Adam Driver on Paper Tiger: Ticks, Lightning and Greek Tragedy in the Reeds

The best sequence in James Gray’s Paper Tiger was supposed to take two days. It got one. Half of that went to safety meetings about ticks. Then the lightning started.

“I kind of like it when things just go totally… it’s a disaster and it makes everybody kind of be all hands on deck,” Adam Driver said Tuesday night at the American Cinematheque’s Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, where a members-only advance screening of Paper Tiger was double-billed with Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson. We’ve posted the full post-screening Q&A.

Paper Tiger, written and directed by Gray, is set in 1986 New York, between Queens and the Gowanus Canal. Driver plays Gary Pearl, a former cop with a business proposition that looks lucrative; Miles Teller is his younger brother Irwin, an engineer who takes the deal, and the brothers collide with the newly arriving Russian mafia. Scarlett Johansson plays Irwin’s wife, Hester, in her first film with Driver since Marriage Story. It premiered in Competition at Cannes, played NYFF in September, and has already earned Driver a Gotham Awards nomination for Outstanding Supporting Performance. It’s Gray’s first film since Armageddon Time.

He Asked for the Job

Driver was a fan first. When the Criterion Channel ran a James Gray New York series, he watched The Yards and We Own the Night for the first time and reached out: “whatever you’re doing next, I’d like to be a part of it.” About a year later, Gray wrote this and reached out.

The pull was the thing Gray always does: one enormous cinematic sequence wrapped around something intimate. Brothers, this time, in ’80s New York. “It was a pretty easy yes.” Prep stayed light on purpose. “Sometimes you do the first reading of something, it’s almost the best it’s ever going to be.”

Two Weeks of Talking, Then the Family Scenes

The cast rehearsed for two weeks, mostly talking, then opened the shoot with the family scenes. On Teller: “so funny and very unpretentious,” with “a very rich internal, emotional life.” “I can watch him at rest and be interested.” On Johansson, he nodded back to Marriage Story (“that was intense shoot”). Gray, whose films are serious, is “very gregarious and chatty” in person. He knows this world firsthand, the Italian gangs moving out and the Russians moving in, but lets actors own their choices rather than correcting them with “that’s not how my mom said it.” As for the men playing the Russian mob: “Some of them are pretty real.”

Uncle Ken, Who Plays Piano

Gary is the family’s fun uncle, and Driver has his own: Uncle Ken, an Indiana truck driver who delivered dog food, is “really funny,” has stories about scaring off aggressive dogs on his route, and taught Driver piano. So yes, that’s Driver actually playing in the film. Otherwise? “No. No.”

Shooting Like It Was Found in 1986

Gray wanted the film to feel like something discovered from the ’80s, not recreated. That meant shooting on 35mm with tungsten lights and, per Driver, the lenses The Godfather was shot on, though the performances went the other way: “We weren’t acting like we were in the ’80s.” Old tech is slow (“there’s parts where you’re like, this is why we got rid of this”), but: “if they can shoot Sorcerer on that… then you can surely handle us talking in rooms.”

The Reeds

The moderator called the tall-grass sequence an all-timer that belongs in film school. Two days became one “because we had no money.” Half the day went to tick briefings. Then the storm: a lightning strike within a certain radius shuts production down for about 30 minutes, every new strike resets the clock, and a focused shoot day turned into huddles of producers and the director. Gray had walked him through the exact images he wanted, and Driver put the result on him: “the way it turned out is totally a credit to him.”

Ajax, Philoctetes and Tiger Sounds

Driver and Gray talked Greek tragedy. Ajax, the army’s greatest warrior, passed over because he can’t give a speech, who snaps and slaughters a field of animals believing they’re men. Philoctetes, wounded and wailing, dumped off the boat, until the army realizes it can’t win without him. Betrayals inside militarized institutions; found family against real family. For Gary, once “the man” in his job and now back with less power, those are the metaphors, along with Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, the only film Gray assigned. “Really, the only thing I’m beholden to is someone’s taste.”

How any of it reaches the screen: “I can’t play a metaphor.” But you can stand a certain way in the frame, and Gray layers in subconscious choices of his own. “There’s a lot of tiger sounds in it.”

His favorite days were the family house scenes; one with Johansson didn’t survive the cut, “probably we were having too much fun.”

The Colgate Commercial Test

Dream collaborator: Pedro Almodóvar, who he’s talked with but never landed. Directors he’ll follow anywhere: Jim Jarmusch and Leos Carax. “If it’s a Colgate commercial in the Himalayas, like, I’ll do it.” He credited Jarmusch with “incredible morals in the film industry, which sounds a lot like a low bar, but it’s actually a really hard thing to find,” and gave Steven Soderbergh a similar nod. He’s working with Michael Mann again, and mentioned something with Jeff Nichols possibly early next year or the year after, without elaborating.

And Then, Paterson

With Paterson up next, Driver called it “my favorite shooting experience ever.” No money, everyone in one small house. Their first meeting began with Jarmusch arriving with gold on his upper lip from a vitamin regimen, excusing himself to the bathroom and returning apologetic. Driver read the script immediately and called to say yes.

On set they joked about a parallel film, Peterson, in which Paterson is “a total dick” (“Girl reads her poem. He’s like, that sucks.”). Jarmusch got obsessed with twins and put Driver’s stand-in in the movie because it amused him. And since Jarmusch’s partner is filmmaker Sara Driver: “we actually might be related.” Another Jarmusch film? “He has something but it’s nothing for me yet.”

Paper Tiger opens in select theaters Nov. 13 and nationwide Nov. 20 from Neon.

The full Q&A is above and on The Nerd Wire’s YouTube channel.