When you find out that Jeff Nichols, the acclaimed independent director of challenging independent dramas like Take Shelter and Mud, has a made movie about a superpowered child for Warner Bros., your first reaction is probably to wonder which DC superhero he’s tackling.
But in an environment riddled with Batman v Superman and Captain America: Civil War, the most interesting power fantasy currently in theaters is actually an original creation from Nichols’ own mind. Midnight Special is a sci-fi government chase film about a father (Michael Shannon) who kidnaps his own son (Jaeden Lieberher) from a religious cult that wants him back at any cost. You think you’ve seen films like it before, and in some respects you have, but in many others you definitely haven’t.
I spoke to Jeff Nichols over the phone to talk about the exciting new film and learn more about the origins of Midnight Special and, now that audiences have had an opportunity to see it, the film’s enigmatic ending. Is it hopeful or disturbing? And should we really care what it means? Nichols seems to have the answers.
Midnight Special is now playing in theaters.
Warner Bros.
Also: SXSW 2016 Review | ‘Midnight Special’ is Pretty Special Indeed
Crave: I think a lot of people are looking at Midnight Special and then trying to define by other films. “Oh, it’s a little like Firestarter” or “Oh, I saw Powder once.”
Jeff Nichols: Yeah.
Do you think in those terms? Do you think in terms of genre? Or did Midnight Special come out completely organically as a story?
I don’t think in those terms, to be honest, and I don’t think in those terms like this: I never hold up my story and try to make one-to-one comparisons, like “This is when a gas station blows up,” or “This is when this happens in E.T.” That would be an absurd way to write and really wouldn’t benefit anybody, I think, in terms of the exploration of this genre.
Now, what I do is I’m very clear about the genre I’m working in. I state it up front and then I kind of leave it alone. I stated very clearly up front in the writing process that I was making a sci-fi government chase movie, which obviously throws you immediately into the camp of those other films.
But I think genre is a really valuable tool. Often we talk just about it in terms of movies, kind of in terms of categories in the Blockbuster section. Really, genre is just archetype, and these are common languages and themes that we use in storytelling to have a shorthand with the audience, and I think that’s very valuable.
I think it’s great for marketing. I think it’s a good way to make an open invitation to the audience to come and see your film. But then I pretty much leave it at the door and that’s honestly just because of the style that I write in, you know? Once I get these characters going I’m just thinking about the characters.
Warner Bros.
At the same time, you’re promising the audience a sci-fi government chase movie and there are certain expectations that an audience member would come in with, wouldn’t they?
Sure, yeah, and isn’t that a great thing to have people’s expectations flipped around, potentially? It’s a dangerous thing to play with because if somebody wants to just go watch Close Encounters they’re going to be, probably, a little displeased with what they find [in Midnight Special]. But the hope is that people don’t want to just see the same movie again and again. The hope is they want a new experience, and that I’ve done enough of a job with the film that they start to attach the emotions in this film to these characters, and are affected by those things rather than just some past impression that they have from another from, you know? I think Close Encounters is great. I think you should put the DVD in every night and watch it. But that’s not exactly what I’m doing for people.
One of the things I was marveling at in this film was the way that you laid out information, and the way that scenes would subvert themselves. We meet Sam Shepard and he’s in an office, and he could be a government agent or a corporate billionaire, and then he walks outside and gives a sermon. Was that part of the appeal as well, to change those dynamics?
Yeah, you know, I think a good part of that is the style that I write in. I build these giant timelines for these things that go way, way back to like Mike [Shannon] and Joel [Edgerton]’s characters when they were kids, you know? I know what was happening with these characters long before the movie starts, and I know what happens to them long after it finishes.
What I’m trying to do is just take this very clean piece out of the middle of this timeline. If you do that you have to be really honest with where your characters are at in that part of the timeline. The way that you behave at a certain part of your life is different than the way that you behave later. This boy has been on this planet for eight years now, when we find these characters. They’ve been knowing him and having relationships with him for a long time. So it would make sense that they don’t ask the same questions we ask about this boy. They’re in a different part of their lives, and I think it’s usually part of a writer’s inclination to try and fold that backstory back into the film and that’s a tricky thing. It’s not always an honest thing.
Warner Bros.
