An interview with Nicolas Winding Refn for Bronson (2008)

I first met Denmark's Nicolas Winding Refn in 2003 at the Sundance film festival, which he attended with Fear X, his first (North) American movie. We arranged to do an interview in the Yarrow hotel bar, where the first thing he said to me was, “What's your favourite movie? Mine's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” I can't remember what my reply was; in those days, it was probably Peeping Tom. God knows what happened to that tape but the interview went well. In fact, it overran, and we arranged to meet later, to join Nicolas and his wife Liv at the premiere party of Jonas Akerlund's film Spun.

The party was pretty surreal; thinking back, I remember getting my first up-close sighting of Mickey Rourke and, aside from my then-girlfriend being told off for smoking (at midnight, in a bar) by a couple of LA fuckwits who'd brought their baby, my clearest memory is of my late friend Shari, who had attached herself to Mena Suvari and was trying to tempt me over (I wasn't really having it). The best was yet to come, though. We ended the night in one of Park City's Music Taxis, in which we were serenaded by a man playing Bad Moon Rising on an acoustic guitar.

Nicolas and I have kept in touch over the years and done several subsequent interviews, including one in Cannes for Drive that is likely embargoed until the film's release in September. But while I was rooting around on my computer I found this conversation about his 2008 film Bronson, starring Tom Hardy as Michael Peterson, a small-time crim who morphed behind bars to become the tabloid-famous prison irritant Charles Bronson. A biopic only in the broadest sense, Bronson dispenses with straight narrative and takes just a few random but chronologically correct segments from Bronson’s life, from his career as an inept thief, to being declared completely insane, then sane again, and spending the last 34 years in solitary confinement: all without claiming a single life.

It struck me that this would be a pretty reasonable introduction to Refn, both in terms of his personality and working methods...

Why did you decide to make Bronson?
Rupert Preston, my producer, came to me with the script and I said I should read it. I must admit, I wasn't very intrigued, but because of the name Charles Bronson – I'm a fan of the actor – I decided to read it. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but I thought it had some interesting possibilities. So we began to talk about it, and what I would do if I were to make it. We went back and forth, more and more as I thought about it. I read Bronson's biography, I met with the writer who'd written the draft I was given, and I went through it with him and made a lot of changes. In fact, I changed the whole concept of the story.

In what way?
The original approach was more generic – it was trying to say something about the man, or capture who he was, which I thought was close to impossible. And perhaps ludicrous, because by doing it that way you would actually deduct from him as a person rather than see all the potential that there is in this very interesting man. But when I finally decided to do it, it was more a question of timing. My Hollywood film just didn't seem to be happening as fast as I wanted it to, and my Viking movie, Valhalla Rising, was quite far on the horizon, so I suddenly had some free time on my hands, and at that time I had basically gotten so involved in rewriting Bronson that I couldn't let it go.

How did you start the process?
I looked at all the young actors around London. Not physically, I just checked out everybody's faces and saw who was interesting. I did meet with a few actors to talk about the role but it didn't really happen. I mean, I met with Jason Statham and Guy Pearce about doing it, but it didn't work out with them. And the closer I got to a start date, it became clear that Tom Hardy was the ideal choice.

Wasn't Tom Hardy the original choice?
He had been attached to the project before I came along, but he'd had to drop out, for scheduling reasons. He was very familiar with the role, plus knew Bronson personally, so I thought he would bring something extra to the project that would help it. I mean, I'm not from the UK, I didn't grow up [knowing about] Charles Bronson.

So why did you want to do it?
I was interested in this man who changes and transforms himself from Michael Peterson to Charles Bronson.

How quickly did you get started?
As soon as the money came through, I said, “Let's do it.” I delivered the shooting draft the day we started shooting, and I rewrote it every night. We shot about 40 per cent of it in our five-week production schedule, because it kept on changing. We were searching for how to portray this man, and the more we searched, the more it became apparent that we were never going to find an answer. So we decided to show him as a human being, showing all his masks, and so the film became about this man and how he sees his life – or wants to see his life – transforming.

What research did you do?
I only read his autobiography at the beginning, to see if there was anything there that could be interesting. There were some good structural things in the book that I liked. For example, at one point he writes about maybe always wanting to be in prison. And that began to trigger an effect: I could see that here was an interesting story about someone who, actually, once he got in, didn't want to get out. And that led to me coming up with the first line of the movie: “My name is Charles Bronson and all my life I wanted to be famous.”

