Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I've said it before and I'll say it again, but let's just get this out of the way: Jeff Nichols speaks my cinematic language. I adore his films. I've been at multiple film festivals with him, going back to Take Shelter making the fest circuit, and yet I've never had the chance to sit down and talk with the man. That changed this SXSW.
As a bonus I got one of our greatest working character actors in on the chat as well. Yes, I'm talking about the peanut butter to Nichols' chocolate, Mr. Michael Shannon.
This interview's pretty great. Nichols talks quite a bit about his process, not just on this film, but also on Take Shelter. We start off talking about Jaws (naturally) and somehow the conversation hits topics like Nichols' badass Halloween costume, Tangerine Dream, how the bunker scene in Take Shelter was conceived and even Benedict Cumberbatch (you'll see).
Both men give very smart, well-thought out answers while also being gleefully smart alecky. Shannon in particular was quick with the jokes, which you might not expect considering how intimidating he is on screen.
Now, a quick word of warning before we start. Midnight Special is out in limited release, but if you have not seen it we do discuss a few things from the end of the movie. We don't go into any specifics, but we do dance around a few late in the movie topics, so if you haven't seen the flick yet don't spoil yourself. This is a great one to bookmark and return to after you've seen the movie.
If you want a little taste, but don't want to get spoiled then you might want to stop when the conversation turns to Michael Shannon's relationship with Jaeden Lieberher.
The interview began with me shaking hands with them both and introducing myself by my given name, Eric. Nichols then tried to explain to Shannon that I had a nickname online and I had to explain why people know me as “Quint.” That's when the recorder was turned on. Hope you enjoy this chat as much as I did.
Quint: Ain't It Cool started back in the wild wild west days of the internet, so we all took screen names...
Jeff Nichols: I just hung out with Capone in Chicago.
Quint: Yeah, since Steve was in Chicago Capone seemed a fitting spy name. My favorite movie is Jaws and my favorite character in that movie is Robert Shaw's character, so I took that screen name.
Jeff Nichols: I went dressed as him for Halloween one year.
Quint: Oh, really?
Jeff Nichols: After he'd been bitten half.
Quint: How'd you pull of the bottom half of the costume?
Jeff Nichols: I wore black tights, then I took pantyhose, stuffed them with cotton and tied rubber bands around them and painted them red so they looked like intestines. I made, like, a hula skirt out of that. It was an extraordinary costume.
Michael Shannon: Huh. Why don't we do stuff like that in your movies?
Jeff Nichols: Movies aren't as fun as Halloween.
Quint: I'm not the kind of person who automatically hates the idea of remakes, but I'm pretty hardcore against a remake of Jaws. It's about as perfect a movie as you could make...
Jeff Nichols: It's an incredible film. You know, those scenes of him at the table with the little boy? Those are the scenes in Spielberg films that nobody talks about. They always talk about the damn shark, but he was able to weave in these really beautiful moments. I mean, they had to have just captured that.
Michael Shannon: Oh, like it was something they were just doing? They were screwing around and Spielberg's like “Shoot that.”
Jeff Nichols: Yeah. Or maybe he designed it. I don't know.
Quint: I don't know for sure, but I seem to remember hearing that it was something they noticed on the day.
Michael Shannon: I don't think I've ever seen Jaws.
Quint: Really?!?
Jeff Nichols: Shit, man. It's good.
Quint: You definitely need to change that. I was going to say that I'm super against a remake, but if they did it you'd be my choice for...
Michael Shannon: The shark?
Quint: To play Quint, the Robert Shaw character, but you could play the shark, too. Benedict Cumberbatch it and do the shark as performance capture.
Michael Shannon: I'm all about Benedict Cumberbatchin' stuff. That's, like, my checklist when I get out of bed in the morning. Did I Benedict Cumberbatch that? I brush my teeth. Did I do that the way Benedict Cumberbatch brushes his teeth? I hope so. I don't know how he does it, but I'm pretty sure he does it like this.
Quint: We should talk about Midnight Special... or we can keep talking about Jaws.
Michael Shannon: Or Benedict Cumberbatch.
Quint: Steve told me that you guys talked a bit about the influences of this film, so I don't want to harp too much on it, but what I love about the tone of the movie is that you did this impossible thing of acknowledging that Amblin era Spielberg movies without completely replicating the style. You made your movie, not a Spielberg-looking movie. Am I crazy, or is there also a little Stephen King in there, too?
Jeff Nichols: It's probably something I brought into it.
Michael Shannon: Via John Carpenter.
Jeff Nichols: Yeah. All that stuff mixes up. We're all at a relative age where it mixes up the pop culture we were all raised on, I imagine. It's all mixed in there. I think a big difference is Spielberg had John Williams. I'm sure they developed together just the same way (David) Wingo, my composer, and I developed together. I don't want to say one influences one more than the other, but it's such a specific tone and style in music. They do the mysterious parts very well, but it's fanciful. It's something I don't think my particular taste level would be suited toward. Maybe at the end of the day some people judge that as a limitation, but that's part of it.
