Jeff Nichols had dreamed of making a movie about a 1960s motorcycle club for more than 20 years.
His obsession began in his brother’s apartment, when he first opened Danny Lyon’s book “The Bikeriders,” a New Journalism-style account of the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club in the mid-1960s. He could watch the movie. in his mind: a story about rebels, romantics, frauds and the end of an era.
But he didn’t realize how terrifying it would be to film the motorcycles in motion.
The motorcycles were old. The actors, including Austin Butler and Tom Hardy, would travel at high speeds. And there would be no helmets. At one point, one of his stunt coordinators just put it: “There’s no way to make this 100% safe.”
They went for it. The danger was the point. And everyone came out unharmed.
His motorcycle expert (and amateur philosopher) said something that stuck with Butler. It’s dangerous, but it can also be empowering.
“Your life is in your hands,” Butler said. “But it is also an incredible act of self-love. You have to take care of yourself. No one else can do it for you”.
“The Bikeriders” (hitting theaters nationwide Friday) is a rare summer gem: an original movie with stars (including Jodie Comer, Michael Shannon, Norman Reedus and Mike Faist), cold credibility, pathos and melancholy. lucid for a moment, and a type of man, who was fading even as it was happening.
“There is all this romanticism around this subculture. It’s easy to turn into ‘Grease’ very quickly,” Nichols said. “This is a movie that’s really about nostalgia. There’s a sadness that comes with that. But there is also a joy in remembering it.”
Find rising stars
Nichols has always been lucky with his casting, landing movie actors just when they’re about to make it big. Before making “Take Shelter,” he recalled a producer asking him, “Who is this Jessica Chastain?” For “The Bikeriders,” it was Butler. “Elvis” had not yet been released, and “Dune” : Part Two” wasn’t around. But when he met him, he was sure, “This guy is a movie star, you know?” Nichols said.
“I read a lot of scripts and this one felt different,” Butler said. “It felt full of humanity and these cinematic moments that I could see in my mind. … I felt like I was being invited into this other world. And he was one of the coolest characters I’ve ever read.”
Butler’s Benny is also the most enigmatic of the group: a guy whose face never appears in Lyon’s book and who is never interviewed, only talked about.
“I love how Jeff talks about him as an empty cup that everyone wants to fill with their own expectations and their own responsibilities. He doesn’t want any of that,” Butler said. “That’s when he wants to let go and be free.”
And Butler brought an element to Benny that Nichols hadn’t originally envisioned. Nichols wanted Benny to be engrossed until the end and recalled telling the star to “get out of the way” a couple of times.
“Stop smiling,” Nichols laughed. “When that child smiles, the whole world smiles.”
But he soon realized that he was missing the point of casting someone like Butler, an emotional actor with a big heart who would come up and apologize to Hardy after a fight scene.
“At some point you have to find a balance between the character that is on the page and the human being that you have playing that role,” Nichols said. “And that character got better because of him.”
A different point of view
In the many years she had to think about how to make “The Bikeriders” work, one of Nichols’ biggest breakthroughs was when she realized who the narrator should be: Kathy.
Based on a real woman, she falls in love with Benny at first sight and becomes involved in the club.
“If you ask Danny, Kathy was one of the most interesting people there. She just jumps off the page,” Nichols said. “She’s witty, she’s introspective, she’s self-deprecating, she’s infuriating at times. She is a real person. And honestly, I fell in love with her.”
Comer saw in her a fascinating character, an “ordinary” but extraordinary person: strong-willed, fun and authentic. She worked tirelessly to nail Kathy’s very specific Chicago accent, using hours of taped interviews with Lyon as a roadmap.
“I could see in her so many older women that I have ever had in my life,” said Comer, who grew up in Liverpool. “The way they tell stories and have a kind of magnetism.”
But on another level, she was a better storyteller, both for a stranger with inner intimacy, and for what he wanted to say.
“The ultimate truth, and a subtext of the film, is that men are really bad at sharing their emotions,” he said. “Watching this group in the hands of a male narrator I think would be really boring.”
Fact, fiction and telling a good story
“The Bikeriders” is a work of fiction. Nichols did not want to be the historian of the Outlaws, a group that still exists. What he wanted most was to capture this time and culture and evoke the feeling he had when he opened that book all those years ago.
But it also relies heavily on images of Lyon, some of which are recreated, and on reportage. Much of Kathy’s dialogue is things said by the real Kathy, who was married to Benny. Hardy’s character, Johnny, was also apparently inspired by the Marlon Brando film “The Wild One” to start the club. He was the leader and also a bit of a fraud: a suburban dad with a real job.
Nichols also chose to make the film in color, rather than imitate Lyon’s famous use of black and white photography.
“They’re beautiful, but they’re romanticized,” Nichols said. “I think when you put them in color, they are less affected. “They become more realistic.”
Take it to the big screen
“The Bikeriders” journey to theaters was not without its bumps. Last fall, it made a triumphant debut at the Telluride Film Festival, often a launching pad for Oscar hopefuls. But as the December release date approached, it became clear that the actors’ strike wasn’t going to end in time for the stars to help promote the film. Headlines said that The Walt Disney Co.’s Searchlight Pictures had pulled “The Bikeriders” rather than simply saving it for a post-strike release.
“It was misreported,” Nichols said. “It was frustrating. It was like, you all have a fundamental misunderstanding of how this movie was made.”
The truth, Nichols explained, is a little more complicated and nuanced because New Regency finances its own films and distribution, often working with partners at the studios to do so. After the deadline for a December release was missed, another opportunity arose with Focus Features, the arthouse arm of Universal Pictures, which envisioned a summer release worldwide.
The joys and pains of riding those motorcycles
Like Butler, Hardy came to the film with some motorcycle knowledge. But neither of us would say this was an advantage: vintage bikes are a different beast.
“It turns out it’s a convenience because I can ride instead of, for example, lying about skiing,” Hardy said. “But it quickly became an inconvenience. “You’re busy and you’re trying to do the other job, you’re trying to act, and the bike is unpredictable.”
Still, once they got it, it could be pretty exciting.
“It was exciting to ride in a giant group,” Butler said. “You feel the energy of each motorcycle coming together.”
Comer said riding on the back of Benny’s bike for the first time was “a truly magical cinematic moment.
“We were on a night session in Cincinnati and we were freezing, with the wind in our hair,” he said. “You see the twinkling of the lights, the streetlights. You can hear the roar of the engines. I was like, Oh my God, this is exactly what he talked about.”
And, of course, danger was always present. But it also led to some real movie magic, like the nearly impossible recreation of one of Lyon’s most famous photographs with a single motorcyclist speeding across the Ohio Bridge, looking over his shoulder.
In the film, the rider is Butler. They had closed the bridge. The police were there. They couldn’t do it more than twice (both logistically and because they couldn’t risk anything with their star). They had a 35mm film camera mounted on a car with a crane that was trying to speed up alongside Butler, but it was also definitely going at a different speed.
“All of a sudden we put the cameras in the right place, the bridge is in the right place, Austin looks back and then he’s gone,” Nichols said. “And you say holy (expletive): ‘We got it.’”
