DEREK CIANFRANCE

Illustration Sharm Murugiah

Words Joshua Bullock

It took Derek Cianfrance twelve years in the directorial wilderness making documentaries before he made Blue Valentine (2011), the high watermark of recent domestic drama. It unflinchingly examines the place where love and life’s daily grind meet, through the mesmeric pairing of Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. Cianfrance’s subtle hand coaxes depth and integrity from his leads, allows space and time to brood without boring. The Place Beyond the Pines (2013) again keeps character at the forefront of an experimental and complex narrative with epic themes. Now filming his latest feature, The Light Between Oceans with Michael Fassbender, Cianfrance has become the rising director today’s best acting talent wants to work with. In an interview with So It Goes’ Joshua Bullock, he lifts the lid on his methods and the growing pains of a slow rise.

52 53 Joshua Bullock : Where have you just come from? the audience. No one cared about how many edits I made or how Derek Cianfrance : I’ve just been casting my next film, The Light many cool shots I had. All they wanted to do was experience a story, to Between Oceans. Wow, actors have it hard. Directors are imagining feel something. things, just dreaming things, whereas actors actually have to go put themselves out there. Some people can see it as vanity, but they’re the JB : Which is how a first film usually ends up. ones putting themselves in vulnerable places. To be actually judged for DC : Yeah, maybe. But if you put that first film out into the world and who they are. These castings are so painful for me because there are the world doesn’t embrace it then they can put you on the bench. And these human beings on display. I don’t have to do that. I admire that that’s what happened, I got put on the bench. I had to sit there and in them, that thing I don’t have. watch other people play for twelve years. In time, I started directing documentaries and it was only then that I really started to learn. Being JB : But they arrive on the day, you’ve been paying the price for months a documentary filmmaker was penance. I would do an interview with and months beforehand. someone and they wouldn’t necessarily answer the question the way I DC : Yeah, but a good actor is always on a bit of a vision quest. All of thought they should. Things would happen, we’d be at a table and the their life experiences feed into their movies and their performances. coffee would spill and I would be shooting and I’d only have one take The first film I made was a movie called Brother Tied… for the scene, so I learned to humble myself and embrace the real-life lack of choices. JB : …I hear the 35mm print is sitting in your basement. DC : It is, in my dad’s basement. But it’s the worst because it’s all JB : Who were you twelve years on from your failed first film? You’d about me. When I was a kid I loved Taxi Driver. I loved the way it was written Blue Valentine at pretty much the same time you released made, the way it made me feel. But what I remember is standing Brother Tied. in front of the mirror and saying, “You talkin’ to me?” I used to DC : I had become a father, gotten married, fallen in love. When I emulate Travis Bickle because of the human being, because of the finally made Blue Valentine I had pushed that script around for twelve performance, because of the actor. That movie’s great but not without years, I’d written sixty-six drafts and finally I had Ryan [Gosling] and that performance, without Harvey Keitel and Jodie Foster and Albert Michelle [Williams] and 1,224 story boards. I had that movie in my Brooks and Cybil Shepherd. They all add up to creating this world head. My fear about it was that when I started shooting I was going to you believe in. Otherwise, you’re just making Ansel Adams pictures. make something that was all about me again. You need the people. That’s the only thing that matters to me, the people. JB : How did you raise the funding? How did it actually happen? After sixty-six drafts... JB: You were a student under the legendary experimental filmmakers DC : I just kept sending it out, and eventually when you believe Phil Solomon and Stan Brakhage. A real alternative to most in something enough, more people around you start to believe in 3,9/>:80 mainstream film schools. it. That’s just inevitable. I was too stubborn to let it go and I tried ,9/30,=? ?30 DC: Absolutely. I’m very thankful. I was so disappointed to have to everything. I competed in this Chrysler short film competition – I won 7@60 ?3=:-> go to school in Colorado, but in hindsight it was the best experience I a million dollars, so had this giant cheque in my house, one of those FRIDAY THRU SUNDAY COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS could have had – I got to observe these real artists, and they challenged big cardboard cut-outs. At the end of the day they only actually gave us MUSIC HORSE SHOW FREE RIDES TRUCK SHOW my view of cinema, my view of the world, opening up the possibilities 250,000 dollars. of what it could be. They also just showed me how to work, as an artist. I had a student film I was going to do about a vampire and I wanted to JB : Why? call it Suck. I went to Phil Solomon’s office and told him. He basically DC : Because I didn’t make it in the timeframe. At the point when just emasculated me. I realised it was incredibly immature. I won the million-dollar cheque I didn’t have Ryan and Michelle, I had another cast. I had had the plug pulled on me so many times by JB: You were being ironic before you even started. Solomon also told other people and then I had this other cast involved in Blue Valentine you that content should illuminate form rather than form illuminating who were people I liked. I realised I’d rather not make my film than content. What did he mean by that? make the wrong version of it, so I pulled the plug myself. Two years DC: I grew up with this idea of the director as such a big deal; the later when I finally made it with Ryan and Michelle, the money wasn’t guy who sits in a chair with his name on it, telling everyone what to all there. do. Usually you see images of him pointing – that’s iconic. I embodied that in my early films. I heard The Wild Ones had 1,600 edits and so I JB : How did you set up those two halves of Blue Valentine and the six decided I wanted to make a film with more edits. So I raised 40,000 years that pass between them? Did you give them a month off and say dollars – from my dentist, selling T-shirts, selling chocolate Easter ‘go get fat’, ‘Ryan, go accelerate that receding hairline and come back bunnies, whatever I had to do to save money to have 40,000 dollars in April?’ basically so I could do 1,601 edits of Brothers Tied. It was about me, I DC : Ha ha, not quite. Basically we got a house and lived in it was making a movie that was about what I could do. When I watch together. I wanted to wait six years to do it. Shoot the past, and then that movie it’s a bit embarrassing to me. I appreciate its naïveté and wait six years. But the financier only gave me a weekend. So in order its ambition, but I don’t think anyone cared. I went to Sundance with to get a whole month I had to sell all my lighting equipment, sell all it when I was twenty-four years old and there were sixty people in the camera tools, and again that was all perfect with my mindset right

