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Los Angeles - Ryan Gosling thinks violence in movies can be funny.
The Canadian-born star takes the leading role in Nicolas Winding Refn's new movie Drive - about a Hollywood stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver - and although some have criticised violent scenes in the film, he believes people shouldn't always take it so seriously.
He said: "When I saw Valhalla Rising in the movie theatre, when one of the characters has his intestines pulled out, everyone in the theatre started laughing and the whole theatre came to life. Suddenly it was fun to go to the movies. It was allowed to be poetry, and it was allowed to be funny.
Psychotic man
"For me, that's what's truly amazing in the way that Nicolas handles violence. Last night we got to go into the cinema alone for the test, and the scene where someone is stabbed in the throat, everyone started to laugh."
Filmmaker Nicolas also believes the gory scenes in the film - which also stars Carey Mulligan - should be put into context as it is about a man who is "psychotic".
He added to movies.ie: "I think that art is a kind of violence. I started reading Grimm's fairy tales for my eldest daughter, and when I was reading them I felt that I would like to make a movie just like a fairy tale, in how a fairy tale is told and using these very few archetypes that appear in the stories.
"Essentially the movie is about a guy who is psychotic. That's not a bad way, because he has a lot of empathy, he's not psychopathic, he's psychotic!"
(Photos: FilmDistrict)
