“Hey, what’s going on with that biker film you want to do?” It’s a question I spent many years asking filmmaker Jeff Nichols in regards to his latest movie, The Bikeriders. Going all the way back to Mud (2012), he’s floated the idea during interviews of wanting to make a biker movie. Finally, over a decade later, Nichols has done it.
What’s his most commercial movie, The Bikeriders, might be his most confounding as well. It’s a compliment. It’s a movie I saw last awards season before Disney dropped the title and sold it off to Focus Features, and I originally thought, “What is this?”
Now, many months later, it clicks. It’s a story of the beauty and danger of freedom, a story that, on paper, a filmmaker with an arthouse sensibility in a commercial business can relate to on some level. No, The Bikeriders isn’t secretly about storytelling, but it is a story about individuals seeking independence in a world that prefers systems.
The Bikeriders, based on Danny Lyon‘s photographs and interviews, is a handsomely made addition to Nichols’ literary filmography. It’s a movie about far too fleeting moments to cherish while chasing and enjoying a passion. Nichols told Immersive Media about his passion in making it.
How are you doing?
I’m great, Jack. What’s been going on?
Things have been good. It’s been a while and God, we’ve been talking about this movie for 10 years. I remember Michael Shannon told me five years ago, “He’s never going to make that frickin’ movie.”
That’s a hundred percent true. He said it to my face.
Okay, so when did it finally click in place creatively for you?
The truth is, Jack, and this is a bit of a scoop, I haven’t really ever told anybody this before…. It’s just for you, been waiting for you.
[Laughs] Thanks, man.
The truth is I’d put so much into working on Alien Nation [remake] and when it got canceled at Fox-Disney, I was found myself several years in and didn’t have another script ready. I’d been talking about this film for so long, I’d been working it out in the background of my head. It felt like now’s the time put up or shut up, to be honest.
There was something about having my back up against the wall having come off of this three-year project that didn’t end up working out. I don’t know, it motivated me to finally sit down and face all the insecurities I had about it, and that’s really where this comment’s going…
Go on, please.
I really didn’t feel comfortable in this world, in this subculture. I really didn’t feel comfortable writing in this voice, this thick period. The Midwestern accent was foreign to me as a southerner. Also, the story structure was unlike anything I had tried to tackle before. There was a lot of narration. It spanned a long period of time back and forth. It was also a period piece. All these things were intimidating to me, and I think I found myself in a position where I was like, all right, well, it’s now or never.
Fortunately, that got me over the hump. I sat down really with some of the interviews from Danny’s book and I started. It was like putting training wheels on. I started with some of those photos, and it’s really with the bulk of Kathy’s interview where she’s talking about the first time she met the guys. That’s lifted pretty accurately from the book.
Once I had that on the page, I started to feel comfortable writing in that voice. That was her real voice. And then, my voice started to come out, and before I knew it, I had 25 pages I really loved, and then 30 pages I really loved, and then 50 pages, which was quite different for me. Usually, I meticulously outline everything. It was really one foot in front of another. And so, that’s partly why I think this film feels so different from the other films is partly because of the way that I wrote it.
Speaking of the insecurity of Alien Nation falling apart, my reaction walking out of The Bikeriders was, oh, Jeff finally made his popcorn movie. It’s such a full-throttle theater experience. Was there part of you that kind wanted to be like, well, I’ll show you?
Maybe a little bit. No, no. There are other ideas that are more popcorn movies for sure, but I think, no, I didn’t write this one with a grudge. I definitely had my back against the wall, but I remember writing a Midnight Special with a bit of a grudge. I wrote Midnight Special in a period when we took Mud to Cannes and no one wanted to buy it. That film went for a year without anyone. In fact, no one ever did buy it.
Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions, who I’m really grateful for, they just kind of co-finance the distribution of it. So, I was writing a Midnight Special really from a place of like, “Oh, okay, fine, I’ll show you. If you guys like Take Shelter and you don’t like Mud, here it is.” Which of course, a year and a half later, it worked out that Mud was quite successful, far more successful than Take Shelter in terms of box office.
So what feeling were you seeking to get on the big screen on The Bikeriders?
This one was, it was just trying to get it right, trying to capture the feeling that I got when I picked up the book, trying to get the feeling when I read the interviews in the book, trying to get the feeling when I listened to the audio from those interviews or when I listened to music from that period that I’ve just been so obsessed with my entire life.
There is a feeling that you get listening to The Sonics, listening to Chicago Blues and listening to The Shangri-Las, and I kind of felt like I didn’t want to mess it up. I wanted to make sure that when people came to this film, they felt immersed in a world, and I think that’s different from any other of the films I’ve made. I think the other films do take you to very specific worlds, but that’s not the out-front goal.