54 55 then. I wanted to kill the machine of making films. I’m in the process JB : So with all that meticulous preparation and bringing so much out of that right now with The Light Between Oceans. There’s only so much of your actors, how faithful to your original plans for a scene are you money that I have and I want to invest all of it in time and space for once you review your final footage? the actors. I’d rather have that than a great helicopter shot. There DC: I always say editing is murder. The only thing that helps in the are certain filmmakers who are so good they can just push the artifice editing room is working with my friends Jim and Ron. Together at button and you feel something there and then. Why are you crying? least we make it enjoyable. I don’t really use a script supervisor on set, You look around and everyone in the theatre’s crying at that exact telling me which shooting days I liked. In Blue Valentine there’s a scene moment. I don’t want to do that. I want to make movies that are more with Ryan and Michelle where she’s sitting on his lap on the bus and mysterious and more human. My favourite films are ones that change I remember telling them it looked weird. I didn’t want her to be his over time. baby. I tell my actors, let’s not judge anything. If you want to do it, do it. But then conversely whatever I want to do, do it. We’ll just let the cream JB : So what did you do with the month? rise to the top in the edit. And in the editing room I was sure we were DC : I asked production designer Inbal Weinberg to deck out this going to use my version, but it wasn’t as good as the idea Ryan came whole house we were renting – Ryan, Michelle and the daughter Faith up with so we used his. I find editing torturous because so much has to – and make sure that it was fully functional so that there would be leave. You just have to murder all these gifts actors give you on the set. soap under the sink and sheets on the bed. The costume designer Not only murder moments, you have to murder entire people, entire put all of their wardrobe in their closets and their characters. I’ve cut my mum out of a movie. But underwear in their underwear drawer, so we it’s nice to have friends with you when you’re could live there. Then we came up with a budget, When I committing these atrocities. figuring out how much money they made a year. Ryan was a house painter, he made this much a finally made JB: It is striking how naturalistic the dialogue is week. Michelle was a nurse, she made this much in your films. Was that sort of experimental, a week. They had this much to spend on rent, Blue Valentine I had less-constructed cinematic experience one you this much to spend on car payment, babysitter, sought out growing up? insurance minus whatever else. They had 300 pushed that script DC: The first time I saw Faces, by John dollars a month for groceries, so I gave them around for twelve Cassavetes, I felt completely bewildered by it. All 300 dollars. They had to go grocery shopping, of my favourite movies make me feel like that. stuff that was never on the screen but would help years, I’d written He says his stuff isn’t improvised. I don’t know, them have memories to draw from. Slowly over we’ll have to take his word on it. He certainly time, things started to eat away at them. The first sixty-six drafts and has a way to make his movies feel alive. If my week was weird, everyone was psyched to be in first film, Brother Tied, had been successful, I the house and we were just watching movies and finally I had Ryan think I would have been a completely different listening to Leonard Cohen songs, but then after Gosling and Michelle filmmaker. Maybe I’d be doing much bigger- a week, the honeymoon started crumbling a little budget, megalomaniacal movies. But then I bit. Michelle was lying on the couch and Ryan Williams and 1,224 admire all kinds of movies. Even with Avatar, was doing the dishes again. Little bits of tension though it’s all technically very proficient, James came through. storyboards. I had Cameron still cares deeply about stories – he’s the best storyteller. I’d like to have a balance between JB : Did you engineer any other interplay between that movie in the way I work with actors and the technical – I Williams and Gosling? my head definitely want my films to be beautiful. But I’m DC : Once, we broke apart the sink and kept born for the cinema because you only have to get Ryan out of the house. The sink was dripping, it once. Like in casting, I can see eighty people leaking all over the house and Michelle was in the house alone. Ryan and they all lead to one. When I cast Ben Mendelsohn in The Place was outside wondering why he couldn’t go inside the house and I Beyond the Pines, it was after five seconds. He came in and said, “You’re said, “Well you’re at work right now.” At five o’clock he goes in the not going to have me read for you are you? If you do, it’ll be the last door and there’s water everywhere. Michelle is frantic because it’s thing I get to do for you.” I said, “What else should we do?” And he said, someone’s real house and she wants him to fix it and of course, he’s “Just give me the role and I’ll carry the script.” So I hired him. not a plumber. How she could think every man would just know how to do plumbing – there’s this battle of the sexes that’s starting to happen Previous page clockwise from top left: The Place Beyond the Pines; and I’m just outside listening to the chaos. It kind of reminds me of Pines; Pines, artwork; Blue Valentine; Brother Tied; Pines, artwork how I grew up, listening to arguments. This is how I live with my family now. We argue all the time, which is why I know how to communicate Opposite page Clockwise from top left: The Place Beyond the Pines; honestly. When the month was over, they had real experiences, the Blue Valentine; Pines; Blue Valentine; Cagefighter, documentary; Pines muscle memory of fights. Michelle needed that with Ryan because the guy is so smart, he’s impossible to argue with. You need to get brave to All The Place Beyond the Pines images © Focus Features; All fight with him. Blue Valentine images © Optimum

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