'Too Old To Die Young': Nicolas Winding Refn On His "Heroin-Induced, Obsessive, Fetish Ride About America" [Interview]

The karma of our great nation has come full circle. Concentration camps have been reborn, immigration as has been weaponized by the side of hate, and Hollywood is about to knock one of its most beloved record stores down (yes, one of these issues is not as dire as the others). Yet sure as a phoenix rising from the ashes, Nicolas Winding Refn remains a singular filmmaker who firmly believes in the power of rebirth and resurrection; a storytelling seer who feels “creativity is truly the only thing that makes the world move forward.”

Even with America run by a racist pumpkin-head dotard, the Danish director still sees hope on the horizon. Faith is an essential part of the auteur’s artistic process. Refn always takes a trip to Paris so that his friend, Alejandro Jodorowsky, can provide him a Tarot reading before starting each new project. Watching the entertainment industry shift gears in anticipation of the ever-encroaching streaming takeover, Refn saw an opportunity to launch a film noir novel, “Too Old To Die Young”— a long-form, compulsively fetishistic, acid coma about death, religion and the rebirth of America, starring Elvis Presley. Or at least, upon first meeting Miles Teller, the Danish filmmaker simply could not unsee how much the young actor’s face resembled the King of Rock & Roll. Casting Teller to play the corrupt cop with a mythic pelvic bone at the center of his show— a man of power/privilege in a sexual relationship with an underage teenager— practically screamed Stars & Stripes to the director.

“Too Old to Die Young” also comes courtesy of the filmmaker’s self-branded streaming platform, ByNWR, and Amazon Prime. Refn sat down for a chat with The Playlist while he was in Los Angeles promoting his new project right after Comic-Con. We talked with the director about his caustic, polarizing “Too Old to Die Young” series (which I loved, personally, but it is nihilistic and provocative), why it was important for him to tell this story now, and how he sees the streaming world paving the way for new and evolving forms of media.

“There will always be cinemas,” the filmmaker said, “but they will be a stop along the way… because the battleground for entertainment will be fought on the internet.”

Refn has always had a particular fondness for the City of Angels—though you’ll never see the director of “Drive,” behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. If you’re ever browsing through the auteur section of Amoeba Records, you’ll find he signed his section with a sharpie. “I love secrecy,” he says from behind his sunglasses, holding a trademark Amoeba Records bag he set on the table earlier; “There is a truth to be found in secrecy.” Enveloped in the red and yellow plastic is a gift Refn purchased for a friend. It feels wrong to ask the filmmaker what record he’s giving them.

This is such a fascinating series. How did this creative collaboration with comic book writer/cartoonist Ed Brubaker come about?
Some years ago, there were a lot of noirs in Hollywood—I don’t live here – and now is the time to get into television. You could say Netflix kind of changed the system with doing shows that were direct and would unload everything and it kind of started a whole new … not even a Golden Age, really, just a whole morphing of the industry. And I was here in Los Angeles doing a movie, “The Neon Demon,” and while I was doing that I said, well, I am interested in this streaming concept, though I don’t really watch television.

I was in a car— I don’t drive, I was being driven— and I came up with this idea about doing a show in L.A. about death and religion, and I kind of mentally went back to my origin, to when I started making films. I made something called “The Pusher Trilogy,” three Danish films, back in Copenhagen, about people in a criminal environment and it was kind of a serialized, long format concept that were done as feature films. Then I came up with the title (“Too Old to Die Young”). I didn’t invent the title, but the title was like a riddle that fit really well with the show; it had an enigmatic sensibility. That was the foundation. I wanted it to take place in L.A., and obviously, it was going to have all of my fetishes and indulgences.

But because it was such a huge undertaking, and I was already doing something else – I love working with other people; I find it enormously pleasurable – I called Ed, who I had hired to work on a film that I was producing, and said, “Look I have this idea. Do you want to join me on this… whatever this is going to be?” We like each other’s work and I thought that his talent, especially for short narrative, was very interesting to bring in. Directing is essentially accumulating a love and a team, and then you work individually with the people who have specific talents. And so, I thought of Ed, who is a natural-born storyteller. But he’s used to a shorter format which I find very interesting—which is graphic novels—so he’s taking his talent and fusing it into this larger landscape that I wanted to do.

Then you’re up and running.
Yes, but along the way— I always go to Paris to meet [filmmaker] Alejandro Jodorowsky to have a Tarot reading about whatever I’m working on. We discuss it, and then we eat. The Tarot made it clear that there was a missing piece on the team, and everything has a mother and a father, so I brought in [screenwriter] Halley Gross (“Banshee,” “Westworld“)—who happened also to be friends with Ed, and she’d worked previously with him—and she really came from the gaming world. She writes video games and she had been an actress originally and kind of drifted more towards writing. So, I thought that was a great combo of talents that could infuse into what this was going to become one long, heroin-induced, self-indulgent, compulsively obsessive, fetish ride about America.

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The long format approach—it seems more truthful, as the narrative world decays. It seems more surreal the deeper it gets. Was that surreal for you too, in working with the longer format?
Well, I make everything in chronological order. It’s really just about how I feel and what would I like to see, and I’ll just change it to whatever that feeling is.