James Gray desires to set the document straight about Scarlett Johansson declining his FaceTime name during the six-minute standing ovation on the premiere of his newest Cannes debut, Paper Tiger Saturday evening. (The director dramatically shrugged as the decision dropped whereas he and forged members Adam Driver and Miles Teller stood below spotlights in entrance of the whole Grand Theatre Lumiére viewers — in one of many nice comedian moments of Cannes 2026.)
“I want to be fair to Scarlett, I didn’t tell her I was going to FaceTime her! I thought I’d get lucky, but she’s working and all that in New York.” Grey mentioned, laughing, at Sunday’s press convention.
The absence of the movie’s largest stars, and arguably one of many largest film stars of this 12 months’s muted pageant, had been a sore disappointment to the screaming crowds outdoors the Palais, however Johansson is busy filming the reboot of The Exorcist.
In Grey’s taught thriller, set in Eighties Brighton Seashore; the Gowanus space of Brooklyn; and Nice Neck, Lengthy Island, two brothers (Driver and Teller) fall afoul of Russian gangsters in a quickly remodeling metropolis the place high-stakes alternatives for riches additionally include a excessive threat of life and limb. Johansson spends the film in an unlucky blonde wig and glasses, with a thick Lengthy Island accent, because the spouse to Teller’s non-streetwise suburban dad, who unwittingly places a goal on his household’s again.
Johansson, having recovered from the FaceTime debacle, had despatched a notice for Grey to learn in the beginning of the press convention, calling the expertise of working with him and the forged “one of the great pleasures of my career.”
Cinema, she continued, in considered one of a number of references to the political local weather on the press convention, “has this rare and remarkable power to connect us to one another through a shared experience… That collective empathy is something we could certainly use more of right now, and my hope is that by making movies like this one, we can feel even for a couple of hours in the dark a part of the shared human experience.”
General, although, the actors and Grey stayed away from controversy and overt political statements. Requested for a response to the claims in Lena Dunham’s memoir about his risky on-set habits on Ladies, Driver responded, “I have no comment on any of that. I’m saving it all for my book.”
Because the moderator moved on to the subsequent query, Driver added, referring to the reporter, “I have no idea what she’s talking about.” The allegations that Driver was verbally aggressive have been the topic of quite a few articles for the previous month.
Requested why he set the film within the Eighties, Grey cited a visit he’d taken to the “broken” former Soviet Union in 1984 after which seeing how the market turned king there and in China quickly afterwards, to what he believes is devastating impact on human integrity.
“The reason I set the movie in this time period is… that it was the beginning of the moment in which the market became God,” he mentioned.
“Now, I’m not advocating for socialist dictatorships,” he continued. However, he added, that second led to our political local weather at the moment, and younger individuals who really feel like failures in the event that they don’t have financial success. “What happens is you get someone like the current American president, who is a symptom of what I’m talking about: totally transactional. You know, ‘How can I make the most money?’”
As for struggles on the film, Teller cited taking pictures in an intense warmth wave in New York with no shade. “James shot an entire movie in the Amazon and he said this was physically just as challenging,” he mentioned. Driver recalled taking pictures the film’s greatest scene, a chase scene in a discipline of reeds outdoors of LaGuardia airport, throughout a lightning storm the place they needed to cease manufacturing each half-hour.
However principally, the actors in contrast measurement. Top, that’s. Requested how they felt about one another as scene companions, Teller replied, “Well, Adam’s taller.”
“I mean, I’m a pretty good size. I’m like 6’1,” 190 [pounds.] Normally, I’m the most important particular person on set,” mentioned Teller. “My hand felt very small when Adam shook it.”
Driver confirmed that he’s 6-foot-3: “Fitting in doorways is a challenge. Fitting shoes are a challenge.”
“You remember when you almost sent me to the hospital?” Teller requested, in a second nobody would elaborate on.
Driver mentioned he didn’t and joked that they shouldn’t speak about it.
“Okay, I do have a scar,” Teller mentioned, to laughter. And the matter was dropped. Guess it’ll should go in Driver’s e book.
