Armageddon Time: Read the script for James Gray’s personal drama about family and the pursuit of the American dream

Editor’s note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the screenplays of films that will appear in this year’s film awards races.

Writer-director James Gray returned to the staff for Armageddon timethe autobiographical story that stems from Gray’s own upbringing in a multi-generational Jewish-American family in the New York borough of Flushing, Queens.

The Focus Features film confronts issues of race and class against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan’s impending election to the presidency in 1980. The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May and was released in late October.

successor Star and Emmy winner Jeremy Strong (a fellow New Yorker) stars Armageddon time as Irving Graff, essentially Gray’s real father. The plot revolves around the Graffs taking their son Paul (Banks Repeta) from public school to a private school, which is supported by Fred Trump, the father of Donald Trump (played by John Diehl). Other leads in the cast include Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain.

One aspect of the script was Paul’s relationship with his childhood friend Johnny, played by Jaylin Webb in the film. Gray revealed to Deadline that the real Johnny was killed in a drug deal in the mid-1980s, about six years after the events of the film.

A well-rounded depiction of the period (the opening words in the script are “EXT. The Clouds”), the film is so close to real life that Gray even shot scenes a stone’s throw from his real childhood home.

Grey, who previously directed Ad Astra and The Lost City of Zsaid that honesty is crucial to making art.

“For me, the process that every creative person of any interest has to go through is not to promote a rosy or pleasant idea or a lie, but to promote something that is as honest as possible because that is true honest dialogue and The debate can begin,” he said. “I can’t argue with you when I say, ‘I’m a great guy and my life has been great and nothing bad has ever happened to me. OK, if that’s true, then what are we talking about, right? Everything is good.”

Armageddon Time is the latest in a series of films set in New York for the next Grey Little Odessa, The Yards, The Night Is Ours, Two Lovers and The immigrant.

Read his Armageddon time script below.