INTERVIEW: Ryan Gosling talks Blue Valentine

That trend certainly continues with Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine, a wrenching portrait of a marriage in which Gosling plays blue-collar worker Dean, who falls for and then marries Cindy (Michelle Williams).

What follows is arguably one of the most authentic portraits of a relationship seen in modern American cinema – little wonder that Gosling, 30, received a Golden Globe nod for his searing performance, with Williams both Golden Globe and Oscar nominated.

How does it feel that Blue Valentine has been so heralded in the awards season?
I don’t know. For a film like this, for a film so small, these things are very helpful. They make up for the lack of printed advertising money that you don’t have. They’re very helpful for the film – so it’s great.

Why is it helpful?
A lot of people will go see a film because it’s being acknowledged on that level. It’s very helpful for our movie. That’s what happened with Half Nelson, for sure. As soon as all that stuff started happening for it…it gains an awareness for the film, that you can’t afford, so it’s great.

It does mean a lot of promotion for the film...
You have to go around and talk about the film. You’re the film’s voice, but…that’s how it goes.

Were you worried about the fact the film was originally given an NC-17 rating in the US?
I know you guys don’t have that here, which is nice. But back in the States…it’s not just that kids under 17 can’t see the film. I agree – they shouldn’t. But it means they can’t play in a lot of major theatres, and they can’t even run ads for it on television or in newspapers. It was more exciting to find out that we’re not officially pornographers!

Could you understand at all why it got that rating initially?
Not really. It’s very confusing, so it seems like a real double standard. You can’t speak to them directly, so you can’t really find out exactly why. You’re just guessing why. But it seems like…the rating system really needs to be revisited. We were happy they re-thought our rating but the problem still remains, I think. It’s a problem that’s bigger than our film.

 What is at the heart of this problem?
I think that ten people who live in the Valley, representing parents across America…how is that possible?
They just make these decisions and they decide for these parents what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. I don’t know.
They’re tolerance of violence is so different from their tolerance of sexuality. If there’s violence involved in the sexuality, it’s somehow perceived as entertainment – but if there’s love involved in sexuality, it’s seen as pornographic, and therefore not acceptable.
They really control what happens to these films, if they get out or they don’t get out. By giving a film an NC-17 rating, you’re not saying ‘I don’t want kids under 17 to see this film’, you’re saying ‘I don’t think anyone should see this film’ – because it’s relegated to arthouse theatres in big cities, and doesn’t get out to the people, and people who it’s made for.

 Would you call the film a love story?
Yeah.

Would you take a date to see it?
I would. I think it’s very romantic. Back home, they call it an ‘anti-love story’.
The filmmaker started writing this film 12 years ago. He said he wrote it as a reaction to all these films he was watching, which seemed like the actors were carved out of marble and made in the image of gods.
He wanted to make a film that was made in the image of man. It’s our faults that is what make us special and human. These characters in this film couldn’t embrace each other’s faults because they were trying to live up to some idea of perfection that only exists in movies.
I think that is romantic to acknowledge – to acknowledge the faults.

 Did you film the story in two separate parts - the present and the flashbacks?
Yeah. To shoot all the beautiful stuff first, the falling in love, it was like a dream. And then we built this castle and we had to tear it down. But when we were tearing it down, we knew what we were losing because we’d already built it. It would be hard to go back and forth between time periods and shoot it, and be able to feel the weight of what you were losing if you didn’t know what it was.

How did it feel to see the 'old you' and the 'young you'?
To look at myself in that way? We wanted to show the effects of time, and we wanted to show that we treat our characters like flags. When you see a flag, it’s torn at the edges because the wind is beating it down and the sun has made it lose its colour. We wanted to show the erosion of time on our characters. That’s just part of the job, I guess.

Does it make it easier to do a film like this with an actress like Michelle Williams by your side?
Yeah, I don’t think I could’ve done the film without her. She was on this for six years. Even though I didn’t know her, I knew who she was, because of that level of commitment. So when we went into making the film, we had that trust from one another because we’d proven it, our dedication – to the project, to each other – over that time.

