You’ve done incredibly violent and stylish films where crime and pain aren’t exactly glorified, but they look cool. Do you think there’s room for the “Hey Girl” era of Ryan Gosling, or are you deliberately skewing that?
Ryan Gosling: I thought I had never really made a violent film until I was reminded that I did. I made this movie called Murder By Numbers. It feels like a lot of time has passed but only in the last two years have I been experimenting with these kind of things, and the reaction is strange, and much stranger than anything I’ve ever done before. For instance, when we did Drive we were at Cannes and Christina Hendricks gets her head blown off and everybody cheered, and they were so happy about it, and excited, and it was the most bizarre reaction that I could imagine. I think Nicolas understands it though.
Do you ever wonder about alienating viewers or fans?
Ryan Gosling: You can’t really think like that because it’s a dangerous road to go down. I feel very lucky to work with Nicolas because he makes films from a very personal place and that’s not always the case. It’s nice to be around someone whose film becomes their life and whose life becomes their film. It’s an interesting way to work, and it hasn’t been the way I’ve always worked but it’s been a good experience.
So how are we going to keep making memes of you?
Ryan Gosling: You seem to find a way. I’m not worried about that!
Could you talk a little bit about the visuals for the film and working with cinematographer Larry Smith?
Nicolas Winding Refn: I worked with Larry Smith on Bronson and he became a collaborator. I knew that filming in Bangkok would pose two obstacles, one was the amount of money we had. We did Bronson for under $1 million. We had to move very quick and the light package was very small. For this film, we had roughly $3.5 million, which is still not a lot. Practical lighting was essentially what we had to work with. Larry is very good with actors and is great at respecting them and their needs. In a way, the relationship with actors and the camera people is a close collaboration. In the old days, actresses had particular camera people that they preferred, who had to work with them on certain pictures.
With such an intense shoot, I was wondering if you did anything off set in Bangkok?
Ryan Gosling: Yaya-Ying took me to karaoke and Vithaya [Pansringarm] gave me cooking classes. We did a lot of boxing too.
Kristin Scott Thomas: I mostly did massages.
Nicolas, were there any specific fairy tales that you were thinking of when you were developing the film?
Nicolas Winding Refn: It’s more about the language of fairy tales. I used to make films that were much more about authenticity. When I was a lot younger, I even went the classic route of catching reality in a frame. Whether it was real drugs on set or real people playing themselves, whatever I could get to be as real as possible I got. I think that it was with Bronson that I became more interested in hyper-reality.
Ryan, when the film premiered at Cannes there were reports quoting you as saying that when you were a kid you liked movies so much that you used to put them in your pants? Can you speak a bit further about that?
Ryan Gosling: You really want to know about this? [laughs] When I was young I saw Rambo: First Blood and I took knives to school and threw them at other kids, so my mother took me off R-rated films. When I was 12 I got my hands on Blue Velvet and I had to sneak it by my mom and I had to sneak it in my pants to do it. It was just the idea of a film like that, that you couldn’t show anyone, that you had to hide it in your pants, it just felt good! It made an impression on me.
Did you like that movie?
Ryan Gosling: Yeah, I did like Blue Velvet.
That’s the new meme.
Ryan Gosling: You may be right. I’m going to stop talking about this. [laughs]
Did you have to cut back at all on any violence in this film for the sake of its rating?
Nicolas Winding Refn: No, not really. I make the films that I make. There was a bit of an issue in France where it was rated very low. When it came out, there was huge backlash. Apparently, people thought it was very extreme to be rated so low. The rating system is a dying concept though because it really has no value or meaning. It’s just a matter time before it disappears. Coming from Scandinavia, it was always the opposite. Sexuality (verses) violence was always accepted and taught in schools. In America, this issue of sex and violence being viewed in another way, it’s puzzling to me.
Ryan, during that scene were Kristin’s character rips into you was it hard not to break character?
Ryan Gosling: No, it was fine. She was so good in the scene that it was great to watch.
Kristin Scott Thomas: That was a very difficult scene to do. There were some words that just wouldn’t come out because a nice, well brought up girl just couldn’t say those things. It became sort of a handicap, we ended up doing something like 14 takes.
Kristin, can you talk a bit about the dark humor in the film?
Kristin Scott Thomas: Personally, I didn’t think it was funny at all, I wasn’t getting the humor at all. I find this film deeply shocking and disturbing actually. Crystal does have to say some awful things and they make you gasp and perhaps that gasp does turn into laughter. It wasn’t purposeful though, I don’t think that any of us set out to say something so outrageous that it would be funny.
That concludes our interview but we’d like to thank everyone for taking the time to talk with us. Be sure to check out Only God Forgives, in theatres this Friday.
