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"  Photo: Atsushi Nishijima Ryan Gosling&amp;#039;s electric, sexually charged, incendiary performance in The Place Beyond the Pines proves once again why he is one of Hollywood&amp;#039;s finest actors. Gosling reunites with filmmaker Derek Cianfrance, who directed him as Michelle Williams&amp;#039;s husband in Blue Valentine. The Place Beyond the Pines is a gritty, riveting drama shot in working-class Schenectady in upstate New York. Gosling plays Luke, a heavy-metal motorcycle stunt performer in a traveling carnival. He reconnects with a former lover (Eva Mendes), who has given birth to his infant son.  Heavily tattooed with bleached blond hair, a cigarette perennially dangling James Dean-style from his lip, Gosling is all testosterone-fueled bravado until he falls in love with being a father. He accepts his sometimes-boss&amp;#039; proposal to rob banks because he is underemployed and afraid of losing his family to Mendes&amp;#039;s live-in boyfriend. His robbery success is disrupted when he crosses paths with a cop (Bradley Cooper), who has political aspirations. Cianfrance&amp;#039;s meticulously structured film is actually three distinct movies: Gosling&amp;#039;s story, Cooper&amp;#039;s tale, and 15 years later, their two sons&amp;#039; intertwined chronicle. &amp;quot;I loved the structural narrative of the movie,&amp;quot; Gosling told us. &amp;quot;I think it&amp;#039;s so interesting the way the baton keeps being passed. There are still the conventions of a heist film, a crime drama, a family drama, a thriller, and yet it&amp;#039;s deconstructed.&amp;quot; But filming wasn&amp;#039;t always fun. &amp;quot;I regretted the face tattoo instantly,&amp;quot; Gosling said. &amp;quot;I told [Cianfrance], &amp;#039;This looks ridiculous, I can&amp;#039;t do this to myself or your movie,&amp;#039; and he said, &amp;#039;Well that&amp;#039;s what people do with face tattoos, they regret it. This movie is about consequences, so now you are stuck with it.&amp;#039; I was upset at the time, but I was glad that he held my feet to the fire in that way, because it did give me the sense of shame that I don&amp;#039;t think I could have acted in the film. I didn&amp;#039;t want to be photographed or even look at myself in the mirror, and I felt ridiculous. I started to feel probably exactly how this character felt.&amp;quot; Gosling did his own motorcycle stunts and trained for months by riding around Schenectady, which is a Mohawk word that translates to &amp;quot;place beyond the pines.&amp;quot; He describes his character: &amp;quot;Luke is a melting pot of every masculine clich\u00E9\u2014tattoos, motorcycles, muscles, guns\u2014it&amp;#039;s overkill, and when he is presented with this child that he didn&amp;#039;t know that he had, it&amp;#039;s like a mirror is held up to him. He realizes that those things don&amp;#039;t make you a man, and at the heart of it, he&amp;#039;s an empty person. He&amp;#039;s very much a disaster of a person.&amp;quot; Has Gosling considered being a father himself? &amp;quot;I really like the kid who played our kid; Tony Pizza, that&amp;#039;s his name,&amp;quot; he laughed. &amp;quot;His real name is Tony Pizza Jr., and I don&amp;#039;t know, if they could all be like Tony Pizza, I guess I would have them.&amp;quot;  The reality of filming his bank heists was not exactly romantic: &amp;quot;When I first started robbing the bank, I looked down and [the extras] were smiling and filming me with their cell phones!&amp;quot; Gosling said. &amp;quot;They were having a great time being robbed, and then Derek got very angry and blamed me for not being scary enough. He said, &amp;#039;Look at these people, they are having a good time!&amp;#039; He made me do 22 takes.&amp;quot; In a few months, Gosling will be grappling with the challenges of filmmaking himself, as he begins shooting How to Catch a Monster, which is his screenwriting and directorial debut. He admits that he&amp;#039;s a bit nervous. &amp;quot;But I&amp;#039;m not worried anymore,&amp;quot; he stated. &amp;quot;I was until I got this cast, [but] the cast is so good that [I] can&amp;#039;t mess that up.&amp;quot; Mendes heads that cast.  We asked Gosling about the chemistry between him and Mendes, which is at the heart of The Place Beyond the Pines. &amp;quot;I think that she...I would like to say it&amp;#039;s our chemistry, but I think the reality is that it&amp;#039;s Derek&amp;#039;s process,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;I think that chemistry is evident in other relationships in the movie, as well, and the kind of environment that he puts you in evokes a kind of connection. I think we all have a chemistry with one another because we were the only actors in the vicinity, because everyone else was a real person from [Schenectady].&amp;quot; The fledgling director has picked up on-set lessons that he will apply to How to Catch a Monster, which is due out in 2014. &amp;quot;What I&amp;#039;ve learned from the filmmakers that I&amp;#039;ve worked with is that they are themselves,&amp;quot; he explained. &amp;quot;As much as you want to adopt a particular style, I don&amp;#039;t think that&amp;#039;s wise. When you are a director, there is nowhere to hide. You are completely exposed. As an actor, you can say, &amp;#039;Well it&amp;#039;s the character,&amp;#039; or &amp;#039;I didn&amp;#039;t write, direct, cut, or score it.&amp;#039; You can hide behind a lot of things. Whereas a filmmaker is responsible for everything. I didn&amp;#039;t realize how much you can tell about a filmmaker by their films.&amp;quot; Gosling&amp;#039;s entire career, which began on The Mickey Mouse Club at age 12, has surprised him. &amp;quot;I couldn&amp;#039;t get an audition for The Believer or a movie like that, because of my past [as a child actor],&amp;quot; he revealed. &amp;quot;Yet, after that film, people were talking to me like I was some serious person all of a sudden. And I tried to play that role for awhile, because it felt good. But it was something I was sort of pretending to be. I have been with my manager since I was 14, with my agent since I was 16, same with my publicist and lawyer. Everybody around me has been in it for the long haul. You know, when I first started out, I was never really considered for leading roles, so I just sort of wired my brain to believe that if I was going to have a career, I was going to be a character actor. It&amp;#039;s only sort of in the last five years that things kind of opened up.&amp;quot; The Place Beyond the Pines opens in theaters today.  Photo: Atsushi Nishijima  Photo: Atsushi Nishijima "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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