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\n Photo: Davi Russo\/Paramount Pictures\n <\/p>\n
Writer and director Derek Cianfrance knows what audiences might think of him. The worst things in the world happen to Cianfrance\u2019s protagonists: Relationships fall apart; parents die; children get kidnapped. His work is almost always about love, but it\u2019s also going to bum you the hell out.<\/p>\n
Between his films Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines, The Light Between Oceans, and Sound of Metal and his HBO miniseries, I Know This Much Is True, he\u2019s known for stories about fraught romances, generational trauma, and the spiritual cost of caring for another person \u2014 how trying to protect others can push us to make terrible decisions and also be the most fulfilling part of our lives. These were Cianfrance\u2019s preoccupations for a decade, and after 2020\u2019s I Know This Much Is True \u2014 which starred Mark Ruffalo playing twins struggling with mental illness \u2014 it felt like time to hang it up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had friends who wrote me and were like, \u2018We watched the show until the guy cut his hand off.\u2019 And that was a minute in!\u201d Cianfrance says with a laugh. \u201cAnd I was like, \u2018Geez, maybe I went too hard core.\u2019 My experience on it was amazing. But I came out of that and thought, I don\u2019t want to repeat myself again. I don\u2019t want to go into another examination of tragedy on tragedy on tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The filmmaker\u2019s latest, the Channing Tatum\u2013starring Roofman, is lighter than his previous work, more comedy adjacent than anything he\u2019s done before. Roofman is based on the true story of Jeffrey Manchester, an American veteran who became a sort of criminal folk hero in North Carolina after robbing dozens of McDonald\u2019s locations by breaking through their roofs, treating the employees inside with surprisingly kindness, and then escaping from prison and secretly living in a Toys \u2019R\u2019 Us. The film\u2019s whimsical marketing campaign has focused on Tatum\u2019s gleeful roller-skating and dancing in that bastion of \u201990s consumerism, but Roofman itself is a slippier thing. Part thriller, part domestic drama, and part romance, it examines both the paternal kindness and the recklessness that led Manchester to the multi-decade prison sentence he\u2019s currently serving. The movie will still break your heart, but this time around, Cianfrance says, he\u2019s more interested in grace.<\/p>\n
Around 2021, you hear about Jeffrey Manchester for the first time. What about his story was attractive to you?
I had just made I Know This Much Is True. It basically opened to the world right when the pandemic was hitting, and I had no idea how heavy duty it was for people. I\u2019ve always been interested in darkness, my imagination has always led me in that way, and I\u2019ve always just embraced that path for myself. I was making movies for 15 years that were all about ancestry and legacy and inheritance. When I finished I Know This Much Is True, I felt like I had said everything I needed to say. It was such a dark show, although it did have a glimmer of light at the end that creeps in. Afterward, I was thinking about why I fell in love with movies in the first place \u2014 those movies of the \u201980s and \u201990s that I grew up watching in theaters and then would come home and rent on VHS, and then when the movies came on HBO I\u2019d record them and watch them over and over again. I was thinking, What was it about those movies that got me hooked on this dream of mine to make movies? I was just searching.<\/p>\n
Roofman does nod to Risky Business, to Big, these movies that were comedic but also had a melancholy core.\u00a0
Yes, and Mrs. Doubtfire. After I made I Know This Much Is True, I\u2019d used everything up, and I was, like, waiting for it to rain. And you can\u2019t make it rain. You just have to wait and listen and be patient. My producer, Jamie Patricof, said, \u201cThere\u2019s this script called Roofman that I think you should read. It\u2019s about a guy who robbed 45 McDonald\u2019s, but he would give people their jackets before he locked them in the freezer. And then he went to prison, but he broke out. And instead of hiding out in a forest, he hid out in a toy store.\u201d I told Jamie, \u201cI am interested in this, but I\u2019d have to talk to the person. I\u2019d have to talk to Jeff Manchester.\u201d Jeff is in a maximum-security prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. He called me, and in that first phone call with Jeff there was this guy who was so jovial and kind of optimistic and funny and charming. He was telling me stories that were unbelievable. When you talk to someone who\u2019s in a maximum-security prison, they cut you off after 15 minutes. And Jeff called me back. He started calling me about four times a week for the next four and a half years. I had hundreds of hours of conversations with him. He eventually started calling me Dr. Derek. It was very good for him to have someone to talk to. He loved movies and I started to realize that as he was living his life, he was the protagonist in his own movie. He was imagining all these things as someday being told into his life story.<\/p>\n
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\n Derek Cianfrance on the set of Roofman with Kirsten Dunst.
