The Wrap's Drive Screening

Dec 2011 - One of the great perks of living in LA is wide exposure to the film industry. So many people work in the film industry - you can't miss the influence around town. When Awards season hits - the marketing frenzy that precedes the Academy and many other awards shows, many of the best films of the year come around for another lap.

One of the great perks of living in LA is wide exposure to the film industry. So many people work in the film industry - you can't miss the influence around town. When Awards season hits - the marketing frenzy that precedes the Academy and many other awards shows, many of the best films of the year come around for another lap.

The Wrap sponsors a series of Screenings for guild members, press and Wrap subscribing professionals. This cool December evening featured the indie hit Drive - starring Ryan Gosling and Albert Brooks. Nothing but obstacles in the way though.

How do we get out of work early in Burbank and make it all the way to Santa Monica - that foreign country way over on the left coast, by 7:30 start your engines? Well you have to do a bit of driving, let me tell you! Hmmm - the dotted light traffic sign above the 5 freeway says 45 minutes of tail lights to downtown. Things aren't looking good out of the gate.

So tonight we're Weaver - that guy we don't like on the other normal days. Just pick all the right gaps and away we crawl. Finally things open up on the 10. When you think you shouldn't push your speed demon luck any further, some granny blows by you in a Toyota. You gotta LOVE LA!

So we make the show - no seats left except in the bottom right corner. The house is packed with those in the know - for one to get there early. The popcorn line is long - they're making it one kernel at a time. So we go without dinner. The show starts 20 minutes late, rendering the Weaver Drive in less than an hour somewhat less worthwhile.

The lights dim - life is good. The movie was great - dark, brooding and a bit of car candy along the way. There are 3 car chase scenes and 3 songs intertwining the course of events. You think the movie is gonna be all car chases rubber and sex flying but mostly there is just effective use of tension in anticipation of that. All that for one long kiss. Oh - and a little more blood and gore than ya thought - director Nicolas Winding Refn likes red.

Nicolas is Danish - regaled the crowd of how the film came about. Not sure I would have told the story about getting high on flu "meds" from Harrison Ford - then driving through LA with Ryan Gosling having alternating happy and sad unrealities. At leaset Ryan said yes and they went on to make a movie - the way the director wanted.

The auto casting company seemed to be pro GM - but for a nice 57 TBird, the key cars were GM. Chase 1 feature getaway car - a Chevrolet box that nobody will ever notice in LA. Except that it has a secret 300 HP addition under the hood. The next chase involved a Ford Mustang getting pushed around by a Chrysler 300. What??

One sad moment of unrealism - our nameless driver is tired of getting bumped from the rear, so he wheels a 180 at 80 mph and seems to do better in reverse. Does Nicolas know that reverse has only one gear speed? Slow! Oh - Nicolas does not drive - how should he know? He wondered why people in the crowd laughed at the fact that he does not drive a car but made a car movie. Those silly Europeans!

Another moment of unrealism - though plausible by Hollywood movie standards: Driver brooding in his butt ugly but hopped up 75ish Malibu - tracking down the bad guy in bad Lincoln Town Car. Hero sideswipes bad guy into ditch by ocean. Hero waits in dark for right moment. After the required long drawn out tension bits - two headlights come on in the distance. Said headlights speed toward bad guys - T-Bone anyone? Yup - BOOM! Bad Lincoln flies 30 yards onto beach; demolished.

Look up - way up, and you'll see the big boot. Oops - wrong show. Look up - see the Hero car - with intact front end, grill, hood and headlights still on. That's one tough Chevy. We can only wish they built cars like that. We can only hope they make more movies like that. Gripping; and nice moody driving shots through LA with minimal traffic.

Director of Photography Newton Thomas Sigel talked about the good experience working with an Alexa digital camera rather than film. We heard that 20th Century Fox will only distribute movies in digital file format. No D-Cinema projector? No show. Albert Brooks joked that in 2015 Universal will only release movie with happy endings. They'd better release Drive 2 soon... who knows what road we'll be on by then.

'Drive': Albert Brooks recalls a breathtaking deleted scene: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2011/12/drive-albert-brooks-recalls-a-breathtaking-deleted-scene.html
Dec 7, 2011 by Oliver Gettell - The Envelope

'Drive' Filmmaker Gets Auto-Erotic: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/08/idUS61184838220111208 at Wrap Screening
Dec 7, 2011 by Tim Kenneally at TheWrap
Is this what they mean by a powerful sex drive?

Story & photo by Randy Berg