Top 100 Refn Quotes
#1. I was always a fan of Nic. With his movie, you know it's "A Nic Refn Movie."
Elle Fanning
#2. To be honest, the real reason I did 'Drive' was because of Nicolas Winding Refn, the director.
Christina Hendricks
#3. I did a TV show called 'Unit 1.' It wasn't a bad experience, but yes, the first season I didn't have a good time because I was coming from Nicolas Winding Refn films where the corners were sharp and radical, but now we had round corners.
Mads Mikkelsen
#4. 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.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#5. Elle Fanning was fifteen when we started [The Neon Demon]. She turned seventeen during the shoot. Four weeks before Cannes, she turned eighteen. She had her prom at Cannes.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#6. But once you get down to reality, there's no one to play her and there's no movie. It would be ridiculous.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#7. Jenna Malone was a very important piece of how the film [The Neon Demon] turned out.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#8. Understanding one's own power is more interesting than someone being given something powerful.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#9. I had met Keanu [Reeves]a few times so it was a great way to reach out to him with an actual job offer. He very kindly agreed to be part of it and it was an amazing experience.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#10. I've been lucky to have a beautiful wife and children. The idea that something so beautiful can be so horrific at the same time. Beauty is a complex thing.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#11. There's incredible effect in being either loved or hated, but knowing that, either way, you have penetrated the mind and have altered it; that is a very pleasurable feeling.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#12. I have not seen "Batman v Superman," unfortunately. It hasn't been on the plane, as I've been flying a lot.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#15. I am a child of cinema, and I am a cineaste, so everything I do is a reference to something I've heard or experienced or seen. And we all do it, we all steal. The ones who claim they don't, are obviously lying, because you do. You just have to make it your own.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#16. For me, Amazon has stepped in and presented the future of entertainment. Obviously, the future of entertainment is going to be on the internet.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#17. 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.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#18. I believe shooting chronologically gives you a very fresh perspective and you're always aware of where you are in the development of the characters.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#19. I can do my part of the storytelling. I can carry it. I can paint it. I can maneuver it. I can massage it. But if I don't have anything to work with, then there's nothing.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#20. The fairy tale always takes place in worlds that are between, unidentifiable.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#21. I grew up in the '80s and John Hughes was the filmmaker making serious movies for teenagers.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#23. The power of art is as powerful as weapons of mass destruction; it's just where war destroys, art inspires. But in order to inspire, you need to react to it. And, if it doesn't penetrate your mind, you can't react to it.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#24. I am not a fan of improvisation, because it bores me. Working off a tight scenario gives you the confidence and ability to - why don't we change this a little bit and bring it back to the script. You always discover things while shooting.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#25. Financially, it was very successful. Which is the most important thing. That is the only way you get to make another movie. It's very simple. The market will value you.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#26. The vibe, it's that excitement. New York, you just can't describe it. You get a similar thing from Paris and London, but it's not New York.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#27. I've been trying to get away from physical violence; it's too easy; it doesn't satisfy me artistically to work with it. Dramatic violence is much more interesting, but it's much more difficult.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#28. I always think once you have the lead protagonist, you cast around that character.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#29. I'm a very feminine man. I like feminine things. I don't go to strip clubs. I don't drink beer. I don't play sports.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#31. [Liv Corfixen] very much part of my life in that she's everything in my life and we found a way to use each other much more on a creative level as well. She was kind of the idea for this movie so I wanted to acknowledge that. She gave me the original idea to make the film.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#32. Doing your first film, it's very important that it's a commercial success, because that gives you a couple times to experiment until you have to hit the jackpot again.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#34. Financing films that are demanding is a task, in itself. Because people are so afraid of taking any kind of chance, because they're afraid the audience isn't going to respond. But the audience is so hungry for anything that's a bit original, personal, or different.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#35. Personally I kept my feelings out of it and created a fantasy. That's the process of going through this world being beautiful.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#36. I'm a fetish filmmaker, in that I don't know why I do what I do, I just like to see things. When I figure out what I would like to see, I will put it in a film.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#37. Nowadays, teenagers are so fast and quick to see through any form of manipulation. Sitting down and just thinking of something is like watching really bad pornography.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#38. In the end, self-indulgence is very much about your ego and your vanity and your own id. The more you can indulge in it, the more pleasurable it becomes. And then when it feeds out, it's able to penetrate the mind and create a reaction.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#39. I mean, what do you think creativity is? Nothing but self-indulgence. And the more self-indulgent it is, the more interesting it becomes. So I think that part of creativity is also falling in love with your own narcissism: accepting it, using it as an asset.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#41. I love rock ballads, and I'm kind of in emotional turmoil, being ill and high, so I start to sing to the song, I turn it up and start to sing.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#42. The digital revolution is forever. They put importance on that option as well. With Amazon, you're getting the best of both worlds, with a whole new playing field.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#43. Man's fear of sexuality is the basis of all horror from the male perspective.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#44. The conversations about a film are an example of success because then you know whatever you've done has resonated.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#45. [The Neon Demon] was more my own fascination with beauty. It's my children's fascination beauty.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#47. Only God Forgives was very much a generation gap in a way. It was all the youth of the world that embraced it. I make films for young people. That's what I will continue to do.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#48. I think the idea was to make a horror film that became a science-fiction film with a lot of melodramatic tropes.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#49. I love films, I love movies, I love television, I love television series, I love the internet, I love anything that enhances images. But most of all, I love, love movies.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#51. I've done collaborations in all my movies, and I think it's part of what I enjoy about the process. This kind of intimacy that you create. Because it becomes very intimate.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#52. I like doing the promotional work. It's part of the film's process. Cannes was very wonderful to premiere.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#53. Sometimes I just play the theme from Arthur. It reminds me of my childhood in New York and I just love it.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#54. If you create something that is essentially alien to you - as a man - and make a film about woman, the more I can surround myself with woman and combine it with my soul's point of view, the more I become a stranger in a strange land.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#55. The minute you celebrate narcissism, which on one hand is very complex, it's very ridiculous. You have to love oneself with humor.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#56. I certainly believe that creativity must be an experience. If I'm to steal time away from people, we should give them something to react to.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#57. 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.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#58. When you make something that everyone likes, it's very easy to say, "Well, I'll just repeat that." Because that was easy. I have a formula. But creatively, it's not very interesting.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#60. I just think it was time [in THe Neon Demon]to do a film about women. But not just women, I wanted to do a movie about a teenage girl. It was a great counter to the masculinity of "Drive."
