Why Ryan Gosling Is Joining the Circus

We've got more scoop on the hot actor's upcoming movie motorcycle riding

By Marc Malkin Jan 25, 2011 8:20 PMTags
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We already know that Ryan Gosling is going to be riding a motorcycle in the upcoming drama The Place Behind the Pines.

But Mr. Gosling isn't going to be simply cruising around some streets and up and down some highways...

Gosling will actually be playing a circus motorcycle rider.

Yup, like one of those guys in the huge round steel cages.

"He'll take circus motorcycle lessons," Pines producer Jamie Patricoff told me while having breakfast at the Sundance Film Festival. "I can guarantee you he'll want to do his own stunts in the cages.

"I'm waiting for that call from him going, 'I'm going to take my motorcycle lessons now,'" Patricoff said.

Pines is being directed by Gosling's Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance. "It has a little more action than Blue Valentine had," Cianfrance told me earlier this month at the Critics' Choice Movie Awards. "This one has motorcycles and guns in it. With Blue Valentine I wanted to make a very violent movie without guns because I hate guns so much because every movie has guns in it...But it's hard to make a violent movie without guns it so the next one has a gun."

Patricoff, who coproduced the freshly-minted Oscar-nominated Blue Valentine and was in Sundance with the film Little Birds, said they hope to begin shooting Pines this summer.