CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 10/12/07

Backing the Badge:
We Own the Night's James Gray

By peter clines

The writer-director of Little Odessa and The Yards returns with a Shakespeare-inspired police story of family, loyalty, and destiny.

When a studio executive once suggested that James Gray do a more traditional film, perhaps a police story with a car chase, the critically acclaimed writer-director was at a bit of a loss. It wasn't until later that random inspirations came together, mixing with some of his own childhood memories of Brighton Beach to become the taut and emotional crime story We Own the Night.

Bobby (Joaquin Phoenix) is the black sheep of his family, managing one of Brooklyn's hottest clubs and getting ready to help his boss expand into Manhattan. Meanwhile, his brother, Joe (Mark Wahlberg), has followed in the footsteps of their father (James Duvall) and become one of the city's top cops, heading one of the bold street-crime units that operate under the motto "We own the night." But 1988 in New York City is a harsh time for the police as the Russian mafia begins to extend its reach and tighten its grip, and soon Bobby is forced to make serious decisions about where his loyalties lie before a ruthless drug kingpin (Alex Veadov) takes everthing he's ever loved.

Near the end of a long press day for We Own the Night, Gray took some time to sit down with CS Weekly and talk about covering his house with index cards, writing for actors you know, and why he doesn't believe in free will…in life or cinema.


What made you get into film? You originally wanted to be a painter, right?
That's right. But I started to see that cinema was a combination of all the things I love. There's dance, in a way, how you position the actors in the frame. There's music, of course. There's painting in how you frame things and light things. There's drama. So, it combines all the art forms. How can you not love a medium like that? I would say that the movies of the late '70s, early '80s—Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull—all that stuff started to shift my attention away from painting.

How long do you generally take to write a script?
Not very long. For an original piece of material, I'll do research, I think about what I want to do—maybe about a year it takes me. The time in between movies is long because it's a tremendously difficult process to raise money and get actors. It's a very complex, involved thing to get a picture off the ground, but the script itself takes about a year.

Do you write constantly?
No. In fact, it would be of no use to write constantly. I read somewhere that Woody Allen, who's just a god at screenwriting, he gets up every morning and works, and I wish I could do that. For me, I look at the blank computer screen and I get very depressed. I try to think of a way to come up with an idea and I sort of mull on it and I take a shower that's 10 hours long. I write ideas on index cards and post them up all over the house and I try to see connections. Really, the beginning of the process, there's very little writing every day, it's a lot of think-work. The actual writing of the script is maybe two or three weeks. It comes after I write a very detailed treatment, about 30, 40 pages, which comes after I write the outline, because nine-tenths of the law in screenwriting is structure. Dialogue is not the number-one issue in a movie, or in narrative storytelling. I would say the outline is of absolute, crucial importance.

Do you think you'd ever write something for someone else to direct?
I would love to do it. Without question, I would love to write for Steven Spielberg. I would kill to write a script for Spielberg. I think Steven Spielberg—I'm obviously not alone in this—is the best stager of scenes I've ever seen in my life. He has an almost god-like ability to know the right place for the camera and how it relates to the action and the actors. I would just kill to write a script for him, to see what he would do with it. I don't know if he would do a script of mine. I think that's the bigger problem. I would like to write one for Martin Scorsese, and a whole bunch of people I would write for in a second. But, I don't know, they've got their own things they want to do, so the chances are zilch. [chuckles]

How did this story come together for you? Did it start off as a story about brothers, or a story about one man finding his way?
It came about when I went to see a play, Measure for Measure by Shakespeare, in the park. Summer of 2001. I watched the play, and the story had the most amazing narrative conundrum. In the play, a guy is arrested and convicted of a crime. He's had a child out of wedlock, and in 1500s Venice that's a crime punishable by death, but nobody is ever punished by death for that. It's just that sort of law that's on the books but that nobody actually prosecutes anyone. A young judge who's very ambitious says, "I am going to do it. I am going to execute this person for that crime to show that I have power." The sister of the person who's going to be executed comes to the judge and says, "Nobody gets killed for this crime anymore. Please spare my brother." And he looks at her, and she's a nun and she's beautiful. He says, "I'll spare your brother, but you have to fuck me first." Incredible! What is that narrative conundrum for that nun? If she fucks the guy, she has disgraced herself permanently in the eyes of God. But if she doesn't, her brother will be killed. I saw that, and it was like a shot to the solar plexus. That Shakespeare was both broad and subtle. That his narrative ideas were timeless, timely, clear, and mythic.

