Paper Tiger (2026). Courtesy of Neon.
Fall 2026, James Gray, Josh Berger, Paper Tiger, Robert Hein
James Gray’s filmography is distinguished by inventive, elaborate sound design, though that likely wouldn’t be the first thing you notice. Whether summoning his childhood memories in Queens (Armageddon Time, 2022) or plunging into the vast nothingness of outer space (Ad Astra, 2019), the filmmaker has a knack for weaving intricate webs of feeling thatmake the intimate epic and the otherworldly immediate. His instinct for restraint allows him to pull offthis balancing act; he knows that less is more and that sound can be a tool for precisely sculpting the emotional register of a film.
Watching his latest, Paper Tiger, I was dazzled by a final shootout whose sonic landscape wrung my nerves. That scene, as powerful for what it withholds as for what it depicts, made me wonderhow sound design works in service of the film’s othertwists and crescendoes. Part domestic drama basedon Gray’s family circumstances in the 1980s, part thriller hearkening back to the organized crime intrigues and brotherly frictions of The Yards (2000) andWe Own the Night (2007), Paper Tiger follows a quaintJewish American family suffering the wrath of the Russian mafia after witnessing their shady operations along Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal. Irwin (MilesTeller) and his cancer-stricken wife, Hester (ScarlettJohansson), struggle to protect their family from thegangsters’ increasingly violent acts of intimidation. Meanwhile, Irwin’s swaggering big brother, Gary (Adam Driver), strives to settle the matter using hisown murky methods. To get a sense of how the filmnavigates its shifting registers, I sat down with Gray,supervising sound editor Robert Hein, and rerecording mixer Josh Berger to discuss how their team’s sound mix process helped Gray make the movie as “personal and honest” as possible.
BEATRICE LOAYZA: I remember seeing Paper Tiger at Cannes and feeling almost a sense of relief. It’s not that I didn’t see other great films, but yours gaveme this entire sweep of emotions—crying, shaking, laughing, the whole shebang. Could you speaka little bit about the film’s mélange of moods and genres? Do you feel you have control over the way it emotionally bends and turns, or does that happenorganically through the filmmaking process?
JAMES GRAY: In order to get a film made you have to be a narcissistic piece of trash: “Myidea is so good!” These guys [gesturing at JoshBerger and Robert Hein] would probably tell you I’m a major-league asshole, but once you startmaking the movie you have to take that sideof you and chuck it. I swear it came out to bethis sort of mix because I was open to the actors’ideas, to the cinematographer’s ideas, to theseguys [nodding at Josh and Robert again]. I triedto make the movie as personal and honest as Icould. The only thing I can say to the actor is,“We have to do it again. Don’t lie to me as much.”As for why the film came out the way it did, with this mix of elements, I’m not capable of answering that because it would involve psychoanalysis.
BL: So, it’s intuitive. And obviously a bit autobiographical. New York was a grim place in the 1980s, though a lot of folks would say it’s still grimtoday in a very different way.
JG:In the late 1980s, there were nearly 2,000 murders a year in New York, and nowit’s down to 300 or so. I once saw someone getshot at St. Mark’s Place. So, New York is saferthan it was, but there are still huge pockets ofunhappiness and violence. The middle class inManhattan has been pushed out, and you have adecline in how street culture influences the middle class. When I was a kid, I remember hearing early rap in Times Square, which was a horrible garbage pit of porn and violence, but I didhear amazing music—stuff that created thesegreat, weird fascinating conversations betweendifferent kinds of people. Now, Manhattan is abunch of rich people with nannies and strollers. I don’t romanticize the past at all. The scene in the car with the boys being threatened by thethug—that happened to me! I don’t see that witha nostalgic glow. My father’s experience withthat extortion he had to endure, my mother’sillness—it’s true, all that is autobiographical.Autobiographical means you’re adhering to the facts of the case, but the film is also personal,which means you’re putting the authenticity ofyour emotions into it.
BL: And then the Gowanus Canal has this very real and deep history of crime and violence. Howdo the levels of fact and fiction break down in the film?
JG:I don’t think I made up . . . anything?The Gowanus has been a troubled place sincethe 1830s or ’40s, full of sewage and agricultural runoff. Later, there were tanneries dumpingchemicals into the water. The Gowanus is about30 to 40 feet deep, and still has what they call a“black mayonnaise,” a tar that is ten or twentyfeet deep at the bottom made up of pollutantsgoing back to the 19th century. Then, there’sthe layers of petrochemicals on top. The cleanup effort would take forever, though there havebeen valiant attempts. I viewed it as a metaphorfor moral and ethical pollution. I thought ofChinatown [1974]. The Gowanus Canal is a kindof swamp that we all have to live in in order to survive. We’re all compromised. I’ve tried to explain to my children that every time they buy apair of sneakers, and the tongue says “Made inthe Philippines,” that they’re essentially committing an ethically charged act that our entiresystem is rooted in. So, the canal is a kind of metaphor for that sort of intractability.
