James Gray speaking about Hollywood in the last Cahiers du Cinéma

[VincentVendetta]

Translated from French to English by me.

Me, my generation, I watch it with disgust! Every filmmaker I know and who I went to film school with thinks: "I must do this comic book adaptation or else I won't find work." Well, first off, it's a cowardly stance. (He loses his voice) One must take risks! If you just want to make a lot of money or not take risks, don't become a filmmaker, go work in Wall Street! Oh... You made me mad!

Coppola said he admires your generation, because working regularly has become much harder for his...
Since I don't have elements to compare the two periods, if I refer myself to what other filmmakers of his generation, like William Friedkin, has said, I believe we have a too romantic vision of the 70's and the New Hollywood. Studios were probably already managed by idiots, let's not lie to ourselves. This is why I tend to see what happened in Hollywood as one part amongst others of what became the United States and the industrial world: at the top, there's more and more money in the hands of a smaller and smaller group of people, and less and less money going to the bottom or the middle. In fact, it's the middle that disappears completely. Today, you can have a movie shot on a smartphone, or Wonder Woman 1984, but what was in the middle has disappeared. I'm not talking about a middlebrow cinema, but a cinema based on narration, with some spectacular and expensive aspects, but that's isn't crushed by them. Today, The Godfather would be an HBO miniseries, and Apocalypse Now would simply be impossible to make.

This short-term vision of the studios, which consequences could they have on the long-term?
I'm sure they're shooting themselves in the foot. I talked recently with a member of the board of the Academy of Motion Pictures, who asked me: "The ratings of the Oscars are falling. What do you think we should do to make the show popular again?" I said: "Nothing." He was shocked: "You don't believe we can improve the show?" I told him: "Yes, of course. But it's got nothing to do with the show, it's about the movies. They matter less to people today." If the studios were smart, they would each produce two movies per year in which they would invest 60 to 70 million dollars et which wouldn't be programmed to make money. Two movies to take risks. Many would certainly be bad, but others would be very good and, whether they make money or not, they would make it so cinema could stay the preeminent language of culture. Instead, some dumb accountant comes in and says: "This movie will not make the money we need." Now, movies are terrible, and nobody cares. They make two billion, but they're forgotten the next day.

I would strongly suggest watching his TIFF conference from a few years back. He's not only very intelligent, but also very funny.

James Gray | In Conversation With... | TIFF 2019 - YouTube