Interview: Nicolas Winding Refn on Sleazy Movie Posters, Tom Hardy and Being Sued over 'Drive'

Talking to the Danish director behind 'Bronson' and 'Only God Forgives'.

Image via Gunther Campine / Publicist

Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is a mad, crazy, genius. He gave Tom Hardy his big break in Bronson. He then made Ryan Gosling the coolest guy in the world in Drive. And then with the world at their feet, he and Gosling followed that up with Only God Forgives, a mindfuck of a Thai kickboxing movie that gleefully alienated all their new mainstream fans.

But it’s not a film he’s promoting at the moment. Several years ago he purchased a large collection of film posters, not really knowing what they were. They turned out to all be sleazy exploitation posters, the type that would hang in the lobbies of the notorious Times Square grindhouse cinemas before New York was cleaned up in the early 90s. They advertised gory horrors and soft porn, with lurid artwork promising levels of violence and sex that no film could ever deliver on. Now he’s put them together in a book, called The Act Of Seeing, and we spoke to him about it when he was in London, as well as working with Ryan Gosling and collecting Japanese toy robots. 

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