page_title: The Place Beyond the Pines
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: The Place Beyond the Pines / Production / Development
caption_attribution_description: Derek Cianfrance at the premiere of Place Beyond the Pines, Toronto Film Festival 2012 Too bad, that Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper kind of walked on by, so no shots of them here.
context_page_description: The Place Beyond the Pines is a 2012 American neo-noir crime drama film directed by Derek Cianfrance, and written by Cianfrance, Ben Coccio, and Darius Marder. The film tells three linear stories: Luke, a motorcycle stunt rider who supports his family through a life of crime, Avery, an ambitious policeman who confronts his corrupt police department, and lastly, two troubled teenagers who explore the aftermath of Luke and Avery fifteen years later. The supporting cast includes Eva Mendes, with Ben Mendelsohn, Rose Byrne, Mahershala Ali, Bruce Greenwood, Harris Yulin, and Ray Liotta.
  Cianfrance was inspired to write the film based on his experiences as a father. Coccio and Marder, who shared similar interests in film and media, helped write the story. Cianfrance envisioned the main themes to be about fathers and sons, masculine identity and legacy. The film reunites Cianfrance and Gosling, who had previously worked together in 2010's Blue Valentine. The role of Luke was written for Gosling, as he expressed an interest in playing a bank robber. Filming took place in Schenectady, New York, during the summer of 2011.
context_section_description: Cianfrance's inspiration for the story first started when he saw Abel Gance's 1927 silent film Napoleon, which uses a triptych (three-screen) technique to play out an once. In 2007, the birth of Cianfrance's second son reignited the idea, and he started to think about being a father again and the responsibilities involved. "That got me to thinking about the fire I felt inside me, which had been with me for as long as I could remember. It helped me to do many things. But it was also, many times, a destructive and painful force", he said. He stated it was important for him, as an artist, to do something personal and challenging. He also read the works of Jack London, including the novel The Call of the Wild, and became intrigued with the idea of legacy and what our ancestors had to do for survival. Shortly, Cianfrance met Ben Coccio, who shared a similar interest of books and films, began writing the screenplay. The third screenwriter, Darius Marder, joined the project four months before principal photography began.
  Meanwhile, Cianfrance was still working on the film Blue Valentine (2010), which stars Ryan Gosling. In 2007, Gosling told him about a fantasy which involved "robbing a bank, on a motorcycle, and then making a very specific getaway." Cianfrance told Gosling, "You've got to be kidding me, I'm writing that movie right now." The pair shared numerous identical ideas, and knew that The Place Beyond the Pines would be another opportunity to work together again. Cianfrance envisioned the story to be about fathers and sons, masculine identity, "reinvention or transformation of the self for a man over a period". He added, "It's about legacy—what we're born with and what we pass on. It's about the choices we make and how those choices echo throughout generations. It's a classic tale of the sins of the father being visited upon the son".
  While Cianfrance is not a fan of violence in film, he is drawn to displaying the narrative of it and "how a gun could come in" and affect peoples' lives. The first draft of the script ran over 160 pages, which required much refinements from the three writers. Once filming began, they had produced 37 versions of the script. Coccio came up with the title of The Place Beyond the Pines, which is the Iroquoios translation of Schenectady—"the place beyond the pines". The city is where Coccio spent his childhood and Cianfrance frequently visits. The writers sent the final script to Sidney Kimmel Entertainment; they financed the film and gave the director and crew "a lot of trust, space and time".
caption: Derek Cianfrance, director
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