All my films represent my own needs and wants.
— Nicolas Winding Refn
I would love to make a romantic comedy.
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.
I'm calculated in other things, but not in what I make.
My world is just one big chaos!
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'm dyslexic, which means I have trouble reading and writing. So images really speak to me.
I believe silence is the greatest sound of all.
Oh, I love L.A. It's not so much about Hollywood. I love everything in L.A.
I started making films purely based on what I would like to see.
I'm not a political filmmaker.
The most creative phase of a film is in shooting, because structure is the defining element of that phase.
Writing is fantasizing about what your film will be like. Shooting is reality. And the post-production is recovering the idea you had.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Filmmaking is not about what we see - it's a very misconceived notion; it's about what we don't see.
I would love to make a kids' movie. But they are very hard to make.
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.
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've always felt that I was from the future because the future is really not about what you make but what you stand for.
I like all kinds of film.
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.
Whenever I make a movie, I always try to figure out what kind of music it would be.
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.
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 think that every man has a 16-year-old girl inside of him.
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.
I'm not a guy's guy. I always loved girl things. I loved dolls. I loved dressing up and much more.
I like extremes.
I believe in free education, free healthcare. But I do not believe in equality.
I wanted to be famous. I guess I thought acting would make me famous.
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.
For me, the greatest pleasure is when you make something, and everyone argues about it.
L.A. films are hard to define compared to New York films because New York films are their own subgenre, in a way. L.A. is more transparent.
People react to 'Drive' in a way that is very primal.
I think 'Videodrome' was an absolute philosophical masterpiece.
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.
The first thing I do when I go to people's houses is look at their television, turn it on.
I'm not the greatest filmmaker. There are a lot of better filmmakers than me.
'Bronson' was like, 'I'll do a movie about my own life.' And it became like an experiment.
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.
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.
I'm a huge admirer of Keanu. I think he's absolutely extraordinary.
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.
I think the Internet is the greatest invention since women.
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 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.
When I was 12 or 13, I started going to the cinema myself.
