Broadcast News

After the success of the Academy Award-winning Terms of Endearment (1983), writer/director James L. Brooks spent a few years researching and writing what is possibly his most personal film to date: Broadcast News (1987). Drawing from his years in television, including a stint at CBS News, he took a spot-on look at the ethics of journalism and filtered it through a love triangle between people who work at a network affiliate T.V. station. In short, Brooks’ film is the Bull Durham (1988) of journalism films – smart, funny, insightful and even poignant in the way it looks at the people who deliver us the news on our T.V. screens every night. In some ways, Broadcast News anticipated the dumbing down of televised news so that now there is a whole generation of people who prefer The Daily Show, satirizing today’s top stories, over watching the real thing on the major networks or CNN.

Tom Grunick (William Hurt) is a slightly dimwitted hunk that aspires to be a hard-hitting investigative journalist but is clearly suited to be a news anchorman. Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) is a super-smart news reporter that lacks on-screen charisma – basically the polar opposite of Tom. The object of their affection is Jane Craig (Holly Hunter), an intelligent control freak and T.V. news producer. She finds herself attracted to Aaron, her intellectual equal, but drawn also to Tom’s hunky good looks. At some point, she must make up her mind and decide who is worth loving and who isn’t right for her.

I like how we see these people at work, like the scene where Jan edits Aaron’s newstory under a tight deadline. With only a few minutes left she wants to insert a Norman Rockwell painting into it with a new voiceover. While this is going on Joan Cusack’s co-worker is freaking out because she has to deliver the finished video tape to the control room. With seconds to go she makes a mad dash through the studio that is simultaneously tense and hilarious. It is all worth it when the story airs and everyone gets a sense of satisfaction because it worked and their co-workers let them know. This sequence shows the comradery that exists between these people. They care about the stories they’re trying to tell and really want to make a difference.

Broadcast News is a film of its time, capturing the state of flux that network news was in. Early on, Brooks lays out his views of what’s happening to T.V. news at a conference Jane is speaking at. While she warns of their profession being in danger, people talk amongst themselves or get up and leave forcing her to skip over topics, like trends involving magazine shows and news as profit. Her biggest reaction comes from showing a clip of an elaborate display of dominoes that all the networks showed in favor of an important government policy change. This scene warns of a future that has now happened, making Brooks’ film quite prescient.

As is customary with Brooks’ films, there are some spot-on observations about relationships, like when Aaron says to Jane at one point, “Wouldn’t this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If needy were a turn-on?” It’s funny because it’s true. In addition to witty dialogue, Broadcast News also has its moments of hilarious physical comedy, like the classic scene where Joan Cusack races through the newsroom to get a taped news story to the control room seconds before it is supposed to air. There are little moments as well, like, en route, where she accidently bangs into a water fountain that makes this sequence so funny to watch.

In a wonderful bit of then casting against type, William Hurt plays a good-looking blank slate of a person. Tom means well and really tries to understand the things Jane and Aaron say but he just doesn’t get it and is unable to articulate himself properly. I love the scene early on where he admits his short-comings to her: “I can talk well enough and I’m not bad at making contact with people but I don’t like the feeling that I’m pretending to be a reporter. And half the time I don’t get the news that I’m talking about.” Hurt does an excellent job in this scene as Tom tries to articulate his flaws as a reporter. He’s confident and well-paid while also showing a refreshing self-awareness of his flaws. He just doesn’t know how to fix them. Hurt could have easily played his character’s shallowness for laughs but there is an earnestness there that is endearing but this disappears as he becomes more savvy in his profession.

Fresh from her hilarious turn in the Coen brothers’ Raising Arizona (1987), Holly Hunter is ideally cast as the chatty Jane, a person who says exactly what she means even if it hurts someone else’s feelings. She is the kind of person that picks up five different newspapers during her morning power walk (and you know she reads them all before work). She’s an obsessive micromanager, which hides her insecurities tied to her love life. She’s the best at what she does for a living but her love life is a mess, pining for clueless pretty boy Tom while oblivious to how much Aaron loves her. Yet, Hunter also shows Jane’s vulnerable side – her awkwardness when it comes to personal relationships.