We've got this kind of syth, bass-y stuff. It's a little Carpenter, but the stuff I like a little bit more is the Tangerine Dream stuff, like on the Kathryn Bigelow film, Near Dark. It has an amazing score. That's kinda what we were looking at.
Quint: Tangerine Dream is great. I adore Jerry Goldsmith, he's one of my favorite composers, but I'm that weird guy that actually prefers the Tangerine Dream score to Legend.
Jeff Nichols: Yes.
Quint: What I like about the score to Midnight Special is it might not be as thematic as John Williams would do, but you guys weren't afraid to go big with the score. It's not simply tone music.
Jeff Nichols: Which I'm a fan of. I made that leap in Take Shelter. Shotgun Stories was all background. Shotgun Stories really was subdued, partly because I didn't have my composer at that time. I was strictly working with my brother, who has influenced a lot of my music, but they weren't scoring scenes in the tradition sense. They were just writing music and I was applying it, asking for little notes. That film is very sparse when it comes to score.
I remember with Take Shelter I was having a really hard time writing the finale when they're down in storm shelter. In fact, I wrote everything up to it and I wrote everything after it. I was so precious with that scene, I was nervous about it. When I wrote it, I put on headphones and, this is really cheesy, but I turned on the score to The Thin Red Line. It's like that scene of Will Ferrell debating in Old School, I just kinda blacked out for a little bit and when I woke up the scene was done.
Writing to music is a really bad thing. You're not supposed to do it. Usually when you go back and read the scenes that you wrote listening to music they don't work without the music playing. They seem really melodramatic, but in this particular case they held up, I feel like.
Going into the end of Take Shelter I looked to Wingo and said, “Alright, no more cool indie scores.” I was listening to a lot of Michael Nyman, who did the score to Gattaca. He did a piece of piano music based on his scores and it's just gorgeous. I listened to a lot of that for Take Shelter and for this. That stuff gives you big emotion, but still feels like a really beautiful, subtle score.
Quint: We need to talk about Jaeden. Alton is the lynchpin of this movie. If he doesn't work, and specifically if his relationship with you, Michael, doesn't work then the movie doesn't work.
Michael Shannon: Right.
Quint: I thought it was pretty brilliant the way you guys handled the father/son relationship in the movie. There's no big emotion “I love you moment.” Towards the end you have a chance to have an emotional outpouring, but you play it wordless. You don't have to have it, your character says it through his actions.
Michael Shannon: Yeah, exactly. He's following his heart through his action.
Quint: Jeff, you have someone like Michael in the father role, so you know you have that part covered, but maybe you could talk a little about the search...
Michael Shannon: The Search For Jaeden.
Quint: Exactly.
Jeff Nichols: Real quick, before we get away from it too soon, I think the beauty of that moment is in its brevity. When people die, they're just gone. Very few people get to sit there for that moment. Usually they're just gone. Last night was the first time for my wife to see the film and she said to me this morning “That's the last time he sees him. That's the last time he ever sees him.”
I think because we see him, as the audience, that might be mitigated to some degree, but that's what's so powerful in that moment for me. It just devastates me and that's because of its brevity.
Quint: I don't want to spoil too much since this is the end of the movie, but it's also the fact that for the entirety of the movie Michael's character is the protector figure and you're still protecting him in the best way that you can, by leaving, but in doing so you're not taking him to the final step of his journey.
Jeff Nichols: It's a tricky thing. It's a character hand-off that goes against all narrative reason. I have some thoughts on that, but anyway... Jaeden came to us through an agent we all know, Jack Whigham at CAA. Originally I was a little resistant because you always want to go out and find a real kid, someone that hasn't been on movie sets, but what I've found through meeting a lot of kids is that they were just real kids. They weren't concerned with a lot of things and Alton was a very special kid. Luckily I haven't had a lot of experience with sick children, but I've heard that children that are dealing with terminal illness are extraordinarily mature. They've had to grow up too fast and they have an awareness of the world and the situation they're in that children shouldn't have. That's certainly what Alton's character is going through. He's quickly understanding, not just on a metaphysical level, but certainly on a practical level that things aren't going correctly.
So, I needed a kid that had that maturity and that understanding. That's partly why we cast an older kid. He was small (for his age), but also he's just one of these kids, you know? You've seen these child actors before who just have an innate understanding and awareness of where they are in the world. That's hard to find. Someone who then also isn't aware that they're acting? Because that's where the honesty starts to get killed out of it.
Jaeden had that balance. He didn't seem affected, he just seemed aware.
Michael Shannon: Straight shooter.
Jeff Nichols: Straight shooter. Very straight. When I saw that I was like, “Oh, cool.”
Michael Shannon: I'm just jealous of him because he gets more laughs than anybody else in the movie. I was going for laughs the whole time and I didn't get any.
