Nicolas Winding Refn
We live in a time where it's very much in vogue, constant search for pure utopian equality, and which, on one level, is quite amusingly silly but also on another probably very important.Collection: Equality
I believe in free education, free healthcare. But I do not believe in equality.Collection: Equality
Filmmaking is not about what we see - it's a very misconceived notion; it's about what we don't see.
Writing is fantasizing about what your film will be like. Shooting is reality. And the post-production is recovering the idea you had.
I think that art is an act of violence, and the more emotionally engaged you are in a piece of art, the more violent it feels.
I'm glamour. I'm vulgarity. I'm scandal. I'm gossip. I'm the future. I'm the counter culture. I'm commercial reality. I'm artistic singularity.
The 'Neon Demon' is very much designed to be like a YouTube movie. It's designed to be chopped up. You can cut it up into seven or eight pieces and they're, like, vignettes.
With 'Only God Forgives,' what's great about that movie is it just freaked so many people out.
I'm not a walking encyclopedia. I'm not one of those types that knows every single film ever made or can recite every dialog.
A good director is not an expert in anything in particular. A good director just knows a little bit about everything.
Denmark is like a Sylvanian world, but one thing it breeds is malady. The malady is generally in good taste. Opinions are correct. That is the chief enemy of creativity.
I started making films purely based on what I would like to see.
I moved to New York when I was eight years old, in 1978. I grew up in Manhattan. I couldn't speak any English, and I had dyslexia, so it took me many years before I could read.
My mother and stepfather were documentary filmmakers and, of course, had a very healthy Scandinavian mentality. When it came to cinema, my mother was very obsessed with the French New Wave. That was her generation.
When I was 12 or 13, I started going to the cinema myself.
I wanted to be famous. I guess I thought acting would make me famous.
I know how terrifying L.A. can be, because I've been there as a failure. After 'Drive,' it was the most marvellous place in the universe.
America has no one to catch you when you fall. That makes you want to achieve. It is healthy for the soul. But all that is valued is success.
Beauty is like a new class system. The world is so obsessed with beauty; it has been for the last 2,000 years. It's the one stock that's never gone down, the one stock that's never gone out of fashion.
I like extremes.
The greatest artists were in a situation where they had to pay their bills. That's a very convenient way to get very creative very fast.
I think the Internet is the greatest invention since women.
I'm not a guy's guy. I always loved girl things. I loved dolls. I loved dressing up and much more.
For me, it's all about having the performers feel confident in their movements and surroundings. And then I'll figure out how to photograph it afterward.
There are wonderful artists who deal in the fashion world only, and you see by their creations that they are changing our understanding of sexuality and freedom and gender-bending.
The most creative phase of a film is in shooting, because structure is the defining element of that phase.
I'm a huge admirer of Keanu. I think he's absolutely extraordinary.
I think that every man has a 16-year-old girl inside of him.
I'm not a political filmmaker.
When I was 20 years old, my uncle was an arthouse distributor, and he would take me to Cannes every year to work as a film scout.
I always approach every film I make as if it was going to be the last. So if I'm going to go out, I'm going out with a bang.
I always, as a firm rule, make my movies based on how inexpensively I can make them because that means the more freedom I'm going to have.
Oh, I love L.A. It's not so much about Hollywood. I love everything in L.A.
'Bronson' was like, 'I'll do a movie about my own life.' And it became like an experiment.
Whenever I make a movie, I always try to figure out what kind of music it would be.
I believe silence is the greatest sound of all.
I'm not the greatest filmmaker. There are a lot of better filmmakers than me.
Coming to Hollywood, you always hear the horror stories, but I had good people around me who maybe didn't understand what I was doing but always protected me.
I'm dyslexic, which means I have trouble reading and writing. So images really speak to me.
The first thing I do when I go to people's houses is look at their television, turn it on.
I like all kinds of film.
Every film that you make has to have a scene that is the heart that blood flows through in every other scene. That scene doesn't always have to be in the beginning of the film. But it can also be at the end, or in the middle, and that can sometimes make the film more effective.
I've always felt that I was from the future because the future is really not about what you make but what you stand for.
My world is just one big chaos!
I think 'Videodrome' was an absolute philosophical masterpiece.
Art has the power to influence and to make you react to something that you normally wouldn't concern, worry, or even think about or wouldn't want to talk about.
I'm calculated in other things, but not in what I make.
People react to 'Drive' in a way that is very primal.
Creativity is about taking what is the norm and expanding it and continuing to expand it and expand it and expand it and expand it.
Filmmaking is like any kind of art form. You have to try to figure it out, and you're going to do that by trying.