This article appears in the new issue ofDEN OF GEEK magazine.
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ForJeff Nichols,The Bikeriders long road trip began with a handful of photographs.
The only clear details were the leathered texture of his jacket and the gleam flashing off his Harleys steel.
When discovering this image and many like it in 2003, Nichols was in no way a motorcycle connoisseur.
To this day, big bikes terrify him.
Credit: Kyle Kaplan/Focus Features
But he instantly knew how the picturestaken by New Journalism legend Danny Lyon between 1963 and 1967made him feel.
And he needed to express that sensation onscreen.
Photographs can lie to us, Nichols says 21 years later on a sunny Texan morning.
Theyre very romantic, and Dannys photographs are romantic mainly because the people are.
I mean, theyre beautiful with the hair and the bikes and the clothes.
Theyre a promise, however misleading, about freedom and belonging to a tribe.
Nichols recognized that allure from his own life.
In the mid-90s, I was tangentially a part of that, Nichols recalls.
But eventually, it grows into this bigger thing and becomes an affectation of itself.
Like a snake eating its own tail.
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The Bikeridersmovie is about the moment the snakes fangs sink in.
Its the death of a specific kind of American cool.
The lifestyle went from a party toin some instancesa criminal enterprise.
Yet perhaps the most important player and true voice of the filmand with athickChicagoan voice at thatisJodie Comers Kathy.
While photographs might lie, Comers Kathy never would.
Five weeks later, I married him, she boasts with pride.
This anecdote is something the real Kathy said almost verbatim in an interview in Lyons book.
And it was always clearly the voice of the movie.
Shes the most interesting one, Nichols says.
Were not doing anybody any favors.
I kind of immediately fell in love with her, Comer tells us.
I cant lie; she just felt like such a force of nature.
Comer even saw something of her grandmother from Liverpool in this Midwestern hurricane.
It pulls people in, and I recognize Kathy had that quality.
Theyre all so tricky, Comer says of the accents shes become famous for sliding between.
So we recreated that in the film.
Tellingly, too, Hardy also had a mantra he frequently muttered: You cant be half a gangster.
And that charisma is no put-on, according to the director.
And when he walks up and shakes your hand, you realize that youre meeting one.
And its not just about handsome good looks, the filmmaker insists.
Thats a misunderstanding of what it takes to be a movie star.
Theres something vibrating under their skin that makes them undeniable.
Austin has it, Tom has it, Jodie has it.
Consider the titular bike riding in the film.
she chucklesshe vividly recalls the evening she spent on a camera rig above the Ohio River.
But thats because, by the time cameras rolled, he had mastered riding antique Harleys without a helmet.
Thats pretty impressive since, as Nichols tells it, he mightve fibbed his way into the role.
He was like, Yeah, we rode Spykes onElvis.
But at that point I hadnt seen it, so I was like, well, that makes sense.
I thinkElvis rode motorcycles.
(Some cast mates were advised not to ride at all.)
I nearly fell out of the car.
I was so excited about it, the director beams.
Twenty-one years after staring at a photo, he rediscovered a lost glory.
The Bikeriders opens in theaters June 21.