\n Photo: Davi Russo\n <\/p>\n
So you felt tapped out by themes about legacy and the sins of the father. But I found a fair amount of that in Roofman, too, as Jeff struggles with becoming a father figure to his girlfriend Leigh\u2019s family while evading the law. Do you have a sense of why these are concerns you keep coming back to?
I can only be me. That\u2019s what I realized making this movie: I am always going to be me. Comedy and tragedy are flip sides of the same coin. My wife\u2019s a comedian. I know the life of a comedian very well. Most comedians that I know are very serious in real life, and me being into tragedy, my imagination is dark, but my consciousness is incredibly optimistic. But yes, this movie is about being a dad. The most important experience of my whole life is being a dad. And it\u2019s one of the reasons I haven\u2019t made as many movies over the course of all these years, because, honestly, I\u2019ve tried to do everything in my power to stay home. I write at my kitchen table. I would wake up at 5:30 a.m. and start work before my boys would wake up, and I could make them breakfast and send them off to school and get back to work, and I could be there to pick them up from school. I could just be present. Family has just always been just a profound influence on me.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re conditioned to think of heroes and villains. In real life, I\u2019ve never met a hero and I\u2019ve never met a villain. I\u2019ve met people that have done heroic acts and I\u2019ve met people who have done villainous acts, but I don\u2019t know if those archetypes actually exist. With Jeff, I was interested in this person who was full of contradictions. I think it had less to do with legacy in this movie and more to do with providership and what it meant to be a father. The real Jeff, he fell off the path a little bit and I think it\u2019s easy to do this when you live in a society that values things and stuff. Your value is predicated on what airline class you\u2019re in, or how big your house is, or what kind of car you drive, or what kind of clothes you wear. It\u2019s materialist, it\u2019s capitalist \u2014 it\u2019s things. Jeff came out of the Army, and he couldn\u2019t give to his kids the life that he had growing up. That\u2019s because back in the \u201950s, if a single parent had a job, you could pretty much have a house and a car.<\/p>\n
You could have a life.\u00a0
Nowadays two people can work two jobs each and still not be able to make ends meet. What Jeff was feeling was that desperation of trying to be a provider, and he made these huge mistakes. With the Jeff character, there\u2019s three people in this movie. Jeffrey Manchester can\u2019t get a job. He\u2019s not a good dad. He\u2019s not a good husband. He enlists the help of Roofman, who uses his brain and gets what he wants. He makes a bunch of bad decisions, but Jeff won\u2019t let him hurt anyone. And then there\u2019s John Zorn, the fake name he gives to Leigh when they start dating, who is the idealized version of who Jeff can be. But those other sides of him, Jeffrey and Roofman, are still battling to take the wheel. And I find his story to be tragic and beautiful.<\/p>\n
Like Jeff, Ryan Gosling\u2019s character in The Place Beyond the Pines becomes an outlaw because of this consumerist pressure. I think about Luke saying, \u201cI\u2019m still his father, I can give him stuff,\u201d and he\u2019s robbing banks to provide. Do you feel a personal connection to that pressure?