Nicolas Winding Refn
#61. In the end, we're just showmen. But, I think that it's an important factor. Not to be anything else but clear about that - for me, creativity is an important part of our evolution. Art has probably done more good for the world than war. But they're equally powerful. They both create revolutions.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#62. I sometimes play different kinds of music to see where the performers end up. I play one genre. Then something else when I do it again. It really helps.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#64. I try not to have too specific notions because it messes up the process later on. I leave it very open to interpretation until I start casting. Everything changes a lot when you start casting. I mean everything.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#66. Cinema is mass media, it is both overtly gross and exciting. It is our great mirror of society.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#67. I feel that silence is the greatest word, ever. When you don't talk, people begin to read things into you or you become what they long for. When you don't talk, you almost become the mirror image of the other person.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#68. I don't have to go very far to see the power of beauty. Being desired, feeling desired is a very seductive aspect of our being.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#69. When we met, my agenda was "Get Elle Fanning." I believe Elle's was "Get the role." But we didn't know that.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#70. We live in a beauty-obsessed culture, which on one hand is absolutely fabulous, but on the flip side, is also dangerously extreme.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#71. My initial idea was I wanted to make it a horror film, very much. At times I do enter that world.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#72. I don't know if power seduces less or more. I think power is a constant evolving mechanism that, since the dawn of time, on one level corrupts and on another level does not. But I think, no matter what, mutates.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#73. Like all art forms, film is a media as powerful as weapons of mass destruction; the only difference is that war destroys and film inspires.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#74. I think that experiencing through art is a wonderful way to expand the horizon and everything around it.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#76. The kind of group mentality that we had lived under since the Second World War is starting to erupt, and the craving for individualism is now much stronger. It's not as taboo anymore, as it was when I was younger.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#77. Ironically, even the fashion in New York or Paris or Milan or whatever, or music in Berlin, or art in, I don't know, Madrid - all these scenes come and go. Everything leads back to Hollywood.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#78. You must understand that violence in a movie is only a tool. If it's used badly, it will be horrible. If it's used correctly, it can be very interesting. But, essentially, it's just a tool.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#79. In "Drive," there's a heightened male edge. In "Only God Forgives," it was almost crawling back into the womb of the mother. And now with "The Neon Demon," being reborn as a 16-year-old girl.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#80. The world needs change, change needs an activity. It has to be planted by a thought.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#82. I feel Amazon is really bringing films into the future. So for me it was the best of both worlds.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#83. The thing with Ryan, you can look at him for hours. Very few actors have that. It's a gift.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#85. The artificial world that we create through images will essentially become real.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#86. People very quickly define success due to the amount of money something makes. In the end, I think everyone is searching for that experience. That's why we continue to go to the movies and watch television.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#87. I never desired to really go to Hollywood and make films, and purely because I want my entire control, which I'm used to having.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#88. Amazon, being a provider - not just on the playing field - is, of course, opening up a whole new set of possibilities. At the same time, Amazon also understands platforms. For them, theatrical is an extremely important event. I also believe it's the best way of seeing a movie.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#89. I think that television has become really, really interesting, in terms of character development. You can have 13 hours to develop a character, as opposed to 25 minutes in a movie. That excites me.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#90. I also believe on a practical level, if you're taking time away from people, besides entertaining them, I think it's important that there's something to react to.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#91. I very much enjoy my freedom creatively but I also would love to make one of those big Hollywood films that costs a lot of money and has a lot of people running around with cell phones and all that insanity.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#93. The character requires so many elements. The only one who could fulfill that was this one person: Elle Fanning.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#94. I think that I am a pornographer, meaning that I make movies based on what excites me and what I would like to see.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#95. I consider it a great honour that my movie Drive inspired so many wonderful artists to come together and create one ultra-cool glam experience.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#97. If an actor or actress is recognizable, that changes our perception of them.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#98. It was a very comfortable and personal relationship [Cliff Martinez ].'The Neon Demon'is our third movie and the music has never been as important as for this movie.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#99. I've stopped showing actors what to actually do. I rather just talk to them about it. Then I usually play music. That's a great way to convey inner emotion, bring the power of style and acting together. That's really what it is, very good acting without talking.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#100. Beauty is on one level pure surface, and on the other hand, it's the most complex subject that we can touch upon because it says everything about us as people. It's a subject we very quickly begin to argue about. I think that's so interesting.
Nicolas Winding Refn
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