On Dark Brink of Love, Weird Shit and Getting Cool Gigs, a conversation with William Boyle

Hello confined friends!

I hope you’re feeling OK and in control of your inner Jack Torrance. If you’ve been home, playing with yourself, binging Netflix series and wondering what else you can do with your time while ducking coronavirus, I have a suggestion for you: Dark Brink of Love on byNWR.com, an art project (for lack of a better term) lead by director Nicolas Winding Refn. On there, you can watch restored old fillms, read essays, discover music and now, you can read fiction by some of the coolest new, young voices out there.

You might’ve noticed, but I’m struggling a little bit to define exactly what this endeavor is. So, I invited the guest editor Dark Brink of Love - friend of the site William Boyle - for a chat. So why don’t you pause your tenth binge-through of The Office, read this and then head over to byNWR.com and do something different than what everybody else is doing? As usual, you can thank me later.

Ben: Dark Brink of Love launched on March 1st on byNWR.com. I think everyone found it pretty cool, but what is it exactly? It's (not so) short fiction in a form I haven't quite seen before.

William: byNWR.com is a site that the director Nicolas Winding Refn started a few years ago. It's born of his passion for the rare, the strange, and the crazed. An ever-expanding world of original content. Each volume runs for three months and features three restored films (generally forgotten and neglected films) and then the content surrounding those films is chosen by a guest editor. I was the guest editor for the noir volume - there's short fiction, essays, music, photos, and podcasts.

This is the first time that byNWR has featured fiction. They told me they wanted something original, that represented my vision for the project and couldn't just be perceived as an extra, so fiction was naturally the first place my mind went. Much of the fiction was inspired by the films - by their locations or stars or even just their atmosphere You can read more about what NWR and managing editor Jimmy McDonough are after with the site here.

And to put it further into context, here's my intro to the volume.

Ben: Sound like a crazy awesome gig. How did you get involved? Did you have to apply or were you requested?

William: They had someone else on board that didn't work out. Jimmy McDonough has written a couple of great music biographies on Neil Young and Al Green (as well as books on the films of Russ Meyer and Andy Milligan), and he's friends with a good friend of mine, blues historian Scott Barretta. Jimmy asked Scott if he knew anyone and Scott recommended me. I had a couple of phone conferences with NWR and Jimmy and had to get together a proposal for the volume. At that point, they'd either give me the go-ahead or cut me loose. They gave me the go-ahead and were really enthusiastic about the direction I'd gone in with it.

Ben: Wait what? You've thrown that in there so casually. You talked to the man himself? How was it like, talking shop with freakin' NICOLAS WINDING REFN?

William: Yeah, he's very involved in the site. I talked to him about five or six times during the process. It was really goddamn cool - this is something he does because he loves these weird films and he wants them to get the treatment and audience they deserve. It was really instructive in a lot of ways but above all very interesting to see the stuff that he perceived as boring, all the stuff he doesn't want this site to be or do. Talking to him about the site was definitely a window into his process.

Ben: What does he perceive as boring exactly?

William: Like I said, with the site he was bored by anything that might've been perceived as a traditional "extra." He didn't want the same people writing the same essays they write other places. He's drawn to--and I think this is obvious in his films - the rough, the raw, the unpredictable, the abrasive. He's not interested in hitting the beats everyone else hits, which is why he's drawn to these sorts of films that play by their own rules (often because the people making them didn't know the rules or that there even were rules or they were just creating their own rules).

Ben: Why the foray into original written fiction? I love the concept as a whole, but it seems counterintuitive to where darker fiction is going in general. Was there a specific reasoning behind it?

William: To add to my previous answer first: I think he's probably bored by anything that's not "rare, strange, or crazed."

I have no idea where darker fiction's going in general or even really what that means. I'm not thinking about trends. I got the job and I knew I was going to contribute a bunch of original writing and I knew I wanted that writing to be weird fiction. With other writers - especially Gabino Iglesias, J. David Osborne, Laura Lee Bahr, and Erika T. Wurth - it also just fell into place naturally. I liked the idea of having writers and artists create something based off their reaction to the film. I also liked the idea of blurring the line between reality and fiction--it just felt true to the site. Some of the stories and essays feel true but they're not really.

Ben: One thing I really like about this project is that it shines a light on talented voices that could use a bigger audience. What was the overall reaction to J. David Osborne's story Oklahoma: Heartland, U.S.A published two weeks ago?

