Tell me about the cast. What made you think Miles Teller would be good for this part of a kind of unfeeling sociopath who can’t really connect with the world?
It was kind of your typical casting process, in some ways. I’d never worked with Miles before, but Elle Fanning spoke very highly of him, and I was looking for a younger lead, and Miles was just turning 30 at that time. We met. He was really the first real actor that I sat down with to discuss it who was at that level and all throughout our discussion I kept thinking, “Oh my god, he looks like Elvis.” So, my mind was like, “If I can make a story about America starring Elvis Presley.” I mean, how much more red, white and blue can you get?
[**Spoiler Alert**, though hey, the show’s been available for streaming for almost two months now]
Did that decision have anything to do with his character dying so abruptly then and being killed off much earlier than expected?
No. That was really just because I do things chronologically, sometimes I can’t decide what I want to do with the characters.
I love your work with Ryan Gosling, do you have plans to make something together again soon?
Eventually, yeah. It’s inevitable. We’re each one half of the same soul. So, of course, we’ll work together again.
You’ve called yourself a pornographer in the past, perhaps suggested yourself as a pornographer of violence. This series really takes that fetish, kink, and sadism to another level, almost like the format freed you from limitations.
Well, I had no time limitations. I only stopped shooting because we ran out of money.
Was that why the last episode was shorter and kind of felt like an epilogue?
No, I shot the whole thing. When I say, “I only stopped shooting,” I mean that I could have gone on shooting for another year; but at some point, you do have to stop. Then, when I had all of the material, I looked at it, and I thought, okay, well, I didn’t set out to make television— that was not the DNA of this— so I said I’m going to approach it like a book. I’m just going to chop it up wherever I feel it needs to have a pause, and whatever length comes out of that is the length of an episode.
You’ve also spoken about how filming something doesn’t mean you agree with it. There’s a lot of discussion about the morality of violence in media right now and you’ve always seemed like someone who sees the canvas as a way of tackling these tough themes rather than running away from their consequences.
Well, society on a global scale is obviously in a process of rediscovering itself. There is no doubt, that whatever you do, you have responsibility. But we’re not politicians. We are not here to get your vote, or to be liked—or loved, for that matter—we’re here to create, and creativity is truly the only thing that makes the world move forward. Creativity is what breaks down the barriers of society. Creativity teaches us empathy. Right now, we’re in a wave of insanity and unpredictability, but also a lot of people have suddenly been made aware that they can voice an opinion in a way that makes a difference, which is a beautiful thing. We just have to remember that at the end of the day, in terms of creativity, the point of view is essentially the origin of the reason to create.
We, unfortunately, live in a time where entertainment has gotten so misogynistic, and algorithms have completely desensitized it. It’s almost like you become a zombie that just eats flesh and because it’s so digestible your appetite is bottomless; because it doesn’t go to the brain, it just goes to the stomach. It doesn’t make you think; it just steals your time, and time is something very sacred because it’s the one thing you will never get back.
I love how Mexico is woven into the narrative. Were you thinking about the hot button political situation when weaving that POV into the series?
Again, I don’t live here, but I’ve gone to Mexico and I just think it’s an absolutely amazing country full of beautiful people and great people and inspiring people. All of Latin history, if you think about it, is just extraordinary. But, of course, what was happening in America at the time when I was writing the show and making the show was very, very extreme, and you could say I just decided to channel what I was feeling into what I was indulging in, but also what I saw to be happening.
You always capture the City of Angels so rapturously. Has your vision of L.A.changed over the years – from “Drive,” to “The Neon Demon,” to ‘TOTDY?’
I just continue to see new areas. I absolutely love Los Angeles— and I can’t drive a car, so you really have to love it. I think there are just so many great things here. You can continually discover new areas. I love cities, generally. I’m a city person; I grew up in New York, in Manhattan, so you can’t get any more city-oriented than that. LA is like a mystery that just keeps on evolving.
Your shooting style often feels similar to filmmakers like Jean-Pierre Melville, in how you use locations.
Mm-hmm.
Since “Drive,” it almost seems like you have doubled down on that minimalist style. Are you still heavily influenced by him or other New Wave directors?
Well, Jean-Pierre Melville is one of the great French filmmakers. I’ve always been drawn to minimalism. I believe less is more and none is everything.
It almost seems like you’ve stripped things down more than usual here; I’m thinking of the climax, specifically—which felt more Seijin Suzuki influenced. Visually it’s so simple and abstract, yet full of meaningful symbols. How did you come up with the idea for that final John Hawkes sequence?
A lot of what was and what is happening in the country is like a form of new mutation. It’s like a new birth of America— and whether that’s good or bad is a very personal judgment. But I think that a character like John Hawkes, [the character] Viggo, who has gone through some kind of spiritual odyssey. He has dedicated his life to protect innocence and now the idea is he’s part of all the other forgotten men and women. I mean, you have a country where people literally drop out of society. We don’t really have something like that in Scandinavia—for many different reasons, of course—but the idea that you have a country where literally people are living on the fringes, where political changes don’t even matter, and people have dropped out of society. Viggo is also a very frightening character, but he’s on some kind of spiritual quest of cleansing the Earth of evil.
You look at Viggo, Miles Teller’s Martin—even Gosling’s character in “Drive”—they’re all characters who want to be heroes, but they end up losing and destroying everything in the process of their quest, due to their violent tendencies. Despite the spiritual journey, there’s something primal inside, still.
I think there’s always primal instincts when you shave away all we’ve been taught growing up and how to we’ve been taught to behave. At the end of the day, we still have the same impulses.
Do you continue to feel a natural impulse in collaborating with Cliff Martinez? Has your creative process changed with him as the years have gone by?
It just gets easier and easier. We talk less and less about the work and more about everything else.
READ MORE: Listen To 2 Tracks From ‘Too Old To Die Young’ Soundtrack From Composer Cliff Martinez
How do you go about staging something like the car chase sequence around that song, Barry Manilow’s “Mandy?” There are so many ways that scene could have played out, but you seemed to have a very specific idea in mind. Was it all pre-designed; or is that something you like to discover in the editing room?
It was all designed. When I have to shoot so much material, I have to be pretty clear in what I want to shoot. The question is how am I going to shoot it and how is it going to change.
You always seem to have many projects brewing. You were reportedly working on an all-female horror movie called “I Walk with the Dead.” When developing new ideas do you typically have set ideas in your head for scenes in that movie?
Yeah. It’s kind of little bit all over the place, and then I’ll say things and it’ll turn into something else, and I might go, “Oh, that idea I had, or that title I really liked that I came up with, maybe I should pursue that.” Everything is constantly just moving.
