BPS 348: First-Time Filmmaking, Oscars & Netflix With Scott Copper

Scott Copper (Director, Screenwriter, Producer) made his feature
film directorial debut in 2009 with Fox Searchlight’s Oscar-winning
CRAZY HEART, which he also wrote and produced. The film, which
starred Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell and Robert
Duvall, earned three Academy Award nominations, winning for Best
Actor (Bridges) and Best Original Song (T Bone Burnett and Ryan
Bingham). Cooper won an Independent Spirit Award for Best First
Feature and earned WGA, USC Scripter and Independent Spirit Award
nominations, for his screenplay.

Cooper’s follow-up was the Leonardo DiCaprio/Ridley Scott-produced
OUT OF THE FURNACE, starring Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, Casey
Affleck, Zoë Saldana, Forest Whitaker and Sam Shepard. For his work
as writer, director and producer, Cooper won the Best Debut and
Second Film Award at the 2013 Rome Film Festival, where he was also
nominated for a Golden Marc’Aurelio Award. Next was Cooper’s 2015
Warner Bros. gangster film BLACK MASS, which Cooper both directed
and produced and which made its worldwide debut at the Venice
International Film Festival.

The box-office hit garnered wins from critics associations across
the country, and earned lead actor Johnny Depp the Desert Palm
Achievement Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival,
as well as a Best Actor nomination from the Screen Actors Guild. In
2017, Cooper’s western epic HOSTILES debuted at both the Telluride
Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festivals, earning
widespread critical acclaim. The film reunited Cooper with his OUT
OF THE FURNACE star Christian Bale and featured performances from
Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi, Jesse Plemons, Rory Cochrane and Ben
Foster. Cooper followed this up with ANTLERS, an exploration of yet
another genre in the Guillermo Del Toro-produced horror film.
Searchlight released the film to acclaim in October 2021.

Most recently, Cooper re-teamed for the third time with Bale on THE
PALE BLUE EYE, an adaptation of Louis Bayard’s novel of the same
name. The film tells the story of a series of murders at the United
States Military Academy at West Point in 1830 and a cadet the world
would later come to know as Edgar Allan Poe. Robert Duvall, Gillian
Anderson, Timothy Spall, Toby Jones and Harry Melling round out the
cast. The Netflix film will debut in Fall of 2022. Born in
Virginia, Cooper now resides in Los Angeles.

Please enjoy my conversation with Scott Copper.

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