Albert Brooks nails the smug, smartass qualities that Aaron possesses and how it masks his insecurities when it comes to his romantic feelings for Jane. He clearly loves her but can’t find a way to get past that “best friend” stage of their relationship. That’s really how they work best – chatting with each other on the phone first thing in the morning and again before they go to sleep at night. Brooks excels at playing a brilliant reporter that lacks interpersonal skills and is publicly humiliated twice during the course of the film. The first time is minor – the national news anchor (played with perfect smug condescension by Jack Nicholson) calls Jane to compliment her on a story she and Aaron worked on together without acknowledging him. Brooks plays it for a significantly uncomfortable beat and this foreshadows the second, more memorable time when Aaron reads the news on air and is stricken with the most extreme case of flop sweat (one co-worker comments dryly, “This is more than Nixon ever sweated.”).

Aaron resents Tom for several reasons. He doesn’t like how success comes easy to the good-looking man while Aaron has to work his ass off and still doesn’t get recognized. Mostly, he’s jealous of Tom’s relationship with Jane because he loves her and doesn’t think this other guy, who just waltzes in and dazzles her, is right for her. Aaron is bitter because he is always second choice in his personal and professional lives. He resents this as he’s smarter than Tom but has a whiff of desperation when talking to women and doesn’t have the unflappable charisma needed to read the news on air. He may be smart but he also makes sure that those around him know it. Then, just when it seems like he’s the most unlikable character of the three, there’s the scene where Aaron all but tells Jane that he loves her and the vulnerability he conveys in that moment is touching.

Brooks does something very unusual with Broadcast News: he manages to get us to care about three unlikable people – a bossy know-it-all, an arrogant prick, and a shallow pretty boy. There are all kinds of throwaway scenes where the three characters are called on their overbearing traits in hilarious/semi-serious fashion, like when the head of the news division (Peter Hackes) disagrees with Jane over having Tom read the national news on air for the first time. She confronts him and says that Tom is not read as if it is fact and he replies, “It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you’re the smartest person in the room.” Her response is unexpected. Instead of a witty comeback or angry retort, she quietly and sadly says, “No, it’s awful.” That we care about these characters at all is due in large part to the charisma of Brooks, Hunter and Hurt as well as the superb writing that fleshes out and gives dimension to these characters so that we understand what motivates them and sheds light on their behavior.

From 1964 to 1966, James L. Brooks had been a reporter for CBS News in New York City. He met CBS Evening News senior producer Susan Zirinsky at the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco where the idea for Broadcast News was born. He had originally wanted to make a romantic comedy but attending the convention inspired him to have politics in the background of the film. He came up with three lead characters but “didn’t want the movie to declare its hero. All our effort was to have three characters as co-equals.” He also noticed the technological and stylistic changes in the way T.V. news covered the 1984 convention and saw it as a symptom of the changes in American business.

He spent most of 1985 and 1986 in Washington, D.C. doing research, hanging out at the CBS and NBC news bureaus. He showed up at the Gridiron dinner, the White House Correspondents dinner and the Washington Journalism Review awards and took notes, becoming a reporter again. He also spent weeks hanging out with Zirinsky who started as a technical consultant on the film before becoming an associate producer. In addition, he also hung out with the CBS News employees and it clearly influenced him as the budget cuts and firings in the film mirrored what happened in real life, although he denied it at the time. In doing his research Brooks discovered “this new kind of driven, professional woman out there that fascinated me as much as the changes in the television business.” When he started writing the screenplay he “didn’t like any of the three characters. By the time I was finished, I thought I could enjoy having drinks with all of them.”

In 1985, James L. Brooks told Albert Brooks that he wanted him to play one of the male leads in a romantic comedy about broadcasting. As a result, the comedian had input on the script early on. For example, the scene where Aaron suffers from flop sweat on the air came from real life. Brooks was watching CNN late one night and saw a news anchor sweating profusely. He called James L. Brooks and told him to turn on the channel and check it out. The director ended up putting it in the film.

William Hurt was Brooks’ only choice to play Tom and admitted, “frankly, if he’d said no, I would have canceled the picture,” but he had limited time available for the project and the filmmaker began to worry that he wouldn’t find his leading lady in time. Brooks had spent six months looking for the right actress to play Jane. With the sets built and rehearsals about to begin on Monday, he still hadn’t found the right person. The script found its way to Holly Hunter who read it on Friday, auditioned with Hurt on Saturday and got the part on Sunday, starting rehearsals on Monday.