 How much does playing a character like Dean take out of you?
I left it all on the field in that film. I can’t imagine going back and doing another independent drama for a while. I went and made a comedy with Steve Carell. It was just a completely different experience.
When I first moved to Los Angeles, I did a pilot when I was 17. I had a small part and so did Steve Carell.
We both had tiny parts. I remember watching him shoot one day and he was so funny, that they couldn’t make it through the takes.
The crew was laughing – the guy had to put down the boom and laugh! It was the first time it had ever occurred to me that you could be so good, that it was a problem! I made a promise to myself that I would work with Steve one day, that we would make something together. And it came along at the right time, after I finished Blue Valentine.
So this film came along, and it was me and Steve. I just thought I had to do it.

 Who do you play in it?
I play this local lothario – and his wife, played by Julianne Moore, divorces him. And I try and teach him the ways of…how to pick up women.

So were you all cracking up on set?
Yeah. He’s an assassin. He just finds what your button is and presses it. And he keeps a straight face, but he’s always trying to sabotage you. He’ll just find out a way to look at you. A lot of his stuff is really straight. He hits you in this way, and you can’t really tell that it’s coming. It’s like a sucker punch. You start laughing, you get in trouble.

How did you find working with director Derek Cianfrance Blue Valentine?
Yeah, it feels like I’ve been dreaming that this person would come into my life and would want to work this way.
Making films, it’s always like thinking ‘Couldn’t we try it like this?’ or ‘Couldn’t we shoot it this way?’ or ‘Does it have to work like this?’ I like filmmakers that are willing to dismantle the whole idea of the process.
Derek always treated the filming process like…the convention of making film was like a big monster hand that was always trying to get its grasp on us.
We were always outrunning it. He did so many things. For instance, at the beginning of the movie when I’m waking up, he set up the cameras in the living room that night, and I went to sleep and I woke up and the crew had all snuck in and they were filming me sleeping.
And then my little girl woke me up and we went out into the yard, and there were cameras in the forest filming us – there was so much thought put into what would be the most fruitful environment to put us in. It’s very thoughtful.

Were you concerned about keeping relations between you and Michelle real?
Yeah. But Derek had a lot of clear ideas that would help us achieve that. The years that we were prepping our characters, Michelle and I never talked about the film. We never met. We had one dinner.
But we really met each other on camera, in character. So when things are happening for the first time for the audience, they’re really happening for the first time for us as well.

But you’d seen a finished script?
Well, no. We knew that eventually we’d do this part of the film where we’d be living together.
We knew what the scenes were. But within each scene, the director would give us a point A to point B, and how we got there was up to us. You could draw a line between those two dots – and it could be a squiggly line, it could be any colour you wanted it to be, but you had to get from one point to the other.
So you never really knew what the other one was going to do, so it had a life of it’s own. The script was originally a traditional script. And he wrote like 75 drafts, and a manifesto. But when we got on set, he said, ‘The script is 12 years old. It’s dead to me. If you say any of the lines, you’ll bore me. Action!’
 

Did that help the younger actress, Faith Wladyka, who plays your daughter?
Yeah, because then she doesn’t have to say lines, and you don’t get that cute kid alert thing that happens in American movies a lot, when kids are smart and like little adults. 
She’s just the best – if it was a different kid, I don’t think it would’ve gone that way. Her whole audition tape was her swinging her pigtails around – she never said a line. She’s just a kid. A special kid, but she’s not like a little professional.
Derek – we spent a month together in his house. We had fake birthdays for her and made her birthday cakes, and had Christmas and got our family portraits taken and went fishing, went to fun parks, read stories, watched movies. By the time it came to shooting, we were pretty good buddies.

Did you have to do much work to buff up?
For the latter part? Yeah, we tried to put on some weight. I was supposed to put on a lot of weight but I got concerned that people would walk out of the film and feel like ‘If he hadn’t have let himself go, it would’ve worked out. If he’d just hit the treadmill, he would’ve been fine.’ So we didn’t want it to be too extreme.

