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Hello, I'm Derek Cianfrance. Director and co-writer of 'The Place Beyond The Pines'.
Director and co-writer of 'Blue Valentine'.
When I was living in Boulder in 1998 and first started writing this script
one night at 4:15 in the morning
I heard this voice, very faint in the distance
calling for, it must've been an animal that was lost.
Then the voice just disappeared off into the distance.
And I was so haunted by that moment, that,
that really inspired that opening scene of 'Blue Valentine'.
You weren't gonna tell me? - Hadn't heard from you in over a year.
You just took off. Never called me.
We try to do some silent takes
between the actors
and that's what I felt
had the most truth, the most secrets in them.
I gotta leave in four hours. I don't know what to do.
I try to get them to co-author their characters.
Go.
Can you dance?
Can you? - No!
Here,
I'll play a song, and you dance.
There's no tricks in the photography of 'Blue Valentine'.
There's no--
The artifice of the movie making isn't getting in the way
of their experience.
It's allowing for it.
We're not in any impossible place, y'know.
We're not outside the car looking through the window
but from over their shoulder
from behind them, we're seeing
observing this thing happen between two people.
You got a kid? You want to provide for that kid?
You gotta do that using your skill set.
I relate to people that are scared.
I go through my life for the most part scared.
Everybody get down on the floor!
And I think that is the definition of courage,
I don't think courage is about being fearless...
If you ride like lightning
you're gonna crash like thunder.
I think it's about being fearful
and still confronting it.
I didn't want to be somebody's husband.
And I didn't want to be somebody's dad. That wasn't my goal in life.
But somehow
I've--
It was what I wanted.
I didn't know that.
One of the big compliments
is when people say they relate to it.
When you're, like, 7 years old you can become the president, you know.
You can become anything you want to be when you're younger.
I think when you l--
start having experiences in life, you make choices,
every choice has a consequence
and I feel like when people get older
their--their path narrows.
I was thinking a lot about legacy.
I was thinking a lot about this fire I'd always felt inside
that I knew my father had had and my grandfather had had.
The last thing I wanted
was for my baby to have that fire, you know?
I wanted my baby to come into the world clean.
I wanted him to come into the world without
any of my sins, any of my mistakes,
any of my wrongdoings, any of my pain.
All of a sudden I had a movie to tell that would be
about those baton passes.
About that passing of the fire between generations.
It was about legacy.
It was about lineage.
About what we pass on.
Y'know, this is the American city
and the American movie.
I feel like I can watch my favorite movies over and over again.
They seem to change as I get older.
But I know the films aren't changing
I know it's me that's changing.
But the thing I appreciate about those films is they're made with an openness.
They allow the audience in on the imagination of the making of the film
of the imagination of the story.
I think it's beautiful to give characters
to give people some space sometimes.
Often times movies try to explain too much, y'know.
I like to have my own ideas when I watch a movie
and so I'm trying to give that to the audience.