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.’”
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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.