Short of the Day

Is this the first promo for his upcoming Amazon series?

Okay, so if we’re technical, today’s Short of the Day isn’t really a short film, at least not in the traditional sense. What it is is a minute-long clip from writer-director-wizard Nicolas Winding Refn that he posted on his Twitter feed over the weekend with the statement: “Dear Friends, Happy Easter.” What follows is a clip of the animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex from the Museum of Natural History in London gesticulating in a weird, fuzzy, purple-green light as a passage from The Satanic Bible is read in voiceover by the late Anton LaVey, and all this with the words “Too Old to Die Young” constantly onscreen.

Take a minute to process all that.

Now, we know that Too Old to Die Young is the name of Refn’s upcoming, L.A.-set crime series for Amazon starring Miles Teller, but is this meant to be a teaser of sorts for that? The passage by LaVey — which is about the relationship between love, good, predation and humanity, and which is cut short mid-word after a minute — could certainly be a thematic indicator of what we can expect from the series, but the T Rex — like that cougar in The Neon Demon — is out of left field and tough to connect to anything other than the sort of beautiful, wicked absurdity we’ve come to expect from Refn.

There’s also the possibility this is a tie-in to the album of songs that inspired The Neon Demon which Refn recently released; it’s called The Wicked Die Young. That seems less likely, but I suppose it’s still in the mix.

Whatever this is, it’s cool as fuck. Check it out, and keep your eyes open for Too Old to Die Young, which is in pre-production now for a 2018 release.