Jeff Nichols had been dreaming of making a film about a 1960s motorcycle club for 20 years.
This 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 see the movie in his mind: a story of rebels, romantics, traitors and the end of an era.
But they didn’t realize how terrifying it would be to film moving motorcycles.
Amazon’s ‘The Boys’ will end after 5 seasons
The bikes were old. Actors including Austin Butler and Tom Hardy were riding at high speeds. And there were no helmets. At one point, one of their stunt coordinators said: “There’s no way to make this 100% safe.”
They agreed to it. Danger was the issue. And everybody escaped safely.
His motorcycle expert (and amateur philosopher) said something that struck a chord with Butler. It’s dangerous, but it can also be empowering.
“Your life is in your own hands,” Butler said. “But it’s also an incredible act of self-love. You have to take care of yourself. Nobody else can do it for you.”
“The Bikeriders” (opening in theaters nationwide on Friday) is a rare summer gem: an original movie with a star-studded cast (including Jodie Comer, Michael Shannon, Norman Reedus and Mike Faist), quiet credibility, compassion and moments of clear-eyed sadness, and a kind of man who was fading away even as it happened.
“There’s a lot of romanticism around this subculture. It’s very easy to become a ‘Grease,'” Nichols said. “It’s a movie that’s really about nostalgia. There’s a sadness to it. But there’s also a joy in remembering it.”
catching a rising star
Nichols has always had success with casting, casting his films with movie stars who were at the time known to be successful. Before making “Take Shelter,” he remembers a producer asking, “Who is this Jessica Chastain?” For “The Bikeriders,” it was Butler. “Elvis” hadn’t been released yet. They didn’t know about “Dune: Part Two” yet. But when they met him, they were convinced. “This guy is a movie star, you know that?” Nichols said.
“I’ve read a lot of scripts and this one felt very different,” Butler said. “It was so human and I could see these cinematic moments in my mind’s eye. … I felt like I was being invited into this other world. And he was one of the best characters I’ve ever read.”
Butler’s Benny is also the most mysterious: a man whose face is never shown in Lyon’s book and who is never interviewed — only talked about.
“I like how Jeff talks about him being an empty cup that everybody wants to fill with their expectations and their responsibilities. He wants none of that,” Butler said. “This is the time he wants to break free and be free.”
And Butler infused an element of Benny that Nichols had not previously imagined. Nichols wanted Benny to be bottled up until the end and remembers telling his star to “pull it back” several times.
“Stop smiling,” Nichols said, laughing. “When that kid smiles the whole world smiles.”
But he soon realised it defeated the purpose of casting someone like Butler — an emotional actor with a big heart who would go and apologise to Hardy after a fight scene.
“At some point you have to find a balance between the character on the page and the person who plays that role,” Nichols said. “And that character became better because of him.”
A different approach
After years of thinking about what would make “The Bikeriders” a success, Nichols’ biggest breakthrough came when he realized who the narrator should be: Kathy.
Based on the story of a real woman, she falls in love with Benny at first sight and becomes attracted to him at the club.
“If you ask Danny, Kathy was one of the most interesting people there. She just pops off the page,” Nichols said. “She’s funny, she’s introspective, she’s self-deprecating, she’s annoying sometimes. She’s a real person. And honestly, I just grew to love her.”
Comer saw a fascinating character in Kathy, an “ordinary” but still extraordinary person: strong-willed and funny and authentic. She worked tirelessly to perfect Kathy’s very distinctive Chicago accent, and used hours of taped interviews with Lyonne as a roadmap.
“I saw a lot of the older women in my life in her. The way she tells stories and there’s a kind of charm about her,” said Comer, who grew up in Liverpool.
But on another level, she was a better storyteller, as an outsider, with an insider’s intimacy as well as what she wanted to say.
“The ultimate truth and one of the subtexts of the film is that men are really bad at sharing their feelings,” he said. “I think it would be really boring to watch this group in the hands of a male narrator.”
Tom Hardy (left) and Austin Butler are seen in a scene from “The Bikeriders” in this image released by Focus Features. (Focus Features via AP)
Fact, fiction and telling a good story
“The Bikeriders” is a work of fiction. Nichols didn’t want to be a historian of the Outlaws, a group that still exists. He mostly wanted to capture this time and culture and evoke the feeling he got when he opened that book so many years ago.
But he’s also heavily influenced by Leone’s images, some of which are recreated, and reporting. Much of Kathy’s dialogue is things the real Kathy, who was married to Benny, said. Hardy’s character Johnny was also apparently inspired by the Marlon Brando movie “The Wild One” to start the club. He was the leader and a bit of a cheater – a suburban dad who also had a real job.
Nichols opted to make the film in color, rather than imitating Lyon’s famous black-and-white photography.
“They’re beautiful, but they’ve been romanticized,” Nichols said. “I think when you color them, they’re less affected. They become more realistic.”
Bringing it to the big screen
“The Bikeriders'” journey to theaters has not been without obstacles. Last year, it had a rousing debut at the Telluride Film Festival, often a launching pad for Oscar hopefuls. But as its December release date approached, it became clear the actors’ strike was not going to end in time for stars to help promote the film. Headlines said the Walt Disney Co.’s Searchlight Pictures had abandoned “The Bikeriders” rather than hold it for release after the strike.
“It was misreported,” Nichols said. “It was disappointing. It seemed like you all had a fundamental misunderstanding of how this movie was made.”
The truth is a little more complicated and nuanced, Nichols said, because New Regency finances its films and distributes them in-house, often working in collaboration with studio partners. After the December release date was set, another opportunity came from Focus Features, the arthouse arm of Universal Pictures, which had envisioned a blockbuster worldwide release in the summer.
The joys and sorrows of biking
Like Butler, Hardy came into the film with some knowledge of motorcycles. But neither of them considers this a great achievement – old bikes are a different thing.
“It’s just a convenience because I can ride instead of lying about skiing,” Hardy said. “But it quickly became an inconvenience. You’re busy and you’re trying to do the other thing, which is the face-pulling part where you’re trying to act, and the bike is unpredictable.”
Still, it can be quite exciting once they get it.
“It was thrilling to ride in a huge group,” Butler said. “You feel the energy of every motorcycle coming together.”
Comer said that riding Benny’s bike for the first time was “a truly magical movie moment.”
“We were shooting in Cincinnati at night and it was cold, the wind was blowing in my hair,” he said. “You see the lights flashing, the street lamps. You hear the roar of the engines. I was thinking, oh my god, this is exactly what she talked about.”
And of course the danger was always present. But it also resulted in some real movie magic, such as a nearly impossible-to-recreate one of Leone’s most famous images, in which a biker looks over his shoulder as he speeds across an Ohio bridge.
The rider in the film is Butler. They had the bridge closed. The police were there. They couldn’t do it more than twice (both for good reason 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 keep up with Butler, but of course was going at a different speed.
Click here to get the Fox News app
“All of a sudden we lock the camera in the right place, the bridge is in the right place, Austin looks back, then drives off,” Nichols said. “And you say: ‘We got it.'”
