Cannes 2010 Interview: Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine)

Blue Valentine followed in the footsteps of Lee Daniels’ Precious, in that both films began their festival life in Park City and would make their international premiere in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes where the international critics shared the same enthusiasm for the film as the Sundance audiences did.

While my first interview with Derek Cianfrance in Park City focused on the form and technique, this follow-up interview (on the rooftop of the Hotel Palais Stephanie on the Croisette) touched upon the life of the film after it preemed in January. My burning first question would go with the choice to be distributed by the Weinstein Co. who would bring the film to Toronto and would end up going toe to toe with the MPAA on a crucial downgrading of the film from NC-17 to R, they even went as far as dumping Andrew Jarecki’s All Good Things which also stars Ryan Gosling.

Prior to my second viewing of the film, I had noticed a very slim change in the runtime and was curious to know how much more work Cianfrance had put into the film — as he mentions he chopped some scenes and expanded others with the goal to “do the same movie but make people’s ass hurt a little less.” I also noticed actor Scott Speedman’s name in the credits and I thought he had workshopped the film at a Sundance lab, but Speedman was at some point attached to the film (when one works with a project for twelve years there is bound to be several names participate in fleshing out the roles of Dean and Cindy — actually Benicio Del Toro and Ashley Judd were the first pair that Cianfrance had thought of — but having seen the film it’s hard to imagine that anyone else would be a better fit for the roles. I also made a passing comment that the older Dean sort of resembled the filmmaker himself and I wanted to know if that had been a conscious decision on the actor’s part. We touched upon the level of intimacy attained by his duet and finally we talked about his upcoming projects. His more imminent project appears to be The Place Beyond the Pines, which was mentioned to go into production sometime next year and Metalhead appears to be the project he’ll be working on for a long haul. Regardless, of what comes next, we hope this genius filmmaker picks up the pace and regularly churns out further masterworks.

The Weinstein Co. opened Blue Valentine on December 29th and the film will expand over the coming weeks.