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ndie auteur Jeff Nichols made his debut in 2007 with Shotgun Stories, a revenge story full of menace and foreboding, and followed that up with Take Shelter, another dark tale that danced around themes of love, madness and the apocalypse. Then came Mud, a coming-of-age story starring Matthew McConaughey as a fugitive. After those three ultra-low budget films, the writer/di- rector upped the ante with the ambitious and smart sci-fi thriller Midnight Special and the Oscar-nominated Civil Rights drama Loving, both released in 2016. His new film, The Bikeriders, is another period drama, inspired by Danny Lyon's iconic book of the same name, which chronicled the four years in the '60s that Lyon spent with the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club, interviewing and photographing bikers. Starring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, Michael Shannon and Tom Hardy, it follows the rise of a fictional 1960s Midwestern motorcycle club through the lives of its members, and immerses the audience in the look, feel and sounds of the bare-knuckled, grease-covered subculture of '60s mo- torcycle riders. To bring those sights and sounds to life, Nichols assembled a roster of creatives that included such longtime collaborators as director of photogra- phy Adam Stone, editor Julie Monroe, production designer Chad Keith and composer David Wingo. Here, in an exclusive interview for Post, I spoke with Nichols about making the film and his love of post. You first told me about this project years ago. It's obviously been a labor of love. What took so long? "Just me getting over the fear of telling a story like this. I didn't grow up around motorcycles and that culture. There was pretty much nothing in this film that I felt comfortable with, so it took me a while to figure it all out. I also want- ed to do this strange narrative hybrid that was inspired by The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom, directed by Michael Ritchie back in '93, which used the real taped conversations of the mother, played by Holly Hunter, to build the script, and then Holly based her voice and her portrayal of the mother on those tapes. When I saw that, I thought, 'This dialogue doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard in a film before.' It was unique and real, because it was. And so with this, I was able to get all the interviews and audio that Danny Lyon did in the '60s, and I had them all digitally trans- ferred from the original tape, and I had hours and hours of these bikers talking in bars with the jukebox playing in the background. It was like this anthropologi- cal treasure chest." What sort of film did you set out to make? "I didn't want to make a documenta- ry, and I was terrified of the Chicago Outlaws, and didn't want to make a film about them and their history. But I loved the arc of the material and the idea of this social club for truck drivers and regular guys who started this motorcycle club over the '60s and early '70s, and it reflects what's going on in the country at that time. Then the whole thing mutates and becomes more aggressive and violent, and turns into a real bike gang, as op- posed to the original idea of a biker club. So I had all these moving pieces and ideas in my head, and it took a while for me to decide how much fictionalizing I'd do and how much of the real taped dialogue I'd use. And it's not a straightforward narra- tive. I wanted to move through different eras and jump around, say from '59 to '73, so it took a lot of meticulous planning." Fair to say that the themes of belonging and identity are central to the film? "Yes, the idea was to make a personal, regionally-specific film set in a specific time and place that still resonates with a broad audience, and it's really about our search for identity. I think that's one of the biggest animating forces at work in our society right now." The film was shot by your usual cinematographer Adam Stone. What did he bring to the mix? "We shot on 35mm film, anamorphic with Panavision G Series lenses, which was exactly same setup we used on Mud and Midnight Special and the other films. We didn't change anything filmically in-camera. We got all the key department heads — the production designer, costume designer and so on — together, and they all studied the same source material, every photo of Danny's, along with tons of others, and they built this whole world so com- pletely that when we put the camera up it looked exactly like one of Danny's photos. And Adam works closely with Michael Roy, who's been our gaffer since Take Shelter, and they have a language together, and have grown as artists and really craft the look of all my films, so a big part of this is due to Adam. We use a lot of natural light, and I totally rely on their skills and process for the look of my films." THE BIKERIDERS — JEFF NICHOLS AN AUTHENTIC LOOK INTO A 1960S SUBCULTURE I DIRECTOR'S CHAIR www.postmagazine.com 10 POST MAY/JUNE 2024 BY IAIN BLAIR (L-R) Actor Mike Faist and director Jeff Nichols during production.