James Grays Amazon jungle quest.
The Lost City of Z, was the filmmakers biggest and most difficult film yet.
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James Gray:Thats a great question.
I have a wife and two boys and a girl.
I want to come with you.
They camped in the jungle with me.
The movie began to take on a very personal feel.
Your shower is the rainwater thing that you pull and its cold water that comes out.
Every day is the same, its equatorial so you have equal time night and day.
The parallel is very clear.
I mean, the movie was brutal.
I remember reading the book and then writing the adaptation of it.
I make a run at push that out of my mind.
He reads it and he goes, Why would you want to make this?
Why would you want to do this?
We shot in Colombia and Peru.
For the first two weeks, I thought, this is great.
I understand theres no hot water and its really hot, but Im here and Im doing it.
Then you were on the river all day in the most punishing heat.
You cant help but have it hit you in a major way.
To be candid about it, a certain madness kind of sets in.
Theres no way to avoid it.
That movie is so incredible, but I literally dont understand how he physically was able to tolerate that.
And that was 40 years ago.
They didnt have even some of the conveniences you might have had now.
Well, we didnt have very many conveniences, I will say that.
We tried to go old school.
We shot on film.
We didnt watch any dailies.
We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
The other was the crew raft.
Its interesting what it does to you.
You begin to live the movie in a way that is both good and terrible.
He said preposterous things about meeting groups of white Indians who would be more evolved and all that.
You have to judge the person within the context of 1905 Edwardian England.
I accepted that level of ethically challenged, morally challenged person.
Also, he went on eight trips, not three as we have in the film.
In fact, he was considerably more obsessed, even more than the character in the film.
Its an approximation of a greater truth.
Its not a documentary.
Your next project is a science fiction film,Ad Astra.
Its interesting because youre always trying to make the same film over and over again.
There was both this struggle to do the exact same movie and in a completely different framework.
Its almost told from the point of view of Jack in the movie.
I thought, Oh, thats interesting.
I mean, Western Europe had no idea what was down there.
They didnt have an acute or detailed awareness of the content and its details.
Fawcett, really, was traveling down to space.
So what Im working on now is only really an extension of what it is Im trying to explore.
Ive never been asked that.
I have to think about my answer there.
Im making you work hard this morning.
I thought wow, thats the greatest thing I ever heard.
The Lost City of Zis playing now in New York and Los Angeles and expands nationwide next week.
