Director: Cooper nearly pulled out of ‘The Place Beyond The Pines’
BRADLEY Cooper nearly pulled out of ‘The Place Beyond The Pines’ because it wasn’t what he signed up for.
The 2012 American epic crime drama film starring Ryan Gosling as Luke, a motorcycle stunt rider who supports his family through a life of crime, and Cooper as Avery, a policeman who confronts his corrupt police department underwent a complete rewrite after the latter, whose involvement helped to pay for the flick, made it known he was not happy.
Speaking at IndieWire’s Screen Talk live at the New Directors/New Films festival, writer/director Derek Cianfrance recalled: “I had given [Darius Marder] the script and he had a lot of notes for it, and I kind of agreed with a lot of what he was saying. And so we rewrote every word from 10 weeks to six weeks.
“I remember giving Bradley Cooper the copy of ‘The Place Beyond the Pines,’ the new script, and getting a voice message from him saying, “Bro, I just want to let you know I read the new draft and I’m out.”
“He was like, ‘That’s not the movie that we had signed up to do.’”
The pair ended up having lengthy discussions in the early hours to get the ‘A Star Is Born’ star back on board, and Cianfrance thinks Cooper agreed in the end because he was getting tired.
The filmmaker continued: “I was moving my family up to Schenectady the next day [to be on location] and the whole crew was coming up there. I had all the money anyway.
“So I went up to Montreal, and I had a long conversation with him from midnight to 3:30 in the morning where I got him back on. It was only in the last five minutes [when I convinced him]. I think he just got tired. He wanted to go to bed.”