“The Bikeriders” is actually an unconventional love triangle, confirms director Jeff Nichols

Author and director Jeff Nichols (dirt) is back in the saddle, so to speak, with his love letter to a bygone era in The Bikers. Inspired by the photographer’s black and white images Danny LyonThe Oscar nominee plays the lead role in Nichols’ book Austin Butler (Elvis), Tom Hardy (Poison), And Jodie Comer (KillingEve) in a character-driven look back at the unrest in the US in the ’60s and ’70s. At the heart of his story, the filmmaker tells us, is “this idea of ​​a love triangle,” but “it wouldn’t be a love triangle in the traditional sense.”

The Bikers is told through an interview with Comer’s character Kathy, who recalls her first meeting with the enigmatic Benny (Butler). Their love story is the audience’s gateway to the Chicago Vandals, a biker club founded by the Marlon Brando-like Johnny (Hardy), who welcomes society’s outcasts with open arms, but that’s not the only love story. Although the relationship between the bikers is bonding and at times familial, Nichols tells us, “It was really important that the relationship between Tom’s character and Austin’s character was not that of a father figure.”

During this conversation with Collider’s Steve WeintraubNichols explains his intentions for his main characters and shares what is most important to him in filmmaking and storytelling. He also discusses why people are drawn to danger, the risks of filming his ensemble on vintage motorcycles, why The Bikers is not black and white and why certain scenes turned out to be the most “nerve-wracking” of his career.

You can watch the full interview in the video above or read the transcript below.

The Bikers

Follows the rise of a Midwestern motorcycle club and its evolution over the course of a decade – from a hangout for local misfits to a more sinister gang that threatens the original group’s way of life.

Release date

21 June 2024

director

Jeff Nichols

Duration

116 minutes

Why Jeff Nichols cares about characters over plot

COLLIDER: If someone has never seen anything you’ve directed, what would you like to show them first and why?

JEFF NICHOLS: Just watch the characters. In my films the focus is on the characters, not the plot. Hopefully, when you watch the characters on screen for two hours, you have an emotional connection to them and to the story. That’s how I try to frame it and hopefully that’s how people see it too.

American motorcycle culture has fascinated many people around the world for decades. What do you think it is about this culture that attracts people and romanticizes it?

NICHOLS: I think that’s part of human nature. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to make the film, to try to understand it a little bit better. Look at a motorcycle. It’s beautiful. When you see it, you want to ride it. It feels like freedom. But it can also kill you. It keeps this tension right in front of you, and that’s what our film is supposed to be. There’s this thing that’s incredibly attractive, but you know it’s bad for you. You know it’s dangerous, but we do it anyway. Why? Why is there a part of human nature that draws us to things we know are dangerous? It’s a question the film doesn’t necessarily answer, but it wants to bring it to light and ask it.

The editing process fascinates me because it’s where everything comes together. Which of your films do you think changed the most in the editing room, in ways you didn’t expect?

NICHOLS: That’s an interesting question. Usually it’s not big, sweeping changes. I outline these movies so meticulously that by the time we get to the editing room, they’re pretty much the same. About two-thirds of the way through every single movie I’ve done, a scene comes out, a scene that I would have given up if you’d asked me to take it out in pre-production, but then in the editing room you just say, “Nah, that’s not there.” In this movie, it was a scene with Mike Faist’s character, and it was the only scene where he’s alone, not with any of the group. When we were shooting the movie, Mike said, “You’re never going to use that scene.” I said, “No, it’s very important because it’s kind of My point of view, I’m talking about what I think about this club and the reality of this club and this culture.” And he said, “There’s no way you’re using that.” When we started in the editing room, I had barely got a construction together and I thought, “Yeah, that’s got to go.” He bet me $1,000. I owe him $1,000.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of actors betting $1,000 on set and saying, “You’ll never use that.”

NICHOLS: I’ll probably never pay him, but I owe him $1,000.

