This spring, Ryan Gosling will be doing the unthinkable — putting his pretty face behind the camera, instead of in front of it. The actor is dipping his toes into the always tricky waters of a directorial debut with “How To A Catch A Monster,” a project he also wrote. Thus far, the plot details have been somewhat vague, involving a mother and son, an underwater city and a fetish club among other things. He’s corralled a pretty solid cast with Saoirse Ronan, Ben Mendelsohn, “Doctor Who” star Matt Smith, Eva Mendes and Christina Hendricks all on board, and it’s the latter actress who proved pivotal to Gosling in his inspiration for the movie.
Speaking with the New York Times as “The Place Beyond The Pines” gets set to hit theaters, Gosling revealed that it was Hendricks’ death scene in Nicolas Winding Refn‘s “Drive” that lodged itself in his brain. “…the audience gave a standing ovation,” Gosling said about the sequence in which Hendricks’ head gets blown off. “It was the strangest thing I’d ever been a part of, and in some way my movie is a bit about that experience.”
It’s certainly a pretty dramatic moment (watch below), and considering the impact it had on Gosling, it only makes whatever he’s putting together all the more intriguing. But until we see that, ‘Pines’ will have to hold us for now, and that’s certainly not a bad thing at all. Derek Cianfrance‘s epic crime drama of fathers and sons opens in limited release this weekend, and one more one sheet has arrived with a graphic treatment, emphasizing a line of dialogue that has become a calling card for the film.
