Why do the robbery scenes in Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond The Pines seem so authentic? They're as close as you can get to the real thing without breaking the law! "Derek had this rule that all of those bank heists would be shot in one take," explains star Ryan Gosling. "And so there was just an energy to them that I don't think you could have got if you were breaking it up."
Turns out Cianfrance drew inspiration from an unlikely source for a top indie director. "My reference point for those robbery sequences wasn't other movies, it was America's Wildest Police Chases and Cops!...We had to really do these things!"
The Magic of Ryan Gosling
That's Gosling racing through the streets of Schenectady, NY on a bike? Cianfrance says that because of the way he wanted to shoot the action scenes, it had to be. So they had the actor train with The Dark Knight franchise motorcycle stuntman Rick Miller, who after their first training session ranked Gosling on a scale of 1-10 at 3... In fact, Miller felt that with just eight weeks of prep time, he couldn't get the actor beyond a 3.5 or 4. But as Gosling's fans will tell you, the man can work miracles.
"The day before production," marvels Cianfrance, "I said 'What level did Ryan get to?' He said about a 7! So that shows you the magic of Ryan Gosling."
The Place Beyond The Pines opens in NY and LA today, and expands to more theaters on April 5.
Check out my full interviews with the director and cast below, including Gosling's thoughts on how Drive was his version of a superhero movie:
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