‘I Know This Much Is True’: Derek Cianfrance On The Epic Canvas Of TV, ‘Empire Of The Summer Moon’ & Much More [Interview]

Damn.
Yeah. And just like Thomas, the poor kid survived it, no one really cared, the war went on and suffering continues. So there’s this whole thread of memory too, Dominic’s memory and the larger memory of American in the 20th century too.

“I Know This Much Is True” really benefits from the idea of a movie idea being told in over the course of a limited series, time to breathe, and get into tangents that still enrichen the theme. Given the scope of your previous films, have you since thought about how they benefited from a series treatment too?
Well, “Blue Valentine” had to be a movie. I mean [pause] I did have the idea—because I had so much amazing footage from Ryan [Gosling] and Michelle [Williams]. I felt like I was shooting Halley’s Comet all the time when I was shooting that movie. There was so much good I had to leave in the hills. So yeah, I had a desire at one point to make one movie called ‘Blue,’ which was all present day, and ‘Valentine’ which was all the past, but I didn’t do it.

‘Pines’ was also fashioned to be a movie. I love the cinema, going to the movies— I hope I can go back at some point. But ‘Pines was originally imagined as having an intermission. There’s a title card in ‘Place Beyond the Pines’ that says, “15 years later.” That’s supposed to say “intermission.” But that was naïve of me. It didn’t quite fit inside the marketing plan or feasibility of modern movies.

So, I imagine there’s lots on the cutting room floor of that movie.
Yeah, I had to really cut down ‘Pines.’ ‘Pines’ was really inspired by “The Wire.” ‘Pines’ was a Western in the writing stage until I saw “The Wire” and then it became this modern, urban story. The horses became motorcycles. And it could have been longer. But at the same time, I feel like that needed to be a movie.

What about that idea applied to ‘Oceans’?
Well, there was a time when I was cutting it and I was like… [pause]. When I got to the third act, everything had to start moving so fast that I no longer had the opportunity to explore character anymore. I was just servicing plot. So, that’s one of the reasons that led me to television was the idea of the expansiveness of it. There’s a contradictory paradigm there too. With movies, you have such a giant canvas on the screen, but unless you’re telling some franchisable universe or story of superheroes, forget it.

And nothing against those movies. I love those Marvel movies and I’ve watched them multiple times because of my kids, you know?

Yeah, I’m in the same boat.
I love them. They’re phenomenal. But could “The Godfather” parts one and two be made today? And I hope so, but for me—I felt like this was just too big of a story for a movie. We’d have to lose so much and we would have to just service plot. And what I’m most interested in is character. So, it was a real gift to get all this expansiveness to tell this sprawling story.