alternate soundtrack to drive

making drive, refn listened to “a lot of kraftwerk, brian eno, really 80s stuff”. the film opens on a getaway through los angeles at night.

eno scored refn’s fear x (2003) and was on his stereo while he made drive. the driver takes irene and benicio down into the concrete bed of the los angeles river, to where it turns wild.

bernie, by the stock car: “i used to produce movies. in the eighties. kind of like action films. sexy stuff. one critic called them european.” in 1981 a german band scored michael mann’s thief, about a professional thief who wants out.

“the first visual reference i showed ryan,” refn said, was kenneth anger’s scorpio rising (1963), scored with pop records; the driver’s scorpion comes from it. this one plays over a biker working on his motorcycle. in drive, it’s irene’s husband home from prison.

scorpio rising again: the song over which anger’s scorpion first flashes on screen. in drive, it’s where the driver offers to drive standard’s robbery, for irene and benicio’s sake.

refn: “it’s pretty in pink with a head smash.” omd wrote this overnight for pretty in pink’s reshot ending, where it plays over the final kiss. drive’s kiss is in the elevator, just before the head smash.

gosling’s own band, with a los angeles children’s choir, two years before drive. in drive, his driver drowns nino in the pacific, then tells bernie that nino “didn’t make it across the river”.

refn shot drive as a fairy tale about “the archetype of the knight who roams the wasteland in search of a woman to save”. wagner’s knight saves elsa on one condition, that she never ask his name; once she does, he must leave. melchior, the great wagner tenor, was from copenhagen, like refn.

the night they met, gosling drove refn home and put the radio on; this came on, and refn sang along “at the top of my lungs”. the film, he said later, “is that scene, really”.