Bradley Cooper almost quit The Place Beyond the Pines.
During Indiewire’s Screen Talk live at the New Directors/New Films festival, writer/director Derek Cianfrance — who co-wrote the feature with future Sound of Metal director Darius Marder — said Cooper didn’t like what he read after receiving an updated script. That’s because Marder and Cianfrance rewrote “every word.”
Cooper hated the changes to his character, a police officer who kills an empathetic thief (Ryan Gosling) midway through the 2013 film.
“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,” Cianfrance said. “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.’”
Cianfrance was in a bind, since the film was partially funded due to Cooper’s involvement.
“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,” Cianfrance said. He asked Cooper for an in-person visit .
“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.”
Cianfrance is now the producer of Exhibiting Forgiveness, Titus Kaphar’s feature directorial debut, which is part of the New Directors/New Films program.