Breaking Baz Exclusive: Filmmaker Jeff Nichols On The Sexual Tension At Heart Of ‘The Bikeriders’ Movie Involving A “Love Triangle” Played By Austin Butler, Jodie Comer & Tom Hardy
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: Jeff Nichols spent two decades considering how to approach what would become his new film The Bikeriders because he did not want to glamorize motorcycle culture.
That’s a hard road to travel when the finished movie stars Austin Butler (Elvis), Jodie Comer (Killing Eve), and Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road), who aren’t exactly lacking in screen charisma.
Nichols has based his movie on the seminal work of photojournalist Danny Lyon, who rode with and snapped the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club for two years beginning in 1963.
His book chronicling his devilish association with the Outlaws was first published in 1968. Front and center are Butler as devastatingly handsome biker Benny; Comer as down-to-earth Kathy, unvarnished and clear-eyed, she sees through the biker bullshit; and Hardy as Johnny, the leader who kinda wants to be Benny. “Well, you don’t want to say they’re cliché, which is women are drawn to the bad boys and that stuff, because we all are, because I’m as attracted to Danny as she is, not in a sexual way, but in that way…and that was honestly kind of the purpose,” Nichols said. “The thing I created more than anything was the love triangle and how interesting for it not to be these two guys fighting over a girl, but to be this woman and this leader of this club fighting over this young man.” Nichols stressed that Hardy’s Johnny character is not attracted to Butler’s Benny in a sexual way, rather that Johnny sees Benny as being authentic, and that’s attractive to him.
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