By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(October 27, 2000) -- Director James Gray will never win awards for his speed. It's taken him six years to follow up the respected Little Odessa with the new The Yards.

But he might win for his passion.

Certainly, that's what comes out of a conversation with the intense-but-friendly 31-year-old filmmaker.

He's in a Toronto hotel room, talking about his new movie with Mark Wahlberg. It's about a family caught up in corruption among New York subway workers.

But Gray peppers his conversation with all sorts of movie references -- from Apocalypse Now, which inspired him to be a filmmaker when he was a kid in Queens, to some obscure art films that he insists inspired Stanley Kubrick's 2001.

It's not that he's bragging or preaching -- he just breathes movies in and out like most people do air.

And he says passion is what he most wants to discover in any potential film project.That's why he's only made two films over six years, and hasn't yet agreed to direct as a hired gun for someone else's script.

"Certainly I'd be willing, but most of the stuff I get sent is mercenary," he says, "They're written to make money, and not out of personal passion."

He adds that he doesn't necessarily mean he's looking for arty, original stuff. In fact, he loves gangster films, thrillers, and action movies, among other things.

"I love dealing with movie genres, because originality is over-rated in films. So, it's not the lack of originality that bothers me, but rather the lack of emotional commitment to storytelling as an art form.

"I tried very hard to make The Yards so the audience can sense the love among the characters."

And Gray's affection is understandable. It's rooted in family. His father worked for a subway repair company, and much of the Uncle Frank character played by James Caan is loosely based on him.

So the neighborhood, the setting, and some of the people are from Gray's background.

And, interestingly, the director encountered an actor on The Yards who could also identify. Mark Wahlberg plays the central character, a young man just out of prison, and trying to go straight. In real life, Wahlberg served time as juvenile for a robbery, before turning his life around as a rapper, a model and an actor.

"I had not wanted Mark," Gray admits. "I had written the part for someone I know. I had a vision of Mark just as the underwear guy. Then his agent kept calling me up.

"Mark met with me and kept saying, 'Jim, Jim, I'm that person. Please let me do it. When I got out of prison, they had a party for me, just like in the script. I'm that guy!' "

"When an actor wants a role so passionately, you figure he's going to bring something to it. After the third meeting, I said I'd use this guy. And I can't believe how good he is."

Growing up in Queens, Gray first imagined himself as a painter -- and he still paints as a way to design the looks of his films. But he turned to movie-making after seeing films by Francis Coppola.

He studied at the University of Southern California film school before returning to New York to make Little Odessa, about Russian immigrants on the mean streets of Brooklyn.

Gray says he expects his next film will also be a New York City project -- the last of a sort of trilogy. He says it'll be about the street crimes unit of the New York Police Department.

"It was set up in 1971, which is about when New York was changing from the city of Breakfast at Tiffanys to the city of The French Connection."

"I figure I've done gangsters and businessmen, so now it's time to do cops."