James Gray Quotes

We've gotten to a point where it costs so much money to make a movie that directors and filmmakers feel they have to make sure that everybody gets it. And that's an unfortunate development, I think, in a lot of narratives floating around in the film industry.

As a medium, film has great potential, but its use is dominated by big capital.

As bad as some movies can be, good movies are also possible, sometimes through the very heinous corporations we love to trash.

I could never work in that kind of commercial environment where the stars have a lot to say, where the producers kind of push you around and tell you who to cast and who not to cast. I'm just not interested in that at all.

I think, honestly, that the word 'indie' is a false gimmick. 'Independent' used to mean a movie that was financed outside corporate Hollywood, but a lot of what gets called independent these days is totally produced within that system. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I gladly, I voluntarily gave up the kind of commercial film career I had going as soon as I had enough money to finance my own films.

I don't think Hollywood makes many good films anymore. How many directors can you really trust to have an artistic vision, not a corporate vision or a watered-down communal one?

Times change; Hollywood is not the same as it was when I first entered the business. It felt to me like it was starting to narrow down and centralize itself around what would... make money.

It's only in relatively recent years that Hollywood became the playground of multinational corporations which regard movies and TV shows as a minor irritant to their overall activity.

Independent cinema is more thoughtful, delicate. While Western blockbusters can have their own kind of delicateness, it's not delicate enough. You have to be ready to compromise to enter that field. I will do so only if it's worth it.

Things have changed a great deal since the days of Mr. Mayer. The studios no longer control, as they did in those days, artists or directors or producers, as the case may be.

You're taught - consciously or sub-consciously - to make an indie so you can get through that terrible process and get to Hollywood. I realized when I got there, 'Oh, no; I think I'm better over here.'

I became a producer because nobody was ready to finance my films.

Having been subjected to the pigeonholing of Hollywood myself, I realized that once you become a studio-approved director, your chances of ever making your own film again are zero. You make the films that the studio wants you to make.

I have a real kind of fundamental philosophical belief that movies are better if everyone gets paid when they work, and if they don't work, the people who worked on them make a little bit of money, and the people who finance them, they lose, but they don't lose too much. I believe that that creates better work.

If you can get your movie made the way you want to get it made, no matter what the end result is going to be, if people are going to see it, that's awesome.

I've made six films for Disney, and they have a clause in their contracts called the morality clause that I've always refused to sign.

You are treated like a cog in a machine. The director might be obsessing so much with the stunts that he doesn't notice your performance, and the producer may just be an insane money man, but I have no snobbery about the movies.

People look at stuff like 'Godzilla' and 'Avengers' and think I only do blockbusters, or however you wanna put it, but in reality, I can make double or triple what I got paid for 'Avengers' by doing other stuff - there are other options, but I don't want to work with this person or that person, and so I don't do it.

Soderbergh is a very respectable director that manages to have an incredible amount of freedom in a system that doesn't allow anybody to be free as he is on a set. And he will jump from 'Solaris' to 'Ocean's Twelve' and 'Thirteen.'

I'll put it this way: with the kind of films that I do - creatively driven, with interesting directors and writers - I don't feel the need to work with the super established, top-tier directors that are out there.

As a filmmaker, one tends to want to evolve evermore towards a place of independence.

The corporateness of the fashion industry tends to take away or distort the freedom of creation.

I've talked about this a lot, but 'The Witch' took four years to finance because there were certain compromises I wouldn't make.

Bollywood is a business more than an art industry. One has to play the game others play to carve your own path.