Top: Jeff Nichols on location, directing Joel Edgerton and Shannon. Above: Adam Driver’s Sevier and Edgerton’s Lucas. Right: Great power comes with great stress for Alton.
described it as a chase movie,“ Shannon tells us. “He said, ‘I’m writing this thing with you in a car, being chased.’ And that was it. He didn’t even mention the boy.” The boy is Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher), a child with special powers who has been snatched away from a cult by his father, Roy (Shannon). The cult wants the boy back, but the government, which fears his explosive supernatural powers make him a threat to national security, is already on the case, in the form of Adam Driver’s intuitive NSA agent, Sevier. Meanwhile, Roy, aided by his friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton) and Alton’s mother Sarah (Kirsten Dunst), believes the boy has a secret destiny that they must help him to fulfil — even though they don’t know what it is. “It’s about belief in something you don’t understand,” says Nichols. “What would you do if you knew your child was bound for somewhere you couldn’t follow?”
“MICHAEL SHANNON IS A RAW NERVE” In the flesh, there seems little to connect Jef Nichols and the actor who has appeared in all his films so far: where Nichols is garrulous, literate and boyish, given to grinning from ear to ear,
Shannon projects the intensity of a human storm cloud, tall, taciturn and darkly foreboding. Nevertheless, Shannon has become the director’s unlikely alter ego. “Y’know, I began writing these parts not knowing Mike real well,” Nichols says. “I was just writing versions of myself, and then for some reason casting him as me. I’ve always seen Mike, from Shotgun Stories on, as this hard-toread, tough person who is extremely sensitive and extremely emotional. Oddly enough, that’s how I see him as a person in real life now, the more I’ve gotten to know him.” He describes Shannon as “a raw nerve. It makes all the sense in the world that he’d play this part, which to me is very emotional. He’s just a guy who wants to protect his family, which seems to be a recurring theme for me. I know everyone’s always gonna look at Mike as the bad guy, ’cause that’s the easy play. But he’s great at that too. Mike Shannon can pretty much do anything.” Casting Shannon also gave Nichols access to the cofers of Warner Bros., home to indie-turned-A-list directors like Christopher Nolan and Tim Burton, which actually bankrolled the film for the bargain budget of just under $20 million.
“There were a couple of reasons I went to Warner Bros., but one of the main ones was because I thought they’d understand Mike,” Nichols says. “They’d already, to a degree, invested in him, in terms of making him one of the main characters in Man Of Steel, so my hope was that they’d get it. Luckily they did.”
“I’M A SUCKER FOR FLATTERY” Although Mud came in at an even more economical $10 million, Nichols’ last film landed a peak, pre-Oscar Matthew McConaughey and post-Oscar Reese Witherspoon in two of its leading roles. This one combines stars from Man Of Steel, Spider-Man, Exodus and The Force Awakens. Nichols has proved a master of drawing in big-name casts on small-scale movies. The secret, says Nichols’ long-time producer Sarah Green, is a mixture of two things. “Firstly, the material speaks for itself,” she says. “Jef is an extremely good writer and the scripts read really well. And then, when you meet him, you immediately feel comfortable. You know you’re talking to a guy who understands filmmaking and knows how to talk to actors. If they have any questions, a meeting always does the trick.”
APRIL 2016
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