Jeff Nichols: Yeah, it's really strange because I was cutting these scenes for the humor. It just gets lost on people. (laughs)
Michael Shannon: There's this one line he always gets a big laugh on. I think he gets a laugh because it's so sincere. “Lucas, you'll want to sit down.” It always gets a huge laugh because he really means it!
Jeff Nichols: He wasn't playing it as a joke.
Michael Shannon: Yeah, Jaeden... those things can go south in a hurry when you're trying to establish intimate relationships really quickly. There are a number of them in this movie. Me and Joel (Edgerton) have to be best friends since we were kids. Me and Kirsten (Dunst) have to be husband and wife, me and Jaeden have to be father and son. At any given point it could have gone sour. Three of us could have ganged up on one of the others or something like that.
There was a deep respect for what we were doing. The thing that impressed me the most about Jaeden, that made me kinda fall for him right away, is that he seemed to have a great deal of respect for what was taking place. Most children you work with have absolutely no respect. What they do they do by accident. They're not trying to do anything necessarily or if they are trying to do something it's what a grown up told them to do to be cute or get attention, but it's not telling a story. Jaeden was really trying to tell a story. He knew what the story was and it seemed like it meant something to him.
I mean, every once in a while he'd get bored or tired. Any kid is going to, but for the most part he seemed very, very focused on the thing.
Jeff Nichols: Which is what you want out of the adult actors, too. I've been fortunate, but on occasion you'll get into the editing room and go, “Why's that take not working? Oh shit, that guy's not paying attention in the moment! That's why that's not working. They're thinking about breakfast.” You can see it, (snaps fingers) it happens right there in front of you.
Michael Shannon: Jaeden's such a good listener. He understands the philosophy that just because you don't have a line doesn't mean you're not in the scene. Most kids would just be waiting for their next line. He pulls off some really tricky stuff in this. I don't want to give everything away, but his reactions to things... there's long stretches of the film where he doesn't say much.
Jeff Nichols: When he's in the back seat of the car, he's just looking around. That scene, actually, was written that he kept the goggles on. I knew there was all this stuff going on under there, so I had to take them off. You weren't actually supposed to see his eyes for the first time until the bedroom scene, but it was like I was robbing myself of this great performance!
Quint: I was really impressed with Jaeden in St. Vincent, but this is certainly a step up for him as a performer.
Jeff Nichols: He's no joke.
Quint: You were very good, too, Michael. Don't worry, I won't leave you out. (laughs)
Michael Shannon: It's alright. I have a very secure sense of my place in the world.
Quint: Seriously, you're always great, whether it's in Bug or Boardwalk Empire, but there's something about whatever the chemistry is between you two that takes your work to another level for me. If they announce a new Jeff Nichols movie with Michael Shannon as the lead it's instantly at the top of my most anticipated movies list. Is there a difference in your working relationship with Jeff something you notice?
Michael Shannon: I'm always just curious to see what Jeff's up to, you know? I mean, you hear the guy talk about making movies and he's so damn smart about it. He's so sophisticated, which is really damn startling coming from a redneck like him because he should be dumb as dirt.
Jeff Nichols: (laughs) It's all an act.
Michael Shannon: I don't want to say we're like brothers because he has two brothers and they're both jerks... No, I'm kidding.
Jeff Nichols: Just one of 'em.
Michael Shannon: It's like I feel at home. When we had done Shotgun Stories... I had never done anything like that before in my life. Jeff kept looking at me like “You've been on movie sets, give me some pointers.” I was like, “Dude, this is so unusual and unique and special. You don't need any pointers from me. Just keep doing what you're doing.”
Jeff Nichols: (whispers like he's telling me a secret) I did not know what I was doing.
Michael Shannon: The biggest pointer you can give somebody is don't do what you're supposed to do.
Jeff Nichols: I think these movies where Mike's the lead have the closest 1:1 relationship to my life. Mud was written about a nostalgic time in my life. Mud was written from the point of view of me as a 15 year old and I carried that story with me. Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter and Midnight Special, these three films fit into a trilogy. If there's a box set, that's what it needs to be. It's because those three films, despite the amount of time they always take to make and get out into the world, they were written about me right at the time I was writing them. They were written about a thing that I was feeling right at the moment I was writing them.
For whatever reason when I feel these things that are so palpable... I mean, that's a very delicate gift that I want to give somebody. You don't want to just give that anybody, you want to give that to somebody who's going to respect it and, honestly, do it justice. That's what Mike does. It's not something you want to close your eyes and point at a roster of A-listers and go, “I don't know any of these fuckin' guys, so I guess that guy I'm going to give this beautiful gift of how I feel about son to.”
Quint: That's a good place to end. Thanks, guys.
Jeff Nichols: Thank you.
Told ya' that was a good one! By the way, I'm totally stealing Nichols' idea for his Quint costume. Maybe not this Halloween, but goddamnit I'm going to do it one of these years!
Midnight Special is super good, folks. Go see it! It's out in limited release now and, I'm told, opens wider April 1st.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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