William Bibbiani interviews Nicolas Winding Refn!

After a “Good Not Great” summer of blockbuster shenanigans comes Bronson, a cinematic breath of fresh air from jolly old England about the country’s most famous inmate, Michael Peterson – a.k.a. Charlie Bronson. But while Tom Hardy’s performance as the titular character deserves every bit of its acclaim, the film would not exist without the artistic vision of writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn. And yes, he’s color blind.

We sat down with Nicolas Winding Refn, director of Bronson, the Pusher Trilogy, Miss Marple: Nemesis and the upcoming Valhalla Rising, starring Casino Royale’s Mads Mikkelsen as a mute Viking warrior of supernatural strength. Find out about his difficulties shooting a film about a man in solitary confinement, making a Miss Marple movie just to work with Dr. Who (and taking his name off the project when that fell through), adapting Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde for Universal (starring Keanu Reeves), trying to make the first good Viking movie, and why technology is getting in the way of good science fiction…

NOW.

How did you come up with the abstract visual representation of Bronson talking to the audience?

Nicolas Winding Refn: When you’re making a movie about a guy in solitary confinement it’s very tricky, because either you can take a route that’s all about in a cell… that wasn’t the wisest thing I felt. I wanted to make it almost like this was a stage performance. A guy would come out on stage and he would talk about his life and we would visualize that. And that’s kind of like the structure of the film. Then, I always wanted to make a Kenneth Anger movie…

William Bibbiani: That explains the poo!

Nicolas Winding Refn: You could say that Bronson is a combination of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and Scorpio Rising.

In the movie, Charlie Bronson seems much more sophisticated and articulate than one would imagine most convicts would be in real life.

Nicolas Winding Refn: Well, he’s quite a clever man. If he had not gone to prison he would probably be one of the biggest advert executives out of England, because he’s very clever. The guy was able to create his own mythology, you know? I wasn’t making a biopic of Michael Peterson, I had no interest in making a biopic. I wanted to make a movie about the transformation of becoming Charlie Bronson, which is this larger than life concept, “brand” out of the U.K. that represents anti-authority.

When he’s out of prison it seems like he has a really hard time interacting with people, but then in the scenes where he’s in prison it seems like he has an easier time speaking his mind. And then the scenes when he’s on stage, he’s very articulate. Is that based on research?

Nicolas Winding Refn: No. I did not do the research on him, and I never met him. I didn’t even meet his family members because I didn’t want to make a biopic… Bronson is probably the closest I’ll ever come to making a biography. But structure-wise it was divided into three sections. First section was him on stage talking about his life, wanting us to see how he wanted his life to be perceived. He’s very articulate, he’s very flamboyant, he’s very open… Second act, he’s released [for] 69 days. You actually get to see his difficulties relating to the outside world. He’s like a Hans Christian Andersen character, he’s like a tin soldier walking around in a world he doesn’t understand, he can’t relate to. He’s too emotional for anything. He meets a girl, he falls in love with her. He doesn’t understand that there are different agendas, or love can be different things… He’s very primal in that sense. And the third act is basically now the audience seeing Charlie from their point of view. The movie shifts into that degree. So that’s why at the end he fully transforms himself into the Charlie Bronson “brand.”

How did you find Tom Hardy for this role? Was it difficult for him to do this particular character day after day?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Tom was kind of an interesting choice because first we met, and we didn’t like each other. We met in a wine bar in London, and he’s an alcoholic, or an ex-alcoholic, and I don’t drink alcohol. And it couldn’t have gone worse. I was like, “It’s not going to work,” and I’m sure he found me very arrogant, and he went off to do some plays and some other stuff, and I went off to kind of look for other actors. I think in the end, deep down the fault was mine because I didn’t know what I really wanted, or I didn’t know what I didn’t want, because I really hadn’t decided how to imagine the film. I hadn’t written it yet, I just had this idea. Of course, for many years people had been trying to make a movie about him in England. But once I kind of started writing it and gone around to meet actors… I met with a few Hollywood stars, Jason Statham and Guy Pearce were definitely into the picture, I met with them in various places. They were very nice, but I guess they didn’t take it very serious, that’s all… The casting director kept saying that I should meet with Tom, and I’m like, “I’m not reading with Tom.” I was being very childish. And in the end, there was nobody else. So kind of it was like inevitable. So, “Let’s meet again.” We met again about seven months later, but by then I basically knew what I didn’t want, so I was more specific and Tom had done a lot of other stuff in between, so meeting again it was like, “Oh my God, you’re Charlie Bronson! Where have you been?”

Did that conflict work for your relationship as you shot the movie?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Well, I’m sure it helped us as we started working together but it became a great marriage. I immensely enjoyed working with him. It was very tough for him, because I had under a million dollars to make the total movie, I had five weeks to shoot the movie, so for Tom, yeah, he was under a lot of pressure. He had six weeks to prepare, to pump up.

