Nicolas Winding Refn photographed by Tom Hoops
08:04
![“Ryan’s dialogue was so reduced, which can be difficult for an actor. When you take away their dialogue, you handicap the actor and take away their movement…So they have to use parts of their body to communicate, which is harder than it looks. But a way to do that is to keep everything inside, so gestures and moves tells the story. But very quickly, people compensate, and move faster, and bigger, and more facial gestures, where they try to emulate something. But because we’re making a movie, the camera sees, it’s enlarged basically. So with Ryan, because he’s such a unique actor, all you had to do is go over and hug him and hold onto him until he would let [go] into the hug. And I would say, “Keep it all inside, and go with God.” - Nicolas Winding Refn.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltmn52YIRG1qztqsao1_1280.jpg)
“Ryan’s dialogue was so reduced, which can be difficult for an actor. When you take away their dialogue, you handicap the actor and take away their movement…So they have to use parts of their body to communicate, which is harder than it looks. But a way to do that is to keep everything inside, so gestures and moves tells the story. But very quickly, people compensate, and move faster, and bigger, and more facial gestures, where they try to emulate something. But because we’re making a movie, the camera sees, it’s enlarged basically. So with Ryan, because he’s such a unique actor, all you had to do is go over and hug him and hold onto him until he would let [go] into the hug. And I would say, “Keep it all inside, and go with God.” - Nicolas Winding Refn.
”I don’t know if you know the story, but when Nicolas and I first met, it didn’t go very well. We weren’t going to make the movie together. He didn’t talk to me, and I couldn’t get through to him. In retrospect, he said he was high on cough medicine, so that’s that. When we got in the car, I had to give him a ride home. It was an awkward drive, so I turned on the radio and REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling” came on the radio, and Nicolas started crying. Then he started singing, and he said, “This is it. This is a movie about a guy who drives around listening to pop music because it’s the only way he can feel.” I had the same dream for the movie, and I thought, “This is odd that this guy’s from Copenhagen and I’m from Canada, and we’re wildly different people, yet we’re sharing the same dream for a film where that’s not in the script. So how are we both having the same thought?” If REO Speedwagon hadn’t come on the radio, we never would have made this movie. It meant something to me, and it meant something to him when most people would just think, “Yeah, you guys are a couple of nutjobs. It’s just a song that came on the radio.” But to us it meant something. We spent the movie trying to discover what that was. The two of us comparing and contrasting our dreams created the film. ” - Ryan Gosling.
“I love the language of silence. Like the character in Vanishing Point who is essentially also very existentialist in his silence. The great heroes are always more silent, from that to the Man With No Name to The Samurai and Shane. There’s a mythology. The man who’s always more silent is always the one who’s unpredictable.” —Nicolas Winding Refn (x)
Ryan Gosling: "Carey and I, our relationship off camera was very similar to our relationship on camera. We really just kind of looked at each other. It just felt good. I just liked looking at her. And I didn't want to blow it by saying anything. Also, I really wanted to kiss her, so I asked the movie's director Nick if I could do it in the elevator scene before I smash a guy's head in.
23:06
Editor Matt Newman, Ryan Gosling, and Nicolas Winding Refn.
“My father was an editor. My mother was a photographer. I was brought up on an editing table. So images and editing them together has really been the basis of my understanding of film since I was little. Matt Newman, who edited Drive, also edited Bronson and Valhalla Rising with me. He’s a very important collaborator creatively for me. I shoot my films chronologically because it gives me a way to see the movie unfold in front of me in its purest form. It gives me a way to change things. It also gives the actors a little pressure, because there’s no safe haven, anything can go. When I edit the movie the first thing me and Matt do is cut the film into inconsistent, non-chronological storytelling. A completely incoherent structure, just to see what it feels like to turn everything on its head. Then you suddenly begin to discover what you can do — for example, starting a language that jumps in time. For example the dinner scene cuts together with the crooks in the park and him stealing a car. What you’re actually suggesting as a director is, “Is this happening or not?” without making a conscious decision of whether this is happening or not, which, going back to the Grimm’s Fairy Tale nature of pure fantasy, adds to the dreamlike aspect.” - Nicolas Winding Refn.
