Love it or loathe it, Nicolas Winding Refn‘s "Only God Forgives" was a distinctive and completely polarizing piece of work. As the filmmaker himself admits, it found him consciously destroying everything that made "Drive" a success. He wanted to ensure he didn’t get stuck repeating himself. But it resulted in an anxiety filled shoot for the director, captured on camera by his wife Liv Corfixen, who turned it into the documentary "My Life Directed By Nicolas Winding Refn." It’s an up close look at Refn’s process on the movie from the kind of perspective you don’t often get. And over the weekend, the pair hit New York City to talk about the film.
The Close-Up podcast captured that conversation, and as always, Refn makes an enjoyable raconteur. He reveals that he’s a "big admirer of reality television," which made it easy for him to be filmed by Corfixen, and he describes the experience as "therapeutic." For her part, Corfixen says her husband is an "exhibitionist" and she wound up with nearly four hundred hours of material. When it came to whittling that down into something manageable, Corfixen had to quickly learn how to "kill your darlings."
There is so much more within, so listen to the full talk below. "My Life Directed By Nicolas Winding Refn" is now on VOD and playing in select cinemas.
