The movie that brought out Ryan Gosling’s violent side: “I learned my lesson”
Have you ever seen a “violent John Hughes movie”? No? Well, Ryan Gosling claims to have made one in 2011’s Drive. It’s unclear what he thinks Drive has in common with The Breakfast Club or Sixteen Candles. That Gosling kisses a pretty girl before beating a man to death in an elevator? The dream pop soundtrack? That Gosling’s unnamed character, just called the driver, wears a silly satin bomber jacket?
The film, directed by Nicolas Winding Refyn, is adapted from a 2005 novel by James Sallis. You’re more likely to have seen the film and heard “a real human being” in every cafe and club from 2011 until the present day than to have read the book, but despite being a relatively low-budget film meant to court an indie audience, Drive did remarkably well. You might still see someone on the high street in a dumb scorpion jacket.
Although Gosling would go on to say that his favorite role was in Step Brothers of all things, Drive was a watershed moment for Gosling. He went from the guy from The Notebook, the rom-com heartthrob, to a bona fide action star, putting his chiselled body to work murdering villains rather than making women swoon. In Drive doing both at the same time, actually.
Talking with RadioFree, Gosling recounts, “Well, I’ve always wanted to see a violent John Hughes movie. And I always thought if Pretty in Pink had a head smashing, it would be perfect. So there’s that. And then, on top of that, when I was a little kid when I first saw First Blood, it put a spell on me, and I thought I was Rambo. I even thought my face felt like Sylvester Stallone’s face when I touched it.”
He continues to think about the tactile nature of cinema, saying, “And then I went to school the next day, I put steak knives in my Fisher-Price Houdini kit, and I took them, and I threw them at all the kids at recess. And I got suspended–rightfully so, and I’m sorry, and I learned my lesson, and I never did anything like that again. But my parents said, ‘Look, this guy can’t watch violent movies.’ So they put me on a leash, and I could only watch Bible movies and National Geographic movies (which are very violent) and black and white comedies–Abbott and Costello movies and all that.”
He keeps talking about the effect of cinema upon him and, by extension, his character in Drive, thinking back, “So I understand the effect that movies can have on you, and the kind of spell that they can cast on you. And when I first read this script, I felt like, “Well, this is a guy that’s just seen too many movies. He’s going around acting like he’s the hero of his own action movie.” And I wanted to explore that idea. Because I’ve been wanting to play a superhero, but all the good ones are taken. And I thought, “Well, I could create my own, potentially.” And so that’s what we tried to do with Drive: a violent John Hughes movie meets a guy who’s confusing his own life for a movie. [laughs]”
We all play back our lives in moments of retrospect as though they were movies, and Gosling’s choice to play the driver that way makes sense. You can see him as a decisive action hero, sure, and he fits into that role better than his dumb jacket. But we don’t know much about the character. He doesn’t talk much. Was he a hitman or a mobster in a past life? We aren’t told. Maybe he’s just seen too many genre films.
