In their sixth and most recent film together, The Bikeriders, Michael Shannon and director Jeff Nichols had quite different ideas about the actor’s large-scale, scene-stealing speech.
Based on Danny Lyon’s well-known photobook of the same name, which documented the photographer’s time riding with the Chicago chapter of the real-life Outlaws Motorcycle Club, the movie follows the growth and demise of a fictional biker gang in the 1960s. Shannon portrays Zipco, a peculiar gang member who is modelled by a genuine motorcyclist that Lyon spoke with for his novel. Lyon said to A Rabbit’s Foot that the genuine Zipco “was born in Latvia, was always drunk, had’stuff’ in his beard, and had a WWI German Spike on his helmet when he wore one.”
In a moving scene over a bonfire, Zipco tells his fellow motorbike enthusiasts how he tried to enlist in the Vietnam War but was turned down because mental health examinations revealed he wasn’t suitable for the fight. As Nichols planned, the monologue opens in a humorous manner, but Shannon did not find it funny at all.
Regarding that scenario, Nichols tells Entertainment Weekly, “it came straight out of the book pretty much, straight out of an interview.” The way he’s narrating the tale about going to the draft board, where his mother had to grab him from bed to go, and failing every exam, is hilarious. Just prior to filming, Mike approaches me, as we typically don’t speak before he performs his act, and he says, ‘You think this is pretty amusing, don’t you?’ And I think, “Well, that’s kind of funny.” “I don’t think it’s funny at all,” he exclaimed.
“Okay, let’s see it,” Nichols recalled telling Shannon, and he was finally taken aback by the way Shannon performed the monologue. “It’s a bait-and-switch, really, because he gets you laughing, and then he stings you with it,” Nichols explains. “And I did not see that coming.”
Jodie Comer, who plays Benny’s (Austin Butler) eventual wife Kathy, said that Shannon’s performance was one of her best set recollections, particularly given it was the first day of filming.
“We were on night shoots in Cincinnati and there were quite a lot of ensemble scenes,” she told EW. “It was the sequence in which Mike Shannon delivers this two-page speech. I just recall that there were maybe eleven of us gathered around the fire, watching him work and observing his uncertainties and worries. It was astounding to me that he was having self-doubt or self-questioning thoughts. Just seeing him at work after being such a big fan of his on-screen persona. We were all very much in love, I believe. That was very unique.”
Butler concurs, saying that Shannon’s performance “so enamoured” him as well. “There’s these moments that transcend and that was definitely one of them,” he claims.
On June 21, The Bikeriders, which also stars Boyd Holbrook, Norman Reedus, Mike Faist, and Tom Hardy, will be released in theatres.