Brooks hadn’t seen any of Hunter’s previous work. The audition with Hurt began as one scene and ended up being two hours of going through the entire script like a rehearsal. Both Albert Brooks and Hunter researched their roles at the CBS Washington bureau with the latter studying with Zirinsky. In addition, the two actors hung out together to give their on-screen friendship an air of authenticity.

The first cut of Broadcast News ran three hours and twenty-four minutes with Brooks trying to get it down to around two hours. He previewed the film for several audiences with different endings to see what worked best.

Broadcast News received mostly positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “The tricky thing about Broadcast News – the quality in director James L. Brooks’ screenplay that makes it so special – is that all three characters have a tendency to grow emotionally absent-minded when it’s a choice between romance and work.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “the film’s most brilliant and sobering touch is the brief epilogue that gives it the perspective of time.” The New York Times’ Vincent Canby praised Hurt’s performance: “Mr. Hurt, a most complicated actor, is terrific as a comparatively simple man, someone who’s perfectly aware of his intellectual limitations but who sees no reason for them to interfere with his climb to the top.” However, The Washington Post’s Hal Hinson wrote, “James Brooks is a tricky kind of talent. He’s smart about little things…But when you get right down to it, his insights about television news coverage…aren’t particularly original observations. Brooks is excellent at taking us inside the world of television, but not terribly good at analyzing it.”

Not surprisingly, the film’s depiction of T.V. news divided its real-life counterparts with CBS’ Mike Wallace finding Tom to be an “implausible” anchorman but found the film itself, “very realistic – the ambiance, the egos, the pressure,” while ABC’s Sam Donaldson objected to the film’s view that “good people are pushed out, bubbleheads get rewarded and management are all venal wimps.”

Of all Brooks’ films, Broadcast News is the most successful at merging his T.V. sitcom sensibilities with his cinematic aspirations. His film is not only chock full of truisms about network news but is also an incredibly entertaining and witty romantic comedy that is unafraid to sprinkle moments of compelling drama throughout. Brooks not only manages to say something about the relationships between men and women but also how it intertwines with their work in a way that escapist fare from the 1980s, like Baby Boom (1987) and Working Girl (1988), didn’t quite zero in on as well.

Partway through Broadcast News, Jane and Aaron realize that their way of reporting will eventually be replaced in favor of people like Tom who represents style over substance. This is addressed in a scene where Aaron semi-seriously compares Tom to the Devil:

“He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance... Just a tiny bit.”

History has proven Aaron right as the Tom Brokaws and Dan Rathers have been replaced by less reliable people. Thanks to the Internet and social media, news reporting has become more immediate and sometimes reported before it can be properly verified, taking the old maxim, “if it bleeds, it leads,” to an extreme. Brooks’ film saw it coming and people used to clickbait headlines and TMZ sensationalism must look at Broadcast News like ancient history. Looked at now, the film is a snapshot of a bygone era.

SOURCES

Gussow, Mel. “James Brooks Launches a Star.” The New York Times. December 13, 1987.

Hall, Jane and Brad Darrach. “The News about Broadcast.” People. February 1, 1988.

Scott, Jay. “Brooks Gives Acerbic Account of TV News.” Globe and Mail. December 4, 1987.

Shales, Tom. “A Hollywood Director Who Loves Washington.” Washington Post. December 13, 1987.

Siskel, Gene. “James Brooks’ Plan? He does it his way.” St. Petersburg Times. January 10, 1988.

Tobias, Scott. “Interview: Albert Brooks.” The A.V. Club. January 18, 2006.

Modern Romance

“You have to be fearless about it, you can’t go, Oh gee, am I gonna come off too this or too that? Don’t make the movie then, don’t do that subject if that’s what you’re afraid of, play a lovable teddy bear.” – Albert Brooks

Albert Brooks has always been a fearless performer unafraid to play characters that are unattractive (Taxi Driver) or arrogant (Broadcast News). In the films he wrote and directed, Brooks helped pioneer the uncomfortable comedy, which featured characters stumbling into awkward situations and off-kilter comic pacing that often involved stretches with no jokes that cleverly built-up to a punchline or joke that wasn’t always blatantly telegraphed. One can see this influence in the comedy of Garry Shandling, Ricky Gervais and Louis C.K. among others.

