Drive – Red Bull and TV shows and speeding tickets, oh my!
What do Red Bull, Breaking Bad and The X-Files all have in common? Well, for one, they all helped the movie Drive come together.
A mysterious man (Ryan Gosling) in Los Angeles, who has multiple jobs (including one as a getaway driver) is trying to escape his shady past. He falls for his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), whose husband is in jail, leaving her to take care of her child alone. When her husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) is released from jail, the driver ends up helping him in a heist, but it doesn’t go as planned.
One funny thing about this dark, highly stylized movie is the fact that director Nicolas Winding Refn can’t actually drive. He has no interest in cars, and doesn’t have a driver’s license; in fact, he failed his driving test a whopping eight times. Also, when Carrey Mulligan was driving the director home from the set once, she got pulled over for speeding. She claims she had drank too many cans of Red Bull.
Drive also has an unexpected link to The X-Files. Bryan Cranston, who plays Shannon, appeared on an episode of the sci-fi show back in 1998. The episode was called “Drive,” and his work with screenwriter Vince Gilligan on that show led to them working together in the future. His performance as a sympathetic villain helped him land the role of Walter White on the hit TV show Breaking Bad.
And to make a long story short, Cranston’s performance on Breaking Bad is what made Refn cast him in the movie Drive.