{"id":906488,"date":"2026-09-26T18:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T18:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/906488\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T18:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T18:12:09","slug":"paper-tiger-director-james-gray-says-art-isnt-sunday-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/906488\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Paper Tiger’ Director James Gray Says ‘Art Isn’t Sunday School’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cPaper Tiger<\/a>\u201d director James Gray<\/a> says he doesn\u2019t \u201cwant to preach\u201d about politics while making the festival rounds for his latest film, starring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAll movies are political in one way or another, but I like movies that exist with subtext,\u201d Gray told Variety at the film\u2019s New York Film Festival<\/a> premiere Friday. \u201cI don\u2019t want to preach to you. That\u2019s a polemic. That\u2019s for debate class. The reason we can watch some of those beautiful Hollywood movies from 1940 and still find them moving is because they weren\u2019t trying to teach us a lesson. Not Sunday school. Art is not Sunday school.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYet \u201cPaper Tiger\u201d has taken on a few unexpected political parallels. Dating back to the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese used the term paper tiger to describe someone who appears powerful and intimidating but ultimately poses little threat. President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly invoked the term when discussing Vladimir Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRussia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win,\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social<\/a> a year ago this week. \u201cThis is not distinguishing Russia. In fact, it is very much making them look like \u2018a paper tiger.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCoincidentally, he only began doing so after filming wrapped on James Gray\u2019s \u201cPaper Tiger,\u201d a crime drama centered on a family being threatened by Russian mobsters.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s very weird because I wrote and made [\u2018Paper Tiger\u2019] before [Trump] ever started using that term,\u201d Gray said. \u201cIt had nothing to do with him\u2026. It\u2019s sort of like half frightening, weirdly flattering. I don\u2019t know. What would you think?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom Gray\u2019s early work on \u201cThe Yards\u201d (which drew from his father\u2019s work manufacturing subway parts and how the job led to him becoming entangled in illegal activity) to \u201cArmageddon Time\u201d (his autobiographical coming-of-age drama that played second fiddle to Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cThe Fabelmans\u201d on the 2022 awards circuit), each of his films chronicle deeply personal chapters of his life through the guise of genre.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPaper Tiger\u201d was initially conceived as a sequel to \u201cArmageddon Time,\u201d one that would focus on his mother\u2019s untimely battle with glioblastoma that ultimately killed her. Gray even considered bringing back Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong as his parents, but his experience watching his father become a convicted criminal took precedence in the story.<\/p>\n

\n\tAdam Driver stars in Gray\u2019s latest film as Gary, a former police officer who ropes his younger brother Irwin (Miles Teller, not Strong) into a dicey business deal that lands them in trouble with the Russian mafia. Their predicament hijacks Irwin\u2019s suburban family life, just as his wife Hester (Scarlett Johansson, not Hathaway) is diagnosed with a sudden illness. Gary dismisses the Russians as \u201cpaper tigers\u201d (all talk, no bite), only to discover how badly he has underestimated them.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe title\u2019s irony extends beyond the Russians. Much like \u201cArmageddon Time\u201d explores the complexity of the American Dream<\/a>, \u201cPaper Tiger\u201d depicts a system that appears navigable to an ordinary American family \u2014 until, that is, it swallows them whole.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis term was originally [popularized] by Mao Zedong in China to describe us,\u201d Gray explains. \u201cI always loved it because it seemed so vivid. A tiger made of paper \u2014 what is that? It\u2019s the brittleness that\u2019s underneath all of us no matter how tough we think we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJust hours before the \u201cPaper Tiger\u201d premiere in New York, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced<\/a> that Trump was setting up a trilateral peace agreement with Russia and Ukraine. But when asked if Trump himself is a paper tiger, Gray went mute.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNo comment,\u201d he smirked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cPaper Tiger\u201d director James Gray says he doesn\u2019t \u201cwant to preach\u201d about politics while making the festival rounds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":906489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,138144,344,94007,325807,474384],"class_list":["post-906488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-james-gray","tag-movies","tag-new-york-film-festival","tag-paper-tiger","tag-scarlet-johansson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/906489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}