Boy Movies #7

Ryan Gosling is a girl, feat. Cassidy Olsen

You’re reading Boy Movies, a weekly record of my ongoing break from reality. Far be it from me to boast, but I’m going to say it: This is a fun issue. If you agree, consider sending it to someone you think might enjoy it too… perhaps a powerful executive or a prominent influencer… idk…

I have a strong memory of sneaking into a showing of Nicolas Winding-Refn’s noir-infused crime drama Drive at the dilapidated, beloved, now-closed AMC in Toms River, New Jersey in 2011 with friend of the newsletter, writer, and future CEO of Twitter Cassidy Olsen. I brought it up to her early in our Zoom discussion, expecting her to delight in this piece of shared history with me. Instead: “I’m not saying I don’t believe you,” she replied, which is one of the worst ways for any sentence to begin. “But I don't remember the actual experience of seeing Drive with you.” I ended the call immediately and we haven’t spoken since.

Just kidding! For context, Cassidy and I grew up together — literally, we were neighbors who shared a bus stop and spent afternoons walking to each other’s houses, aging into two freak teens who chose to spend any and all of our available free time at the movies. We were like the girl version of the nerds from Superbad, which I guess would make us the nerds from Booksmart, but I’m hesitant to mention Ol*via W*lde in this newsletter again lest she manifest in my home. I knew Cassidy, who through no fault of her own has earned the distinction of becoming the first Boy Movies guest, would be the perfect person to speak on Drive with me, which is the subject of this week’s issue in honor of the birthday of its star and one of my longest-standing favorites, Ryan Gosling (November 12th, another Scorpio — what does that mean).

The first time I saw Drive, I was blown away by its stylishness, by its electronic soundtrack, by Gosling’s smoldering, simmering performance. Drive is, to me, the essential Gosling, perfectly cast as an anonymous Hollywood stunt driver who gets involved in an admittedly bizarre mafia situation after falling for his neighbor (Carey Mulligan… slay). Still, I’m fairly confident this was the first time I rewatched since Cassidy and I snuck in, which did happen — believe brunette women — and I was afraid it wouldn’t hold up, or worse, wouldn’t affect me as deeply as it did then. I’m happy to say I had nothing to worry about: I still believe Drive is as near-perfect as a movie can get, and it’s nice when the stuff you cared about when you were young still resonates with you as an adult.

Below is mine and Cassidy’s conversation about Drive, which has been edited for clarity. We get into what makes Drive a boy movie, why it appealed to us as teen girls, and try to determine whether Ryan Gosling is a boy actor or a girl actor.

A real human bean… and a real hero

Allison
Re-watching Drive, I was like, “Ryan Gosling looks like he's on the verge of tears the whole movie.” He’s also doing De Niro, he’s doing Taxi Driver. I recognize that now in ways that I didn't when I first saw it. My question is: Do you think Ryan Gosling is a boy actor or a girl actor? He’s hard. He got his big break in The Notebook.

Cassidy
In a girl movie. Yeah. My heart says girl actor. I understand that he's a girl actor who wants to be a boy actor, but he just isn't. I think that [Drive] was in his stretch of, “I'm gonna make serious auteur films, I'm gonna really give this a shot.” And he did really well. But I think fundamentally it's so hard to shake. Also, the comedy of him as well. People love to say Drive is so self-involved, and I understand the criticism. But he's so playful. He’s a girl movie guy.

Allison
Ryan Gosling, girl actor. I agree. He's got some quality, I don't know what it is. It's not quite the Colin Farrell thing where I look at him and I'm like, “Woman. Actress.” Ryan Gosling does a lot of very masculine films, especially during that stretch of 2010 to 2013.

Cassidy
I think that's the funny thing about Drive. I also think you think very critically about actors and acting in a way that I don’t. I adore actors, but I’m not as focused on pinning them down.

Allison
You’re more of a directors person.

Cassidy
I'm more of a directors person. But I would say if I knew any actor's career well enough, it is Ryan Gosling. He's so good at a lot of different things, and Drive is such a boy movie, right? But the reason I love it, and loved it when I barely knew anything about anything, was because of those more intangible — in quotes, in heavy quotes — “feminine,” girl-type things that make an action movie appealing to you and I at that age.

I couldn't tell you what happened in the second half of the movie for like, five years, just because I was so bad at understanding plot beats when I was younger. They're just killing each other. I now understand it's the different mobs, but it also just doesn't matter. The focus is on the aesthetic style. One thing people say about it is, “I can't stand this movie because there's nothing happening, and then what is happening is slightly confusing.” But I've never cared. I’ve always been enthralled by the spirit of the movie, and the performances are so strong with so little. The Driver has, what, like thirty-three lines of dialogue in the whole thing?

Allison
I’d completely forgotten that there was a mafia plot at all.

Cassidy
There’s the Jewish mafia, and then Ron Perlman is half-Italian, and there’s the East Coast mob.