Thank you very much. This is fantastic.

The love triangle got the wheels of “The Bikeriders” rolling

“It wouldn’t be a love triangle in the traditional sense.”

One of the things about it is that it’s a love story between three people, but I don’t think the audience realizes which three people are in that love story.

NICHOLS: That’s true. Hopefully they do in the end. This idea of ​​a love triangle came to me, and it wouldn’t be a love triangle in the traditional sense, where two guys or two girls are after the same guy. There’s this older man who is attracted to this younger man because he wants what he has, and then there’s Jodie Comer’s character, who is also attracted to this man and wants to marry him, but there’s something about the essence of this young man that they desire. In that sense, It was really important that the relationship between Tom’s character and Austin’s character was not that of a father figure because that’s what I’ve experienced in other films. I talk a lot about fathers and sons. That’s not what this is about. This is a man looking at youth and desiring them. That’s a very different instinct than wanting to protect or desire. You could argue that Jodie’s character has those same feelings and that was really the creative inspiration added to Danny Lyon’s book to set things up and get the plot moving.

There are a lot of shots of actors without helmets on vintage motorcycles, which is sometimes not very friendly. What about the insurance company if you say, “Yeah, we’re going to do a shot of 14 people, all riding and no one wearing a helmet, so let’s just do it?”

NICHOLS: We had a person on set whose sole job was to tell the insurance company what we were doing every day. She was very nice (laughs), but that’s how closely they paid attention. You can’t put millionaire movie stars on bicycles without someone raising their hand and saying, “What are you doing?” But we did our best. But at some point, there will be bicycles that are over 60 years old with people on them, riding down the highway at high speed without helmets, and that is incredibly dangerous. And they’re in a pack. Honestly, that was the most nerve-wracking part of any film I’ve ever directed.

Is this something where you know you can only do a limited number of takes, like, “We can only shoot for 30 minutes and that’s it?”

NICHOLS: We treated it like stunts. When you ask an actor to do a stunt, you don’t do it more than once. If he does it once and you get it right, you can keep going. That’s how we treated the motorcycle scenes. You might want another take or another ride, but you had to control yourself.

You shot this on film. Was there ever a debate about doing this in black and white, or is that not really feasible these days? Is it harder to release it commercially?

NICHOLS: I never wanted to do it in black and white. Danny Lyon actually asked me that because he loves black and white and a lot of the photos are in black and white. The first edition of his book is all black and white, but the edition I first found was a 2003 edition that had color photos in it. For someone who grew up in the ’80s, color photos from the ’60s brought it to life for me in a way that the black and white photos don’t. Black and white is an affectation, and filmmaking is an affectation, but I feel like if you do it in color, reality becomes even more intense. It allows you to connect with the world in a more personal way. So for me, that was never a question. It was always going to be color.

“The Bikeriders” captures “the old outlaws” of a bygone era

One of the things this film does so well is that it captures a time and place that doesn’t exist today, when it was just a group hanging out and riding before it became something else. Can you talk about that time period and how the film captures that time?

NICHOLS: That’s the feeling I want people to leave the theater with. It’s a feeling of nostalgia, a feeling that this very specific time, this very specific place, with these very specific people, no longer exists. Danny says it in the second prologue to his book. He talks about the climax of what happened to the club and says, “The group I rode with are now referred to as the ‘old outlaws.’ They’re no more.” I like that. I like the feeling it gives.

In reality, it is a period from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, a time of change for this country, when It could actually happen that someone is so innocent that he thinks he only has a riding club, that it is just a group of friends and that it could grow and grow chapters and that it wouldn’t end up metastasizing into something quite violent and dangerous. But that’s what happened here. The film is a prequel in that respect. It’s really meant to show you where a group like this started and how the mindset of the people who founded it evolved. That’s really what we’re trying to do with this film.

The Bikers is now in cinemas. You can find the show times under the link below.

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