Nicolas Winding Refn on Valhalla Rising, Extreme Filmmaking and Going Hollywood

And you're returning to nature, too, in a way. You're out of the city, you're out of the studio, making films on location in Scotland. Did you sense that impulse?

Yeah. I initially conceived Valhalla Rising the same way I conceived Pusher -- I'd just do it without an urban environment. Minimalistic, in-your-face, gritty realism, but just in the mountains of Scotland. I wanted limit any kind of production-design scenario, except for the cages where he was staying, which were anonymous. It was like a car would be in an urban environment. So it was just like swapping it. Also, the only way I could make the film interesting to me was to eliminate any historical feel. It felt more futuristic, maybe, like after a nuclear war. Is this movie past or present? That kind of sensibility.

How do your actors respond to that sensibility? I mean, here's Mads, jamming his face into mud.

Well, the Scottish actors who were in the movie were great. They were not the problem. They were there, man. And the weather was fine for them. For me and Mads it was like, "Oh, no, not another rainy day." It definitely affected their characters and the way they acted. But I think it was more the crew who were the problem. I don't think they expected it to be this extreme. Nothing was far enough away for me, or harsh enough. Forget that I couldn't afford any comfortable living or comfortable productions. It was like in the morning, we would drive up the mountain no matter how bad the weather was. We'd eat lunch in the rain on top of the Scottish mountains. Quite demanding.

How did you push yourself?

I'm not even a very sporty person! I don't like that kind of thing. But I just had to go with it. It was almost like, "How can I make this film as physically uncomfortable as possible?" But to get to those places, the visualization was such a great benefit. "How are we going to do that?" It was faith. You travel with faith.

But that's not unique for you. I've always really loved the chances your films take. Like you have these guys lost in red mist for 20 minutes! Where does that kind of thing come from?

I stole that cut from 2001.

How?

When the priest in telling One-Eye that he should travel with the men to the Holy Land, it's because it's not so much about the war, but about "the scars of your soul. That's where the pain lies." And One-Eye stares at him, and you cut to the general and the priest and the general's son staring at One-Eye, and he says, "Is he going to travel with us?" And the priest says, "If it's God's will." And so you dissolve from One-Eye's face into the fog, and they're already on their journey. I stole that from 2001, when they found that monolith on the moon that creates this signal sound. Then you cut to the Jupiter travel. Because you're already in the travel part of it. And the whole idea was to compare it to us traveling in outer space. That's how it would have been for them to travel where they were going.

When you're explaining this to your cast and crew, are they with you, or are they naturally lost in the fog along with you?

They were with me -- at least they said they were. To make this film, you really need kind of a team spirit. And Scotland has very good actors. They were into that whole mentality of imagination. There was no vanity. They weren't allowed to cut their hair or their nails or their beards or anything for like three months.

How much would you say your films are commentaries on contemporary dysfunction -- families, prisons, wars --

I don't set out to make political films, in that sense. It's not like I want to make a film on the penal system or anything like that. The Pusher films are very much about family and the destruction of family. I really just set out to make things I would like to see in a movie. It's how I conceive my stories: I don't have stories to begin with; I have scenes. "What would I like to see?" When I have X amount of scenes, I start to create a story around it. So I don't have any conscious answers to give you. I leave it up to people like you to find that -- and maybe you can tell me some of the things that are wrong with me. [Laughs]

That's interesting. The deeper you get into your career, do you think you're closer than ever or further than ever from making a full-blown mainstream film?

That's a good question. I think every time I make a film, I say to myself that I write, produce and control. That's all I've done so far. Now I say, "Oh, this is the one. Now I'm really going to show [Hollywood]!" You know? But at the same time, I've been very lucky with them. They get released, people watch them, and people have emotions about them, either good or bad. It truly doesn't matter to me as long as people have a reaction. I am going to Hollywood now to do a movie with Ryan Gosling called Drive, which is about a stuntman by day and a getaway driver by night. But the sensibility of the novella that it's based on [by James Sallis] very much speaks to me. So I feel very comfortable working within that. But I would love to make one of those Hollywood, $100 million extravaganzas. At the same time, I'm also very content in my situation. I get to make the films I want to make. I don't have the ego of world dominance.

What happened to your Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adaptation?

I was going to make a modern adaptation with Keanu Reeves, but because of my involvement with Only God Forgives -- which is my own production -- and Drive, it just didn't work with that. And I also had a film called The Dying of the Light, with Harrison Ford, that was meant to go. Everything was there, but over the course of a weekend it fell apart.

That's the business.

Classic Hollywood. I was a bit naive. I thought, "Wow, this was easy." But it turned out it wasn't.

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