One of Brooks’ best films is Modern Romance (1981), a funny, wryly observed comedy about love featuring the comedian as a neurotic guy repeatedly breaking up and getting back together with his girlfriend played by Kathryn Harrold. The film famously did not test well with audiences back in the day and when he refused to make any changes the powers that be released it with little fanfare only for it to promptly die on the vine. He subsequently sunk into a deep funk only to be rescued by none other than Stanley Kubrick who told him how much he admired the film.

The first scene – where Robert Cole (Brooks) breaks up with girlfriend Mary Harvard (Harrold) – establishes the film’s off-kilter vibe as they order food and she endearingly wipes her lipstick off his cheek before he lowers the boom. She tries to prolong it by chitchatting about his work – he’s a film editor – until he forces the issue, calling their relationship, “a no-win situation,” like Vietnam. This isn’t the first time they’ve broken up and Robert comes off as a little paranoid and majorly neurotic. Brooks deftly juggles tones in this scene, inserting sly, little jokes amidst the heaviness of the moment, like when an understandably upset Mary gets up and leaves only for Robert to say, “Come back, we can at least eat!”

Robert goes to work and confides in his best friend and co-worker Jay (Bruno Kirby), giving himself a half-hearted pep talk: “There’s ten million people in this city alone. How difficult can it be to find one perfect woman? It’s not that big a deal,” to which his friend deadpans, “I haven’t but maybe you can.” They try to build each other up in an amusing moment but it feels like they are going through the motions.

Upset, Robert goes home and proceeds to call Jay on the phone. Brooks captures their entire conversation in one long, uninterrupted take as we see how the breakup with Mary has started to impact on him. He then calls Jay back after the two Quaaludes kick in and wanders through his house rambling on and stumbling around in a funny scene. Again, Brooks lets the scene play out as we follow Robert around his place, talking to himself after hanging up with Jay. Most other filmmakers would have cut away or used to music to manipulate our emotions but not Brooks who only uses music when it feels right – in this case, when Robert decides to put on a record, saying, “God, I have so many great albums. I love my albums,” and this other amusing gem, “Music is the doctor of the soul.” However, the song he puts on makes him sad and he takes the record off. This awkwardness feels intimate, like we shouldn’t be seeing this and it only adds to the authenticity of the moment. Here’s a guy who feels lost in life. He’s broken up with the woman he loves and now deeply regrets it.

Robert convinces himself that he’s starting a new life and so he loads up on vitamins, buys a new running outfit (from a salesman played hilariously by Brooks’ brother Bob Einstein), and then proceeds to clumsily try running with predictably poor results. He tries to get over Mary through sheer force of will and it is funny seeing him try. The rest of Modern Romance plays out his attempts to get over Mary and then his attempts to win her back.

The lovely Kathryn Harrold is ideally cast as Brooks’ love interest and one can see why Robert is crazy about Mary – she’s smart, beautiful and good at her job, which makes us wonder why they broke up in the first place? Early on, it isn’t clear why they keep breaking up and getting back together but by the last third of the film it becomes obvious – they don’t communicate very well. He doesn’t trust her and is insanely jealous, letting things build up until they become an issue.

Bruno Kirby is well-cast as Brooks’ best friend and they play well off each other, especially early on when, after just having broken up with Mary, Robert confides in Jay. Later on, he pops up in a strong sequence that shows how the two men solve a post-production issue that the director tells them to resolve. I like that it’s a comedy where we actually see the characters working at their jobs. Brooks goes one step further and actually provides some detail on what a film editor does, which gives us an insider’s look that feels true.

The inspiration for Modern Romance came out of a personal experience Albert Brooks had:

“Two year ago, I was going out with a woman. The relationship had ended but I found myself driving around her house, over and over again. I felt pinned to my car. I couldn’t do anything else but keep circling the house and I couldn’t even figure out why I was doing it. Finally, I thought, why don’t I pull over and write this down? It might make a good film.”

Brooks actually incorporated that very anecdote into the finished film. He chose Robert to be a film editor because he had never seen a movie about Hollywood that featured one as the protagonist. Furthermore, he said, “I would not have made Modern Romance unless I had that kind of trouble in my life with breaking up. I didn’t do it as much as that character, but I did it enough to be able to write and do that, so for comedic purposes, I take behavior that I might do and I square it.”

