00:00For me, it was finding all the internal life of him and who he is and what makes him the way that he is
00:07and what he's actually thinking, even though he's not saying much.
00:11Austin Butler's new film, The Bike Riders, is inspired by the Danny Lyon photo book of the same name
00:16that documented the lives of a motorcycle club outside Chicago in the 1960s.
00:21Stars Butler, Jody Comer, and Norman Reedus, as well as writer and director Jeff Nichols,
00:26set down with The Hollywood Reporter to talk all about the movie.
00:30What was your prior experience with motorcycles before doing this movie?
00:34Mine was bare minimum. I think I'd been on the back of one once, and it was an old one that was probably very faulty and shouldn't have been on the road.
00:42I grew up, my dad rode motorcycles, and my grandfather rode motorcycles, so I'd been on them.
00:50I'd ridden on the back of my dad's when I was a little kid, and then at about 15, he said,
00:56I'm going to teach you how to ride a motorcycle, and so I went out there and learned.
00:59But I'd never been on an old bike before, and it's very different.
01:03And so that was the big learner curve for me, was just getting used to all the different personalities of each old bike.
01:11Yeah, that was fun.
01:12But you're the man in charge.
01:15I'm sunny.
01:16You're a known motorcycle enthusiast, so did Jeff come to you, or how did you get involved in this movie?
01:22So I was doing Daryl Dixon in Paris. I was filming. I went to Cannes. I sat at a dinner with Jeff.
01:27He goes, you know, I'm directing a film called The Bike Riders. And I was like, the Danny Lyons photo book? And he goes, wow, you know that? And I said, yeah, I have a few prints at home. I have a signed Danny book.
01:38Then he sent me the script. He told me who was in it. And I was like, Jeff, you got a lot of good looking guys in this movie. Can I try something else and just go in that direction? And he was like, yeah, go for it.
01:48Reedus plays funny Sonny, a bike rider from California who travels to Illinois, where Butler's character Benny is the newest member of a motorcycle club made up of local outsiders.
01:59Comer portrays Kathy, a strong-willed woman inextricably drawn to Benny.
02:03So what are we doing here? Just shooting the breeze?
02:10I guess.
02:11Both Comer and Butler opened up about taking on their roles.
02:14I heard you listened to the recordings that the interviews for the book are based on to really get her accent down.
02:21Can you talk to me about the process and the challenges of it?
02:24Yeah. Well, I mean, when I initially, I met Jeff on a Zoom and I'd read the script and we were just kind of talking about the material and what I felt.
02:32And then at the very end of the call, like as we were getting off, he was like, you know, I have like 30 minutes of audio of her.
02:38And I was like, why is this not in my inbox? Like, can you like send me this right now?
02:42So he did. And I was like, oh, okay. I worked very closely with the dialect coach, Victoria, who's incredible.
02:47And it was just about like really kind of, you know, getting to grips with the material and trying to make it feel as authentic as as possible.
02:56Benny has this really underlying rage that we see come out in really dramatic ways sometimes.
03:01Where do you think that comes from?
03:03And did you do any sort of character work on his backstory, either on the real person or did you fill in those gaps?
03:09Yeah, there was a lot that I had to fill in for him.
03:12I think it's a lot to do with his own relationship with his father.
03:17And there being a lot in his family life, you know, that because he's very young when he when he joins the club.
03:25And, and to have that type of rage there. So I, I, I worked a lot on, on that, trying to figure out, you know, what his childhood was like.
03:35For Butler, the bike riders follows his performance in Elvis, which earned him Golden Globe and BAFTA trophies, as well as an Oscar nomination.
03:43THR recently named the actor one of the top 10 young movie stars taking Hollywood by storm, with one agency source saying, quote, everyone wants him to be the lead of everything right now.
03:52As a director who's had him lead a movie, why do you think that is?
03:55I think it's because he's a movie star and they don't grow on trees. And the truth is, it's not just because he's good looking, but it's because he's got a lot going on.
04:06There's a lot of depth to this young man. And we are seeing the beginning of a movie star.
04:12The filmmaker also opened up about directing Emmy and BAFTA winner Comer.
04:15Jody's one of the greatest actors I've ever worked with.
04:18Um, the amount of work that she put into this character is really unbelievable.
04:23But the reason I cast her was because the first time I talked to her, she had read the script and the way that she talked about Kathy was the way that I felt about Kathy.
04:32Uh, she loved her. She admired her. She, uh, was confused and confounded by her at times.
04:39Um, all things that I felt, um, and I knew that, that she would hold that relationship to that character very delicately.
04:45Um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that I felt, um, all things that
Comments