During Indiewire’s New Directors/New Films festival, Derek Cianfrance revealed that Bradley Cooper was very unhappy with him and Darius Marder’s script changes to 2012’s The Place Beyond the Pines. Deadline reports that after Cianfrance and Marder rewrote “every word,” Cooper considered quitting.

“He was like, ‘That’s not the movie that we had signed up to do,’” Cianfrance revealed to the panel. Since Cooper’s involvement with the film was a large reason behind how it got funding, Cianfrance was worried. “I was moving my family up to Schenectady the next day [to be on location] and the whole crew was coming up there. I had all the money anyway.”  

“So I went up to Montreal, and I had a long conversation with him from midnight to 3:30 in the morning where I got him back on,” Cianfrance revealed. He joked that “It was only in the last five minutes [when I convinced him]. I think he just got tired. He wanted to go to bed.” Ultimately, Cooper stayed with the film which followed his police officer character wrestling with guilt over killing Ryan Gosling’s thief character around the film’s midpoint.

Now, Cianfrance is producing Titus Kaphar’s directorial debut Exhibiting Forgiveness, which is debuting during the New Directors/New Films event.