Initially, Columbia Pictures was so happy with Modern Romance that then-studio head Frank Price flew Brooks and his co-star Kathryn Harrold from Los Angeles to San Francisco on the executive’s private jet for a test screening. It went so badly that Price ditched Brooks and flew back to L.A. Later, the two men met and addressed the problems the audience had with the film. People couldn’t understand why Robert was so unhappy and Price wanted Brooks to add a scene where he goes to a psychiatrist. Brooks refused because he didn’t know why the character was so unhappy as well. His then-agent Michael Ovitz urged him to add the scene in order to appease the studio. Brooks refused and changed agents. The studio released the film with little support and it performed poorly at the box office, polarizing critics and leaving Brooks depressed.

Then, out of the blue, Stanley Kubrick called Brooks and told him, “This is a brilliant movie – the movie I’ve always wanted to make about jealousy. You will not understand what I’m saying, but you must believe me: The studio decides before the movie is ever released how it’s going to do. It has nothing to do with you.” Kubrick’s call revitalized Brooks’ self-esteem. Over time, Brooks began to realize that his film resonated with people as he recounted in a profile for The New York Times, “A guy came running up to me on the street the other day and he says, ‘You’re the guy! You’re the guy! I got married because of that movie!’ I said: ‘Great. That’s a terrible reason to get married.’”

Modern Romance carries on the proud tradition of single guy romantic comedies like Annie Hall (1977), The Lonely Guy (1984), and High Fidelity (2000) by putting his own distinctive stamp on the genre. He doesn’t go for broad gags, opting for a more understated approach, setting up a situation and letting it play out organically unlike most comedies that go for an easy punchline.

“There are no gags in the picture. No zany comics. There are real people in real situations carried to a logical – or illogical – extreme. If the outcome is funny, it’s because life itself is funny.” – Albert Brooks

Brooks understands that a lot of comedy comes out of anger and pain and isn’t afraid to mine this territory for honest observations about love. He also understands that most of us don’t have an easy time when it comes to love and relationships take work. He also acknowledges the awkwardness of life and isn’t afraid to play someone riddled with self-doubt, which makes his character relatable. One has to admire Brooks for not being content to merely make a film that is nothing more than a joke delivery machine but actually try to say something about love and how people relate to each other.

SOURCES

Barron, Angela. “Post Modern Romance.” Editors Guild Magazine. September-October 2005.

Modern Romance Production Notes. Columbia Pictures. 1981.

Raab, Scott. “Albert Brooks Knows the Whole Hellish Truth.” Esquire. January 29, 2007.

Smith, Gavin. “All the Choices: Albert Brooks Interview.” Film Comment. July/August 1999.

Svetkey, Benjamin. “Albert Brooks Takes a Look Back on his Career.” Entertainment Weekly. May 30, 2003.

Weber, Bruce. “Reflections on Himself.” The New York Times. March 17, 1991.

Drive

Nicolas Winding Refn is the latest cinematic export from Denmark – the same country that brought us enfant terrible Lars von Trier. Like him, Refn is a cinematic button pusher known for creating violently stylish films where the protagonists undergo a transformation to become “what they were meant to be,” as the filmmaker has said in an interview. After making four films, Refn tried to break into Hollywood with Fear X (2003), but it was a commercial failure, forcing his production company into bankruptcy. He rebounded with the one-two punch of Bronson (2008) and Valhalla Rising (2009), the former a biopic about infamous British prisoner Michael Gordon Peterson, and the latter about the adventures of a Norse warrior during the Crusades. Both films were art house hits, but it would be Refn’s next film, Drive (2011) that would be his breakthrough in North America, garnering rave reviews, awards and very strong box office results.

Drive is a neon-drenched neo-noir that pays homage to stylish, yet minimalist narrative crime films like The Driver (1978) and Thief (1981) complete with a retro 1980s electronic score by Cliff Martinez that evokes the likes of Tangerine Dream and Giorgio Moroder. Refn’s film features his most star-studded cast to date with the likes of Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, and Ron Perlman. When I first saw Drive I was unsure how I felt about it. The film was obviously made with great skill and was very stylish, but was it simply style for style’s sake? Was it like many of Quentin Tarantino’s films and simply a pastiche of other, better films? The more times I watch Drive the more I’m convinced that this is not the case and that there is more going on under its incredibly engaging façade, that there is enough of Refn’s thematic preoccupations to give the film its own identity.