Did you shoot the movie in chronological order?

Nicolas Winding Refn: I shoot all my films in chronological order.

William Bibbiani: Where do the theatrical sequences in front of the audience fall in chronological order?

Nicolas Winding Refn: We shot that at the end, because it’s basically him, Charlie Bronson, seeing the world from his point of view. So I shot the whole movie [as a] build up to those stage performances, and then after I did the stage performances, at the end, on the last day, I shot the close-up of him almost narrating his life.

Does the real Charlie Bronson get any kind of royalties?

Nicolas Winding Refn: No, because in the U.K. it’s not allowed. So for him, he doesn’t get anything out of it. His family gets a little bit, like a fee… but there are no back ends, there are no kickbacks, because it’s not allowed. And I think Charlie should be happy enough that a film was made about him. I mean, the guy thinks it’s the greatest film ever made. He’s never seen it.

William Bibbiani: Will he? Can he?

Nicolas Winding Refn: No. No, he’ll never see it. He’ll never be allowed to watch it. I’ve been told he heard it, on the telephone, but no, he’ll never… I mean, his mother came to see it at the premiere. She very much liked it, so that was very nice. That made me very happy of course. But otherwise no, and he’s just been shut down completely, meaning that he’s been moved to a new isolation ward, and all the people that were in contact with him that were part of the filmmaking have been cut off. So he’s completely isolated now.

William Bibbiani: That sucks. That’s sad.

Nicolas Winding Refn: Well, that depends on what’s your point of view I suppose. (Laughs.)

William Bibbiani: Well… it seems unfortunate.

In the trailer, Bronson appears very calculating, as opposed to the actual film, where he has no concrete plan.

Nicolas Winding Refn: He’s clarified “Sane” clinically, but obviously his perception of life is very different. But that was the whole point of what I found interesting. I mean, Charlie Bronson, or Michael Peterson, has never murdered anybody. Never… He’s more like a conceptual artist. He’s like somebody that uses violence as an act of art. And I do believe art IS an act of violence, so [there are] a lot of references to him in my own life, so Charlie Bronson’s journey, his transformation, is very much about my own transformation.

Do you think that Charlie Bronson was always in there, or do you think that being placed in the system was a catalyst for this transformation?

Nicolas Winding Refn: I think it’s both. I think it was there, but becoming in prison was the switch that began letting it out.

You’d think that he wouldn’t want to be in prison. You think he’d change his behavior to get out, rather than stay in.

Nicolas Winding Refn: That’s the big question mark, and that was why it was very difficult to write, because that’s the first obstacle you have. Why would anybody, who was a clearly intelligent, normal heterosexual man want to stay all his life in solitary confinement? And it really was his own subconscious that led to the key for me, because I was really trying to come up with, “Hang on, doing a prison movie’s hard in itself because it’s all about escaping and trying to escape, or planning on escaping, or somebody else helping you plan to escape…” And he’s not institutionalized. It’s not like a political comment of prisons and civilizations and vice-versa. But I was reading his biography just trying to come up with some kind of angle into him, and in that he talks about at one point, very late in the book, [how] he “always wanted to be here.” I said, “Oh my God, he’s answered the whole thing himself.” This is his stage… He almost craved it. That thread through everything he does is narcissism, narcissism to such a degree that fame is his feeding frenzy. So he was willing to sacrifice everything to become famous.

What can you tell us about Valhalla Rising?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Valhalla Rising was just picked up by IFC at Toronto [for] early next year, and it’s a Viking film. It’s actually the first canvas of images that I came up with after doing Bronson, because I shot the films back-to-back. And Charlie Bronson being my own psychoanalyzation of my own transformation, from where I started to what I’ve become; so Valhalla Rising is the start of Phase Two of my career.

What sort of reality does it take place in, as we might interpret the “reality” of Bronson? What’s the reality of the Viking world, and their mythology?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Very different. (Laughs.) It’s about the concept of mythology, and what mythology can create, and Mythology versus Christianity… and the conflict between those two things. The film is about a mute warrior who has no past or present, who escapes his captivity and travels with Christian Vikings to the Holy Land to fight the first war, but they get entangled in a mist that doesn’t lift until they reach America, and then it goes horribly wrong.

William Bibbiani: There aren’t terribly many good Viking movies…

Nicolas Winding Refn: There are none! (Laughs.)

William Bibbiani: I was being generous. (EDITOR’S NOTE: BOTH ERIC THE VIKING AND THE 13TH WARRIOR HAVE THEIR CHARMS.) Historically, from an artistic standpoint, what’s inspired Valhalla Rising for you?