Allison
It just doesn’t matter. There are so many movies that have come since Drive that are formed around the aesthetic, but none have done it as well as Drive.

Cassidy
Including Nicolas Winding-Refn.

Allison
He peaked. That type of soundtrack, the pink lettering — it’s all so distinct. It has a very specific sense of self.

Cassidy
My instincts about Refn are like… is he a bit of a sexist? Maybe! Did Christina Hendricks’ head need to get blown off in that way, while teetering around in heels? Her character is kind of ridiculous, frankly. That's become more concentrated in his other films where you’re like, “There's not enough here that I can look past this.” But in Drive, you don’t care. Also, Drive is such a classic story. It's a Western. I told you, I wrote a whole paper about it in college.

Allison
Yeah, can you tell me what your paper was about? I don’t think I knew that.

Cassidy
It was a Japanese film class. We watched Harakiri, which is one of my favorite movies. It’s a samurai film set in Edo period Japan about a samurai who is going to commit harakiri. Great fucking movie, very metal, very political, very moving. And I swear to god, we watched Harakiri, and I was like, “Hm, it’s kind of like Drive.” Comparing the Western and the samurai film, the political motivations of each and where they fit in American versus Japanese society, and a lot of the camera techniques are the same — super wide screens to really emphasize the single man and the isolation and the individual versus society, etcetera.

Drive is more of a crime noir in so many ways, but he’s a cowboy. He’s taking things into his own hands, he’s a lone wolf, and he also has all of the stuff, all of the Driver’s iconic pieces, like the jacket and the gloves and the mask. He literally puts on a mask to commit a crime. It’s outside the system, a kind of political revenge. I know people will probably be vomiting, like, “Oh my god, are you seriously suggesting Drive is as good as Harakiri?” But I think the Driver is a good comparison. What does he want? He’s so good at being stoic.

Allison
It’s a well-written, well-performed character. I’d forgotten how much time we spend with him, how we only leave his perspective a handful of times, and how clear everything that he's doing is, despite the fact that he's rarely speaking. Do I think it's kind of goofy that he falls in love with this woman who has no personality and just decides to ruin his life for her? Yeah. But he sells it really well, they both sell it really well. I actually buy him being protective over the kid more than I buy him being immediately in love with Irene.

Cassidy
That’s kind of a convention to be like, “She doesn’t have any personality, the kid is a motivation.”

Allison
And, yeah, this white lady and her biracial son — there’s something about that.

Cassidy
There’s something about a blonde lady who works at a diner being like—

Allison
“My ambiguously Latino husband went to prison, and this is our half-white son.” But unfortunately… the movie works. You know what I mean?

Cassidy
It is the script, but I think it's really well directed. Visually, you always know exactly what's happening and what's about to happen and why it's happening. If you think about the elevator scene, that super iconic, romantic, violent scene where he kisses her — you know exactly what’s about to happen. The camera slows down and the lights go up.

Allison
It’s almost like a dream. Is this really happening? And it is, and she’s in her terrible outfit, and they’re kissing, and then he stomps that guy’s head in. That’s such a classic boy movie moment too, when the woman realizes that the man is bad.

Cassidy
Skyler White.

Allison
Very Skyler White. Speaking of, Bryan Cranston is so good in this. Funny that he and Christina Hendricks are in Drive, considering that both of their AMC shows were happening then.

Cassidy
The title cards of that film, you’re like, “Oh my god.”

Allison
Everyone’s at the height of their power, except Oscar Isaac, who was on the come-up, and he’s so good in it. I remember the story of how he got cast and reworked the character, essentially, because he was like, “I don’t want to play the Latino guy who gets out of jail and is a bad husband and is clearly the villain.”

Cassidy
And most of the performances go against the grain of how you consider that actor. Albert Brooks playing a villain is insane. Carey Mulligan and Christina Hendricks both play very different women. I think they’re both good in it, I don’t think their characters are particularly well written, but they’re still being cast against type in a way that’s interesting.

Allison
The casting of both women is fascinating. It almost makes the case for calling it a girl movie — casting Carey Mulligan, who I consider to be an actor, I don’t know if she would get cast in something like this today. I think it would be someone who’s mostly there to serve face since Irene speaks so little. There’s a certain level of maturity about Carey Mulligan, a prestige element.

We were just talking about this with Ryan Gosling, girl actor. This is still a very important movie to many people, including us, and it’s still what people think of when they think of Ryan Gosling. He's doing Barbie, he did La La Land, he’s done all these other big movies, but for some reason, this is it. It’s him, even if I don’t necessarily think it defines him as an actor.

Cassidy
He’s obviously the hero, the lead character, but he still gets to be something beyond how you usually see him. He's certainly not typecast as a strong, silent type. Even when you say Taxi Driver — like, [Travis Bickle is] insane. Drive is just about some guy.

Allison
Parts of it remind me of Taxi Driver, but it’s not about a man going insane. It's about a blank slate, which is the point.

Cassidy
He’s a Mary Sue. Him being a self-insert for any man is the reason that it's a boy movie.