Drive focuses on an unnamed taciturn Hollywood stunt driver (Ryan Gosling) who works as a getaway driver during his off-hours. We are introduced to the Driver as he helps two thieves pull off a job all to the ominous atmospheric sounds of “Tick of the Clock” by Chromatics. He doesn’t say much, but in the first five minutes we find out the rules he adheres to while on a job and just how good he is at it – monitoring the police band radio and knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the car he drives like it was an extension of himself.

The film’s layered soundscape during the opening chase sequence seamlessly mix Martinez’s electronic score, the police band radio, a sports match playing on the car radio, and the roar of the engine. This prologue is the ideal introduction to the world of this enigmatic driver. It’s not an entirely realistic one per se, but one heightened, almost like we are seeing everything through his eyes or we are inside his head where he lives out fantasies as an undefeatable superhero of sorts, rescuing a beautiful damsel in distress and her little boy. The Driver even has his own “superhero outfit” – a silver-colored jacket with a large yellow scorpion emblazoned on the back.

On the surface, the Driver is an expressionless blank slate who seems to be looking for something and may have found it with Irene (Carey Mulligan), the pretty woman that lives down the hall, but obstacles keep getting in the way, like her ex-con husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) or local crime boss Bernie (Albert Brooks) and his intimidating right-hand man Nino (Ron Perlman). Only Irene brings a smile to the Driver’s usually expressionless face and actually brings him out of his shell as is evident in the afternoon they spend together with her son Benicio (Kaden Leos). Refn drenches this sequence in a warm, golden light as “A Real Hero” by College plays over the soundtrack. Irene humanizes the Driver and Carey Mulligan’s kind eyes and warm smile certainly make a convincing argument for how her character is able to cut through his impenetrable emotional armor. But since this is a noir, their happiness is doomed to be short-lived.

Ryan Gosling does an excellent job of portraying the stillness of the Driver. He is someone who doesn’t waste time with needless movements or words. If the Driver doesn’t say much throughout the film it’s because those around him talk too much, whether it is his nervously chatty mechanic mentor Shannon (Bryan Cranston) or the menacingly charming Bernie. Everything he does has a purpose. The actor is also able to portray his character’s unnerving capacity for bone-crunching violence that lurks under the Driver’s calm surface and that only comes out when provoked. Usually pretty boy actors like Gosling try to act tough and fail, but with the help of Refn, he transforms into a credible badass. It’s all in the eyes, which Gosling alternates between inviting, like when the Driver is with Irene, or all icy intensity like when he and those that are important to him are threatened. The Driver does show glimmers of emotion, like the look of remorse he demonstrates when he finds out Shannon’s fate.

Albert Brooks is quite the revelation as the ruthless Bernie. Known predominantly for playing passive-aggressive neurotics in films like Broadcast News (1987) and Mother (1996), he is cast wonderfully against type in Drive. Much like Bill Murray in Mad Dog and Glory (1993), Brooks is able to use his funnyman persona as his character’s façade only to show the nasty brutality that exists when things go sour. Brooks is able to go from genial to lethal on a dime and it is easy to see why the actor received so much acclaim for his performance.

Refn is certainly an accomplished director – there’s no question about that. The car chases are exciting and intense white-knuckle affairs, as is the jarring, blood-splattered violence that is brief and visceral and very stylishly depicted in that cool, Tarantino kind of way – only minus the humor. What saves Drive from being merely an empty exercise in cool style is the supporting cast, which humanizes the Driver character. While he is largely devoid of personality, those around him are rich with it, from the gregarious Nino to the grizzled Shannon. It is Irene, however, who gives the Driver’s life a sense of purpose. She motivates him to protect her and Benicio from anyone who might hurt them including an intense scene in an elevator where the Driver kills one of Nino’s flunkies. Right before this happens, the Driver turns around and kisses Irene. As this happens, the lighting changes noticeably as if time has stopped, as if it wasn’t really happening – perhaps only in his imagination. Then, real-time kicks in as he proceeds to stomp the henchman’s head in with sickening brutality. This scene sums up Drive in a nutshell – a stylish, romantic film interspersed with sudden, jarring acts of brutality.

Producer Adam Siegel was looking for a potential movie idea in Publisher’s Weekly when he came across a small review for James Sallis’ novel Drive. Intrigued by the premise of a stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver, Siegel read the novel immediately. He and his co-producer Mark E. Platt were taken with Drive’s protagonist, an unnamed getaway driver that was “an enigmatic reserved individual who lived by a very distinctive code,” Platt remembered.

