CANNES – The first takeaway from the press conference for “Too Old To Die Young” at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival is poor Miles Teller. Sure, the “Whiplash” star hasn’t necessarily always been friendly to the press (thank you “Fantastic Four”), but he’s clearly been through the ringer as the star of Nicolas Winding Refn’s new Prime Video series. And, no, we’re not exaggerating for sarcastic effect either.
Refn explained during the sit down with the world’s media that “Too Old” was written after “The Neon Demon” was released in the summer of 2016 and how it was inspired thematically by America’s last presidential election. He began shooting in 2017 and filmed for 10 months. Teller committed to the project after just reading the first episode and admitted his primary reason was to work with the filmmaker behind acclaimed films such as “Drive” and “Bronson.”
READ MORE: Miles Teller in the “Too Old To Die Young” trailer
“For me, it was working with Nic. I’m such a fan of Nic’s work and he told me we were going to shoot it in chronological order which was 7 months for me,” Teller says. “That was really intriguing to me, to have a character for that long. I didn’t really need too much. I learned so much on this project as I knew I would being directed by Nic I felt like I learned a lot about the craft. I added a lot of things to my repertoire. That’s what I kind of chase. I chase the experience because that’s the only thing you can control.”
*Refn insinuates it went much longer, “until I ran out of money”
In the two episodes screened at the festival, it’s hard to completely figure out the overreaching narrative but the show centers on Martin (Teller), an LA County Sherrif’s investigator who is moonlighting as an assassin out to get truly bad people. He’s still friendly with an ex-Army buddy, Viggo (John Hawkes), who has a similar mission but is guided by the mysterious new age wisdom of Diana (Jena Malone). The second episode was almost a stand alone as it followed Marting traveling to Albuquerque, New Mexico to take two porn producers whose work is ending in the deaths of some of their subjects. Overall, it’s sometimes brilliant and often tedious by even Refn’s standards.
Refn has always been a quirky personality, but on this day his ramblings about why he made the project with Amazon and the future of streaming were, for lack of a better word, peculiar. For your consideration, this particular response.
“I think the studios are getting ready for ultimate streaming. I think that is common knowledge. It’s not this or that. It’s just an ultimate universe,” Refn says. ” Streaming is an energy flow that runs around us that runs 24/7. We can tap into it through our social abilities and we can consume how and when and what. My father-in-law was Fritz Lang. What would my father-in-law do today? He would probably go into streaming. I have restrictions automatically going into it. There is a form of prediction in it. It was just like an ocean of possibilities that had no control was so interesting that we would just every day just come to work and just paint. I just ran out of money. But by then we had shot for 10 months. So, to me it’s like a co-existence. There will always be cinemas because it’s part of our experience. I think yesterday at Cannes, which is a place that is very emotional for me to be. Having this show here certainly becomes the year zero now. Now Cannes has changed. It has mutated into the future. With that comes an endless amount of possibilities.”
If you are concerned Refn didn’t consult with any of his peers before undertaking what he calls essentially a 13-hour movie, you can breathe a bit easier. It’s become somewhat of a tradition that he visits his friend Alejandro González Iñárritu, who just happens to be this year’s competition jury president, to discuss his new works before filming begins.
“With me [he] was like ‘Yes! Yes!’ Because I was talking about wanting to get into the smaller screen. ‘Television! Fantastic!’ I can’t even do his accent very well,” Refn says. “[He said] ‘Just make sure they kill bad people. They have to kill bad people.’ Then he said I needed a female writer and he said you have to have a mother and a father. I’ worked with two wonderful writers on my last film. I went back to LA and Halley Wegryn Gross, who is a young screenwriter out of the US, became the missing link of the team. When in doubt go to Alejandro and listen.”
After espousing streaming as the future and using his teenage children as examples of how young people are communicating with content for almost 30 minutes, Refn was asked what he planned to do next. He took a breath and responded, “My first reaction when I was done with the show is that I want to do a movie next.”
“Too Old To Die Young” debuts in full on Prime Video on June 14.