So, I bought the Art of Shakespeare and I started to read the plays, and one of the plays I read was Henry IV, part one and part two. Prince Hal hangs out with his buddy Falstaff. They drink a lot, they play jokes on each other, and he's very much a ne'er do well. And what happens? A call to action. His father, a mediocre king, is under threat. He comes to his father's aid and he becomes a completely different person. He becomes the king, but in doing so he sacrifices a large part of himself. And in the end, his buddy comes to him and says, "Prince Hal, now that you're the king, we can really party." And he turns to Falstaff, his friend, and he says, "I know you not, old man," meaning, of course, "I reject you." Which has both tragic implications that he has left his past behind and part of himself behind, and at the same time has become king. Genius! I read that and I said, "That's the basis for my story. That's what I would like to do." And that was really the beginning of the story, to base it on Prince Hal, who was Joaquin, and Hotspur, who was Mark, and the king, which would be Robert Duvall.

It's weird, too, because when you mention Shakespeare everyone thinks you're a pretentious asshole and what you're trying to do is have everybody talk in verse. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about stealing the basic story ideas from the master and you hope that one-tenth of it comes out.

How much of this is writing what you know and how much of it is somewhat autobiographical?
I would say a tremendous amount of it is autobiographical, and all of it is what I know. My family has a Russian-Jewish background, I'm from New York City and the outer boroughs, from Queens. I got to know members of the Russian underworld when I was going around as a teenager. My mother died when I was young, and that wound up in Little Odessa and The Yards. I would say a huge amount winds up in the films. I don't think it's important to be autobiographical. I do think it's important to be personal. To make films that you care about for some reason, that reverberate with you personally. That's crucial.

You wrote Bobby and Joe specifically with Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg in mind. How does that affect your process of developing characters?
It affects it a lot, because you try to deal with, and sometimes subvert, public personae. Mark Wahlberg is the tough guy, and all of a sudden now in the movie he's the guy who's paralyzed to act in the field. Joaquin Phoenix is the troubled soul, and now in this movie he becomes the man his father always wanted him to be. So, I was conscious of that, conscious of subverting their public personae, and also to play to their strengths as actors. Wahlberg is tremendous at relating a certain earnestness and an honesty in front of the camera, and he's great at doing it in a way that sometimes means when he's miscast people don't understand. They say "Well, look at Wahlberg in Planet of the Apes, he's playing an astronaut." But that has nothing to do with his ability as an actor, which is considerable. Mark as Dirk Diggler, Mark in, I must say I'm biased, my film The Yards, is extraordinary, because he's able to empathize with a more blue-collar earnestness. Joaquin Phoenix is all about inner turmoil on screen, and able to relate to the audience the most complex human behavior without saying anything. So, I wrote it with those two excellent qualities of each actor in mind.

Do you tend to write looser or tighter scripts, knowing that you're going to direct them?
You know, I never do it consciously. People have told me that my scripts are especially specific in terms of direction and what the scene looks like. I never, ever thought about it consciously. I think it's pretty clear that the films are written for the person who wrote to direct them. Not consciously, but that's the way it's unfolded.

Do you like ad libs from actors?
I love it. I have no respect at all for my dialogue skills, and when actors can do something that is better than what I wrote, why not take the credit? [chuckles] I love it. It's great, because sometimes by doing silly or weird thing A, B, or C, you get D, which is fantastic in a very different way. You can never, ever restrict your ideas. You can't restrict the flow of energy. It's your job, however, to be a filter and say, "Well, that destroys my vision, but that makes it better." That's your job.

How do you write a story about destiny but still make your characters active people that make choices and appear to have free will?
That's an excellent question. I don't know how much I believe in free will, because "free will" is a concept that is so tinged with ideological and cultural weight. If you went to Saudi Arabia and talked to a young woman there about free will, she wouldn't know what the fuck you were talking about. That's an American idea, a Lockian idea. Human beings are very, very subject to the whims of economic, cultural, and ideological forces that are really outside of their control. What you try to do is balance that with the character acting in a specific way that's consistent with who he is or what he believes within the scope of the story. So, the story essentially has to work on two levels. The story has to say character A wants X, Y, and Z, but that X, Y, and Z is entirely within a framework that is imposed upon him by the gods. And when I say "the gods," I'm talking about the ideological apparatus of the state. It's why those movies that we love, they're always about people that are essentially in a box. How active is Jack Nicholson in Chinatown? He kind of isn't, actually. In fact, everything he does winds up screwing over in exactly the same way he made a mistake years before, right? He doesn't have the power to act. The world enforces its rules on him. How much choice does Michael Corleone have in what he eventually does? Very little. It's a very mythic idea. This, to me, is drama's highest calling. It's a very complex idea, and if you can pull it off, it's fantastic. I'm not saying I did it, but it was certainly in the back of my head.

Peter Clines has had a lifelong love affair with the movies. He grew up in New England, where he studied English literature and education, and now lives and writes somewhere in Southern California. If anyone knows exactly where, he would appreciate a few hints.

James Gray, We Own the Night courtesy Columbia Pictures

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