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“Paper Tiger” director James Gray says he doesn’t “want to preach” about politics while making the festival rounds for his latest film, starring Adam Driver, Scarlett
Johansson and Miles Teller.
“All movies are political in one way or another, but I like movies that exist with subtext,” Gray told Variety at the film’s New York Film Festival premiere Friday. “I don’t want to preach to you. That’s a polemic. That’s 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’t trying to teach us a lesson. Not Sunday school. Art is not Sunday school.”
Yet “Paper Tiger” 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’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Russia 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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social a year ago this week. “This is not distinguishing Russia. In fact, it is very much making them look like ‘a paper tiger.’”
Coincidentally, he only began doing so after filming wrapped on James Gray’s “Paper Tiger,” a crime drama centered on a family being threatened by Russian mobsters.
“It’s very weird because I wrote and made [‘Paper Tiger’] before [Trump] ever started using that term,” Gray said. “It had nothing to do with him…. It’s sort of like half frightening, weirdly flattering. I don’t know. What would you think?”
From Gray’s early work on “The Yards” (which drew from his father’s work manufacturing subway parts and how the job led to him becoming entangled in illegal activity) to “Armageddon Time” (his autobiographical coming-of-age drama that played second fiddle to Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” on the 2022 awards circuit), each of his films chronicle deeply personal chapters of his life through the guise of genre.
“Paper Tiger” was initially conceived as a sequel to “Armageddon Time,” one that would focus on his mother’s 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.
Adam Driver stars in Gray’s 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’s suburban family life, just as his wife Hester (Scarlett Johansson, not Hathaway) is diagnosed with a sudden illness. Gary dismisses the Russians as “paper tigers” (all talk, no bite), only to discover how badly he has underestimated them.
The title’s irony extends beyond the Russians. Much like “Armageddon Time” explores the complexity of the American Dream, “Paper Tiger” depicts a system that appears navigable to an ordinary American family — until, that is, it swallows them whole.
“This term was originally [popularized] by Mao Zedong in China to describe us,” Gray explains. “I always loved it because it seemed so vivid. A tiger made of paper — what is that? It’s the brittleness that’s underneath all of us no matter how tough we think we are.”
Just hours before the “Paper Tiger” premiere in New York, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced 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.
“No comment,” he smirked.