 So what did you do?
We put on some weight. Michelle and I had an eating contest – Michelle won! She won.

How do you feel about gaining weight for a role?
I did it for The Lovely Bones. I was 150lbs and I went up to 210lbs – and I never even shot it.

How did that feel?
Terrible! I was fat, bald and unemployed, walking around the yard. It was not a fun time. And it’s not good for you. I don’t know how Christian Bale does it. It’s incredible what he does. Really. I’m in awe of his commitment. But it’s your job, though. Every job has its downside, and that’s its downside.

Is authenticity important to you?
Most movies are pretending to know everything and they don’t ask many questions. They’re just telling you how it is. When I was growing up…I loved movies but these people weren’t anything like the people I knew.
I happened to think the people I know are more interesting than they are in movies, for the most part.
Then I started watching films like Cassavetes movies and I started realising there are filmmakers out there who are trying to honour how complicated people really are.
I just think as an actor it’s more interesting to play those characters, who are more interesting than heroes and villains, good guys and bad guys.
The people I grew up around were good people doing bad things, or things that were out of character. That’s another thing that I’ve learned on a film – I did something one time that was out of character. Actors spend all of their time going – ‘Who’s the character? What’s he look like? How does the character dress? How does he think? How does he talk? How does he walk?’ And it’s all about being the character.
I did something one day that was out of character, and the script supervisor was really upset with me. And something interesting happened – she thought she knew him better than I did. I thought if you could leave the audience feeling that way, feeling they knew the character better than you, you could have passed the character on.
Now they take ownership of him and they take him away from you. So I started trying to do that after that, trying to work things into my characters that were out of character – so the audience didn’t trust me to play him, and they would think they knew him better than I did.

Having done this, Half Nelson and Lars and the Real Girl, do you feel like you’ve done your time in independent film?
I love those films. Every time I make a movie…it’s not that I want to make small movies that no one ever sees.
Every time I make these films, I really think they’re going to be bigger than Avatar. It never happens, but every time I’m sure that this is the one. Films like The Blair Witch Project instigate that because it makes me feel that it’s possible to make a small movie that resonates and becomes successful.
And that would be my dream – to make a small movie that did that. It would be so good, that would be the special effect. The authenticity…it would feel like you were watching it in 3D.
And then everyone would want to run and see it and that would be like some kind of big hit.

So where does Drive, your new film with Carey Mulligan, fit in?
Nicolas Winding Refn is the director, and he’s a very special filmmaker, and  I think it’s ended up being more like a cross between Blue Velvet and Purple Rain – which I’m excited about! I hope everyone else is excited about it too.

Do you get to do your own stunts?
Yeah. All car stuff. He’s a good driver, so he doesn’t roll his car. But all that drifting – but mostly 360s, 180s, 90s, all that kind of precision driving. I spent a couple of months just going to a parking lot. I’d have a new Camaro or a new Mustang and would run it until it was just stripped, and then the tow-truck would pull it away and we would go home. It was the best time in my life!

And the George Clooney film, The Ides of March. Are you the lead?
It’s an ensemble piece. My character is the one who takes this downward spiral. He’s an idealistic but he loses his idealism, and he becomes involved in the dirty pool of politics that he swore he would never do.
I’m a huge fan of George and Grant Heslov, his partner, who did two of my favourite TV shows. The first was Unscripted, where they find all these real actors, who are trying to make it in Hollywood, and they infuse the narrative into their life. And also they did a show called K Street, which was improvised and very experimental.
They had a lot of really interesting ideas. And I’ve been working with George a little bit now, and he’s got so much enthusiasm. There’s nothing he hasn’t thought of. It’s infectious.

He’s had a lot of experience with politicians. Has he taken you around that world?
I’ve been doing this, but he said to go campaign, because we’re about to go make a campaign movie. So he’s said ‘Campaign as much as you can with Blue Valentine so when you come onto my film, you’re experienced’ – so I’m taking this as research!

• Blue Valentine is out now on Blu-Ray and DVD.