How so, Jeff?
This was a film that, yeah, I just wanted that feeling to just be imbued in every frame, and that was really at the forefront of my mind when I was writing. It wasn’t so much like, I’ll show you guys, I can make populist films. To be honest, there is a version where you’re sitting there going, I don’t know who’s going to finance a 1960s motorcycle film.
I think now from watching it finished and seeing the cast that I put together, it seems like a no-brainer, but it certainly wasn’t at the beginning. I don’t think there was any moment where I sat down being it is a sure thing. It felt like one more challenge in a career of somewhat challenging films.
One of your biggest concerns for the story was, you wanted to show the beauty of this lifestyle, but you also really didn’t want to glamorize it. Even when it comes to working with your cinematographer, Adam Stone, how was it finding that balance?
Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, the truth is, what I really came around to, and I believe this, is that there’s this tension in masculinity. There are all of these sides of it that are toxic, and those parts, I don’t really find appealing. No one really finds those appealing. But then there’s this other side of it of masculinity that is truly appealing and romantic and sexy, and there seems to be this tension between those two sides, and they’re kind of constantly pulling on each other.
Ultimately, that’s kind of my answer to this issue of like, well, am I going to glamorize them or not? It’s like, well, yes you are, because you’re going to glamorize the parts that are true in terms of being beautiful. The fact is, when you stand around 40 period, correct Harley Davidson motorcycles all rumbling around you, you feel cool. You feel masculine, and it feels beautiful and amazing. That is real.
At the same time, the fear and the danger that comes along with a violent subculture, that’s real, too. And so, I think rather than working actively not to glamorize it, it was more like, no, no, no, just be fair to both sides of that problem or that idea more than a problem. Just show both of ’em. And it makes sense that you see in the first hour, Kathy gets wrapped up in the beauty of all this thing, this whole thing.
It makes sense that in the back half, you see her life kind of torn apart by it. But what’s amazing about Kathy is the whole time she’s still taking a piss out of everybody. I mean, the very first line is that, “It can’t be love. It must be stupidity.” It’s a brilliant line, not one that I wrote. It was from the real Kathy. She’s saying that about the man she’s married to, and it seems like this beautiful kind of complexity, I guess.
I didn’t talk about cinematography at all in that question in that answer.
[Laughs] Well, I do want to talk more about the cinematography. One of my favorite shots in the movie is they’re all riding together and you see Gail’s (Phuong Kubacki) beautiful hair flying back. It’s very Pedro Almodóvar, very Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.
Thanks, I’ll take that compliment.
Oh yeah, no, it is. What sense of motion did you want for the riding? How’d you want to capture that beauty?
Well, there’s actually not that much riding in the film, thank God. It was the most terrifying part because these are real actors, real famous people without helmets on period bikes, which are very dangerous, riding at speed in a pack. It’s literally one of the most dangerous things you can do. And so it was terrifying.
But that being said, my cinematographer, Adam Stone and I, who’ve worked on all six films together, spent a lot of time talking about what it feels like to be on a motorcycle. I think most motorcycles you see in action films and their action sequences, that’s not really what we were going for. We just kind of were going for a feeling of being on a ride. And the scene that you mentioned quite specifically, it was written to be set to that Cream song, “I Feel Free.”
You wanted to get the sense of at the beginning of that scene what it feels like to be in a pack. When you’re on these bikes, they’re vibrating underneath you. You’re on these long road trips, all that noise and all that wind and all that vibration, it’s got to almost all bleed together. You’re almost floating, and that’s where that one shot you mentioned came from.
It’s over-cranked. It’s slow motion, and I wanted to give the sense that you almost frame the bikes out, so they’re just barely at the bottom of the screen, and you get these people floating through the frame. I can’t help but think when you’re on a bike, you’re somewhat disembodied from the bike. At some point, the whole thing kind of detaches itself and you get into this zen kind of space, and that’s what that moment was trying to capture.
When Kathy rides on the back of Benny’s bike for the first time, they come up over this bridge. Some similar tactics in terms of how we filmed that, where we put our camera, how that camera felt that was less about being disembodied and actually being quite awake. In this moment you’re feeling this pack move up around you, you’re on this bridge and you’re surrounded by the sound of all these motorcycles and you’re gripping onto this beautiful guy that you just met. For me, that wasn’t just a scene about Kathy falling in love with Benny. That was a scene about Kathy falling in love with motorcycles. It really became important for showing why she stuck around as long as she did.
