“I wanted him to wear a white satin jacket so he would be visible at night. It also gave him a sense of armor…When you work with great actors, one of the most important things for them to build a character is to know what they wear. And I thought it would be cool if he had an animal symbol on his [jacket]. I was showing the costume designer Scorpio Rising, because we were talking about the clothes people would wear at the garage – I wanted it to be very fetish. Ryan was there, working on his car, because he was building a car to understand the DNA of the motor. Scorpio Rising starts with the famous scorpion coming into frame, and Ryan and I were looking at each other, going, it’s a scorpion.” - Nicolas Winding Refn on Ryan Gosling’s scorpion jacket in Drive

In the elevator scene is where Driver realizes that the circumstances have led to this—they’re in an elevator and he knows what he has to do now, and he will lose her forever, so he kisses her goodbye, because he knows he now has to go to the dark side in order to protect her. -Nicolas Winding Refn