James Gray Tells Mr. Beaks About His TWO LOVERS!

On the surface, TWO LOVERS is a departure for James Gray. Unlike his first three films, there are no guns, no mobsters and no corruption. But his dogged determination to not be muzzled by genre convention is just as present in his latest picture as it is in LITTLE ODESSA, THE YARDS, and WE OWN THE NIGHT. Gray isn't plotting from a playbook; he's working from the heart. As a result, his narratives don't go where typical genre movies go, nor do they resolve themselves in a tidy manner. They end where they must, usually on a note of uncertainty. This penchant for ambiguity has won Gray substantial critical acclaim (he's earned three in-competition trips to the Cannes Film Festival), but it hasn't exactly endeared him to American audiences. Then again, he hasn't had much of a opportunity to connect: aside from WE OWN THE NIGHT, his movies have been dumped into theaters and under-promoted thereafter. What's especially frustrating about this is that Gray's movies are hardly inaccessible; they may shy away from moral certitude, but they also deal directly (i.e. unpretentiously) with basic human conflict. If you've ever had a complicated relationship with your father, futilely pursued the girl of your dreams or struggled to leave home, you should find plenty to identify with in a James Gray film. In TWO LOVERS, Gray gives us one of his most damaged protagonists in Leonard Kraditor (Joaquin Phoenix), an emotionally scarred young man whose first attempt at leaving the nest ended in heartbreak and a suicide attempt. Now in his thirties, Leonard is living at home with his parents, logging meaningless hours at his father's dry cleaning establishment, and fighting off despair. He's not exactly prime boyfriend material at this stage in his life, but that's not stopping his mother (Isabella Rossellini) from instigating a romance with Sandra Cohen (Vinessa Shaw), the daughter of the laundry magnate who's in the process of buying his father's business. Leonard isn't disinterested in Sandra, but he's downright smitten with Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), the beautiful but supremely fucked up girl who's just moved into his building. TWO LOVERS is Gray's first unabashed stab at melodrama, and he comes at it in a way that defies categorization. As I say in the below interview, I spent a good deal of the film cataloguing influences until I finally just gave myself over to the peculiar rhythm of his storytelling. This is a film that is perpetually off-kilter, but always engaging. And while Gray is having to deal with the added weight of having directed Joaquin Phoenix in his final role (in case you haven't heard, he's given up acting for rapping), he was in good spirits when we sat down for a fifteen-minute chat at the Four Seasons (unfortunately, like too many fifteen-minute interviews, this one ends right when it's gaining momentum). Before we started, Gray cautioned that he might be might be a little sluggish thanks to his kids' insistence on being up every morning at 6 AM. We were in the middle of a conversation about writing schedules when I fired up the recorder:

Mr. Beaks: When you're in a creative fertile period, are you a night writer?

James Gray: I was. Not anymore. I had to force myself to not be. I used to write between the hours of midnight and 4 AM. Then I would sleep until 11 AM or something, and the cycle would begin anew. I've now become a nine-to-fiver. I get up, play with the kids, make them breakfast, and drive my son to school. Then I go to an office and I work from nine-thirty to about five - which is a very weird thing in that I find myself less productive. I'm always wondering what's going on in the world. I'm always checking MSNBC.com or somebody's IM-ing me or I'm getting email... and there's all the business stuff. So I get the same amount done that I would've if I only worked for three or four hours in the middle of the night. But it's a sacrifice you have to make in order to have a family. And, of course, I would make it a thousand times over because they're beautiful.

Beaks: Do you think that raising a family has pushed you into a place of greater emotional honesty? I mean, your films have always possessed that kind of honesty, but this is your first film that is not immediately identifiable as a genre picture.

Gray: I think so. You know, I have been asked this about the genre picture thing. I never, ever conceived of them as genre movies because - and this sounds ridiculous - they're very autobiographical, those movies. My father worked for a company that manufactured subway parts, and basically that became THE YARDS. My mother's situation is mirrored in a couple of the early films, and she died quite young. It's funny when people say to me, "Oh, you made those genre movies!" as though I had decided that I would do Sidney Lumet to Francis Coppola to Marty Scorsese or something like that. In fact, my desire was never to rip those guys off - although I'm sure I do anyway. My desire was to do something as autobiographical and personal as possible. And in a weird way, TWO LOVERS is the least autobiographical movie of mine. But "autobiographical" is not the same thing as "personal". "Autobiographical" means it hews to the facts of your life, and "personal" means it's about issues and emotions that you feel connected to. That would be the difference, I would say. And I think having children and a family forced me to recognize the importance of removing what you might call the traditional tropes of cinema. I decided that I wanted to make something as directly emotional as possible. I don't know if this makes sense, but I wanted to strip it down; I wanted to get rid of anything that might rely on gunplay, on clever verbal banter or narrative twists in a way to become almost elemental. To make it a totally simple - deceptively, hopefully - story. Two women and a man. Almost a romantic comedy structure, but using an almost European melodrama approach to what is traditionally a comedic framework. I don't know if this makes any sense, so forgive me if I'm rambling.

