Almost a year after his disastrous world premiere, Gosling reflected on the haters. “I’ve had other experiences where you try to make something that other people are going to like, and you feel foolish in the end, to pretend to know what that is,” he said at SXSW. “Only you know what you like and want to see, and it’s the only thing—especially if you’re going to direct a film, you have to make like a thousand decisions every day—the only place you can come from is what you gravitate towards, and what works for you.”

The intrepid Gosling has waved off his brutalizing critics by comparing filmmaking to high school, a metaphor that equates Hollywood’s golden boy to the artsy Goth being pounced on by the bullies. “Any time you stick your neck out in high school there’s someone right there to chop your head off,” he told Anne Thompson. As Lost River champion Del Toro put it, boosting Gosling for being true to his inner weirdo: “Use what you are, always as a source of pride, and wear it as a giant ‘Fuck you’ to the world when they tell you that you cannot do something.”