Derek Cianfrance, who co-wrote and directed the 2012 crime drama film The Place Beyond The Pines, has revealed that Bradley Cooper almost wasn’t a part of the movie.
The film, which also stars Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes, Rose Byrne and Mahershala Ali, tells three linear stories across fifteen years, exploring the complex relationship between a motorcycle stuntman and a police officer.
According to Cianfrance, the script was entirely rewritten by Darius Marder, just before principal photography began. However, the A Star Is Born actor did not approve of the changes.
Cianfrance began: “I had given [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 ten weeks to six weeks.”
He the explained: “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.’”
Cianfrance continued to explain Cooper’s negative reaction: “He was like, ‘That’s not the movie that we had signed up to do.’”
The Blue Valentine director then decided he would go to Cooper to convince him to take the role.
He explained: “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.”
He said about his conversation with Cooper: “I was like, ‘Can I come talk to you?’ 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.”
In other news, earlier this year Mendes hit back at critics of her husband Gosling’s Oscar nomination for Barbie.