One hundred percent. When I was a kid, I would walk into my living room on Christmas morning and I couldn\u2019t move. My parents were incredibly supportive parents. I was psyched as a kid to get a drum set for Christmas. But also, what I really always only wanted was them and their time. As a father, I\u2019m hyperaware of time, almost to a fault. It started when I was working with Jeff \u2014 I started to become aware of last times that people have in their lives. At that point, I had read my sons their last bedtime story. You don\u2019t realize when that moment happens. And when you start thinking about it, you want to make all of those times the best times and the most memorable times. My wife, when she read this script, she said, \u201cThis movie is the most about you that you\u2019ve ever made.\u201d Mahershala Ali saw it the other day and he was like, \u201cYou succeed where Jeff fails.\u201d I think a lot of my characters are cautionary tales for me on how to navigate my own life. I put so much pressure on that last time, to try to blow everyone\u2019s mind and to make it memorable, because I want to be here together. And I think Jeff does that.<\/p>\n
The real Leigh told me that when he came into their lives, he left her family better than when he found them, because he did provide so much. But Jeff overdoes things. If he wants to kill an ant, he uses a sledgehammer. You can\u2019t sustain that. That\u2019s something that I relate to, the extreme choices. To make this movie, I had to make it in the Jeff tone, which is heightened and multigenre. I was at the park walking my dog, and I was thinking about the scene when he gets arrested at the birthday party, like, How do I do this? My dog was pulling me one way, and there was a mariachi band in the park doing a birthday party. And I was like, Jeff would hire a mariachi band. I have to go with all of Jeff\u2019s over-the-top instincts on this movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n Channing Tatum and Derek Cianfrance on the set of Roofman.
\n Photo: Davi Russo\/Davi Russo\n <\/p>\n
For this movie, you worked with your entire crew from Blue Valentine again, including your DP, production designer, producers, and editor. It\u2019s been 15 years since that movie came out. What did working with the same crew lend Roofman?
This movie came at a time when I\u2019m entering the middle of my life. People have midlife crises, I\u2019ve heard. [Laughs.] Some people buy Ferraris. I wanted to build a toy store and tell the story about this guy who brings out his inner child. That Peter Pan quality led me to really desire these reunions with people from my life who had been there at the beginning. Since I don\u2019t make many movies, I just wanted to surround myself with the people I loved so much. I was shooting a commercial in Los Angeles, and I was working with Andrij Parekh as the DP, and a lot of the crew from Blue Valentine was here. We had everyone over for a barbecue, and I was like, We have to do more of this. Everyone come back. Let\u2019s get the band back together. When we did Blue Valentine, 16, 17 years ago, we made it for nothing. The movie was like 12 years of my life, and I had 23 days to shoot it in. Roofman comes, and it\u2019s gonna be a movie with Channing Tatum in a toy store. But when I was trying to pitch this to studios, they were like, \u201cWe don\u2019t make those kind of movies anymore.\u201d Fortunately, we had Miramax and High Frequency and Paramount that came onboard, but we made this movie for nothing, too, you know? But all those people on that Blue Valentine crew, we all knew how to do it. There was a moment where everyone was like, \u201cWe have a 55-day schedule. What do you mean, 35 days?\u201d We had to figure out a way. And we had to shoot it on film. I was like, \u201cGuys, this is an opportunity for us to say \u2018yes\u2019 to being those people that we were 16, 17 years ago and get back to the core of why we were doing this.\u2019\u201d And it\u2019s a lot harder to do that years later. You get spoiled, in a way. But I believe that a lot of the struggle of this film is like, in it. You can feel like the energy of that, the urgency.<\/p>\n
Cast-wise in this film, there\u2019s another reunion \u2014 you\u2019re working with Ben Mendelsohn and Emory Cohen, who co-starred in The Place Beyond the Pines. Mendelsohn plays a pastor and Cohen plays Otis, a bullied employee at the Toys \u2019R\u2019 Us.
That character of Otis actually had no lines in the script. I\u2019d seen The Bikeriders, Jeff Nichols\u2019s film, and I thought Emory was so incredible. I could not take my eyes off him, and I called him right after to say, \u201cWe need to work together again. I have a script, but I don\u2019t have anything for you in it. This guy, Otis. Maybe you want to build something with him.\u201d Emory came back the next day, and he had written the M&Ms scene. He gave Otis this beautiful arc of a kid who\u2019s getting bullied and learns to get his courage. And with Ben, I just dreamed of him singing a Randy Newman song, \u201cI\u2019ll Be Home.\u201d When we were rehearsing, Ben\u2019s first instinct was to go deep and gravelly, somewhere between later-age Leonard Cohen and Barry White. And I was like, \u201cMan, I want you to go toward the light. I want you to sing falsetto.\u201d And he did it. Life is short, and the experience I have on set with the actors and crew is as important as the movies themselves to me.<\/p>\n