When Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn said his Bangkok-set modern Western “Only God Forgives,” was going to shoot this summer he wasn’t lying.
That was the intention. But after meeting with actor Ryan Gosling about the neo-noir heist car picture “Drive,” the filmmaker decided to switch gears at the last minute, noting he still has funding for the Western which he hopes to do after his first Hollywood foray.
” ‘Only God Forgives’ was going to be my next film,” he said. “I was going to write it, direct and produce it. And then I met Ryan Gosling in L.A. and he’s a very nice guy, and we had dinner. And he wanted to a movie called ‘Drive’ which I had read and [after talking] we suddenly felt like we could collaborate. So I decided to make it now and we’re shooting in the fall in L.A.”
The picture is about about a Hollywood stunt driver who finds more excitement as a wheelman during robberies, but when a heist goes sour, a contract is put on his head and his survival skills burn up the pavement. The novel also has an existential touch we’re hoping surfaces in the script written by Hossein Amini (“Killshot,” “The Four Feathers”, “Jude”).
No other cast has been set and Refn said he wants to cast an unknown girl, but while he’s dabbled in Hollywood projects that never came to be (“The Dying Of The Light,” “Jekyll” with Keanu Reeves), this experience is still surreal. “I’m not used to being called everyday by agents saying, ‘what about this person, what about that person?’ he said about the casting process for “Drive.”
Those who had their heart set on “Only God Forgives,” shouldn’t fret. Refn says like his previous films, “Bronson” and “Valhalla Rising” — which were shot only six months apart — his two films will be shot almost back to back.
Ironically, Refn can’t even drive. “I don’t drive a car. I don’t have a driver’s license,” he chuckled. “But I would love to do a car chase film where its all done in camera. So I don’t have any CGI possibilities and I have to do it all like how they would do it in the ’70s and how do you do that again? There’s a technical challenge to it and ‘Drive’ has a very interesting storyline running through it, it’s almost like a super hero movie because its a guy who realizes he’s half man, half machine. It’s all about what would I like to see, in terms of how could I visualize the film and I had this idea that if you were to carve up the Driver, what would you he look like on the inside and there would be an engine cause that’s his heart. So I suddenly had this obsessive nature about mechanics and engines of cars, that began to create that impulse.”
The impetus for making “Drive” is also an interesting one as the filmmaker also sees it as chess move towards a comic-book film he’s been dying to make and has been actively talking about, practically campaigning for lately: Wonder Woman.
“I’m very optimistic about ‘Drive.’ The people [working on it] are great. So ask me in a year if I liked my Hollywood experience, but I have this dream concept: I want to make :Wonder Woman’ as a feature And I thought in order to access to that I should probably become a bit more Hollywood friendly.”
Refn hasn’t pitched the idea to anyone yet, but clearly he’s dying for the chance to do so.
“They’ve been working on it for 40 years, he said. “It’s going to be a concept that keeps evolving for decades unless someone makes it. There’s a million takes on it. She is, along with Batman and Superman one of the three original, iconic super heroes. And I think that it being a woman and she being created by a psychologist who was very interested in certain fetish elements — if you look at the original Wonder Woman its all about woman in very little clothes tying each other up, I don’t know what you would call that, but I would call it quite fetish. And then giving her interesting powers and having her come from an island of women. To me the real rosebud lies in the fact that it’s really about, what if women were stronger than men on all fronts: how would the world look like? If you do her as an average crusader in hot pants running around — which of course you have to do to some extent— but if you don’t go beyond that its going to be really cheesy or silly and sure they’ll be action, but its nothing special.”
Refn was also impressed with “The Dark Knight” and Christopher Nolan’s dark psychological take on Batman.
“I think Christopher Nolan’s take on the Batman was very clever in really bringing in elements that were always there in the comic books, but for some reason were bypassed in the cinema releases. But I do believe he actually created a hell of a better movie.”
But don’t expect Refn to be chasing several different comic book films in the future, his lens seems laser focused just on the Amazonian heroine. “It’s just that one character that I’m interested in,” he said. “That to me would like a dream. That would be really interesting. But for me Wonder Woman just has so much in it, just like Batman, the reason it works so well is because there are so many layers of subtext that you can utilize. There are some interesting comic book characters, but the real compelling ones you can count on one hand.”
Refn’s next film, the eerie and spiritual viking drama, “Valhalla Rising” starring Mads Mikkelsen (“Casino Royale,” “Chanel Coco & Igor Stravinsky”) hits theaters on July 16 and will be ONDemand a few weeks earlier at the beginning of July (date TBD). More from this interview closer to release.