Beaks: It does. As I watched the film, I kept trying to nail down specific influences. At first I was like, "Oh, this is his Elia Kazan homage. Joaquin's very method." Then I thought, "No, no, no... maybe this is Visconti." And what makes the film really peculiar - and wonderful - is that it is a melding of these influences, but still very direct with its emotions. It's not all the way back to Neorealism, but it is forthright.

Gray: I know exactly what you're talking about. The inspiration was actually Fellini: specifically NIGHTS OF CABIRIA and LA STRADA. I'm not saying [TWO LOVERS] is as good as those. Those are the greatest things ever. Fellini is my favorite filmmaker. I have no problem with, and in fact love, some of the films that are ironic or postmodern or have certain narrative twists. Some of them are beautiful. But everybody's doing it. And I have a contrarian bone in me: if everybody's doing this, I want to do this. So I had decided that I would make something... I love that you called it "peculiar". I was trying to do something "specific". The only ambition was authentic emotion - which doesn't mean "realistic", of course. "Authentic emotion" just means that the actors are committed to the characters they're playing and not condescending to them. And in a way, it is a very anti-art comment. Some people today view art as something you view at a museum under glass. What I like is when a picture or a movie or a painting or any work of art makes you feel uncomfortable. And I was hoping for some moments of intimacy with Joaquin, where it was almost unpleasant to watch him fumble and reveal himself emotionally. That was the ambition. And Fellini is not quite Neorealism. He's actually a little bit post-Neorealist, you know? Which doesn't mean I don't have admiration for [Neorealism]: Roberto Rossellini is maybe the greatest director ever. But I was trying for something that was a slightly heightened reality in a way, a little bit more... "poetic" I guess you could call it? To deal with emotions directly. You're from Ain't It Cool, you said?

Beaks: Yeah.

Gray: I must say look at the site from time to time, but not that often. And I must say that this is in someways the anti-fanboy movie. So I'm sure there will be a lot of hate on the boards for it because there's nothing to latch on to that's... clever, I guess.

Beaks: Well, I think that applies not just to our website, but to most twentysomething and thirtysomething people today. There's this need to fall back on "snark" and on "quirky".

Gray: You're completely right. You're more right than you know. When I show the film to older audiences, almost always I find that they get it. And when I showed the film at USC about two weeks ago, they seemed to like it but they had a very different reaction. (Without getting into specifics, Gray talks about how the younger audience laughed at a key emotional moment at the very end of the film.) And I thought, "What is it with you guys? Why are you so afraid of embracing what is part of life, which is disappointment and melancholy? Why are you so distanced from art - if I may use that word - that it's all a big fucking joke?" I don't understand that. What is that? And I thought maybe... if there were a draft and they had to go to war, maybe the presence of danger would bring back a sense of longing. Longing, for example! It seems to me that it's a generation totally not attuned to the idea of longing. They think it's bullshit. Now, I could be the idiot! Maybe they have it right! They live a happier life; they don't have that sense of longing that I'm talking about. And that's a better way of living. So maybe they are more advanced in their thinking. But I'm not that old. I'm thirty-nine years old, so I should be in tune with it. But I don't feel like I am, and I don't know why that is. Maybe you can tell me, because I don't know.

Beaks: No, I puzzle over it myself. I look back, in terms of cinema, where we were going in the '90s, and there was that moment when Wes Anderson exploded with RUSHMORE. I love that movie, but there's an emotional distance. There's an artifice there. So everything became kind of twee; it became about the little ornaments you string about these films. And there's very little at the core. Or the films are so dressed up that you can't see through to the core. I guess it's a way to shield oneself from heartbreak and disappointment.