BL: You don’t get a totally clear picture of what the Russians are doing at the canal, but sound is abig way you communicate their treachery. They’refurtively clanging away at their operations, and there’s a menacing quality to it all that you feel especially in that first scene when Irwin and his boys are knocked around.
JG:Sound is the greatest thing with movies because people have unbelievable visual literacy now. If I steal a shot from some 1952 movie, I will be caught almost instantly. It doesn’t matter how obscure it is. People’s soundliteracy is awful, and that’s great because you can do the weirdest, most disjointed stuff, andit’ll work because sound is a weapon for the unconscious. You do things consciously in soundwork that work unconsciously on the audience.The sound mix is the best time on a movie. Editing is bad; it reminds you of all the mistakesyou made. Why doesn’t this work? Why is thispart boring? The sound mix, on the other hand,is the best because I’m on the stage mixing, and they play me a sound that makes me feel a certain way that I never imagined. I think it’simportant that both Bob and Josh tell you aboutthe Theremin Prize.
JOSH BERGER: Working with James, we’re able to be artistic in our own way, and thenwe feed off each other. This is my fourth movie with him—I think it’s your fifth, Bob? Each one of us comes with a palette, our colors that we want to bring to the film. For Paper Tiger, wewent out and recorded a lot of stuff. We createda lot of the palette, scenes of sounds we wantedto do. And as we move forward, what we end updoing is flipping a lot of stuff on its head. For thebetterment of the film you’ve got to go places. It’s like jazz, where you improvise for 15 minutesand minute 16 is brilliant, but you wouldn’t havegotten there without the 15 minutes of improv beforehand. So, the Theremin Prize . . . that started with Armageddon Time.
JG:I think it was the scene at the Guggenheim.
JB:Yeah. We’re at the Guggenheim. It’slike a two- or four-second shot, something minuscule. And we added this 1950s sci-fi thereminsound. That was James’s idea, which he came to after all of us were riffing and trying stuff out for hours and hours.
JG:The sound comes in over the first interior shot of the Guggenheim. The movie stars two kids, and they’re at this strange museum,and a place like that must’ve felt like taking atrip to Mars for them. So, I thought of ChannelNine old science-fiction movies. [Makes a warbling sound]. You could show those movies 500times to people—not that they should ever have to suffer that—and no one would be able to point out that there’s a theremin on that track. When we added the theremin sound, Josh thought itwas great, so I got the idea of creating this prize among our team, like what will win this movie’s Theremin Prize? What sound effect will we love so much that really enhances the scene?
ROBERT HEIN:What you’re experiencing now is a lot like what we experienced 12 to15 hours a day with James [laughs]. We’re challenged to our limits, but he makes it fun. If you watch a James Gray film, the minute it starts to the minute it ends, it has sound design. He’s one of the very few that know how to do it; it’s a verychallenging, very intuition-oriented thing to do.On this film, the Theremin Prize was awarded toJames after much competition. We all wanted towin—I came very close! But James knocked it outof the park in the home assault scene with thevoice of the Russian. What did he say?
JG:[Spooky Slavic voice] “Irwin Pearl.” Butyou’re forgetting the almost-prizewinner, in thescene that Beatrice mentioned with the car. Doyou remember?
JB:It was a pig squeal! As James was saying, sound is one of those things that can bemanipulated in a bunch of different ways thatpicture cannot. So, you find these sounds thatevoke emotion, and you do a bunch of things tothem that stretch them even further, sonicallybut also emotionally. He’s reaching over intothe glove compartment, and as an audiencemember you’re like, “What is he going to pullout?” And then a little bit into that scene, whenwe’re building up all this tension, we added this manipulated pig squeal. It created this subconscious-conscious understanding of the fear that these boys are experiencing. Also, earlier in the scene, there’s a little bit of breath on the window,just as one of the Russian assailants is comingup—we all liked that one, too. We had a wholelist of rankings.
JG:Josh brought up the breath on the window because that was his idea.
JB:Not a competition here. . . . Well, Iguess it actually is.
RH:It’s like the Kentucky Derby. WhenJames gets to the mix, the first day is like thegates open, and we start for like three or fourweeks of intense work.
JG:And I always go over. [Laughs.] I always tell that to my producers. Whatever mixschedule we have, I’m going over. I don’t go over on anything else. I actually set up the scenesand direct them with an eye toward soundlater, which is a little unorthodox. The director has two areas of weaponry. The first is theframe. What’s in it? What are you seeing? Andthe second-largest weapon, which I think isunderutilized today, particularly by Americandirectors, is off-screen space. What’s happening outside the realm of the frame? What wecan’t see is deeply disturbing. Do you know the Roman Polanski story about setting up a shot onRosemary’s Baby [1968]?
BL: Tell me.
