Denmark’s Nicolas Winding Refn cut his teeth with the Pusher trilogy before catching international attention with a series of viscerally bizarre films. Bronson tells the story of England’s most notorious prisoner, a man who loves to get naked and grease himself up before attacking prison guards. Refn’s follow-up is Valhalla Rising, the story of One Eye, a brooding Viking played by Mads Mikkelsen, who never speaks a single line of dialog.

Refn’s latest is Drive, a minimal, existentialist thriller. Ryan Gosling stars as a stunt man who moonlights as a getaway driver for hire. The Driver does little else – he’s at peace behind the wheel – yet develops a shy relationship with Irene (Carey Mulligan), a warm-hearted young woman. Soon the Driver gets into serious trouble when a job goes bad, and now a vicious producer (Albert Brooks) wants him dead. At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Refn won the Best Director prize, which is no surprise given his atmospheric visuals and flair for combining pathos with shocking violence. Opening tomorrow, Drive is already one of the year’s best films. I recently talked with Refn about his film, his depiction of violence, and his terrific electro soundtrack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAc23x2JJG0

I want to talk about the film’s feminine aspect. I read interviews in which you stated that it’s very much a feminine film.

All my films are very feminine. Art is a feminine medium and it’s a way to counter masculinity. You know, the film I structured very much like a fairy tale. Half the movie had to be pure champagne in order for the [the psychotic behavior] of the second half to succeed. So it’s very much going from being very feminine to being extremely masculine. But I do look at myself as a feminine filmmaker, which makes me very masculine.

You had these mixes of contrasting scenes, where a passionate embrace suddenly veers into someone’s head getting kicked in. How important to you was it that the violence to those extreme levels?

Very, that was what the whole point. The elevator sequence I came up with a week before we started shooting. This was a scene there that I couldn’t make work, and by placing it in the elevator I was able to incorporate the kiss, which essentially was the payoff to the head smash. Before, the problem was I didn’t have anything to account it for. So it wasn’t till I changed [the scene’s] surroundings that I was able to come up with [a payoff]. There’s nothing too extreme for me if it balances in the reverse.

So balance very important to you.

Yeah, the payoff won’t have an effect unless the build-up is emotionally engaging. Making violence is very much like sex. If you believe the build up to the climax, it becomes so much more engaging.

Was the intimacy of the violence deliberate?

Yes, because violence is very intimate. The more intimate you make it, the more effective it is. More is at stake, so it touches you much deeper. In all of my films, violence always comes out of a person who has no other way to communicate. It’s the last straw of primal man.

With regard to the elevator scene, I read that you talked to Gaspar Noé about how to achieve the head-smashing.

I called Gaspar, and then we met in Paris because I was there for a few days with [Alejandro] Jodorowsky, and he kind of went through it; showed me how they had done it.

What were some of the things that he told you?

Like how in Irréversible he was able to replace an actor with a dummy. I don’t think I achieved it as good as he did it, but then again I got a kiss in there, which he didn’t have [laughs].

Intimacy and violence seems to be a common thread in all your movies, is that something intentional?

I’m a fetish filmmaker, and I make films based on what I would like to see. Either I’ll write it myself or I’ll have somebody else write it for me. I’m not the greatest filmmaker in the world, by no means, but I’m the best filmmaker of the kind of films I make.

When you work with another screenwriter, what’s the collaboration like?

Well, I think the best way to answer that is that I can only make films based on myself. So far, I’ve always come up with what I want to do myself, and having been forced to write it. But, regarding Drive, the source material – the novel it’s based on – is very good. [The screenwriter] had been very clever in how to structure the story in a more accessible fashion, mechanically. So there was a great chance for me and him to go back and say “but what do you want to happen?”. I don’t make films on a “we” basis. I can’t. There’s only “I”. That’s how I make films, though some people make them differently.

Can you talk about the film soundtrack? The electro-pop soundtrack is such a great contrast to how the film plays out. How did that come about?

I wanted an electronic score from the beginning, because whenever I make a film, I try to define it as a piece of music. With Drive, the idea was to have an electronic score combined with automobiles and masculine visuals. The electronic score, in a more European style of late 70’s/early 80’s Europop, was then kind of feminine. [I wanted to combine] that sound with kind of modern sounds of the engine. That was the idea. Kraftwerk was the biggest inspiration for me when we were developing the score.

It seems like the soundtrack is telling the story more than any line of dialogue. Is that what you wanted to come across?

Yeah, because I’m not a playwright. I make films based on visuals and the only people’s opinions I care about are the actors, so if we’re on the same page, that’s all the matters to me. Working on a film is a bit like working on an installation: it’s about collaborating with talent to make it as easy and as comfortable, or uncomfortable depending on the scene, for them to express their emotions. Because, that’s what art is, art is the flow of emotions, and if you can tap into that as an audience, you experience something and it stays with you for the rest of your life.

With having very sparse dialogue throughout the fim, would you say that it was harder or easier to direct the actors that way?

No, not really, it was just more like what fit the scene. When we’d shoot a scene, I’d eliminate almost half the dialogue during script rehearsals. We would start every morning with Ryan [Gosling] and I figuring out, “what do we really want to say?”, and cross out and come up with something else instead. If you’ve got a great cast, your job is not to tell them what to do, it’s to inspire them to give their best. If they want to say something differently or phrase it another way, by all means, go ahead.

