The New Yorker - 16.09.2019

THENEWYORKER, SEPTEMBER 16, 2019 37

Jewish family, in what he calls the Ar-
chie Bunker part of Queens. His mother
taught at Queens College, his father at
the New York Institute of Technology.
His elementary school had classes with
combined grades, owing, he says, to low
funding. He found other ways of occu-
pying himself. “He was always drawing
on these piles of scrap paper, all day
long, mostly superheroes,” his older
brother, Edward, an intensive-care phy-
sician, says. “It was almost fanatical.”
His parents eventually arranged for him
to have art lessons.
“It’s a very important part of his iden-
tity that he had this kind of lonely, weird,
fish-out-of-water New York childhood,”
says Gwyneth Paltrow, who played the
lead in “Two Lovers” after years of
friendship with Gray. When Gray was
in junior high, his parents moved him
to the private Kew-Forest School, in
the more affluent Forest Hills neigh-
borhood. Donald Trump was an alum-
nus, and Fred Trump was on the board
of trustees. His mother used to drive
him around to ogle the big houses. Gray
was an indifferent student who cheated
on tests, and the new surroundings fed
an inferiority complex. Still, he says, the

school changed his life. Its motto was

“Ad summum”: To the highest.

“He was so much a personality—I’m

not sure I had ever met anyone like

him,” Christopher Spelman, who taught

Latin at Kew-Forest before going on

to a career as a film composer, says. With

the support of Spelman and the school’s

French teacher, Gray helped start a film

club with the mission of going into

Manhattan and watching movies at re-

vival houses; afterward, the club would

process to La Bonne Soupe, or some

other teen-ager-friendly spot, and talk

the movies through. Gray funded his

excursions by stealing money from his

mother’s purse, a transgression for which

he says he still has no regrets.

In the autumn of 1981, Gray went to

a double bill at the Carnegie Hall Cin-

ema: “Dr. Strangelove” and “Apocalypse

Now.” “New movies back then were

‘Jaws,’ ‘Superman,’ and ‘King Kong’ with

Jessica Lange,” he explained. “Then you

see ‘Apocalypse Now’ and it was, like,

What the fuck was that?” Over the next

few years, Gray saw everything he could.

(He continues the habit: every night,

after his wife and children are in bed,

he steals past a lavender patch behind

his home to a guesthouse, and watches

a film.) “He was always ambitious for

himself as a director, even in the sev-

enth grade,” Spelman says. When Gray

revealed his burgeoning ambition to his

family, the response was not what he

had hoped.

“What? You’ll never make it!” Gray

recalls his father saying. His mother:

“James, look where we are. We have no

connections. We’re in Queens!” His older

brother understood the dream but did

not share his hope. “You might as well

be an astronaut,” he said.

The year that Gray was making his

college thesis film, his father and his fa-

ther’s business partner were indicted on

fifty-six counts of fraudulent activity

committed through their electronics

company, Envort-Gray, which supplied

the M.T.A. They were charged with

bribing a Metro-North employee and

billing for undelivered parts; the year

when Gray started working on “Little

Odessa,” his father pleaded guilty to

three counts and paid a fine. “In a very

short time, my father had his legal trou-

bles, my brother went to college, my

mother died, and I went off to Califor-

nia,” Gray says. “Almost overnight, the

family unit was destroyed.”

The experience hardened him. But

it was also during this period that he

developed a rigorous, exultant command

of craft. Gray has a reputation among

actors for being unable to stop laugh-

ing when a take is going exceptionally

well. “I remember being one time, like,

‘James, what the fuck? I’m baring my

soul here, and you’re giggling,’ ” Paltrow

says. “He just gets so excited about the

art of it.” In “Little Odessa,” the can-

cer-afflicted mother, played by Vanessa

Redgrave, collapses on the kitchen

floor—a moment that draws on Gray’s

mother’s illness. To the surprise of peo-

ple present, Gray laughed all through

the scene as it was shot.

O

n Tuesday, Pitt came on set in a

spacesuit, and he and Gray went

over the next hours’ material. Pitt, who

has been a producer on Gray’s two most

recent movies, described receiving “very

vulnerable e-mails” from Gray every

morning, exploring the director’s private

hopes and fears and relating them to the

scenes of the day. “It’s the most difficult

film I’ve ever worked on, because the

THE MAN WHO OWNED ME

It was a man I’m sure of it.

Though I never saw him

I felt him rise, climbing up

Through me until I bent

To a devotion not my own.

I felt him in my belly, low

In my hips. I carried him

Like I carried my own children.

I have no idea if he was old

Or young, what his face

Would have been had he flesh.

He did in me whatever an ember does

Burning slowly until all of a piece

What it feeds on falls to ash.

Sometimes I miss what he taught me

To see, the hunger it gave me.

I think he must wait now just

Beside my body, believing I’ll

One day fall back to my knees.

If he had hands, they would be

The kind of hands I open for.

—Tracy K. Smith