EXCLUSIVE: James Gray opens up about Paper Tiger and reveals how Adam Driver and Miles Teller brought it to life

The New York Film Festival kicked off the first day of its 64th edition with a screening of writer-director James Gray’s outstanding new crime drama, Paper Tiger. Set in 1986 Queens, the film stars Adam Driver and Miles Teller as brothers Gary and Irwin Pearl, who pursue a get-rich-quick scheme that involves cleaning up the Gowanus Canal. But after a terrible misunderstanding, Irwin, his wife Hester (Scarlett Johansson), and their children find themselves targeted and tormented by the Russian mafia, threatening to tear the two brothers apart.

Paper Tiger made its world premiere back in May at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, which nominated Gray for its highest honor, the Palme D’Or award, for the second time in his career. Since its debut, the film also received an 83% “Fresh” rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, ranking it highly alongside some of Gray’s other acclaimed films, including The Immigrant, Ad Astra, The Lost City of Z, Armageddon Time. Neon will distribute Paper Tiger in select theaters this November after its festival tour.

At its NYFF premiere on September 25, Digital Trends joined audiences and press in hearing Gray, Driver, and Teller discuss their experience making Paper Tiger in a post film Q&A, moderated by NYFF programmer Rachel Rosen. In this panel, Gray broke down his filmmaking style and his personal inspirations for the movie’s emotional story. He also revealed how he got such acclaimed performances out of both Driver and Teller and how he approached recreating 1980s New York in this throwback crime thriller.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Rosen: I’m wondering if you remember if there’s an originating idea [for Paper Tiger]? Is it a mood? Is it a particular personal story? Is it a theme? And then how the film develops from there?

Gray: I, frankly, as corny as this sounds, I started out saying I wanted to make a movie about love and how difficult it was to love somebody. And I don’t mean obviously in a romantic way only, although that’s part of it. But how things in life get in the way of our relationships with each other.

So it sort of started with that notion. And then to rip off stuff from my own past, somebody said to me once, [they] said, “Oh, instead of therapy, you make films,” which I like a lot. I think that’s a sign of victory, because that means that I put myself as disgusting as I am into the work.

I feel like that’s my job. Now it’s your job to like it or hate it…but it’s my job to show you, warts and all, who I am, I think. So it started really there, that impulse.

Rosen: You were remarkably consistent in interviews through the years, downplaying your talent for working with actors. So let’s dig into that a little bit. Your films have these remarkable performances. Can you parse out?

Gray: If you get great actors, you let them do what they do. That is maybe not as easy as I thought it was. I don’t actually do much with these guys. They’re great.

I don’t say. “I have my vision.” You can say the line exactly as I wrote it, which I think is catastrophic. You have to be open to what the actor will bring. And you want the actor to do something you didn’t expect…So when I get to set, I don’t have a preconceived notion of the way the scene should be played.

I have been to sets where I see directors and I watch them watch the actor and I’ll see them point. And I’m always disturbed by that because they’re seeing the actor say the line either as they should or not…The actor must play the reality in the moment. And I think if I had any skill at all, it would be good enough to let them do that rather than sit on them.

Rosen: Let’s do that.

Driver: He articulated it pretty well, which I think is rare, especially if you’ve written and to not have ownership over it, and atmosphere of the set always comes from the top-down. Whoever’s in charge, who’s leading it, they kind of set the precedent for how the crew is working on it and how focused the actors are on it.

And he sets up all the things that he just said he really does embody on set. He creates an atmosphere where you can’t make a mistake. And if we do it, he’s made sure that we have enough time in the schedule. If we don’t, do it right or if there’s another option, will we have time to to do it?

Teller: And James wouldn’t be afraid to, if a scene wasn’t necessarily working, he would say, “It’s not your guys’ fault. It’s the writers.” Just James, of course.(laughs) And then he would sit and tinker with it a little bit. But I mean, we certainly weren’t. We didn’t have a ton of set ups every day, which is the least amount of setups I think I’ve ever had on a film.

Yeah. James is very available. And there’s elements of this story that are autobiographical in James’s words. And, yeah, he’s just a really lovely, articulate person who really doesn’t love movies as much as anyone that I’ve ever met him.

Driver: And you do just want someone who’s a great audience member, who’s watching, who’s watching the monitor and is seeing everything. And when you feel as an actor that someone isn’t, then you start to do that job also, and it kind of takes you out of the scene.

And if you trust a majority of these choices are about taste and already going into it before, we give it a shot of excitement because of his films or the choices that he’s made with such an attention to detail about costume, what the lenses are, how we’re shooting it, where we’re shooting, already going into it. We’re just paying attention, which again, seems obvious, but, it’s all about taste. And that’s the end of that sentence. Period.

Rosen: And that leads into my next question, which is about period, because I think recent [time] periods can be more complex than shooting something in 1850. And I’m wondering if all of you can talk about that, in terms of language, were there things you thought about beforehand about being authentic to 1986?

Gray: I see no difference between 1986 and 1820 anymore. Have you been to the Gowanus Canal recently? When we were scouting, somebody said, “Well, are you going to do the actual Gowanus Canal?” And I said, “Yeah.” And then I got there and it looks nothing like it did in 1986. People dress nothing like that.

And the hair with these perms…and it’s funny because I think people are almost out of the language of period and recent period, like my mother had that hairstyle and it does look ridiculous. But it’s accurate to what it was. And the only thing we did do was limit the shoulder pads, because in costume, what people actually wore in 1986…these shoulder pad things, we forget they looked like they were about to play Joe Namath.

The shoulder padding out here was risible. So the furthest we went was the hair. You have to try to get the details right, but you actually have to actually not do as much as there was because then it would look like parody. So, we try to be as accurate as we can, but it is all in the end, an abstraction because the movie is like a dream state.

It’s not a documentary. And people looking for that kind of accuracy. I find that to be, if I may be candid, I find it to be kind of a little bit of dunderheaded, because it’s really missing the point of what…a work of art is supposed to communicate anyway. So, you just try to get it as accurate as you can and leave detail uncovered, knowing that you’re going to miss something.

Rosen: Can you talk a little bit about how you developed the visual style of the film, but also the auditory style of the film, both of which I think were quite remarkable.

Gray: Thank you…I don’t think it’s right to just impose a style on a movie generally, or to start there anyway. I mean, you’re always imposing a style, but you’re not starting with a style. To me, it has to be connected to the material. And I’ve always idolized filmmakers who are…just trying to do what’s right for the piece.

And so I don’t try to impose some massively ornate visual style on a movie. And I’ve found that that’s extremely hard to do. Like just creating a scene, which looks like it’s traditional or classical, is really hard, at least for me.

So what I wanted to do was to do something that looked on a set period, but looked like it was a bit of a throwback in that way. One of the decisions we made, which caused a little bit of a headache, but it was great, was to use only tungsten lights and so the film is shot on 35 millimeter film…It has a magic that is totally beyond what a DCP can give you, and it’s almost like we forget it, you know? So I’m glad that they were able to do it.

So sound, for me, is very, very important. I always go over budget, on only one thing on every movie. I’m always on time…but the I’m always over on the movies because the mix is so important. It’s stuff that works unconsciously that nobody is ever aware of.

There’s such weird stuff on the track of this movie. There’s this thing in the car scene…with one of the Russian guys [rooting] over to the glove compartment. And he opens the glove compartment, and on it we put a slaughtered pig sound. So it’s that kind of thing that you you always want to try to come up with, to use a pretentious term, an objective correlative for the emotion of the moment.

Paper Tiger arrives in theaters on November 13.