JAMES GRAY

It's much easier to make a movie with kind of stylistic pyrotechnics because you can hide behind that if there's a gap in the story.

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

Baseball is the greatest thing in the world.

There's virtually nothing made up in 'The Immigrant.' So much of the film came from somewhere in my family's past. All the details are from my own family.

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.

I have no athletic skills whatsoever. I'm just literally incompetent.

I'm telling you, every film I've ever made has been hated by the U.K. critics.

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.

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

'Apocalypse Now' does not alienate us or deconstruct itself. In fact, it welcomes us in.

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 was going to Studio 54 when I was 12 years old. It's true. It's crazy.

At a certain point, you have to kind of realize that greatness is a messy thing.

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.

It's weird, because American films in the 1930s and '40s, particularly melodramas, were made for woman, from Bette Davis to Joan Crawford to Barbara Stanwyck to Katherine Hepburn, and for some reason we've taken a step backward in this sense.

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.

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.

I think true economic class unhappiness comes from when across the street someone has a new Cadillac and you can't get that.

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.

The life of a film is very strange. Once the film is done, you wish you could forget about it and move on.

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

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.

There's never really been a tradition of making films about Jewish themes or using Judaism as a constant.

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.

The sad truth for American actors is that they really have no control whatsoever over the material that they get, or can do, particularly actresses. And if you're over 40 and you're an actress, forget it.