeremy Strong.
No, not necessarily. Because you've made a number of movies. If someone has never seen any, what's the one you want them to start with? GRAY: I haven't. He's such a great director. I mean, I'm dying to see it, first of all. There's nobody who understands where to put the camera better than that guy. And it's so weird to me, and so cool to me, that someone of his stature and level of accomplishment would make a sort of coming-of-age, a Bildungsroman, or whatever you want to call it, around the same moment that mine's coming out.
Let's say you're Spielberg, right? You've just made Jaws and Close Encounters, and then what do you do? I mean, that's its own pressure. Or William Friedkin in the '70s, after he made The French Connection and The Exorcist. Now I think Sorcerer is a fantastic movie, but it must have scrambled somebody's brain to know what to do.
My last thing before getting into the movie, you've obviously been able to get financing to make your movies, but is there a project that you've always wanted to make that you struggled to land the financing on? Meaning, if you could get the financing to make anything you want, what would you make, and why?
Then I also got really into The Clash in 1980, and they had a song called “Armagideon Time,” which actually is a cover by a reggae artist named Willie Williams, which was the version I tried to use in the movie, Steven. It's a major key, in the reggae version, “A lot of people won't get no supper tonight.” It's very upbeat, even if the lyrics are not. And The Clash rerecorded it, and Joe Strummer sings it, obviously, with much more danger and threat than Willie Williams did.
Yeah, I do have - my wife makes fun of me for it - I have a very good memory. I remember all of my grade school teachers. I remember every kid that I went to school with, practically. My brother does, too, by the way, and I relied on him, also, for things like the family plates, which we got. We got the white plates with the green floral pattern on the edge. So my brother told me about those and I said, “Oh, yeah,” so we got the art department to find them.
You made a statement about the movie and you said, "I love the people in this story. They are all ghosts now.
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