Why did that fascinate you?
I guess because that's really me, when I was 24. I wanted to be famous. You could say I put a lot of myself into this. The film I made is more of an allegory for what it's like being an artist, searching for your yin and yang. I mean, Charlie's not a murderer or a gangster. If he had been, I wouldn't have made the movie. That doesn't interest me. He's something a little more fascinating. He's almost like a prankster, someone who makes art, with himself as the canvas. That's why the film moves in that direction.

A lot of people will be expecting a British gangster movie, but Bronson didn't really get up to much gangster activity, did he?
Well, not a lot. I think he did some in his younger days, but I didn't delve into that. He did rob a post office, for example.

So what's kept him in prison for such a length of time?
I think it's a political thing, that he can't get out, because he is who is and he created his own myth. He's like the world's greatest ad man. If he'd worked in an ad agency he'd be bigger than Saatchi & Saatchi. He's a very gifted personality.

Were you daunted by making a film that involved real people?
No. I made it very clear that, if I were to make this film, I could only make it my way, and if anybody had a problem with that, they should say so immediately. Because there are so many minefields in doing this – in my opinion. Because Tom and I came from different angles. Tom came with a knowledge of Charlie as the person, and I came with a fascination for the transformation. The only thing we had in common was that we needed to make him human.

Did you have much contact with Bronson's family?
The family came around and visited. His mother came. His cousin Lorraine came. I only met them very briefly. They only came for one day, to say hello. Tom was more concerned about it than me.

You don't really spend much time on Bronson's background in the film, though, do you?
No. It's not a biopic, in the traditional sense. I felt more that it was a conceptual biopic.

What kind of incidents were you looking for, to give that kind of insight into his mindset?
Well, all those things were in the script. Apparently this project had been developed over quite some years, with many different writers, so a lot of people had contributed ideas. Everything was already there, but the approach, I felt, needed to be more surrealistic. And it gave me a chance to make a Kenneth Anger movie! I spent some time with [filmmaker] Kenneth Anger recently, in Copenhagen, and I told him that I had stolen everything from him, especially Scorpio Rising, to make a film called Bronson. He said, “Oh, be my guest!” (Laughs) And then, of course, Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange is very much a reference in the film too.

Stylistically, the film is deliberately artificial at time. You embrace the whole idea of Bronson being a performer, painting his face and addressing the audience directly...
That scene, including with the whole make-up idea, was something I came up with at the last minute: it was a Friday night, and we were shooting on Monday morning, so I called in the make-up people in on Saturday and told them, “This is what you have to work on.” Again, I was just trying to expand on the idea that here is a man who has many layers, and I thought we could show that by having him changing his face and distorting who he is.

How closely did you work with Tom? Did you have a lot of discussions?
Not really, we were very much on the same page to begin with. He went away and did his body-building – that was his thing. It was very intense. But then, I provoke intensity. I think it's very important for an actor to be intense, and if I don't see it, I provoke it. And benefited him. He believes in transforming himself, so I think we benefited from each other's approach to things.

What did you do to provoke him?
It was a combination of things. Sometimes we'd do seven or eight more takes than he thought we were going to do. Sometimes I would say things that I knew would provoke him. But towards the end of the movie, when we felt we were really getting an interesting angle on Bronson, it became more a question of coming up with crazy concepts and ideas. But Tom loved that whole make-up idea, because he could use that for his performance. He's an extremely gifted performer.

Did you shoot in a real prison?
I've never been in a prison, and it became apparent very quickly that we wouldn't be allowed to shoot in one, because of the Home Office. So because we certainly didn't have any money to make the film – we had a production design budget of £30,000 – I came up with this idea that I needed the location scouts to find me an old gothic estate, and then I would just build various things there. So 99 per cent of the movie is shot in the same building, which was an estate in Nottingham. We used different parts of the establishment for different scenes of Bronson's life. It was almost like we'd walked into somebody's mind, and each room represented a scene from their life. Which was interesting, because on my next film, Valhalla Rising, which I went on to make a week after, we shot only in the mountains of Scotland. So that was pure exterior, and this was pure interior.

One of your interiors was the mental home. How did you approach those scenes, particularly with the disco and the patients?
First of all, the location was quite unique. It was shot in an underground ballroom. I loved the whole idea that you let these people out and then you add the Pet Shop Boys. It gives a very surreal sense of what's happening! The Pet Shop Boys music was a bit of artistic licence, but everything else is correctly chronicled. I didn't have to reinvent everything, because the original script was very much true to how Bronson had lived his life.

Bronson is on heavy medication in those scenes. Why did he come off it?
Because he was certified sane.

Do you think he's sane?
I can't judge him, if he's sane or not. I think he's definitely a very complex personality!

