Director Scott Cooper grew up in the hills of Virginia, the grandson of a coal miner. It's a story he's telling often these days, making it the pillar of the campaign for his new film, Out of the Furnace, a drama that stars Christian Bale as Russell Baze, a steelworker who suffers loss after loss: he watches his father die, his girlfriend (Zoe Saldana) drift away, and his Iraq veteran brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) fight opponents in both the shadowy world of bare knuckle brawling, and battle-induced PTSD in the dark recesses of his memory.

"I'm drawn to people who live on the margins, the dispossessed and disenfranchised, the blue collar milieu, people who are under-represented on screen, too often misrepresented on screen, and I wanted to tell their lives as honestly and authentically and as truthfully as possible," said Cooper, who previously wrote and directed Crazy Heart, helping Jeff Bridges win an Oscar. "And that can sometimes be painful because the people who live in America often aren't thought of too often by people who make films and the people who produce and finance them. I felt a real responsibility to do that."

In Out of the Furnace, Woody Harrelson plays Harlan DeGroat, a vicious meth-dealing, fight-fixing hillbilly, who is owed money by bar owner John Petty (Willem Dafoe); the local booze-slinger is subsequently waiting on payment from Rodney to settle gambling debts. This cash flow — or lack thereof — sets off a chain reaction of violence, treachery, and vengeance, some of which were inspired by Cooper's own life.

Though he is credited as a co-writer with Brad Ingelsby on the project, Cooper gave the script a near-total re-write after signing on for the Leonardo DiCaprio-produced project, adding personal details in what became a cathartic expulsion of memory.

"Woody's character, even though he wasn't from New Jersey, was based on someone who touched my immediate family in a tragic way," he said. "Having lost a sibling, I understand that. Dealing with the kind of loss that Christian's character deals with, people in my family have suffered in that way."

Even character-building scenes, like Russell's inability to shoot a deer while on a hunting trip, came from the filmmaker's memory.