According to co-Writer and Director Derek Cianfrance, he met with Ryan Gosling at his agent's house in 2007 while working on Blue Valentine (2010). He asked Ryan Gosling (paraphrased), "You've done so much already, what is there in life you haven't done that you want to do?" Gosling responded that he has always wanted to rob a bank. "What has kept you from robbing a bank?" Being arrested. "And how would you go about robbing a bank?" Ryan Gosling described robbing a bank on a motorcycle because it is fast and agile, and the helmet would conceal his identity, then stashing the motorcycle in the back of a truck because the police would be looking for the motorcycle. Cianfrance responded that he was actually writing a screenplay about a bank robber in exactly that way, and he felt that Gosling was meant to play this role.