NYFF opens with James Gray's "Paper Tiger." The festival chief's telling aside: this personal film credits 24 executive producers.

The 64th New York Film Festival has opened at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall with James Gray's "Paper Tiger," Variety reports. Set in 1986, it follows two brothers, Irwin and Gary Pearl, whose get-rich-quick scheme to help clean up the Gowanus Canal lands them in the crosshairs of the Russian mafia. Adam Driver and Miles Teller star, with Scarlett Johansson as Linda, the wife of Teller's character. The film premiered at Cannes in May, which Johansson missed while shooting another movie, and she arrived for this screening just off a long international flight. "I'm hallucinating," she said. Driver credited the director: "A set culture comes from the top down, and James sets a culture where everyone feels free." Festival artistic director Dennis Lim introduced Gray as "one of the great living American filmmakers," then said the quiet part out loud: "It's not easy to make personal films in the current landscape of American cinema." As evidence, he pointed to the 24 executive producers credited on this one. The festival runs through Oct. 12. Here is the lesson. A story about brothers, a dirty canal and a bad bet is the kind of grown-up drama that used to be a studio staple. Now it takes two dozen backers to get one made. When a film like this reaches your town, buy the ticket. That is how you tell an industry what you want more of.