Gray: "Heartbreak and disappointment", which is a part of living. It's so interesting that we're talking about this now because I'm watching my kids grow up. When I read to them at night, I'll often read Dr. Seuss to them. And OH, THE PLACES YOU'LL GO... I don't know if you have children, but if and when you do, you'll start reading these and you'll find them wonderful in a whole new way. In OH, THE PLACES YOU'LL GO, Dr. Seuss talks about, basically, your hopes and dreams. And in the middle of the book, he says, "Sometimes, you won't be able to pull it off. Sometimes, life will be disappointing." That's an incredible and really important thing to teach children. Life is not always winning. It's not always conquering the bad guy. The Brothers Grimm were often quite dark in preparing children for the many textures of living life. PINOCCHIO, which I think is a masterpiece, has scary stuff in it; it has a darkness to it - as do a lot of those great films from the '40s. So I think your analysis is spot on for my taste - and it's very sad because I like Wes Anderson's movies and I like Wes as a person. And the same thing is true with Quentin Tarantino's movies and Paul Thomas Anderson's movies. I think these guys are wonderfully talented, but much like Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg... Spielberg made JAWS, which I think is a fantastic movie. But it spawned all of these garbage imitators, which then destroyed the business. Same thing with Friedkin's THE EXORCIST. It's not the filmmaker's fault, obviously. But what happened was that they made something interesting, and people stole the more surface-y elements of them because they didn't understand what made them work in the first place. There's a moment in JAWS, for example, where Roy Scheider is just miserable at his dining room table, and his son starts imitating his angst. It's totally beautiful, and it's something that no American director in the studio system would ever put in a movie today. Spielberg totally understood human behavior. The same is true of Scorsese's films. RAGING BULL is unbelievably stylish, but that's not what makes it great. What makes it great is that there's no bullshit in it. It is a totally honest appraisal of a person's self-destructive behavior. And people steal the elements from it that are overtly stylish without understanding the thing that makes it very profound. So maybe it's the imitations of these movies. RUSHMORE has a certain emotional intelligence to it. There is a sympathy and empathy for Jason Schwartzman's character, which sometimes you don't see in imitations of it. Obviously, we can't blame the filmmakers, but sometimes we're cursed by the success of interesting movies. And the only disagreement I would have with you is that I think it goes back a little further. I think the "snark", as you put it, probably started with imitations of Quentin's movies. It's hard to really put into words. But I think you're right in something else you said, which is that people hide behind the snark. Maybe admitting disappointment is too difficult. Because everybody has disappointment. Who the hell has a life where everything works out great?

Beaks: I love that the characters in TWO LOVERS are in their thirties and dealing with profound disappointment. For people who are in their thirties who've been trying to avoid these feelings, seeing the characters in your film deal with them head-on might help them throw off the cloak.

Gray: I'm very heartened that you responded to that. One of the things I kept hearing was, "Isn't he too young to be living at home?" It was very important to me for him to be the age he was when we shot it, which was thirty-two or something. If you made the movie with a bunch of twenty-year-olds, there would be no history to the characterizations. The stakes would be much lower. "He loves her, and she doesn't love him!" - and then it becomes, like, WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON. (Off my laughter) I've never seen that movie; I'm just saying it would be like that movie. But it feels like that kind of conflict: when young people are in love, it's just a silly thing. Norman Mailer had a great quote: "The older we get, the more we become who we are." Meaning, of course, that our neuroses get more present and clearer because death becomes a much more realistic idea in our lives. So I was interested in doing that, in giving it a sort of gravitas, to make sure the characters had a history to them and a reason for this overarching melancholy. This is what I like in movies. This is what moves me. You're always trying to rip off what you like in movies. Even movies like THE GRADUATE: Dustin Hoffman was, I think, thirty-one or -two when he made the movie.

Beaks: He was around that age, yes. And Anne Bancroft was just a little bit older.

Gray: Which is a genius idea of Mike Nichols'. If he had cast someone who was actually twenty-one or twenty-two, I think the film would've lost the sense of history that it has now. You look at Dustin Hoffman, and he's beautiful in the film. And sometimes he's quite unsympathetic; some of the things he does in the second half of the film verge on the ugly. But it works so brilliantly because he has such a history. You can see it in his face. It's the same thing with Al Pacino in THE GODFATHER. Pacino must've been thirty-two when they made that. So, yes I am glad that you responded to that.

I was being dragged out of the room at this point, so I turned off my recorder. I guess we'll just have to continue this on the next movie, which looks like it will be THE LOST CITY OF Z, an epic about British explorer Percy Fawcett's Aguirre-like misadventures in South America (starring Brad Pitt). For now, I highly recommend that you check out TWO LOVERS, which opens in limited release this Friday, February 13th. Faithfully submitted, Mr. Beaks