For a guy who plays a stunt driver that moonlights as a getaway driver in “Drive,” Ryan Gosling says he didn’t get a whole lot of time behind the wheel in the film. “I drove myself to set and I drove myself home,” he says with a laugh. But seriously, though. “I went to driving school, and I did a lot of the driving. But the cool stuff, I didn’t do,” he says. “But it was one of the best prep experiences I’ve ever had, because I’d basically just show up to this big parking lot, and there’d be a new Camaro or a new Mustang and we’d just ride it to the rims until it was smoking or it wouldn’t go anymore, then we’d just go home and they’d tow it away and call us when it was fixed.”
“Drive” was something of a meeting of the minds for Gosling and the film’s director, Nicolas Winding Refn. “We set out to make a violent John Hughes movie, and I think that’s what we did,” Gosling says. “This movie wouldn’t have happened if REO Speedwagon hadn’t come on the radio” during a drive the actor and director shared one night while discussing the project. “So something happened in that car, and Nicolas and I were sharing the same dream and we spent the whole movie trying to figure out how that was possible.”
Gosling and Winding Refn’s shared dream apparently worked out great, as the actor and director are jumping into more projects together already. They’re now developing a remake of “Logan’s Run” — a project previously kicked around by a number of filmmakers. And they’re getting ready to shoot a film about Thai kickboxing.
With “Drive” already getting such positive reactions wherever they take it, there’s even been talk of a sequel — even if it was originally just in jest. “We were joking for a while — but maybe it’s not a joke — that it would be a prequel called ‘Drive 2’ where it’s about Bernie [Albert Brooks] and Ron Perlman,” he says.
