"The Bikeriders" Director Jeff Nichols Charts His Route to the Silver Screen
The filmmaker discusses his latest movie, insider/outsider philosophy and family SUVs.
It's about an hour's drive from Jeff Nichols’ hometown of Little Rock towards Altheimer, a dot on the map on the way to the Arkansas Delta, where his grandparents lived. As a kid, his family took the trip in his dad’s '89 Chevrolet Suburban, back when these rigs resembled civilian tanks. The stereo played dad’s golden oldies tapes, a monster set of tracks purchased from a late-night infomercial.
Occasionally, this trip would take the Nichols crew to a small family cemetery, tucked away in the Delta forest. Next to the cemetery stood a one-room church with an after-service potluck. Nichols' not-so-religious dad would sneak the family in after the service to eat the world-class home cooking. Raconteurs with heavy accents filled this room—people whom Nichols calls “great storytellers with great voices.” In this environment, Nichols discovered some yarn-spinning secrets: “I had the point of view of an outsider, but the access of an insider. That had a tremendous impact on me.”
That insider/outsider philosophy would eventually help Jeff Nichols, now 45, become an acclaimed film director. His first feature was 2007’s Shotgun Stories, an Arkansas-set tragedy that drew a Roger Ebert rave: “A tense and sorrowful film where common sense struggles with blood lust ... Few films are so observant about how we relate with one another. Few are as sympathetic.” Nichols' next four movies—Take Shelter (2011), Mud (2013), Loving (2016) and Midnight Special (2016)—also take place in the rural South, each vibrating on that region’s rough yet lyrical wavelength.
Austin
Live music. Tacos. Mezcal. Pitmasters. Literary giants. Bourgeois hippies. Swimming holes. Rhinestone cowboys. Political power. Hook ‘Em Horns. Slacker. A beer and a shot. Austin, Texas.
As a student at the University of North Carolina, Nichols discovered Harry Crews and Larry Brown—writers who specialized in degenerates and well-meaning ne'er-do wells. “I started thinking about the stories I wanted to tell,” Nichols recalls. “I remember telling my dad, in 11th or 12th grade, that I wanted to do a mob movie, like Casino. My dad said, ‘Why would you do that? You’ve never been to New York. Write about something from here.’ It started to kick in, like, ‘Right. Why don’t you look out the window first?’”
The Bikeriders, his latest film, rolled out nationwide in June of this year. It tells a story set in the '60's and early '70’s: a gripping tale of a fictional Midwestern motorcycle club. The film takes inspiration from a classic book, published by photographer Danny Lyons in 1968. Nichols discovered it via his brother Ben, lead singer of the Memphis-based band Lucero, and obsessed over it for 20 years.
The book shaped the movie’s look and costumes; much of the dialogue comes from transcripts Lyons gathered, interviewing the real-life bikers he photographed. The result blends authenticity and make-believe in a film chock-full of movie stars. (Austin Butler, Tom Hardy and Jodie Comer lead the cast; Michael Shannon, one of Nichols’ regular collaborators, is one of many noted supporting players.)
At its core, the film riffs on a universal theme: the search for identity. Despite their blossoming budgets and casts of Hollywood stars, Nichols' films haven’t lost their hand-made intimacy. The director chalks that up to working with a familiar crew.
“You look around and the key people standing around are the people you know and love and have been with for a long time,” he says.
The Bikeriders adds to Nichols’ gallery of characters—wayward, desperate, often confused but fighting for a place to call home in a hostile world. Well-reviewed during its theatrical release for gritty realism and lead performances, the movie started streaming on Peacock and other services over the summer. Up next for the director: two new projects, one a big-budget sci-fi, long in the making, with a reported $100-million budget and IMAX-sized ambition. The other: an adaptation of hard-bitten writer Cormac McCarthy’s final novels, a pair of linked stories that delve into quantum physics. (Nichols calls that one “more difficult than anything I’ve ever done.”)
“I’m six films in, and my toolbox is filled,” Nichols says of his next adventures. “I’ve gotten good at this. If anything breaks, I have something that can fix it.”
As for the road, Nichols followed in his parent’s SUV footsteps and made the family car a Toyota Sequoia, a bruiser made for leaning back and letting rip. It’s a move that shows wherever he’s going and whatever he makes next is somehow still rooted in those early days driving toward the Delta, listening to voices and soaking up stories.
