Over 30 years into his career, James Gray isn’t following any trends. And he’s not about to start now.
“This idea that we’re supposed to always try to be ‘new’… That doesn’t really mean anything. Many people say: ‘Oh, it’s important for a work to be fresh.’ The older I get, the more I realize that pursuit is a folly,” he tells Variety.
“My tastes were formed in the late 1970s, and I was influenced by, inculcated by and taught by films from before that. It’s not a conscious effort to make a statement. It’s just an extension of who I am. I think it’s important that we embrace who we are, especially as we get older.”
He adds: “If you look at Picasso, he stole from African art that’s thousand years old. Stanley Kubrick stole liberally from silent films, using ‘The Phantom Carriage’ for ‘The Shining’ and ‘Our Heavenly Bodies’ for ‘2001’. This idea that we have to create something ‘new’ is actually very much a business concept. It’s rooted in the idea of copyrights and capitalism, rather than reminding people of what is true: emotion, beauty and transcendence.”
“I like to say that what’s fresh in your refrigerator today is spoiled tomorrow.”
