What do you prefer? :: SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board

Quoted from sniper

Btw, Chris, did Refn say anything interesting?

Yeah. It was interesting for me. Refn came across as a fairly honest but at times confusing guy. He got up on stage with the Festival Director who asked him a bunch of questions about his career. He was asked what kind of movies he liked and he said mainly art house films but he realized that he can’t make a living from them alone, so sometimes he has to compromise and do stuff purely for the money. He was asked about the Pusher Trilogy and he said these days he doesn’t really like gangster films because the world doesn’t really need another gangster film. But of the first Pusher film he began making it when he was 24 and halfway through it he realized that he didn’t like it, so he rewrote the rest it and made it different to the original vision. However, he actually said that he didn’t like the first Pusher now. A few years later he went on to make Pusher 2 and 3 purely for the money but instead of focusing on the external action of the criminal world he wanted to focus more on the personal impact that living in that world had on people and he ended up being fairly happy with Pusher 2 and 3. I’ve always thought 2 was the best myself.

He also spoke about another film he just completed called Valhalla Rising which he thought was another weird choice for him because he doesn’t like Vikings. He then began talking about Bronson. He said that when he was initially given the script he didn’t like it and that he didn’t really like the prison genre because it’s basically always the same in that the characters always want to get out. He also found nothing interesting about Charlie Bronson, so he researched him to find if there was anything about him that he could connect with and eventually he discovered that what he and Bronson had in common was that they both wanted to be famous from a young age, so then he felt he’d found something that helped him identify with the character.
At the start of Bronson you see Bronson standing in a cell and he says something like “I always wanted to be famous but I couldn’t sing and I couldn’t act, so my options were limited” As for Refn he said that when he was in his late teens and early twenties he wanted to be famous and be a living legend by the time he was 40.   He also said that Bronson was more interesting than most prisoners because unlike them he didn’t want to get out of prison he wanted to stay in, not because he was institutionalized but because he lived in a parallel universe inside his head that was easier to maintain when he was living in isolation.

Refn also spoke about the writing process and said that because he doesn’t drink or take drugs he listens to music to alter his mood for writing.  For example, when he began writing Pusher 2 he asked himself “if Pusher 2 was a band what would it be?” And he thought Iron Maiden, so when he was writing Pusher 2 he listened to lots of Iron Maiden. He then told some story about how in Bronson Charlie Bronson was often in the company of homosexuals in prison, so for some reason, which I really didn’t follow, Refn listened to a lot of Pet Shop Boys while writing it and he eventually ended up approaching the Pet Shop Boys to do the soundtrack for the film and they told him that he couldn’t afford them. But they did allow him use their song It’s a Sin for a low price. He also spoke about how when he first meet Tom Hardy, the actor who played Bronson, they were like chalk and cheese because Hardy is an alcoholic and Refn doesn’t drink. So their first meeting (which was in a bar) didn’t go very well and Refn didn’t want to use him. So then he showed the Bronson script to Jason Stratham but Stratham didn’t get it at all and passed. He then spoke to Guy Pearce about the project but nothing came of it and eventually someone convinced him to speak with Hardy again and their second meeting went well and Hardy ended up getting the part.

After talking to the Festival Director Refn took a few questions from the audience and someone asked him if he was influenced by Stanley Kubrick and he said he was. When you watch Bronson you can see Kubrick’s influence because at times it looks and feels a lot like A Clock Work Orange. After Refn had finished the Q&A I approached him shook his hand, which was pretty cool because it’s not everyday you get to shake the hand of the director of one of your all time top ten films. I then asked him if he was in recovery because he had mentioned that he didn’t drink or take drugs during the Q&A, plus, there’s an NA meeting in Pusher 3 but he said that he’d just never been into drinking and taking drugs because he was a good Jewish Boy. I couldn’t tell if he was joking about the drugs or being Jewish so I just congratulated him on the Pusher Trilogy and told him that I worked in Drug and Alcohol and I thought his depiction of the scene was very authentic, he smiled and thanked me for the compliment. All in all he seemed like a really friendly and down to earth guy who was happy to chat although the Festival Director was buzzing around anxiously making sure that everything was okay.

As for his politics, during the Q&A Refn said that his parents were socialists but when he was growing up he thought Ronald Regan was the greatest man in the world. He went on to say that since then his views have changed a bit but he’s not a socialist but he does believe that people should get free education and healthcare. At that point the festival director interjected and said “Ah, so you are Danish after all” He went on to talk about how the movie business these days is a great example of a free market because, thanks to the net,  people are able to release whatever they want and get rewarded if their work is good enough. After the Q&A I watched Bronson. It was brutal and at times funny and technically it looked like the work of a director at the top of his game, however, the violence became somewhat repetitive and by the end I wondered if there’d been a point to it all. But I guess there was in a sense because Bronson wanted to become famous and he achieved his goal but you have to wonder if the price he paid (and is till paying) was worth it.

On Bronson, the other day I came across a book by him called Solitary Fitness. It teaches you how to get fit when you’re in solitary confinement.  Or too cheap to pay for a gym membership.

http://www.freebronson.co.uk/shop/solitary_fitness_2007.htm