Interview: Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories)

Shotgun Stories, a tale of feuding brothers, is the first feature by Jeff Nichols. Nichols himself is one of three brothers but unlike the forsaken sons in the film, carelessly named Son, Kid and Boy, Nichols’ entire family pitched in to make the “Shotgun Stories”. His mother was craft service and his parents put up much of the cast and crew in their home. His brother wrote the film’s music while his father was a driver on set and a funder.
 
This is a portrait of war on a level that many people can relate to, that of family. At a time when Iraq War films and news stories flood the screen, Nichols has scaled back the issue of conflict to one we can manage intellectually and emotionally. The three brothers engage in a feud with their three half brothers after their mutual father dies. A word spat at the funeral spirals out of control into murder and revenge. Son, the films central character played by Michael Shannon, tells his mother, “You raised us to hate those boys, and we do, and now it’s come to this.” This is a war with no glory in it; only a sinking feeling that blame will destroy everyone.

Nichols’ is an Arkansas native and the film is authentically southern.  With an entirely local cast, the pace and emotional axis are incredibly truthful.  In speaking with Jeff, I found much of the same stillness and genuine kindness that I experienced in people on road trips I’ve taken through the American South.  He’s a rare filmmaker who engages difficult human questions without providing clear answers or happy endings. 

Jeff Nichols

Laura Newman: I’m curious about your background and how you got into
filmmaking.  Did you come from another discipline? I wonder if you
might have been a photographer or a painter because of the visuals that
you have in the film.
Jeff Nichols: Actually, I went straight into film school right out of
high school. I had no idea what it took to make a movie; I just had
the notion that I might like it.  I’d been doing a lot of writing all
through junior high and high school. I was always into creative
writing and always a fan of films. But I didn’t really know what it
meant to make one. I was in the North Carolina School of the Arts,
which is a really intensive film program, more like a trade school,
really light on theory and heavy on production. So, I figured out the
nuts and bolts of how to really make a movie and realized that I liked
it. I liked the process. I directed some short films and after
getting out of college I realized I was really missing some real world
producing capabilities. This was really important because I was in
Arkansas practically in the middle of nowhere with no real help so I
was going to have to have the ball rolling myself. Luckily after
college I had worked on a documentary about Towns Van Zandt (Be
Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt) that was
made here in Austin and I was the production manager. That really
allowed me to cut my teeth in the real world. I wanted to get a
feature made and I wanted to make one that represented this area that I
was from and the kind of literature that I get into and like to read:
Larry Brown and Ray Carver’s short stories. I wanted all those things
wrapped in one package. I wanted “Shotgun Stories”, to a degree, to
represent all these factors of my personality and who I am.

LN: Do you plan on staying in Arkansas and doing films about the area?
JN: I actually live in Austin now. When I was working on the Towns Van Zandt film I met a girl.  We got engaged. We’re actually getting married this weekend. So, Austin has become home. I am writing another story that takes place in Arkansas; it’s actually further south. It takes place on the Mississippi River.  There are definitely still stories about Arkansas that I want to tell. For me, the idea of being a regional storyteller is really important. I think the way places look, the way people act and speak, should never be detached from a story. The stories I like the most and the films I like the most are ones that involve the environment of the place. It’s really tough now with films; the locations where they are shot are kind of dictated by where it’s cheapest so people are going up to Canada or wherever. I feel like you begin to get films that don’t represent anywhere and that’s a shame. Whether I’m making a movie about Arkansas or Texas or Chicago, my goal is to make it as regionally specific as possible.

LN: Now I assume much of that is done in the casting.
JN: Yeah,
everyone in “Shotgun Stories” is from the South. There were no New
York actors cast. They are all from below the Mason Dixon. But even
that is kind of tricky because the accent in Arkansas is different from
say, Georgia. It’s a common mistake when you see people playing
southern roles. They just all of a sudden start to get real lazy with
their “Rs” and it all sounds like “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” which is
bullshit.  So, for me, in getting these guys together, I cast Arkansas
guys. Mike Shannon is originally from Kentucky. Of course Mike
Shannon is someone who has true command over his voice so he can do
whatever he wants. Some of these other guys, like Alan Wilkins who
plays Shampoo, he’s just a punk rock kid from Little Rock. That’s who
he is. I think you’ve got to cast for the places you’re making the
movie. I also wrote a lot of the parts for these people. They’re
mostly guys I knew. I picked them not just for the dialect but for
their emotional range.

LN: How did you come to find Michael?  He’s fantastic.
JN:  A professor of mine in college was going to the Sundance Labs. Basically, if you have a script that you want to get made and then there’s the director’s lab. In the morning you shoot scenes on video and in the afternoon you edit them and everybody watches and critiques them. Mike Shannon showed up to work with Gary Hawkins, my professor, and when Hawkins came back to school he said, “You have to look at the guy.  He’s like the guy you always write parts for.”  I was just blown away by him and I started paying attention to his career, watching him in movies like High Crimes and 8 Mile and thinking wow, somebody needs to give this guy something to do. So, I wrote the lead part with him in mind and when it came time to cast, I called Gary Hawkins and asked him for a contact for Mike. He gave me his cell phone number and I just called him up and said, “You don’t know who I am but I wrote a movie for you.”  Luckily he read it and saw something in it ‘cause he pretty much came to Arkansas sight unseen. I’d never met with him before in person. And he just showed up and was fully invested. It was a huge thing for me personally and also for the film.