William: A big part of it was me wanting to get writers who I thought more people should know involved. JDO was one of the first people I thought of. There was the obvious connection: Stark Fear was filmed in his part of Oklahoma. So, right off, I thought it'd be cool as hell to have him write about his Oklahoma fifty years later.

I gave him the title (which comes from a tourism ad made by the director and writer of Stark Fear) and let him loose. He just felt immediately like a tonal match for what I wanted to do with this volume--focus on transgressive voices and weird noir. It's only been a week, but the reaction has been great so far. JDO's story is one that people seem to be homing in on first, which is perfect since it's representative of what I hoped to achieve with this whole project.

Ben: Were there any guidelines for the stories? Outside of being set in Oklahoma, JDO's story is one of the most free wheeling things I've ever read from him. Were there any aesthetic/logistical imperatives?

William: The main thing was that there needed to be some connection to the films, no matter how minor or peripheral. For JDO, Oklahoma was enough. And Gabino also wrote about the place and kind of ran with the idea of making his story a motel noir. Erika T. Wurth wrote a story from the point of view of the Native American actor who played "the Chief" in Stark Fear - I'd read Buckskin Cocaine and thought this was a perfect extension of that. I wrote a couple of noir testimonials from the POVs of actors from Stark Fear and Guilty Bystander. My long story is built around a motel that's central to Stark Fear. Laura Lee Bahr wrote about the lead actress from One Shocking Moment, and did a kind of a Mulholland Drive thing with it.

I wrote a couple of other stories that only are connected through place. Other than that, knowing that this was for a volume dedicated to noir was imperative, but we certainly had fun stretching the boundaries of noir. I also put an emphasis on the weird, I think. I talked about all of these things with the writers when I was in the process of making my proposal but mostly I knew if I got the right group of writers I wouldn't really have to worry too much.

Ben: I'm going to play devil's advocate here and ask you why do you think this "collection" (for lack of a better term) is different from all the others out there? Why would you say people should read it instead of something else? Internet’s full of great stories. I got my own answer to that, but I'm curious to hear yours first.

William: I think it starts with the site, which is pretty different than anything else out there. The byNWR tagline is “Culture is for everyone.” It’s free, and there’s an emphasis on art that’s neglected, forgotten, undiscovered. To me, it feels like—in the best possible way—a kind of strange junk store where everything you pick up is mysterious or unusual. And the structure of the site is different—it’s not so much a digital magazine as it is a cabinet of curiosities.

Other than that, I think I’ve assembled a group of writers and musicians and photographers that’s enough to draw people in. Some of the greatest and most exciting voices out there. I just approached it as a fan—who would I want to see included? The people I thought of first were the people I approached. That said, I’m not gonna sell people on why they should read it over something else. Read whatever the fuck you want. This is certainly not for everybody. New Yorker readers probably won’t find much to enjoy. But if your tastes run more toward weird cult shit, well, this might be for you.

Ben: Exactly. Data-driven marketing is making film studios and publishers so obsessed with "giving people what they want" that they don't give them what they didn't know they wanted. Do you see Dark Brink of Love as a continuation of your own work as an author or did it open up some creative possibilities for you?

William: That's a really good question. I think it definitely opened up some creative possibilities for me, both as writer and editor. I try to always make weird choices as a writer, but here I felt the freedom to get really weird and surreal, to play with form and expectations a little. I think there's something of a through line from my books--in terms of crime, character, place, humor--but, especially with my long story Cruising the El Nora Motel, I wanted to write kind of a head trip noir, something where there was a lot of mystery and where a lot of questions went unanswered. The spirit of the site and the films really influenced me to go in that direction without hesitation.

Ben: Are you considering embracing new mediums like... let's say film?

William: I’ve written a couple of scripts for a friend, but nothing’s happened with them yet. One of my books has been optioned and I’d say odds are pretty good nothing happens with that. As much as I love film and would love to get some scriptwriting credits under my belt, it’s such a collaborative thing and full of this whole other set of frustrations that I’m not sure I’m equipped to deal with. I’d be open to opportunities, but I’m happy writing novels.

Ben: Anything else you'd like to add? Other projects of you? Books of films that got you good lately?

William: I’ve got a brand new novel out called City of Margins. It’s an ensemble crime drama set in South Brooklyn in the early 1990s. A book I read lately and loved is Lee Durkee’s The Last Taxi Driver. A masterpiece. As for films, I watched Damon Packard’s Reflections of Evil from 2002 for the first time the other night and was totally blown away.

Ben: Thanks man! Good luck with the book and the byNWR project!