With Blue Valentine, writer/director Derek Cianfrance shocked his way into every film lover’s heart and mind with an unflinching tale of love gone wrong. Re-teaming with his lead actor, Ryan Gosling, Cianfrance culled together a talented cast consisting of Eva Mendes, Bradley Cooper, Rose Byrne, Ray Liotta, Harris Yulin, and Dane Dehaan to bring his follow-up film about fathers and sons, and the twisting chains of fate to the big screen. During our roundtable interview, Derek spoke about the genesis of the script, and all the working parts that made the film a possibility.

Does Blue Valentine feel like another century?

I was thankful I didn’t have to wait a third of my life to make this movie. It was only five years and not 12.

When Blue Valentine came out, you were considered an up-and-coming director. What was it like knowing that as you were making this movie?

I had a number of scripts and opportunities. I had this film, The Place Beyond the Pines, that I had been working on since before Blue Valentine. It is another very personal film. I’ve been making films about families, because in families there are great secrets and great intimacy, and cinema is the place for intimacy. “Pines” is about fathers and sons, and it’s about legacy.

When my wife was pregnant in 2007 with my second boy, I was thinking about all the responsibility I had as a father. I was thinking of my son coming into the world and wanting him to be born clean; I wanted him to have his own path in life. It became a personal thing. I was interviewing Danica Patrick for a documentary film and I asked her, “How can you drive so fast?” Her whole life, she knew how fast she could go, and would always drive as fast as she could go, but then she’d drive a little faster. She’d drive to the point where she would sometimes crash. That was how she could push her boundaries and get good. With my next film, I felt like I needed to go to a crashing point and a dangerous place and not make any safe choices as a filmmaker.

At what point did you decide on doing the “15 years later” aspect of the film?

For 20 years, I had an idea of doing a triptych movie. I saw Napoleon when I was in film school, and that got my mind going and I had this idea about making this movie called The Holy Trinity. Also, I had seen Psycho for the first time. I didn’t know you spent 45 minutes with Janet Leigh before the shower scene, and that contrast between characters was kind of a structural thing that I was interested in. Baton passing was a structural thing sitting with me all these years.

When my wife was pregnant, I was thinking about this fire that I was passing from me to my son. It was instantaneous what the story would be and what the structure would be. I was interested in dealing with violence; I haven’t dealt with that before. I have an allergy toward gun violence. I’m sick of it. I don’t know when it became the thing was deemed so cinematic. It must have been with [Sam] Peckinpah and The Wild Bunch, but his violence seems truer, and now there’s this fetishized violence. If I have to see another slow motion bullet come out a gun and pierce somebody’s cheek, I’m going to puke.

I wanted to deal with narrative violence and tell the story that leads up to that violent encounter and the aftermath of that violence. There’s also that echo and it doesn’t go away; you don’t have the sanctity of a flashback to go back to. I wanted to tell this American story about tribalism and what happens when those tribes collide and what the aftermath is like. That 15 years was crucial, it’s the story of legacy.

Can you talk about Ryan’s role in shaping his character?

In 2007 I was at his agent’s house and we were having dinner and talking about Blue Valentine, which we hadn’t started shooting at the time. I asked him what he hadn’t done in his life that he really wanted to do. He said, “I’ve always wanted to rob a bank.”

I have an allergy toward gun violence. I’m sick of it. If I have to see another slow motion bullet come out a gun and pierce somebody’s cheek, I’m going to puke.

I told him I was writing a movie about a bank robber. I asked him how he would do it and he said he do it on a motorcycle because he could go in with a helmet on, so no one would know who he was. Then he said he would escape on a motorcycle because they’re fast. He said he’d have a U-Haul parked a few blocks away and would drive into the U-Haul and escape. I said, “That’s crazy, that’s what I have written into this script.” I knew we were destined to work together.

He called me before we started shooting and he wanted to have a face tattoo. I said, “Really? That’s pretty permanent.” He said his would be a dagger and it would be dripping blood. I told him to do what he wanted. First day of shooting there was something bothering him, he said he thought he went too far with the face tattoo and wanted to take it off and reshoot everything. I said, “Absolutely not. That’s what happens when you get a face tattoo. You regret it.” For his performance, it created this shame and this regret.

What about Eva [Mendes], how did you end up casting her?

I cast Eva because Ryan suggested I look at her. I had looked at a lot of women for that role and I couldn’t find who Romina would be. Ryan said I should look at her. I liked her in Training Day on, but I wasn’t sure she was right for this. She came to the audition and she had on 1990 jeans, a baggy T-shirt, and no makeup, trying to look unattractive; she was failing. It meant so much to me that she was trying. I fell in love with her as a human being.

She was scared and terrified of this role, I relate to that with actors. I don’t relate to a fearless actor or a fearless person, I relate to people who are scared and are willing to confront their fear. I respected her and gave her the role. On set, they’re both great actors and they were both pushing each other. That’s what I saw on set; I don’t know what their relationship was beforehand or afterward, but they’re two of my favorite people.

What was it like, working with Bradley Cooper?

I knew Ryan would be Luke since the inception of the piece; I had no idea who would play Avery. I had a meeting set up with Bradley, I didn’t think much of it; it was before Silver Linings Playbook. I didn’t think there was a shot he’d be in the movie but I sat down with him and immediately there was something about him that struck me. He seemed to be wrestling with something, there seemed to be something going on with him. The image I had was of a pot of boiling water with a lid on it.

As I talked to him, I realized that we were very similar and we had things in our past that were similar. I was so taken that I started thinking about Avery and could rewrite parts and make the audience feel the same thing that I felt. I started working with this idea of a guy who on the outside is greatest guy, but inside is a toxic shame. I wanted to work with that dichotomy. He’s paraded around like a hero but inside he feels like the biggest villain; I thought he could work in that gray area. He was a gift to work with in the same way Ryan was. He was an incredibly collaborative actor, too.

The score in any film plays an important role, but in this film it really aides in carrying the audience through the movie. While Mike Patton has had a well-documented musical career, he still is young in his scoring work, with only about four or five under his belt. What was it like working with Mike and building this score?

For Christmas when I was a teenager, my brother got me Mr. Bungle’s first album. I listened to Mr. Bungle in my white Mustang that had a four-cylinder engine and was so dangerous because it was so slow; it was the lamest Mustang in the world. I listed to that album all the time. I saw a Mr. Bungle show at the Gothic Theater in Denver; Patton was wearing a bondage mask with horse blinders and was singing “Time” by The Alan Parsons Project. He got down on his knees on was licking this balding security guy’s comb over; he became my hero at the moment.

I always found his music so cinematic, whether you go to his Fantômas albums where they have one of just movie scores, or something else. I would put his music on my student movies, and his brother was a cop which builds a connection to this film. This was an opportunity to work with a hero. I told Mike the best way to do it was to throw him images and show him scenes, and he would go home and make music, which is what he’s done all his life. He did 42 tracks and I used 12. I used him like I would use an actor: I try to get them to do as much as they can and then I can take that information and sculpt it.

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Matthew Schuchman is the founder and film critic of Movie Reviews From Gene Shalit’s Moustache and a contributor to Den of Geek.