I don't really make films in Denmark. 'Bronson' was shot in Rottingham, 'Valhalla Rising' was made in Glasgow, and 'Drive' was made in Hollywood.
— Nicolas Winding Refn
I'm a very funny man, so funny comes natural. And if you want to create horror, you need to be funny or campy.
The greater the darkness, the better the drama.
'Valhalla Rising' is a fusion of my upbringing, basically: everything I grew up loving and wanted to make a film of.
A lot of the surreal filmmakers, like David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, or countless other underground filmmakers... Their sense of explosive images have always dominated their films. It's a way to shock the senses, to make them open themselves.
The more we become civilized, the more we simultaneously understand our need to be virtuous and our need to understand our experiences on a subconscious level.
I find beauty very frightening because it's such an all consuming subject in our society.
A good director is not an expert in anything in particular. A good director just knows a little bit about everything.
It's hard to always challenge yourself, coming up with new ways to make your life difficult, so when you make something, it becomes more interesting.
My films are like Christmas: you can't wait to open it.
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.
For 'Drive,' we needed the songs to dictate emotions and really bring you into the mind of The Driver; he's a unique and complicated guy, so the music itself had to be unique and complicated.
I think you have to be so indulgent in creativity in that, if you're happy, it's successful. If it's then financially successful, which is different parameters, then you're also happy.
I've always worked a lot with silence in my films. It forces the audience to concentrate on what they're seeing, because silence is pure emotions. It has no logic; it goes straight to the heart.
The only thing that would really make my mother angry would be if I liked horror movies or violence or Ronald Reagan. And very violent films were a way for me to rebel. You have to rebel against your parents.
People need to express themselves. The more you do that, the better a person you become.
The best way to move forward - to bury the past. That doesn't mean you forget it.
Hollywood is Hollywood. It'll never change, although it does go through its own transformations. I think that there's this obsessiveness with making money, which has gotten out of proportion.
Good and bad are not really relevant to me.
To me, the darkest film ever made and the film, to me, that's the darkest picture in the human humanity's soul is 'Pretty Woman.'
We're premiering 'The Neon Demon' in Cannes, which is the representation of 'The Neon Demon,' which is all about glamour and vulgarity.
If an actor or actress is recognizable, that changes our perception of them. Sometimes you can play against type, or you can just repeat what they've already done. It can be an obstacle; it's a very fine line.
L.A. is, on one hand, very mysterious; it's very modern. It's a mysterious place - it's a haunting place - and everything in our culture around the world of entertainment leads back to Hollywood.
I very much love Los Angeles, and I love working here. I find it very inspiring and very creative, and some of the best crews are in Los Angeles.
I'm not a knowledgeable comic fanatic, as a lot of other people are.
As long as your movies don't lose money, you'll always be able to make them.
I love watching the superhero movies, and I would love to make one. But in a way, 'Drive' is probably the greatest superhero movie ever made.
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 thought it would be interesting to try something in Hollywood after a movie like 'Valhalla Rising,' which I was really pleased with, personally.
Creativity is about a reaction.
I'm a huge John Hughes fan, and I grew up in the '80s, when his films came out. So, my introduction to what you'd call 'cinema love,' that illusion of love, was 'Sixteen Candles' and Molly Ringwald.
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.
Television is dead. And television will not be reborn. It will not come back.
I'd love to do a yakuza movie.
I believe that the constant possibility of failure or possibility of decision-making feeds your creativity.
I was very affected as a foreigner coming from Copenhagen, which is the safest, most liberal town in the entire galaxy. I was like an alien stranded in a strange land for the first time in the U.S.
I like to take things as they come.
I love to look at beauty.
Art is very much about making your weaknesses your strength.
I think that, again, filmmaking is the director's medium in the end, and the best thing a producer can do is stay out of the way and support the director one hundred percent.
Art thrives on obstacles. The bigger the obstacle, the better the drama.
I love to be on location. I love to be in other parts of the world. I love to be where I'm reminded about real, you know, emotions. I love to touch things and design things, and I think that, for the actor, it certainly - it certainly helps their performance.
With 'Only God Forgives,' what's great about that movie is it just freaked so many people out.
There will always be a theatrical experience because there will always be cinemas no matter what. It's like there will always be theaters to have stage plays in.
My writing has always been more out of the need to write a movie rather than me being a good writer.
Polarizing is the greatest achievement in any art form, even in cinema.
I base everything on my instinctual approach. There's something very satisfying in that creativity, and it's a bit like an infant drawing.
You cannot go through life without cause and effect.
People have called me everything. Every word in the dictionary I've been called at one point or another.
I started buying films a couple of years ago. The first film-maker I began to obsessively collect was Andy Milligan. He was a New York frustrated artist.