Allison
Men project on him.

Cassidy
“I want a cool jacket. I want to curb stomp a guy and get Carey Mulligan to date me. I could be him.” It’s aspirational masculinity.

Allison
“Carey Mulligan will want to date me and leave Oscar Isaac for me.”

Cassidy
Who has a personality.

Allison
Who’s an actual person! This is a boy movie, but I’d like to talk a bit about the fact that we specifically in 2011, as teenage girls, were like, “This is a core pillar of our personalities.” We’re now getting into our lore, but we were living in a post-Social Network world, and you and I had been very influenced by that movie. It was the first time I cared about who the director was, who wrote it, I cared about the cast. Obviously, boy movie, despite the fact that it developed a third head made up of women and gay people, but there’s a direct pipeline between me seeing The Social Network to me seeing Drive. What was going on that I was like, “This movie for men is for me”? I think it is what you were saying about it having these “feminine” themes.

Cassidy
I was fourteen and you were fifteen. That’s the right age to be brainwashed into thinking something is perfect forever. With Drive, I don't think I could have said it in as many words then, but if you’re like, “I care about emotional intimacy,” there's so much of that here. That carries the movie. I didn’t like gore, and I didn't like violence for the sake of it, and I didn't understand the beats of stories. He's so charismatic, and it is a romantic film, and then it is also just fundamentally really cool to look at, and then the music as well. Remember the conversation people had that was like, if you went on a date with a guy, what's the movie that he made you watch? That’s never happened to me because I am that guy.

Allison
This is always named as a movie for guys. We talked about the jacket, every man wanted that jacket. But people’s reading of it can be lame, and it gets written off as some gratuitous movie that men love, which it’s not. It’s not gratuitous.

Cassidy
It’s a balance between total silence and moments of intensity. It’s so calming, and then there’ll be a burst where someone gets their head shot in. There’s a nice ebb and flow to the editing and the way that they’ve shot it. As you’ve said, I can’t think of many contemporaries of Drive that do that.

Allison
Refn tried to do it again with Only God Forgives, which was a flop, and Ryan Gosling tried to emulate it when he directed Lost River. I have no memory of that movie, but I do remember the Drive aesthetic being all over it, and it did not work. There’s so much of just Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan staring at each other silently in an apartment. Most of the interactions are weird and almost awkward, none of these people really know how to speak to each other, if at all. There’s always a sense that no one’s saying what they’re thinking, but the other person knows anyway. No one’s being honest, but everyone’s motivations are transparent.

It also has a bait and switch opening where you think that the whole movie is going to be like Heat or something.

Cassidy
It’s a very classic heist intro to what is not ultimately a classic heist film.

Allison
It’s rare to get a group of people like this in one place and get them to make a movie and it works, even now. Drive only works if it’s done exactly like this, a fairy tale about heterosexual masculinity. These are the lengths that a man will go to for a woman that he has just met.

Cassidy
It is just a myth. He’s this great American myth of a man, and at the end, he gets to live. Those are the cultural differences, too. In samurai films, it’s the honorable thing to die, and here he gets to live.

Allison
Which is the interesting thing about Refn, a very European man, directing this, because it has such an American ending. It doesn’t matter that the Driver’s an anti-hero who did some bad stuff, you were still on his side the whole time, and he ends up becoming… a real human being and a real hero.

Cassidy
Sometimes it feels like an accident, how good it is.

Allison
It was a perfect accident. That’s another reason there’s not going to be another one like it. 

Cassidy
Also, movie stars — do they even exist anymore?

Allison
As Jennifer Aniston recently said, we don't have them. People got mad at her, but she was right.

Cassidy
All we have now is Timothée Chalamet, which is pretty good.

Allison
But he shouldn’t be the only one.

Cassidy
He’d be the Driver if this got made today.

Allison
Talk about serving face. He’d be Irene.

Cassidy
You’re right, it’d be gay.

Allison
And Jacob Elordi would be the Driver.

Cassidy
Fucking kill me. Our man, Elvis—

Allison
AUSTIN???

Cassidy
No, he’s too boyish.

Allison
I want it on record that I would watch a remake of Drive where Austin Butler played the Driver and Timothée Chalamet played Irene. It’d be bad, but I’d watch it.

Cassidy
My Policeman… My Driver.

• Oscar Isaac on how he reshaped his role in Drive, which Cassidy and I touched on.

• I reviewed and loved Fleishman Is in Trouble, the new Jesse Eisenberg vehicle. When I sent it to Kate, my roommate and member of the Boy Movies board, she said, “I looked for a mention of your conflict of interest and didn’t see one.” Loyal readers will know what she meant.

• Announcement for those who made it all the way to the end: Boy Movies is taking a well-earned (says I) break next week, in observation of the American holiday “Thanksgiving,” and will return to its regular posting schedule on November 29th. I feel a little panicked about this for no reason at all, but I’ll discuss it in therapy. If anyone needs me urgently, I’ll be in New Jersey. Be well!