An Interview with Derek Cianfrance, Director of Blue Valentine

Blue Valentine, which opened in Philadelphia theaters last week, blew up the Philadelphia Film Festival last year due to all the controversy surrounding its NC-17 rating. The rating, which was later overturned (due to the film’s emotional content of all things), propelled the film into the public eye and it is finally seeing a wide release with a shiny new R rating.

The film, which centers on a contemporary married couple and charts their evolution over a span of years by cross-cutting between time periods, is definitely a film to check out if you haven’t yet.

Director Derek Cianfrance took a few moments to chat with me about prepping and shooting Blue Valentine in a very intimate interview that I think really resonates with the material. I hope you enjoy the interview and check the film out.

What is the meaning behind the title of the film Blue Valentine?

Its an homage to Tom Waits… he has that album Blue Valentine. I think its kind of self-explanatory what it means.  I am such a fan of Tom Waits. I feel like he has saved my life so many times; you know when I was lonely.

I named it Blue Valentine for him.

Being from Pennsylvania, what was the inspiration behind using Honesdale, PA as a location in the film?

You know, I had worked on this script for 12 years, wrote like 66 drafts, storyboarded like 1,224 shots, wrote a manifesto and really just watched the movie in my head everyday.

That movie that I had in my head took place on the beach. I searched all over the coastline of America in those 12 years and I finally found a great location on the central coast of California in a place called Morro Bay… part of the blue in Blue Valentine was going to refer to the water and the sky, you know.

It took forever to get this film made, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. I am not trying to complain; because anytime I think you make a film it’s a small miracle.

I finally got everything together, I got the money together, I got Ryan on board and Michelle who had wanted to do the film since 2003, and I finally got the opportunity to start shooting. So I called Michelle and told her, “Everything is a go, time to pack your bags we’re going to Morro Bay.” She got very quiet on the other side of the line and she said, “I can’t do it”, and I was like “What do you mean? We have been talking about making his film for 6 years.”

She was like “I don’t think you understand, I promised my daughter I would tuck her in every night and take her to school every morning.” I told her “We could get beds out in California too, we could get her a tutor, and it’s going to be ok.” She was just like “I made a promise to her I have to keep her home.”

Being a parent I understand that, I understand not lying to your kids. We were both heart broken and she was crying on the phone, because this is a film she had dreamed of making for a third of her life.  So I hung up the phone and I was really depressed and the fact that she could make a decision like that for her family that was so selfless against her career, was the reason only she could play this role.  It was that heart and soul of hers, that was the essence of the film, it was about people, not about places.

So I called her the next day and told Michelle I had deal for her, “if I can relocate the film to within an hour of where you live in upstate New York and promise you I can get you home every night to tuck her into bed and be there to take her to school, will you do it?” She thought it was the most generous thing anyone has ever offered her.

So I went on Google Maps and figured out what was an hour from her house and Scranton and Honesdale were on that cusp of an hour from her house, but I had never been there. So I got in my car the next day and drove up to Honesdale and really fell in love with the place.  It was actually a lot like Morro Bay, the demographics were very blue collar, it was a small town and there really seemed to be a history there. I really felt like there were ghosts walking around downtown.

I found everything I was looking for and my eyes were wide open.  It was one of the best decisions I made in making the film.

How do you think the film displays the discoveries we make about ourselves and others, and how they can both build and destroy a relationship?

We tried to build the screenplay and the revelations in the movie in a way that would continue to surprise you as you were watching it, because that is the way it is in life.  For instance I have been married to my wife for 7 years and I have known her for 10 years, and I still feel like everyday I learn something about her. But at the same time I never fully get to know her, and I really feel we never really get to know anyone or ourselves.

Life is an ongoing process of learning and revelations, and I wanted the film to reflect that.

I really wanted the film to feel as if you were inside of those moments.

I read that in most scenes the scenes were done in one take. Was there a lot of rehearsing?  What were the conversations like before you started shooting?

I met Michelle in 2003 and she read the 42^nd draft of the script and she came to the meeting with a book of poetry and a CD for me. She was so passionate about the film. But this was pre-Brokeback Mountain so you couldn’t get a film financed with Michelle Williams back in those days.

Then I met Ryan in 2005 and a similar thing happened with him, and I felt like the movie was cursed. But I kept in touch with both Brian and Michelle, and we would have these 9 hours dinners every six months and we always talked about the film, it never go old to us. I even consider them co-writers on the film, because I would go back after these dinners and rewrite the script based on the discussions we would have.

By the time they started shooting they knew exactly who those characters were and everything about them. When the cameras started to roll I felt like I was making a documentary of two people falling in love, because Brian as Dean was getting to know Michelle as Cindy in front of the cameras and it was magical.

Now to say it was single takes of everything kind of paints not necessarily the right picture, because we would shoot all day basically, if we had 12 hours we would shoot for 11 of those. For instance you know there is that scene where he plays the ukulele and she tap dances, the scene that the trailer is built out of.

That scene came about because we had an entire night for Ryan and Michelle to get to know each other on 12 blocks of this street in Honesdale. We started when the sun went down and just filmed all night with them telling each other stories and with them really getting to know each other as the characters. Now there is this part in the script where they are supposed to show each there their special talent, so about a year before shooting I called Ryan and told him “I think Dean is a musician what instrument do you think you can play?”

Ryan was like “I was thinking maybe the ukulele”, and I was like “Could you pick another instrument please?” I was not crazy about the ukulele. (Laughs)  About a week later he left me a voice message, where he played that song You Always Hurt the Ones You Love it was so great, and I told to Ryan to keep that in your back pocket. Meanwhile I was meeting with Michele at the same time and asking her the same question, and she was like, “I use to tap dance” and I was like dust off those tap shoes because you going to need to use them in the film.

So we were shooting this scene and I told them when they came to the bridal store that was going to be the signal to ask about their special talent, so they get to the bridal store and ask what their special talents are, and neither one knows what the other is going to do. They do it, and are discovering it the exact same time I am discovering it behind the camera, which is the same time the audience discovers it. It was a moment. We did a take two but it really didn’t have that intangible, which it was real, you know?

During filming, which scene was the most emotionally exhausting for the actors?

I think the shower scene, because they had to be so vulnerable, physically and emotionally naked for such a long time literally. That scene, took like 2 days where they have the failed sex on the floor. It was an 18 hour shoot of being naked on the floor. That was the most comprising and that was also last stuff that we shot, and in the end we felt like we had all really done something, you know.

They confronted a lot of darkness and fear that was inside of themselves in that scene and I think they were excited by it.