LN: What impact do you think he had on the production and the rest of the cast since he’d worked on a lot of films before?
JN: He raised the bar across the process.  In terms of the production it went from me hanging out with my buddies to like, “Mike Shannon is here! This guy is the real deal.” He showed up and he’s not one of these bullshit guys who’s like, “Where’s my trailer?  Go get me some coffee.”  He’s there to work and he’s there to try to make the best film we possibly could. I think it’s that sense of focus and that attitude that imbibed the entire production. I know I was more on my toes and sharper as a result of it. When you have a guy like Mike who is not only a great actor but intelligent, truly intelligent, he won’t do things just ‘cause you tell him to do things.  You need to have a reason and you better have it thought out when you talk to him about it ‘cause he’ll call you on it. So, that helped. [SPOILER ALERT: skip to the end of this paragraph if you don’t want to know] There’s a scene where he takes down the tent that his brother had been sleeping in, after his brother’s died. When I wrote that scene I was thinking, alright, this guy is preparing to go kill whoever did this to his brother.  It was going to be the moment that led to kicking some ass.  On set after we shot the scene I was talking to Mike and asked, “What were you thinking about in that scene?” He said, “Well, I was thinking about how I shouldn’t have shown up at that funeral and how this is kind of my fault.”  That was such a more complex, better thing to be thinking and we started to really craft the rest of the movie around ideas like that.  There is a sadness and a reluctance in the actions he’s taking.  There’s no pleasure in it, which is really important; it’s the corner stone of the film to a degree.  Because it’s not about relishing in comeuppance, it’s about people who for some reason feel compelled to do these things, in spite of themselves almost.  Mike had a lot to do with developing that.  Without him in the lead, I don’t think we’d be here talking

LN:  It sounds to me like what’s going on with the story is the fine line between taking responsibility and blaming other people and at what point do you choose where to stand.  It’s not a typical revenge story.  There is something more complex going on there about tracing the line back.
JN: Where that starts is you create characters that are not necessarily good or bad. You validate their pain and their anger and emotions, even if you don’t approve of the results. I think we can all see where this guy is coming from; likewise where the other pack of brothers are coming from. That’s how I started approaching this film.  It’s about conflict resolution for me. About how conflicts that seem like they have no possible end in sight. How do you work one of those out? How did one of those come about?  In conceptualizing the story I thought, well, you can either have one side totally decimate, the other side to the point where they are either dead or can’t fight back or at some point both sides have to acquiesce. They have to say, “We’re not going to do this anymore.” It’s at that moment that both sides are vulnerable and that moment is what I thought was worth making a movie about.  

LN: Did you start from that idea, from the end of the film and work backwards?  What was the initial idea behind it?
JN: The initial idea was about brothers. I come from a family of three brothers and the worst possible thing imaginable would be if something violent happened to one of my brothers. That was an emotion that was fairly accessible to me. So, for starters I had that emotion and it was like, if I feel that and I can transfer that into the audience, I think it would be successful. But then on the other hand you had everything going on in the world, all these fights and conflicts. How are they ever going to end? I didn’t know and I’m not one to answer, but for me “Shotgun Stories” was kind of a way of shrinking that problem down to a place where I could manage it in terms of my own world and deal with it. I was working on these two tracks from the very beginning.  

LN:  In your career, who would you say has supported you the most at this point?  We talked about Michael, the film wouldn’t be where it is without him.  What about for you?
JN:  My parents were huge. They put money and time, blood and sweat into this movie. My mom cooked three meals a day for an entire cast and crew of 15 people for a month. Housed them and cleaned up after them.  My dad was there shuttling people out to film sets. They have been there every step of the way.  They never once questioned my desire to do this or pull something like this off. In fact it was the opposite: pure encouragement.  And now my fiancée has been great. It’s not like, “When are you going to go get a real job?”  It’s like, “What do we need to do to make sure you get this much writing done?” My brothers too, my oldest brother Darrin, and Ben who [wrote the music]. Just a lot of family support.

LN: I wondered if David Gordon Green might come up in that answer.  I interviewed Craig Zobel   and David was a big reason that film happened.
JN: He’s very talented and so smart. Adam Stone, the guy who shot my movie, also shot [Zobel’s] “Great World of Sound”, which is interesting because they look totally different. David is just a friend of mine.  He’s been a mentor and friend throughout this entire process. He wasn’t on board officially as a producer until I’d actually finished a cut of the movie. I’d been sending him cuts and he was totally encouraging and when I finally said, “I’m done.  Where do I go from here?” He offered his support. It really was the second half of this film’s journey, which was getting it off my computer and out into the world. David and Lisa Muskat are a major part of the reason that happened. It’s interesting, people love to make comparisons aesthetically and creatively between “Shotgun Stories” and David’s movies and that has some of the least to do with it.  It’s more about a guy who is your friend who says I think you’re good and I think this film is good.  I’ll do whatever I can to help. David is the opposite of a narcissist. He did the same thing for Craig in “Great World of Sound” and others. I just consider him a friend.  He’s coming to the wedding.

International Film Circuit released Shotgun Stories at the IFC Center on March 26th and will follow this with a national platform release.