When we're with the ladies of The Runaways there's a lot of glum attitude and druggy malaise on display, so thank God for Michael Shannon as their Svengali producer Kim Fowley, who electrifies the movie like the lightning bolt that's often painted on his face. It's Shannon's most high-profile part since snagging an Oscar nomination in Revolutionary Road, though since then he's made Werner Herzog's My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done and will soon be seen in Jonah Hex and the HBO series Boardwalk Empire.
In real life, Shannon couldn't be more different from the wild lech he plays in The Runaways. Serious but also seriously funny, the actor sat down with Movieline last week to talk about working with all those young actresses, working in front of a camera in general, and working with the mysterious James Franco.
I interviewed Werner Herzog a few months ago, and he said you were his favorite actor right now.
He said that?
Then I interviewed James Franco at Sundance, and he said the same thing.
Holy crap.
So I guess my first question to you is, what kind of charm offensive do you have going on here, Michael Shannon?
[Laughs] It's the fruit baskets. No, that's wildly complimentary, to hear that from those two people. I made two movies that I really loved with both of them, a short film with James called Herbert White that was at Sundance, and of course, Werner I worked with on My Son, My Son. They were both great experiences. I don't know why I have this great fortune of being so admired -- I just show up and do the best I can. I guess I can kind of understand what they're going for sometimes. Maybe that kind of helps.
You already knew what Werner was going for, I'm sure, since he'd brought you on to do a few days on Bad Lieutenant.
Yeah, that was interesting. In a way, it was kind of like an...I don't know if "audition" is the right word, but he was like, "Come do this part on Bad Lieutenant, and then we can figure out whether [My Son, My Son] will work or not." So I said OK. Doing Bad Lieutenant was fun, to do those scenes working with Nic Cage. Man, that was awesome. He really went for it in that movie.
You really go for it in The Runaways. Do you ever fear you're going too over-the-top, or is that even possible when you're playing someone like Kim Fowley?
Yeah, you gotta look at the source. There are some people that are more animated than others. There are some people who are able to sit still and hardly move and some people that are all over the place. That's the panoply of life, I guess. Is that how you say that word?
I think so.
But you know, I guess one thing that might be why Werner and James said those things about me is that I'm really quite obedient to the director. I'm not belligerent, really; I kind of do what I do and look at them and say, "Are you happy?" If they're happy, then I don't really think much about it anymore. I feel like films are a director's medium. The director is the one who really has the hardest job on a movie, I think, and has the most responsibility for how it turns out.
So you're not the kind of actor who watches a film afterward and thinks, "Why did they cut that scene? Why did they use that take?"
Oh God! I can't even remember the takes after! I have a lot of respect for directors. I think directing a movie is one of the most difficult things you could choose to do in the arts, because it just never ends. I mean, it's so much work from before you even start shooting to photography to post-production. They probably sleep about three hours a night for about four months. I really feel like it's their vision, and if you can realize that, then why not?
Do you feel like you're doing comparatively little work as an actor?
No, I'm not saying it's easy. It's not easy to act in front of a camera -- my Lord, no it's not! It takes a long time to get used to if you're used to acting on stage. I guess there's some people like Steven Soderbergh who goes out and gets people who've never acted before and puts them in front of a camera and it's no big deal, but I guess that's probably because it's not their art form or whatever. They're just there, and it's like "What do you want me to do?" I guess that's what it boils down to, "What do you want me to do? It's your movie."
Earlier this decade, you acted in a lot of big Bruckheimer movies with tracking cameras and explosions. Is that the sort of trial by fire you needed to get used to acting in front of a camera?
Yeah, those certainly were eye-opening experiences. Working on something like Pearl Harbor, it was an incredible experience because we were in the actual place it happened, recreating it for a month. Every day, something would blow up and planes would fly around. I tried to remind myself, "Remember this, because this is a truly unusual experience you're having right now, and not just as an actor, but as a person. This is so bizarre and kind of sad and beautiful at the same time." Yeah, once you've been on a set like that, you've got a little bit more confidence, maybe, the next time you go to work. You've seen the boundaries of what it can be.
Well, tell me about the set of The Runaways. You were directed by a woman and virtually every one of your scenes is opposite women. Did that give things a different kind of energy?
Hmm. Yeah, it was kind of different. It's weird, because before you asked me that, I don't know if I'd thought about it that way. I remember there was a scene that had a man in it, and it was kind of weird. It was like, "What are you doing here? I'm so used to being with the women." I don't know, I'm not a real gender separatist. I think men and women have more in common than we give ourselves credit for, particularly when it comes to something like making a movie. We want the same thing, which is to tell the story. Look at Kathryn Bigelow directing Hurt Locker -- I don't think she was standing on the set the whole time thinking, "Oh, I'm a woman!" She just wanted to tell the story. For a movie like The Runaways about such a freewheeling subject matter, rock and roll, it was really kind of serious how we tried to get all the details right.
Kim has to say some pretty nasty stuff to these girls. Did you ever feel bad about some of the berating you had to do?
No. I mean, I think the thing I really appreciate about Kim and what is hard to imagine unless you try to do it, is that it's hard to walk into a room full of people -- particularly young people, or young women -- and tell them what to do and boss them around. To have some sort of authority in that situation is...I mean, before the take would start, I wouldn't think, "Oh, I'm about to say something risque to these young girls," I'd think, "I have to make them, like, listen to me and do what I tell them!" It's not something they're preordained to do -- when you tell a young person to do something, they say, "No. No, I won't." So how do you do that? That takes a lot of authority, and it's not authority that I'm sure I have. And they never seemed that disturbed by it, anyway.
They've probably heard worse from paparazzi.
I mean, it's Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning. They've seen a few things in their day. [Laughs] It probably would have been different if they'd gone out and found two unknowns who'd never done this before, but they're so sophisticated, the two of them.
Before we finish up, I wanted to ask you how you got involved with Franco and his short film.
That movie came about in the weirdest imaginable way. I was in the train station in Boston -- I think I had gone down there to do some press for Revolutionary Road. This guy in a baseball cap and sunglasses and a beard walks up to me with this goofy grin on his face, like, "Hey Mike." And I'm like, "Who the hell is that?" He's like, "It's James Franco." What? "What are you doing in the Boston train station? "And he says, "Oh, I'm getting a Hasty Pudding award from National Lampoon. Anyway, I'm gonna make this short film out of this piece of poetry I really like. Do you think you'd be interested?" And I'm like, "Uhhh, OK! Sure!" And he says, "What's your email?" So I gave him my email and then he walked off and got on his train.
And this is someone you'd literally never met before?
I think so! I mean, I'd seen him in stuff, and he'd seen me in stuff, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember meeting him before. It was a very, very surreal experience. Then he got back to me and we shot it in Virginia, a three- or four-day shoot. James took real good care of everybody, I was staying in a really nice hotel there. We had a blast. James is very, very creative, and I look forward to him making a feature because he's got great ideas and he's able to take advantage of the landscape he's in. He thought on his feet a lot -- he had a plan, but he also knew when to change it and do different things. He's a smart guy.
Good thing you were in that Boston train station that day.
Yeah, yeah. Fortuitous.
[Photo Credit: Jeff Vespa/Getty Images]