Our very own Jack Giroux interviewed one of my favorite directors, Nicolas Winding Refn about his latest film, Valhalla Rising, over at Film School Rejects. While speaking about his upcoming Hollywood debut, Drive, Refn let slip that they had signed Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston to join Ryan Gosling. Check Refn’s quote below.
“We signed Bryan Cranston. I wanted him and I got him. He’s my favorite actor around.”
Having seen the calm, but intimidating Refn at the Valhalla Rising premiere at TIFF last year, he seems to be the kind of director that gets what he wants. I’m always amazing how he seems to have his next film going. He did Bronson and Valhalla Rising back-to-back and now he is prepping Drive and a neo-western Only God Forgives to work on next to each other. A synopsis can be found below for the novel Drive:
“I drive. That’s what I do. All I do.” So declares the enigmatic Driver in this masterfully convoluted neo-noir, which ranges from the dive bars and flyblown motels of Los Angeles to seedy strip malls dotting the Arizona desert. A stunt driver for movies, Driver finds more excitement as a wheelman during robberies, but when a heist goes sour, a contract is put on his head and his survival skills burn up the pavement. Author of the popular six-novel series set in New Orleans featuring detective Lew Griffin (The Long-Legged Fly, etc.) and such stand-alone crime novels as Cypress Grove, Sallis won’t disappoint fans who enjoy his usual quirky literary stylings. Reading a crime paperback, Driver covers “a few more lines till he fetched up on the word desuetude. What the hell kind of word was that?” Lines such as “Time went by, which is what time does, what it is” provide the perfect existential touch. In this short novel, expanded from his story in Dennis McMillan’s monumental anthology Measures of Poison, Sallis gives us his most tightly written mystery to date, worthy of comparison to the compact, exciting oeuvre of French noir giant.
Are you a fan of Cranston? Are you excited to see him work with Refn?