Cooper discussed the novel that the movie is based on and working with Christian Bale and Harry Melling.
The film synopsis shows a world-weary detective who is hired to investigate the murder of a cadet in West Point. Because he acted in the silence of the youth, he enlists one of his own to unravel the case in which the young man to know the name Edgar Allan Poe was the name of a young man who would come to this end.
Tyler Treese: How did you get started with the original novel? This movie really sets the perfect setting for me.
Scott Cooper: Oh, thank you, Tyler. I spent my days in Virginia the same way as Edgar Allan Poe. I was born there. Poe he was never adopted but John Allan, a benefactor of Richmond, Virginia raised him for many years in Virginia. My father taught English and literature; so after the first movie, Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges, he sent the novel to me. He said that this is so clever, that Louis Bayard, the author, put young Edgar Allan Poe into the central of detective stories a genre he bequeathed to us. I read this for pleasure and figured out, My Lord, that is, if I could do a lot, a compelling film.
One could eat a whodunnit. Moreover, I could also make this father-son love story where two loners who come together on the margins of society form a deep friendship. Second, I can reshape Edgar Allan Poe origin story, because all of us agree with this notion of who Edgar Allan Poe was when he wrote the Raven and Telltale Heart and Murder in the Rue Morgue. This is a film about before that time. He was still in his formative pity and began to write poetry and just started to write fiction. I’m saying that the two hours which occur in this book motivate young Poe to become the writer ultimately became.
Harry is a very popular poet and I like how he’s used like Watson in this movie. He would be the first to do the detective task. What did you like most about this dynamic? Harry and Christian work together just so well.
I think Harry Melling is a revelation. We all know what an incredible actor, Christian Bale, is capable of, and he’s providing an outstanding and powerful performance. But what he sees in Young Poe is somebody that he might wish he could be. Someone who is warm, witty and humorous and has the open mind to those poetic and romantic musings. Someone who’s a great companion and filled with life. Who didn’t ever experience the greatest tragedy and loss that someone like Christian Bales had experienced.
That’s something. Second, it is so hard, just like a director, that two actors have come together and show in the same frame. In a Christian, that’s quite restrained and soot, I mentioned. You have Harry Melling, an open-minded and effective tyre of suffocating spirit. He can hardly stop suffocating whatever thoughts they hear about him from verbalizing. When we see these two men occupy the same space, then at the end of the film, we see how sinister Poe is. Yet as well as a glimpse of how much loss and regret and heartbreak both men ultimately experienced I thought would be, if the viewer, but certainly for the writer and director, a truly beautiful experience.
I wanted to ask for this final scene because the performance both of them is raw and very vulnerable. That character is true, and I thought that final scene really elevated the film. How were you filming that?
Thanks! It wasn’t an easy scene to film, so so as to keep the directors short of giving people breadcrumbs to watch the first time they watched the film, if they knew more about the scenes and then again with these clues – some of them, one first. Second, I think that we shot that scene in an entire day, maybe in a twelve- or fourteen-hour day, where everything happens to the bare of the screen in its original glory. To date it does not matter the most important thing in any movie. That’s the final thing that the viewer will think about. Everything took place since the first time. If the endings don’t work, the film will not be doing well. Whether the movie has brilliant performances, production design, you created a great tone, aesthetic, world everyone has to come together emotionally, has to come together psychologically, and in something that feels honest. And I hope you feel this.