They hired Hossein Amini (The Wings of the Dove) in 2005 to adapt the book and he was drawn to the “extraordinary characters” with a very simple plot running through it.” However, the novel didn’t have a linear story, delving frequently into flashbacks, which made it a challenge to adapt. It was important for the Driver’s point-of-view to be preserved because it was distinctive. Originally, the project had a home at Universal Pictures as a potential franchise for Hugh Jackman to star and Neil Marshall in the director’s chair with a $60 million budget. The studio wanted it done in the vein of the Fast and Furious movies. By 2010, both Jackman and Marshall had left the project and Platt approached Ryan Gosling, an actor he had always wanted to work with. The producer heard back from the actor within a couple of days and he was interested in doing it. Gosling was drawn to the project because he had always wanted to be in an action movie, but found most contemporary ones to be “more on action and little less character.” This was not the case with Drive.

Upon accepting the gig, Gosling used his newfound clout within the industry to choose the director he wanted. The actor watched a lot of films, but when he saw Nicolas Winding Refn’s work he knew that the was the right person for the job. Gosling assumed that Refn wouldn’t be interested because Drive was unlike anything he had done before. Regardless, he sent Refn the script. At the time, director was in Los Angeles developing a Paul Schrader script for a film called, The Dying of the Light with Harrison Ford. However, the project fell apart when the actor didn’t want his character to die. Refn wasn’t taken with the story of Drive, but rather “the concept and idea that there was a man who had split personalities, by being a stunt man by day and a getaway driver by night.” He compared the Driver to a werewolf, “because deep down he’s a man who’s psychotic, but he’s also a man who’s two people – he’s one person by day and one person by night.”

Gosling and Refn met for the first time over dinner for two hours. They didn’t talk about Drive specifically, but rather films in general. Refn had been suffering through a cold and had taken a lot of medicine and was feeling tired. He asked Gosling to drive him home. On the way, “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore” by REO Speedwagon came on the radio and the director enthusiastically sang along with it. Inspired by the song, Refn spontaneously gained insight into Drive. He told Gosling that the film was about “a man who drives around listening to pop songs at night because that’s his emotional relief.” They wanted to make “Pretty in Pink with a head smashing,” as Gosling always felt that John Hughes’ films needed a little violence, imaging the film being about “a guy who’s seen so many movies that he turned himself into his own super hero and made his own super hero costume.” He and Refn began their collaboration on the project.

With the strong script and the likes of Gosling and Refn on board, the rest of the cast came together quickly. Carey Mulligan had seen Bronson and was so impressed by it that she told her agent that she wanted to work with Refn. Three weeks later, she got the script for Drive. Originally, Refn was looking for a Latina actress and had met with several, but none were right for the role. When he met Mulligan, he knew she was right for the role. The director sought out Bryan Cranston for the role of Shannon and the script convinced the actor to do the film. Gosling and Refn thought that Albert Brooks would be good for Bernie, but figured he wouldn’t be interested because the character was “so violent, so dark,” said Gosling. Refn met with Brooks and was impressed by his “volcano-ish way where you have this sense that he’s about to snap at any moment.”

While working on the script with Refn, Amini moved in with the director and his family. Then, Mulligan did as well because she didn’t have a place to stay while making the film. Refn’s place took on a communal atmosphere: “Ryan would come by all the time. It was very collaborative. All we needed was a lot of cocaine and it would have been like 1973.”

For the look of the film, cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel (The Usual Suspects) kept “the wide angle feeling with a lot of depth and a lot of background to it.” Refn picked him to shoot Drive because he liked the man’s energy and his background as a documentary filmmaker. As an added bonus, Sigel had worked as a cameraman on Lucifer Rising (1972) a film by Kenneth Anger, one of Refn’s heroes. So, the first visual reference Sigel showed Refn was Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963), which fetishized guys working on motorcycles. When Refn questioned this pick, Sigel told him that Drive should convey the same kind of “sensual, sexual nature of it, the fetish, the objectification.”

