As Paper Tiger has just premiered at Cannes, James Gray revisited the chaotic post-production of Ad Astra with Brad Pitt.
Because you don’t change a team that loses, director James Gray left the official Cannes competition empty‑handed once again. In six selections, that’s starting to look like a pattern. Yet, global cinephilia didn’t wait for prizes to crown the American one of its favorites. Since his very first work, Little Odessa (which, for its part, took home the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival in 1994), we’ve known: James Gray belongs among the greats.
Nevertheless, there is indeed one film that has not found unanimous acclaim in the director’s career: his space odyssey with Brad Pitt, Ad Astra. This little misstep (for some) may stem from the clash of visions that had opposed James Gray and the Disney studios—the former did not obtain the final cut. The filmmaker had already spoken on the matter, and he has recently revisited the misadventure again.
DISNEY SAID NO
In 2018, the outlet World of Reel had reported how the post-production of Ad Astra became the scene of disagreements between James Gray and his studio over the Disney film. The result: the film’s definitive cut was far from what the filmmaker wanted. To borrow today’s popular English expression: he was denied the director’s cut. The result: a voice‑over the director did not want, a few extra action scenes, and even flashbacks with Liv Tyler’s character, apparently requested by Brad Pitt.
This year, it was in an interview with the outlet Brut, as part of the promotion for Paper Tiger, that James Gray revisited this painful moment:
“I had total control over this film [Paper Tiger], unlike Ad Astra, which was seized from my hands. It isn’t my version. There were talks, debates, a studio, then 20th Century Fox was acquired by Disney. We get caught in that machinery. The film cost $80 million, Paper Tiger $15 million. I love working at that scale, because I don’t think it’s productive to let people alter your film and bear the consequences.”
The filmmaker even went a step further, hinting at what would change in his own version of the space odyssey:
“It would have been a very different film […] It would have run 12 minutes shorter. I’m the only director who has made a director’s cut that’s shorter. I hope to do one someday. Of course, it’s not up to me to decide, but I would love to do it; it would be wonderful.”
Following Steven Soderbergh’s Star Wars (The Hunt for Ben Solo) or the Dune that David Lynch himself truly dreamed of, we now have another cinephile fantasy that will probably remain a sweet dream. It seems more reasonable to wait—with anticipation—for Paper Tiger to arrive in our theaters. No date has yet been announced by the French distributor, SND.
