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In Armageddon Time, writer/director James Gray reaches back into his own life to recreate a moment from recent history. Set in Queens, New York, at the start of the 1980s, Armageddon Time tells the story of Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), an eleven-year-old who is just starting to grasp the hard realities of the world he lives in. The security that his parents (Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong) and his sage grandfather (Anthony Hopkins) provide him contrast sharply with the fragile support system provided to his African American best friend, Johnny (Jaylin Webb). At first glance, the world of Armageddon Time, with its clunky computers and miniature TVs, seems part of the distant past. Only at closer viewing do its social and political realities appear dangerously close to home. As The Los Angeles Times notes, “The distance and specificity of the movie’s 1980 setting serve as a reminder, troubling as well as reassuring.”
To get the veneer of 1980s Queens just right, Gray turned to his collaborator, production designer Happy Massee. In addition to production designing two of Gray’s earlier films, The Immigrant and Two Lovers, Massee has lent his talent to creating cutting-edge environments for music videos and high-end fashion campaigns. In Armageddon Time, Massee worked closely with Gray to recreate, piece-by-piece, the artifacts of the past. “We copied as much as we could, notes Gray. “The cheesy hi-fi system, the green carpet, the sofa with the green and turquoise blue pattern… the weird mix of Danish modern with the Ethan Allen furniture.”
We spoke with Massee about working with Gray to get the period pitch perfect, finding the exact artifacts of the time, and recognizing how this story speaks to the world we live in now.
Get tickets to Armageddon Time now.
Where did you shoot the various schools in the film?
We ended shooting in Bayonne High School, which ended up being a sort of studio for us. In addition to the schools, we shot five other locations there. There are two wings in the school, which we used in different ways. For the public school, we just dressed the classroom, set up shades and window treatment. We used the hallways for the private school based on the Kew-Forest school. We were able to shoot both the public and private schools in the same wing. In the other wing, which was more modern, we created the computer room. Originally, I worried it might look too modern, but when James saw it, he said it looked exactly like the computer room in his school.
There are so many objects, from compact TVs to period lunchboxes, that give the film its authenticity. How did you gather all those period artifacts?
I think that James has a photographic memory that goes beyond his own lifetime. He remembers every little detail, such as a friend’s lunch box, perfectly. When I had a question, he could find the exact object in two minutes on Google. For the computer that was stolen in the film, we had to find an Apple II. At the time it came out, the Apple II had three components, which we found. What we didn’t know—but James did—is that it didn’t have all three components when it was launched. On the day of the shoot, I had to scramble to find the right component that it had when it came out. James was incredibly helpful in getting all the details right, like the exact dining room chandelier used in the film.
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