ShareThisTORONTO - When you play a character known simply as "Driver" in an action caper called "Drive," it's a natural question. So, Ryan Gosling, how much driving did you do?
"I drove myself to set. I drove myself home," he said with a sly smile.
"I went to driving school. I did a lot of driving, but the cool stuff I didn't do." Stunt driver and stunt double Jeremy Fry did the cool stuff, but Gosling says, "It was one of the best prep experiences I've ever had.
"We would just basically show up to this big parking lot and there would be a new Camaro or new Mustang, and we would just ride it to the rims until it was smoking or it wouldn't go anymore, and then we'd just go home, and they'd call us when it was fixed."
If George Clooney has been the anointed king of the Toronto International Film Festival, Gosling is the crown prince or TIFF It Dude, as one newspaper called him. He, too, has a pair of aces up his sleeve: "The Ides of March" co-starring and directed by Clooney, and "Drive," which is now opening.
The 30-year-old portrays a Los Angeles wheelman for hire, executing tricky stunts for movies by day and steering getaway vehicles for crooks at night.
The actor was back in his native Canada to publicize both, although on this afternoon, he and "Drive" co-stars Albert Brooks and Bryan Cranston (with hair) and director Nicolas Winding Refn individually moved from one circle of questioners to the next at a posh new hotel. Every now and then Gosling, nattily dressed in a cream-colored sweater and dark trousers with sockless shoes, would cross paths with one of the others and stop to catch up.
The movie was inspired by the neo-noir James Sallis novel, turned into a screenplay by Hossein Amini.
"The book is great," Gosling said. "And the script was great, but the place where Nicolas and I connected was on this idea that it was like a fairy tale in that it was about a guy who drove around listening to pop music because he didn't know how to feel."
When he falls for a beautiful neighbor, played by Carey Mulligan, his instinct is to try to save her and her young son.
One of the villains is funnyman, filmmaker and "Finding Nemo" dad Brooks, who always suspected he could be a good bad guy. His instincts were on the money.
"I always wanted to play a part that was unexpected, and I know I have the ability, but you got to convince a movie studio to take out the (Stellan) Skarsgard and put you in. It's hard to do."
When he drove to Refn's house to talk about the project, he found himself trying to answer the question "Why do you think you are right for this?" Brooks jokes that he felt like a young man applying for a law-firm job, but told the Danish-born director, "Well, cast someone who you've seen before and you'll have an ordinary movie."
Brooks landed the role of Bernie Rose, a onetime movie producer and full-time criminal. "Obviously, a guy like Bernie, if he got any good review, he'd frame it because it would be a kick in the pants. But if they weren't making cash on these films, he wouldn't stick around. There was no art in what Bernie Rose did."
However, there was artful danger in Brooks, as Gosling later recalls.
"The hardest scene to cut was the one where Albert Brooks actually chokes a guy out on camera," he said of the moment when Bernie grabs a man by the throat and pushes him up against a wall.
"I talked to Albert that night, 'Hey, Albert, how did the scene go,' and he goes, 'I actually knocked the guy out.' He's like, 'Yeah, I choked him out. Is that bad?' 'No, you're Bernie Rose.' You can watch it on camera, you watch the guy's eyes roll to the back of his head and he falls to the floor. Everyone thought he was acting."
Maybe Brooks filled in the backstory for Bernie a little too well.
"I ask a million questions ... just so I can understand ... The more you do that, the better, more secure you feel.
"Just like in our own lives, that's how we know who we are. When, God forbid, we get Alzheimer's, we don't know anymore because we have no backstory, so that's important to do. When the cast fills out, you do it with them."
(Contact movie editor Barbara Vancheri at bvancheri(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
