Ryan Gosling Video Interview On ‘Blue Valentine,’ Michelle Wiliams

I never really quite had an experience like this, you know? I think having years to prepare something is a luxury that you don’t often get, and maybe I’ll never have it again, you know? It wasn’t by design; it’s just that we couldn’t get the movie made. It would come together, and then it would fall apart, and then it would come together, and then we’d go make another movie, and then it would come together and fall apart, so it ended up being this kind of gift in the end.

You know, Michelle kind of prepared her character for six years, and I prepared mine for four, and we never really talked about it. I think I had dinner with Michelle like once during that whole time period. We never talked about the characters in the film. So what’s happening in the movie is when our characters are getting to know one another, it’s really us — we’re getting to know each other's characters at that time as well. And we only did one take of everything, so it’s all happening for the first time for the audience as well. And then for the second part of the film for when we’re married, and our marriage is kind of falling apart, we lived in this house for a month together — the house that the movie was shot in, so we had fake Christmas, and fake birthday presents, and baked cakes, and got our Sears family portraits taken. You know, we had days where we’d just fart all day, and we did dishes and chores, and all those things trying to create real memories. So when it came time to shoot the film, we could draw on actual memories.

I wasn’t thinking; that was the problem, you know? Derek, the director, said to Michelle, “whatever you do, don’t tell him your secret; I don’t care what it is.” And he said to me, “I don’t care what you have to do, get her to tell you the secret. Action.” And hours go by, and she’s not telling me, and there’s no way to get her to tell me, and suddenly the sun goes down, and we’re stealing the shot anyway, we don’t have a permit to shoot on the Brooklyn Bridge; we’re never coming back. And I gotta get this secret. So, I don’t know what happened, I found myself climbing the Brooklyn Bridge, and I’m on the other end of the fence, and I’m looking down at the water, and I’m realizing that Derek brainwashed me and Michelle’s trying to kill me.

I mean, I think there’s a double standard. I think that if there’s violence involved with the sexuality, towards women, the MPAA seems to considerate it entertainment, and then if there’s love involved in the sexuality, it’s pornographic. They’re trying to, I think, whether they’re intentionally doing it or not, they’re controlling the way that women are perceived sexually. And it seems to be a double standard because there’s lots of oral sex scenes, towards men, that get R ratings, but the fact that there’s a woman on the receiving end of it; suddenly it’s pornographic. I think what a lot of people don’t realize is that the NC-17 rating isn’t just a “we think kids under 17 should see this film.” We’re not saying that. We don’t think it should be PG. It’s just when you get an NC-17 rating, it means it doesn’t play in a lot of major theater chains. It means it's stuck to cities that have art house theaters, and you can’t run TV spots, so you're not saying, “I don’t want kids to see this movie.” You’re saying, “I don’t want anyone to see this movie,” and that’s what we take issue with, obviously.