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Filmmaker Derek Cianfrance said he had to convince the actor to stay on the crime drama movie just weeks before filming began.
By Carly Thomas
Associate Editor
The Place Beyond the Pines director Derek Cianfrance revealed that Bradley Cooper nearly quit the 2013 film after receiving a rewritten script.
The filmmaker, who also co-wrote the crime drama starring Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes, recently told IndieWire at the New Directors/New Films festival that he brought in screenwriter Darius Marder to rewrite “every word” of the movie just before filming began.
However, Cianfrance said once the Star Is Born actor read the updated script, he was not very happy with the changes to his character, Avery, a police officer who kills an empathetic thief (Gosling) halfway through the movie.
“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 10 weeks to six weeks,” he recalled. “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 claimed Cooper was frustrated because it was “not the movie that we had signed up to do.” So the filmmaker said he paid a visit to the Maestro actor to hopefully change his mind, notably since the film was partially funded due to Cooper’s involvement.
“I was moving my family up to Schenectady the next day, and the whole crew was coming up there. I had all the money anyway,” the Blue Valentine director added. “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 [he was convinced]. I think he just got tired. He wanted to go to bed.”
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Cooper’s rep for comment.
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