In another lifetime, Bradley Cooper was nowhere near the pines. In an interview with Indiewire, The Place Beyond the Pines writer and director Derek Cianfrance shared that Cooper almost left the project due to rewrites of the script. Before production started, he brought Sound of Metal director Darius Marder on board to change “every word†of the movie, including making changes to Cooper’s character, police officer Avery Cross. “I remember giving Bradley Cooper the copy of The Place Beyond the Pines, the new script, and getting a voice message from him saying, ‘Bro, I just want to let you know I read the new draft and I’m out.’ He was like, ‘That’s not the movie that we had signed up to do,’†Cianfrance explained. Cooper’s involvement partially funded the project, so Cianfrance immediately went to convince Cooper to come back. He shared, “I was like, ‘Can I come talk to you?’ 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. It was only in the last five minutes [when I convinced him]. I think he just got tired. He wanted to go to bed.†How many of us have won fights just because the other person was tired? Ok, but did any of them result in the masterpiece Place Beyond the Pines? Exactly.