Nicolas Winding Refn: That’s a very good question, and it’s something that I can’t specifically answer. I guess just the challenge of doing a Viking film by itself was so absurd that it kind of turned me on, but I’ve had specific ideas since I was 17, like the story, it’s just kind of been evolving. And then after the Pusher Trilogy I decided I wanted to make that, but then I needed money to buy out my ex-partner, so I could own the movie complete, which is also one of the reasons why I decided to write and direct Bronson. Just to get some quick bucks.

You said that Bronson was kind of your Kenneth Anger film, so what’s Valhalla Rising?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Basically, Valhalla Rising for me is the films that I grew up loving so much. It’s like Snake Plissken and [Andrei] Tarkovsky. (Laughter.)

You did a Miss Marple movie a couple of years ago…

Nicolas Winding Refn: I did two, actually, because when I came over, I came over because I was SO broke… and they called me before I arrived, I arrogantly turned them down, but when they called again I was so desperate that I just said “Yes.” “Do you want to read the script?” “No, just give me the money!” (Laughs.) So I came over and they fired director of the first one, [so] I just did that one as well. But I didn’t want to be credited, because [I didn’t shoot all of it]. But I only said “yes” to do it because I had hoped to meet Tom Baker, who played one of my favorite Dr. Who’s, but they didn’t want to go back and reshoot his scenes so I got pissed off, so I said, “I’ll do it and I’ll charge you a fortune, but I don’t want to be credited.”

What are you prepping now?

Nicolas Winding Refn: I would like to make a film that I just completed writing in Asia. I wanted to do a Western in Bangkok called, “Only God Forgives.” But on top of that I’m attached to make some Hollywood films, a remake of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at Universal with Keanu Reeves and there’s another movie in the Hollywood system called The Dying of the Light, which is a Paul Schrader script that I really liked a lot… But all of those bigger films are part of a domino effect, you gotta get all the right dominoes to go down, where my own films, my own productions are shot on very healthy budgets and I can just go and make them when I want to make them, which is very important to me because I don’t want to wait. I like to make films.

Are you writing the script to Jekyll and Hyde?

Nicolas Winding Refn: I was asked, but I felt that I wasn’t the right one. With all the other stuff I had going on, I was almost so overwhelmed that I thought that I wouldn’t give it the right attention.

Who’s doing it?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Justine Haythe, which is very nice. He wrote Revolutionary Road.

What’s the take on Jekyll and Hyde? Traditional? Period?

Nicolas Winding Refn: I want to do a modern day retelling of the same story, which makes it very tricky because it certainly elevates the project into something more demanding.

We imagine Keanu Reeves would be an American Dr. Jekyll?

Nicolas Winding Refn: That is very right. (Laughter.)

Do you have any genre-specific filmmaking desires?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Well, my biggest wish is to do a horror movie and a romantic comedy. I just want to do a romantic comedy because those are the kind of movies my wife and I watch. I really like to make funny things. My biggest wish is to do a “Pretty Woman” kind of movie, and I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen because it’s always difficult for me to write and so I have to find them somewhere. Horror films are of course my favorite genre and of course I’d love to make one, but for some reason I’m always struggling to make one.

William Bibbiani: So Jekyll and Hyde doesn’t fall into the horror genre for you?

Nicolas Winding Refn: What’s difficult about Jekyll and Hyde is that it’s a “concept” more than anything else… It’s like the concept for a werewolf movie, or American Psycho. It’s the thing we all have, but how do you dramatize that in a new, interesting way?

William Bibbiani: By setting it in the present day, does that mean you have to be more plausible with the science? Is that a concern of yours? Because a hundred years ago science was all potions…

Nicolas Winding Refn: You have a lot of credibility that needs to work, you know? You can’t just say things because we all know you can just Google it.

William Bibbiani: In the theater now!

Nicolas Winding Refn: They can even Google it as they’re watching it! In Valhalla Rising, I always wanted to make a science fiction movie, but because I had no interest in the technology of science fiction I made a mental science fiction movie. I find it difficult to make one in the future now because technology always kind of goes against mythology and the concept of science fiction, so I decided to do it in the 1100s instead.

A lot of filmmakers start out making horror films because they’re the easiest to get off the ground, why is it that you didn’t take that route if you’re so interested in them?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Because gangster films are more accessible and they’re easier to sell. That’s why I made the Pushers. But I had no interest in gangster films, I just wanted to make a movie about people in a criminal environment. But the reason I always make genre films is because genre films can work at a very commercial level, very simple, and you can put so much into them. Among all the great filmmakers,  from John Ford to Dreyer, all worked in genres in a way, and you were able to hide things but still have a great commercial liability. I’m not a big… The French New Wave revolutionize my parents’ view of filmmaking, but for me it was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. And not the remake.