But is there something wrong with him? Is it as simple as that?
Is there something wrong with him? Well, I guess there's something wrong with me! Next question! (Laughs) No, not in the traditional way. The film is very much shot like it's how he wants to see his world. And I think he does see the world in a different light. I wanted to capture that element of it: what is his fantasy and what is real.

It's also interesting that the most dream-like sequence in the movie is his actual moment of freedom...
Yeah, and vice-versa!

There's also a strange homoerotic tension to the movie...
There's definitely a very strange sexual ambiguity, but that was created to show that he's sexually indifferent. He has created his own universe, where he's basically not affected by anything from the outside.

He's also got a very camp look, hasn't he?
Yeah, well, Tom Hardy does seem to look very campy with a moustache and suit. But it added to it, because it gave him a sweetness. I remember that when we were shooting the scenes in Luton, the scenes that show Bronson being released from prison, he seemed to me like the little toy soldier who couldn't fit into the world. Everywhere he looks, he can't fit in.

Is it true Hans Christian Anderson was also an influence?
Yeah, me and Hans Christian Anderson have a lot of things in common. We both tried different art forms before we found out what we were good at. I went to acting school, I certainly can't play any instruments and I'm not a very good dancer, so it became very apparent what was left. So the approach we took to the Bronson character was that he goes through different stages, looking for who he is. But once he finally finds it, it clicks, and that's when he becomes Charles Bronson. So there's a happy ending, in that way. But it's also an allegory for fame, and the consequences of fame, versus what is left behind around you. Because there's always a consequence in this life.

How would you describe the style of the film?
We start the first 20 minutes by hammering people on the head, but as the film progresses it starts to get calmer and more refined. It shifts in rhythm, and in approach, and in attitude, and it becomes more and more poetic and surreal. Because that's how Bronson's life has gone.

What influenced your music choices?
When I was making it, I was primarily just listening to the Pet Shop Boys 24 hours a day, which would drive my assistants quite mad. I was just trying to find a piece of music that would fit to the movie. My editor knows a lot more about classical music than I do, so I asked him for some ideas. He would bring in a lot of pieces, and it naturally came via that evolution, because I wanted the classical music to illustrate the grandeur of Bronson's life. Because this is how he sees it: as an operatic journey. I didn't want to make a film based in social realism, because it's not a political film. It's not a film about the injustice of the prison system, or the justification of violence in prison. That doesn't interest me. It's more this very operatic, at some points even campy, view of the world that this toy soldier travels in, searching for a stage to perform on.

Is it true that Bronson used to put on warpaint before fighting the wardens?
Apparently he did used to cover his body in shoe polish and run around the prison, acting very inappropriately! (Laughs) I think he's mellowed out a lot since then, but that was one of the things he would do. In a way, for me, that was like being a conceptual artist; it was like something you heard about people doing in the 60s and 70s!

There's also a lot of humour in the movie. Was that always your intention?
Comedy's very important, especially for this film, because the absurdity of the situation needed to be heightened to an almost larger-than-life degree. I've heard from Tom that Charlie is very, very funny and very charming. I only spoke to him once, for 20 minutes, and that was to ask him about the jewellery robbery that took him back into prison. I asked him if he could come up with some wording on how he sees prison. In the original script, there was a more traditional voiceover. I don't really like voiceover, so I decided to do it more as a theatrical performance and I needed an idea.

What did he say?
(Laughs) He said, “Prison is madness at its very best!”

Did the original script have a more traditional ending?
It did. Well, it had a more moralistic ending, that was very generic. I changed it a little bit, but it was still fairly traditional. It wasn't until we started to shoot the ending that I decided to change it. I shot it, then went back and reshot it, because I felt it was inaccurate. I needed a more poetic attitude towards things. So when Bronson takes his art teacher hostage, rather than make him look like one of those other brutes in prison, I wanted to make him seem like somebody who'd finally discovered their canvas. He uses his art teacher to create an artwork and he fulfils himself. He ends up happy, he ends up smiling, but of course the consequence of him reaching his goal – becoming Britain's most famous prisoner – is that he will be incarcerated for the rest of his life. Again, it's an allegory for fame. You gain your fame, but there's a consequence for you and the people around you.

And there's no final redemption, is there?
No. He very much has a rock'n'roll attitude towards life. He won't back down. He won't stand down. The Man ain't gonna say anything to him! And that's both his blessing and his curse. There's no redemption for Bronson because he doesn't seek it. He's like a rocket, shooting to the moon.

* Read an interview with Bronson star Tom Hardy here.
** You can buy this film, and many more by Nicolas Winding Refn, here...