Nicolas Winding Refn On WGA & SAG-AFTRA Strikes: “I’m All For It. Burn It All Down To Make It Emerge Again, Almost”

With the SAG-AFTRA strike starting today and the WGA writers strike heading into its 74th day, most of Hollywood comes to a standstill. When will these guild strikes end? When negotiations between both of them and the AMPTP resume. But the AMPTP hasn’t contact the SAG-AFTRA national board since talks fizzled late Wednesday night. So it’s picket lines, work stoppages, and release schedule delays until talks begin again.

READ MORE: SAG-AFTRA National Board Officially Approves Strike, Joining WGA Guild Members On The Picket Lines

And IndieWire reports that Danish auteur Nicolas Winding Refn stands in solidarity with both guilds because he thinks it’s what’s best for the industry. “I’m all for it,” Refn told IndieWire in an upcoming interview. “Burn it all down to make it emerge again, almost. And I think in terms of what’s happening right now in the industry, business-wise, I think it’s just another piece of a global problem of just the inequalities, and the lack of sharing of opportunities, is just rising above what people are able to accept. Look at your own [U.S.] presidencies for the last 10 to 15 years. So what happened? And yet no one really learns from it. So all you can really do is go back and look at the French Revolution and remember what they did at the end: They chopped off everyone’s head, and I think we should try to avoid that finale.”

Refn continued, “If contracts need to be renegotiated because times have changed, of course. Everyone would understand that I’m very much a pro-union person. I believe unions are very important. I believe that workers need protection, especially in corporate America. In the E.U., we have more restrictions and more labor rules in our governmental guidelines, where [in the United States] it’s like the Wild West […] So I think there’s a complete understanding of why people are frustrated and going on strikes because things have to be reimagined, revised. It has to be renegotiated […] and the ones that are against it… well, what are you protecting? Just more wealth? You know, it doesn’t make any sense.” 

Refn, a Denmark resident, connected the ongoing issues in Hollywood to a larger global issue of wealth disparaty as a whole. “I come from a socialist country,” Refn went on, “I come from Denmark, the home of Bernie Sanders. So I can certainly say why we’re the happiest people in the world, and I think that we need to be better at coming together rather than pulling it all apart to obtain more profit. But what does that really mean, or give us, if there’s nothing to experience? So the people that are actually creating the works, shouldn’t they be equally as part of the upside as the downside?”

Refn then brought up how the COVID-19 pandemic shook up the global economy. “I think that nowadays, obviously, because especially up to the pandemic and post-pandemic, the realization of the divisiveness in our society, of the gap between rich and poor and have-and-have-not, escalated to beyond what is acceptable,” he continued. “We have to be better at sharing wealth because if we don’t, then we lose our humanity, we lose our empathy, and it becomes just corporate insanity. And that has never led to anything good. History has proven time and time again at a certain point: we rise against what we feel is unfair, and, right now, there’s an enormous inequality in terms of how we share our opportunities. And I believe that needs to be readjusted.”

But Refn didn’t stop there. He also finds the ongoing strikes as a way to reconsider the kind of art and content media Hollywood and streaming networks create. In the auteur’s eyes, the emphasis on producing lots of content for streaming platforms has proven inimical to the art form of filmmaking. “We produce content as a business, but we speak so rarely about why are we making content,” he continued. “What’s the meaning of it? We never talk about why we’re making content. We just talk about making content and more of it and as fast as possible, and everything is becoming a swipe, but that’s not necessarily a healthy mirror to society or us as people.” Maybe instead of an unending output of empty content, Refn suggests the input of artistic intention and creative statement should take precedent.

For Refn, the recent rise of streaming platforms is “all about jamming everything into one and as fast as possible and as meaningless as possible because it can never confront any elements. In his point of view, “the more empty it is, empty calories, the more you can consume it, the faster you can move past it. Out of that comes stupidity, lack of empathy, uneducated, all those things that art has the ability to contribute. So in a way, we’re going the wrong way.”

So what’s the ideal outcome of these strikes for Refn? In his interview with IndieWire, he concluded with, “I think that’s why there’s such a beautiful revolution amongst young people who are turning against the system of corporate and now entertainment […] I think that’s fantastic.” It remains to be seen, however, if the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes will be the beginning of a revolution, much less a beautiful one, within the entertainment industry. But both guilds make it clear in their respective work stoppages that they want things to change, and they don’t plan tok work again until their terms are met.