JG:So, the marvelous cinematographerwas William Fraker, and Polanski says to Fraker, “I want you to set up a POV shot where MiaFarrow is looking at [Ruth] Gordon on the telephone.” He sets up this perfect shot with a longlens of Ruth Gordon on the telephone. Polanskilooks in the camera and says, “No! No! No!” Andhe takes it and moves it one foot to the left. Instead of this perfect shot, you have a door frameand just a hint of the woman’s back sitting onthe bed. Then, at the premiere, when that shotcomes, the whole audience goes like this [tiltshead and body] to try and see what’s around thedoor. I tell you this story because that’s whatthe cinema is, it’s sometimes refusing to showwhat we think we should see and letting soundfill that hole. We talk about this a lot in the mix,what I like to call the Ringo Starr principle,which is the idea of knowing when not to play.
BL: The fact that we see so little in the home invasion scene is part of why it’s so effective. You hear this distant shuffling and the lightest opening and closing of doors or maybe windows—you don’tknow exactly what, but something’s there.
JG:I was unhappy with that sequencewhen I finished the editing. I only had half a dayto film most of it. I had storyboarded like 20 setups, and I think I only got something like nine. Iwasn’t happy with how I shot it.
BL: I thought it was lovely. The long shadows reminded me of The Night of the Hunter [1955].
JG:I love that comparison, but I was actually thinking about Hitchcock. The silhouettebehind the curtain before she’s killed, whichby the way I stole from the movie The SeventhVictim [1943], and Hitchcock must’ve done thesame with his silhouette behind the shower curtain. The point is, you don’t see the killers, sothe invasion takes on a much scarier idea thatthey’re everywhere. I didn’t shoot it to the degree I wanted to, so I said to these guys, “You gotto save my ass.” And they did.
RH:You’re in the bedroom. He wakes up,and we start introducing a feeling. Then, as thescene went along, we had to intensify the fearand tension, which we did by adding little sonictouches and tweaks throughout.
JB:Instead of relying on music or a score totell us how we should feel, the film does it withmore natural sounds. And these are sounds thatwe work through and build up and throw ideasat. In that scene, there’s no score until the veryend when they reveal the moved furniture andmom and dad get into this altercation.
JG:It’s very important that you try to use as little music as possible. Not because youdisrespect the score but because you respect it immensely! It only has value when it’s a memorable addition. If you have 120 minutes of music in a 120-minute-long movie, it doesn’t meananything! Think of the few notes, the trumpet sounds, in The Godfather [1972]. You’d be shockedto learn how much of Nino Rota’s music actuallyplays in this very long film. You can’t hum any ofthe music in Avengers: Endgame [2019] because itall blurs together, it plays throughout the wholething! I don’t want to pass judgment, but musicin that film operates like sound design, but youcan’t do that in a movie where it’s just a bunchof guys in Queens.
BL: The Ringo Starr principle. That brings me to the incredible sound work in the final shootout, which works so well because there is an element of withholding or obscuring. The weaving togetherof silence, plants rustling, the muffling of sound caused by the airplane takeoffs—how did that blend come about?
RH:I’ll speak on that because at first Jameswasn’t with us when Josh and I prepared that scene. We had a very clear idea of what we weredoing, and it turns out we did the exact oppositeof what James was thinking, and we showed it tohim, and he goes, “I don’t understand. This is supposed to be surreal. It’s supposed to be emotional.” We had made it very realistic, so we wentback and started over again with James, and it came to where you see it now, with this visionarysound design.
JG:That’s not true. Though that’s very nice, Bob. What happened was, at first I sat down at my console, and I said, “Yeah, that’s garbage. What are you doing? Why are you wrecking my scene?” But once I said I was after this other thing, they took the ball and ran with it. I told them that this is a character essentially going to heaven, retreating back to the primordial ooze, so the whole thing has to be kind of cosmic. He’s going to sacrifice himself for his brother, and he’s now going to become one with the universe. It has nothing todo with a shootout in traditional terms. OnceI told them that, they did all the rest. I didn’tdo shit.
RH:[Laughs.] Fine.
JG:It’s leaves, bugs, birds. It’s almost likethe closest thing I’ve done so far to death. It’s that moment right before the colonoscopy whenI’m getting put to sleep. It’s a very strange acceptance state, not death as DUN-DUN! but as athing of release. I admire him and love his movies very much, but I wanted to do the opposite ofa Sidney Lumet–style shootout.
BL: I get what you mean about it not being realistic, but there’s still a physicality to it, a sort of sensory experience that felt very real.
JG:Yeah, I guess that’s why we couldn’t gettoo weird—because then, that would be distancing us from the experience. The point was to putus with him. When I’ve read about these near-death experiences for people. . . . Maybe this isgetting a little pretentious, but right before myfather died of COVID—and this was the absolutebottom of the pandemic so I couldn’t go see himbecause he was in a crowded hospital room—wehad a phone conversation like right before the moment he died. He calls me up like 45 minutesbefore he’s gone, and he says, “So, you’re in thehouse? The kids are good? The dog is all right?What about your health insurance? Yeah, okay,goodbye.” So, something in him told him that he was going, and the call was all about makingsure I was at peace. I thought about that a lot forthe scene. The sound had to be violent, but alsobeautiful.
