Derek Cianfrance has taken his time to make movies he wants to make. It paid off with 2010’s Blue Valentine, 2012’s The Place Beyond the Pines, and 2017’s The Light Between the Oceans. In 2020, he made the Emmy-winning HBO limited series I Know This Much Is True with Mark Ruffalo, and though he ended up not directing Sound of Metal he did receive an Oscar nomination for co-writing the screenplay.
But with his latest, Roofman, he headed into a different area — a little lighter, a little more of the type of the movies he always loved like those of Cameron Crowe, Hal Ashby and Frank Capra, and got it produced with a major studio, Paramount.
Cianfrance was told movies like this aren’t made anymore, but I would say he should be thanked because this one for me is one of the year’s best. It is an incredible true story of Jeffrey Manchester, an inventive criminal who robbed 45 McDonalds restaurants by drilling a hole in the roof after closing. He finally got caught and sent to prison for 45 years but cleverly escaped and wound up living in a Toys “R” Us store by night, and later ingratiating himself to the small North Carolina community and church where he also found romance. Now he is back in prison and spoke to Cianfrance hundreds of times to tell his story his way.
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It is all up on the screen with Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst and an excellent supporting cast in a film Paramount hopes will be an awards player this season. It certainly deserves to be. Cianfrance joins me for this edition of my Deadline video series Behind the Lens to talk about the long journey in getting Roofman on the screen, plus so much more.
To watch our conversation and to go “behind the lens” with Derek Cianfrance, just click on the link above.
Join me every Monday this Oscar season for a new edition of Behind The Lens and every Wednesday for new episodes of The Actor’s Side.