How did the culture around bike riding compare to your relationship to a camera and your crew?
Well, I mean, we’re definitely this band of outsiders. The film community that you build for yourself is a family ultimately, even when new people join and then some people go, you always feel like you’re part of this outsider group when you’re making a movie. And it’s very intoxicating. You’re doing something that a lot of people are really interested in from the outside, and they can’t quite get into the inside of it.
So, I don’t know. Yeah, I guess there’s some similarities in it. It definitely feels like you’re in a bit of a club when you’re making a movie. I think the difference though is that we have a real defined purpose. We’re all there to work and to pull something off. These other guys, they’re a lot more rudderless or listless, which can lead to, I don’t know, some different outcomes.
There’s a scene in the movie that speaks to that and really crystalizes what this story is about. It’s when Zipco’s (Michael Shannon) character is by the fire, talking about being rejected by the army. Was that speech close to what you learned from listening to the audio interviews with the real Zipco?
I’m glad you picked up on that. A lot of that credit has to go to Michael Shannon. The words were there and the words were from an interview that Danny [Lyon] conducted with a guy named Zipco. So, the words were real. I didn’t have to embellish them much and didn’t really want to, but the interpretation of those words is what was so interesting.
Mike came up to me the night that we were going to film that, and he was like, “You think this speech is pretty funny, don’t you?” I was like, “Well, it is pretty funny, Mike. You’re talking about your mom dragging you out of bed and this doctor telling you’re a schizophrenic and you curse him up and down. I was like, yeah, I guess I do.” And he’s like, “I don’t think it’s funny at all.” I said, “Well, all right, well, show me what that means.”
Mike sat there around that campfire, and he got everybody laughing. But then he does this beautiful thing, and it’s really through his interpretation of those lines where he then turns it and he starts to say, “You’re an undesirable character. We don’t want you.” And when he says it like that, I remember even on set on one of the takes, one of the other guys kept laughing, and he was like, “Huh.” And Mike Shannon’s a fairly intimidating person anyway, and he made those other actors shift in that moment because of his interpretation of those lines. I know it’s his interpretation because I had heard the original audio of the original guy, and that interpretation was not there.
It didn’t land that way. It was just a funny anecdote that, yes, gave some credence to their feelings of being outsiders. But the way Mike delivered that, the best testament of it was when Norman Reedus came up to me in the midst of filming that scene. His character is this biker from California that comes in and ends up making a rather strange choice to stay with this group; it’s inspired by a character in the book. But Norman came up to me who was only with us for a few days. He was filming his new series in France, and he’s like, “I never really understood from the page why my character stuck around. He says, ‘I like you guys,’ but really, why did he come to that conclusion? I think it’s because of this speech.’
Norman and I came to that from watching Mike. It’s one of those things where a thing that was good on the page, I think, really became great through its execution. Yeah, you’re right to say that that is the essence of what the movie’s trying to say about this group.
You definitely are interested in the intense intimacy between men. When Tom Hardy and Austin Butler get close and talk in the dark of night, there’s a romance to it. How’d that scene become so romantic?
That’s Tom, yeah. Again, it’s another example of the actors taking something that I think was good on the page and taking it to another level. We’d never designed that scene for Tom to get that close to Austin. In fact, we very much lit it so that they would be further apart. It wasn’t until Tom started doing it. I always roll in the first take for this very reason. Tom just kept getting closer and closer, and our steadicam operator has to keep coming around. All of a sudden, this over the shoulder shot becomes a two-shot.
I’m looking at Adam, who’s dropping his head because Tom’s moving out of his light that we had spent hours creating for him back over there. Adam gets close to Tom, his face is in the dark, and we’re like, ‘Well, we’re about to miss this whole scene.’ And Tom tilts his head, and this beautiful piece of light comes across his face, and then you get the entire scene, and then you get more than the entire scene.
What you end up getting is that the physical proximity of that scene makes it sexual, and you definitely think they’re going to kiss. They don’t. But that energy is still all there, and it takes it from a quiet scene into a dangerous, sexy, kind of beautiful thing that, again, I don’t think was fully on the page.
It really does start to then bring out the notes of this thing that Tom Hardy’s character is not a father figure to this man. Tom Hardy’s character is in love with this young man, not in a sexual way, but he really wants to be him and knows that he can’t be that young man.
And so, in lieu of that, he wants to be with him. He wants him close, and he wants to give him the one thing in his life that’s most important to him, which is the club. It very clearly takes that relationship out of patriarch, out of father son territory into something much more interesting.
The Bikeriders is now playing in theaters.
