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

So, to that end, you’ve got a few things cooking, will they be movies or series?
I think the next thing I’m going to make is a movie, but I’ve just going to make sure it can all fit in there. I’m doing this adaptation of “Empire of the Summer Moon,” and it’s the perfect example of a giant movie that should be on the movie screen because it’s massive. It’s an American Western that was meant to be seen in a Cinerama dome back in the day.

But the challenge, especially nowadays, I have no idea where the budget and time needed to make it comes from. So, I’m trying to figure out how and where that lives. Because working for HBO has been a complete dream come true.

I’m mean you’re probably feeling pretty spoiled in that sense—the ability to have that kind of time and rich expansiveness.
Yeah, they gave me a great canvas to work on. I mean, imagine telling the grandfather’s part of this story in a movie. You can’t. But in a series, it’s almost begging for it, you know?

Cinema has felt under siege for a long time and that’s only getting worse the longer this coronavirus pandemic goes on. But at the same time, people like yourself are really making the most of TV right now. The medium and its economics must feel enticing to all filmmakers.
It is very enticing. You know one thing that totally inspired me? Ingmar Bergman’s  “Fannie and Alexander” which was made for TV. I never saw it on TV though originally, but the expanded TV version? That was always my thought with this.

We were going to have movie screenings for “I Know This Much Is True,” but then the pandemic hit. And with HBO, there were a lot of conversations that I had never done TV before, but to me, it’s just storytelling and filmmaking, right? Which is why we shot this on two perf, 35-millimeter film. We shot almost 2 million feet of film and shot it in a way we would shoot a movie. Just a six-hour movie, really with a beginning and an ending, but within that, fascinatingly, each episode with a beginning and ending.  I felt so blessed to be able to make it.

READ MORE: ‘Sound Of Metal’: Riz Ahmed Stars In A Visceral Blue Valentine Painted Black

Your unfinished documentary “Metalhead,” that turned into the movie “The Sound Of Metal,” with Riz Ahmed, is that right?
Yep. I grew up as a drummer, and I have tinnitus, So I had this idea to make this movie about a heavy metal drummer that blows out his ears out and has to adapt to silence.

Yeah, before “Blue Valentine,” I spent all this time on the road with the band Jucifer, shooting this hybrid narrative about them and my story. Then “Blue Valentine” came together very quickly and I had to leave and then I made that and ‘Pines’ and it just felt like an abandoned film that couldn’t be finished.

Crazy.
So I put it up for adoption. And my friends, filmmaker Darius Marder, who was one of the co-writers of ‘Pines; and who co-wrote ‘Empire Of The Summer Moon’ with me, took it. Darius is such a great friend and filmmaker and father that I felt like I could give him my child. And he took it and he made it into “Sound of Metal.”

So ‘Empire is next?
Yeah, I’m working on the next stage of that, because I generally have long gestations between projects. “Blue Valentine” took 12 years, ‘Pines’ took eight years. ‘Empire’ I’ve been working on since ‘Pines’ wrapped in 2011. There’s something beautiful about these long gestations where I can come back, having been a changed person and re-explore it and reimagine it a project.

I also have this adaptation of “A Cotton Candy Autopsy,” which was a comic book from my adolescence that I’ve been trying to get going for a long time. And I have this adaptation of “Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder” by Sam Fussell, which I still want to make. And I have an original script called “Icy Red,” which is in the beginning stages and kind of psychodrama.

“Cotton Candy Autopsy”: Isn’t that the graphic novel that influenced Mr. Bungle’s first album about freaky, scary, anarchic clowns? And Mike Patton of that group obviously did the score to “The Place Beyond The Pines.”
Yeah, man! That’s exactly how I got in touch with that graphic novel. And then my wife is a clown.

What? Really?
Yes. And, so it’s something that I wrote with her, but we’re trying to look at clowns, not from a scary perspective. Look, I love “Joker,” but I’m trying to make a clown that aren’t…I want to find a story about funny clowns again. Funny and sad clowns. Melancholy clowns.

Awesome, I’m sold.
All right, man, it’s great talking to you.

The finale of “I Know This Much Is True” airs Sunday, June 14 at 9pm ET on HBO.