Nicolas Winding Refn and the Arrogance of Youth
Paste talked to the director about The Neon Demon and what beauty means to him.

What is beauty? Why have we been enraptured by it since the dawn of time? What are our modern standards of what it means to be “pretty”? These are questions that drive filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn’s film, The Neon Demon, which has just been released on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD. Refn, known for films like Bronson and Drive, brings no shortage of shock, a vibrant visual landscape and an intoxicating leading lady to his latest.
In The Neon Demon, Jesse (Elle Fanning) has just moved to LA in hopes of making it as a model in the vicious fashion scene. She’s wide-eyed, but, as much as you fear for her in the cut-throat industry, she, as Refn puts it, has a “much darker side.” After befriending a makeup artist, Ruby (Jena Malone), Jesse’s career takes off, launching her into naked, golden photo shoots, questionable clubs and a jealous group of women out to consume her young, covetable beauty.
Paste had a chance to talk to Refn about coming from a filmmaking family (Refn’s father is Danish film director and editor Anders Refn and mother, cinematographer Vibeke Winding), why he chose this L.A. landscape for his film, and how he was inspired to delve into the journey of a young model.
Paste Magazine: You grew up in New York, went to film school and then you dropped out. Like Jesse, you were growing up trying to make it in the business. How much of Jesse is informed by your own journey?
Nicolas Winding Refn: Well, I think there’s a lot of me in Jesse. You know, subconsciously and also my own mirror of it. There’s also a lot of the whole fantasy of What was it like being a beautiful girl? Of course, it’s a very natural part of any man. I believe there’s a 17-year-old girl hiding in every man. It was very good living out the fantasy.
Paste: Did growing up as a teenager in Manhattan in the ’80s influence this film at all?
Refn: I think that kind of wanderer, walking into a dangerous fairytale land—[that] type of club, when you were just 16. It’s probably a lot of that, that part of my life.
Paste: You made Pusher by the time you were 24. How did getting acclaim at a young age inform the exploration of success in youth in The Neon Demon?
Refn: Well, it’s, like, instant, you know? I don’t think I was prepared for what it felt like. I was just very, very lucky in a way. I made the movie with the arrogance of youth.
Paste: Do you feel like you were prepared for the world that you were launched into? Did growing up in a family where you were around that prepare you in any way? With Jesse, we know very little about her background, but it seems like she’s had no knowledge of this world at all.
Refn: You could flip it because the idea of Jesse was that if The Wizard of Oz was real, what if the Wizard was Los Angeles? Dorothy would maybe be evil because there is [that] part [to] the Jesse character—even though she’s very much a deer in the headlights, she’s also very manipulative potentially. If you go back and rewatch the movie, it very quickly appears that there almost is an alternate motive in her constantly. There’s even a third version where she’s like an entity that is what everyone else wants to consume because she represents what everyone else hungers for, essentially. She’s like an enigma.