Ryan Gosling on Terrence Malick, directing again, that Oscar flub
NEW YORK Even amid the chaotic melee on the Dolby Theatre stage during the infamous best-picture Oscar flub, Ryan Gosling was typically unflappable. While most reacted with shock and confusion, there was the “La La Land” star — cool and bemused — chuckling on the side of the stage.
“What can you say?” Gosling said in an interview by phone from Los Angeles. “I was very happy for ‘Moonlight’ at the same time. It’s such a wonderful film. It’s great to see such great work acknowledged.”
It takes a lot to rattle Gosling. But making Terrence Malick’s largely improvised “Song to Song,” the 36-year-old actor grants, was like working “without a net.” Gosling stars in the film, which expands in theatres this weekend, alongside Michael Fassbender and Rooney Mara. It’s broadly speaking a love triangle set against the music scene of Austin, Texas, but plot describes only so much in a Malick movie.
Gosling is currently readying for another film with “La La Land” director Damien Chazelle, in which he’ll play astronaut Neil Armstrong. And he stars in this fall’s sci-fi sequel “Blade Runner 2049.”
AP: How did Malick approach you?
Gosling: It was just: Would you be interested in working without a script? I said sure. A little more than a year later, he asked me to come out to Austin. They were doing some kind of preliminary shooting at one of the music fests out there. The idea was that he wanted to try to cause what he called “collisions” between a narrative film and this music scene in Austin, to take these scenes into real environments.
AP: How did you talk about the film?
Gosling: There were these themes of love and betrayal he was discussing a lot with us. It seemed to me that what he was trying to do with this unique process of shooting was to sort of take a sledgehammer to those themes and break them into smaller pieces so he could reassemble them into a different form that would give the audience an opportunity to see them from a different perspective — maybe his perspective.
AP: You directed “Lost River,” a highly personal Detroit-set fairy tale, shortly after making “Song to Song.” Was Malick an inspiration?
Gosling: He would give me the camera almost every day and have me shoot something. It was great for me just to be having that practice knowing I was about to go make a film on my own.
AP: Do you think about directing again?
Gosling: Absolutely. It was one of the best experiences of my professional life. I look forward to doing it again.