I’m more interested in what they can accomplish. Same thing with the photographer, or an editor, or composer, you always ask “well what would you like to do?”, because maybe they have a better idea than you, and you have to run with that. Filmmaking is a very collaborative medium dictated by a dictator.

I really enjoyed the minimalism of the opening sequence. What do you think makes a good car chase?

It’s hard to say because each car chase is different. There’s no formula, it depends on the story, really. Car chases are just a technique.

What were you trying to achieve with the opening one?

I’ve never seen a car chase that’s all P.O.V., like a video game. I wanted to make each car chase different so it all didn’t become the same thing because I didn’t have the money to do some of the extravagant stunts that other films have. When I did Bronson, I choreographed the fight scenes differently, emotionally as the film progressed. Same thing with Drive.

You mentioned how fairy-tales were the basis for Drive, was there anything specific that you were going for?

They were all based on the Grimm’s Fairy Tales structure and the characters were archetypes. Ryan’s character would be like a knight and Carey Mulligan would be the young girl who gets herself in trouble because of her innocence and her purity. Albert Brooks was the evil king, Ron Perlman was the dragon, and Bryan Cranston, the helper. They were all very much based on archetypes.

In [James] Sallis’ book, which is a brilliant piece of literature, it’s very much about a man’s travel in his past and in his future. But to make that accessible on a much larger scale, it had to benefit from a much simpler plot. So it becomes very accessible immediately because the love story had to be so pure. The good thing in this situation was that Ryan and I were so telekinetic in everything around us. It was like we became one person.

I’ve heard that you have some more films planned that you want to do with Ryan Gosling.

We’re shooting Only God Forgives at Christmas, and then hopefully we’ll shoot the Logan’s Run remake after.

How’s this transition been for you? A lot of people are looking at this as your big Hollywood breakthrough.

Well, I thought it was going to be a battle, but it turned out to be very, very smooth. It was hard how I made the film, but Ryan would protect me. It was in a similar way when Steve McQueen wanted Peter Yates to come do Bullitt, or Lee Marvin insisting on John Boorman directing Point Blank. It was a marriage between a Hollywood star and a European filmmaker, on a very equal level.

You talk about the sort of “telekinesis” you have with Ryan Gosling. Would say you guys have that same sort of vision for your next couple of films together?

It’s more about emotions, and if you can click on certain things. But yeah, we talk all the time about things we want to do and how to make it better. When I came to L.A., I would drive around at night with Ryan and go to the 101, a very famous diner, and talk about the film. Then in the morning, Hossein would be writing from me and Ryan’s experiences, and we’d sit down and restructure the film again, and again, and again. Then Ryan and I would go on a drive and lock Hossein in the attic to rewrite [laughs].

It was very collaborative in that sense. Carey Mulligan moved into my house because she didn’t have a place to stay in L.A., so she lived with me and my wife and it automatically became like a family. It was a lot of fun to make this film.

Your films have a strong Jodorowsky influence. Can you talk about how you applied his sort of existential sensibility to this film?

Right before I went off to Hollywood to make the movie I was talking with him and I said “how do I make a movie in Hollywood that’s mine?” And he said “just smile and nod every time someone speaks to you” [laughs].

How did your relationship with Ryan Gosling influence your discussions with the rest of the cast, if at all?

I would talk with the rest of the cast the same way. On their level, with their ideas, and their approaches. I keep casts very separate.

Separate how?

Well, I’ll talk to one actor about his character separately from how I’d talk to another actor about their character, so when they start their scenes, it’s a duel.

How did Albert Brooks come into the film?

I knew distinctly that I wanted him to play the Bernie Rose character. At that time Bernie was a gangster, primarily because that’s who he is in the novel, but I wanted to make him a movie producer. So Hossein and I talked about how to do that and put that information into the script.

I wanted to meet Albert, of course, before signing off on him and offering him the part. So he came to my house and he was like a volcano of emotion. I realized that he never played a bad guy or killed anyone, which is interesting casting-wise. I figured if I didn’t have him kill anybody now, he was going to kill everybody soon [laughs]. He did a phenomenal job with it.

You talk about the idea of Drive as a superhero film. Can you talk about where the idea for the scorpion symbol on Ryan’s jacket came from, as well as the allusion to “The Scorpion and the Frog” story within the film?

I knew I wanted a satin jacket because I wanted him to shine at night. When you deal with very good actors, you often let them figure out their wardrobe themselves because that’s very much how they build their characters. So Ryan would go out and find a jacket that he’d feel comfortable in and he’d bring it back and we’d make it satin. A lot of them were old military jackets with symbols of eagles and other iconic American symbols, and I thought, “Oh, that would be great if he had a symbol on himself, like a logo!”

We decided we were going to put some kind of animal on the jacket, but then by coincidence I was with the costume designer in a garage looking at how mechanics dress. Ryan was there working on his car because he was building his own car at the time, and he said that I should show the costume designer my visual reference for the Drive, which was Scorpio Rising. The film starts with the logo of a scorpion, and the telekinetic minds of myself and Ryan simultaneously said “it’s a scorpion!” Then Ryan had the idea that we could use this design to incorporate this story about the scorpion and the frog, and it turned out really great.

Thanks for talking with me!

No problem.