To compose the score, Refn hired Cliff Martinez, impressed with his work on Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). The director wanted the soundtrack to consist predominantly of electronic music with some of it being abstract as if conveyed from the Driver’s perspective. Refn gave Martinez a sampler of music that he liked and told him that he wanted a soundtrack akin to the synth-pop music from the ‘80s. Martinez started off with an ambient-heavy score, but Refn was concerned that it would “take energy from the film,” and it evolved into something more rhythmic.

Drive received mostly positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “The entire film, in fact, seems much more real than the usual action-crime-chase concoctions we’ve grown tired of. Here is a movie with respect for writing, acting and craft. It has respect for knowledgeable moviegoers.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B+” rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum felt that the film, “revels in sensory detail; it’s a visually and aurally edgy Euro-influenced American genre movie about the coolness of noir-influenced American genre movies about the coolness of driving – especially in L.A.” In her review for the Washington Post, Ann Hornaday praised Gosling for delivering, “a slow, white-hot burn of a performance,” in “a nervy, understated ode to one of Hollywood’s most cherished archetypes, the sad-eyed man of few words.” USA Today gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and Claudia Puig wrote, “This art-house crime saga has a distinctly European sensibility. The film slows down to a deliberate pace, then revs on a dime to frantic speeds.” However, in his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, “This is not to say the movie is bad – as I have suggested, the skill and polish are hard to dispute – but rather that it is, for all its bravado, timid and conventional.”

Drive wears its influences on it sleeve, most notably in the sequences that bookend the film. Refn’s film begins much like Walter Hill’s The Driver with the protagonist being introduced as he efficiently pulls off a job that wordlessly demonstrates his considerable skills. Drive ends much like Michael Mann’s Thief with the protagonist wounded yet victorious, albeit stripped of the only things that meant anything to him. Like many Mann protagonists, the Driver is defined by what he does. He has his own code of rules by which he lives by. He only gets in trouble when he breaks these rules. The Driver has to keep things simple and it is only when life gets complicated by the presence of Irene and Bernie that he runs into trouble. The only solution is to remove these complications.

It is easy to see why Drive was so well-received – it is a slick, stylish crime film that looks and sounds cool, but there is more going on underneath the attractive surface. There’s Gosling’s soulful performance and an inspired, vicious turn by Brooks. Orbiting these two actors is a talented supporting cast that bring their archetypal characters to life by how they look, talk, and, most importantly, act. Drive works as several things. Gosling saw it as a kind of Brothers Grimm fairy tale with the Driver as a knight, Irene as the princess in the tower that needed to be rescued from Bernie, the evil wizard, while Nino is the dragon that must be slayed. At its heart, Drive is a boyhood fantasy, an R-rated superhero movie, but without the conventional trappings of the genre. It is an art-house power fantasy that allows us to live vicariously through the Driver, a good-looking character capable of performing impressive feats of strength and skill, all for the love of a beautiful woman. However, Refn fuses this with the neo-noir to add a tragic element where the protagonist must sacrifice his own happiness so that those he cares about may live.

SOURCES

Blake, William. Nicolas Winding Refn and Drive.” Soma. Vol. 25.6.

Drive Presskit. 2011.

Gilchrist, Todd. “Johnny Jewel on Developing the Unique Soundtrack for Drive.” Box Office Magazine.” September 15, 2011.

Gilchrist, Todd. “Nicolas Winding Refn Says Drive was About the Purity of Love with his Wife.” The Playlist. February 1, 2012.

Koehler, Robert. “Nicolas Winding Refn and the Search for A Real Hero.” Cinemascope. #48.

Shoard, Catherine. “Nicolas Winding Refn: ‘Filmmaking is a fetish’.” The Guardian. September 8, 2011.

Stephenson, Hunter. “Neil Marshall to Direct Hugh Jackman in Drive.” /Film. March 20, 2008.

Taylor, Drew. “Cliff Martinez Talks Scoring Lincoln Lawyer and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive.” The Playlist. April 30, 2011.

Witmer, Jon D. “Road Warriors.” American Cinematographer. October 2011.

Yuan, Jada. “Ryan Gosling Talks Drive, Ides of March, and The Place Beyond the Pines in his Oddball, Ryan Gosling Way.” New York magazine. September 15, 2011.

Zak, Leah. “Ryan Gosling Likens Drive to John Hughes, Super Hero Films and Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales.” The Playlist. September 14, 2011.

Zeitchik, Steven. “Ryan Gosling and Nicolas Winding Refn share the ride.” Los Angeles Times. September 15, 2011.