“I believe there’s a 16-year-old girl in every man,” is the line Nicolas Winding Refn has been trotting out in every interview in advance of “The Neon Demon,” which screens tonight at the Cannes Film Festival. But there’s more to that provocative statement about his vision behind the fashion industry horror, which sees Elle Fanning playing a woman envied for her looks.
“I wanted to do a movie about a 16-year-old girl coming to Los Angeles. I believe there’s a 16-year-old girl in every man, so I was like, ‘Now I can make a version of my 16-year-old girl. I can be reborn as that character.’ I had this idea that I wanted to make a horror film about beauty,” he told EW. “I wasn’t born beautiful. My wife is, and I have very beautiful girls, but I’m not, so I was like, ‘What would it be like, being born beautiful, and how do you make a horror film out of that?’ I’d recently done a few campaigns for brands, which I very much enjoyed, and I was very fascinated by this fashion backdrop. It was very visual, but it was also very dramatic, melodramatic. All those circumstances led me to this idea at the opening of the film, and once I had that I could see how I would end it all. Once that was in place, I knew I had a story and then it was practical, mechanical, putting it together — and that became ‘The Neon Demon.’ ”
READ MORE: Watch: First Trailer For Nicolas Winding Refn’s ‘The Neon Demon’ Starring Elle Fanning
” I very much enjoyed a movie called ‘Valley of the Dolls‘ that was made in the ’60s. I always had a fascination with that movie. It has a lot of color, and actually I showed [it to] Elle before we started shooting,” the director added, about another influence on the movie. “….I wanted to make a teenage horror film. That itself was very intriguing to me because it’s like, what is that? I had to figure out what that is. I’m not very interested in pursuing things I know what they’re going to be. I don’t find that very satisfying. I like things that I don’t understand — like I had no knowledge of cars, I don’t have a driver’s license, I don’t have an interest in cars, but I’m very good at sexualizing them, so there’s a reason that worked very well to my instincts [with] ‘Drive.’ It’s approaching a story or themes that I maybe don’t understand very well, but that’s what makes them interesting to me, or it could be something I don’t even have an interest in and it forces you to look at it in a different way. Creativity is very much about turning your weaknesses into strength.”
Given his bold vision, and clarity of his creative process, it’s not a surprise that Hollywood has wanted to tap his talent. Projects like “The Equalizer” and “Logan’s Run” bubbled up, only for Refn to walk away, and while he’s not opposed to making studio films or blockbusters, he makes it clear that control is key.
“I love big films. There just hasn’t been the one that worked for what I wanted to do. I thought I was very vocal some years ago about ‘Wonder Woman’; I felt I was born to make Wonder Woman. I love that character. And I’ve had some wonderful meetings about various projects,” he told Deadline. “But I also love my freedom. No money in the world would ever outweigh the satisfaction of doing something exactly the way you want to do it. That high is unattainable if you don’t have final cut. It’s like the high on having the ability to make the movie you want to make is the ultimate drug. It’s very solitude-oriented because you can’t even share it. You can’t buy it and snort it with someone else or shoot it in your veins, you just have to do it. The endorphins that it produces when you go, ‘Well this is how it turned out and I got to make it the way I want to make it,’ it’s still the reason why you go through fire and water… So it’s kind of a conflict that I’m always in, but I would love to try to do a studio film.”
Maybe he’ll get his shot after “The Neon Demon” opens on June 24th. Stay tuned for our review later today, and check out a new clip and images below.