You raise an interesting question: if you come up with a giant timeline for all of these characters and just try to carve out the most interesting slice, where do you start? Do you figure out the entire timeline in your head and then narrow it down, or are you already thinking when you start that this is probably going to be the most interesting part of the story, and then you work the timeline out around it?
I started with a mystery, myself. The first image I had was these two guys in a car, driving down the back southern roads at night with the headlights off, very fast. Then I started to ask my questions: why can they only move at night? Why are they running? Because if they’re driving very fast then they’re on the run, so who are they running from? Those were the first two questions, and the kid showed up in the back seat then. That’s when he got these powers.
And then you start building it out from there and it’s growing kind of like a… I don’t know, a bacteria or something, in all directions. It grows forward, it grows backward, and then you start layering things on top of it and everything else, and that stuff, that’s really where the plot details start to work themselves out. And then you dump this entire other thing on top of it, which is this thematic element, and that starts to shape everything so that when you are building that backstory, you know already that you’re starting to try to craft a film about parenthood and what it means to be a parent.
So then you go back to, naturally, not just the time that the boy was born but the time that the boy was taken away from his parents. That would be a really important part. So I didn’t write the boy’s entire grade school history but I knew that there would be this fulcrum point in their relationship with The Ranch, and with Sam Shepard’s character. So that scene was very explicit in my mind, you know?
Warner Bros.
How do you decide how much the audience is going to find out by the end of this? We learn a lot but there’s a lot of things we don’t see, like for example, the visions that Alton gives people.
Right, right, right. Well, part of that is the barrels in Jaws. It’s just better not to see the shark. I think the visions, early on, if they would just start to describe them in too much detail it would just be kind of verbose and boring.
But I also thought that kind of got away from what people were getting out of the experience of communing with the boy. What I really think they were getting out of that experience wasn’t so much a view of the future or a view of another world, or anything like that. What they were getting was a sense of comfort. It was a feeling, which is what one of the people says in the film, you know? It’s not about the specifics of what’s there, it’s about how it makes you feel in relationship with the universe. And that’s really interesting. And that you can talk about. People can talk about how this thing makes them feel. So that’s how I specifically answered that one problem that you bring up.
I think the same applies to the end of the film. If you know too much, if there’s too much point of view given to that other side of things… I don’t know, it just closed it down, all of this opportunity. So I just wanted to hint at the possibility of what could be there. I wanted to hint at who these people were and what they would be, you know? It just seemed like… I don’t know, it just seemed like the right way to go.
I feel like the ending of this movie could be a bit of a litmus test. [SPOILER ALERT.] because you don’t really go into how the world reacts.
Right.
So for me I’m assuming there’s riots, there’s looting in the streets. Other people might assume it could be the dawn of a new era.
Sure.
You said you have an idea of what happens after this…
Yeah, yeah.
Warner Bros.
Do you think it’s a hopeful future? I know you don’t want to give it away…
Well, I certainly think I [lean] into hopefulness. I try to always do that because it’s kind of my world view. That’s more specific to Mike Shannon’s character, and to Kirsten’s character, even to Joel’s character. They see the hope of something in the future. So I don’t really make any comment about the world at large.
It’s interesting that you bring up the word “litmus.” It’s kind of the way Take Shelter always worked. You know a lot about a person judging by the way that they interpret the end of that film, you know? It’s kind of like, are you a glass half full person or are you a glass half empty? The conversations I have with people are absolutely fascinating because I think what happens is, people walk into movies with their own world views built in, their own belief systems intact, and they apply them to these films. When you don’t give them all the answers it allows them to place their own world view on things, and I think that’s fascinating.
I find it fascinating as a writer to put together these scenarios that allow people to put their own point of view of them, their lens on these things. I don’t know, I think it’s a really cool experience. I think a lot of people are frustrated by that experience but I also think it’s kind of fascinating.
It’s fascinating, but as the writer/director/storyteller, do you ever think that maybe people have come to your stories just to hear your point of view? To hear the storyteller’s answers, and not to come away asking their own questions?
Oh they do get my point of view, they just don’t get the plot. You know, plot is overrated, and endings are just about plot. What you’re talking about is plot and nobody gives a shit about plot. What people really care about are emotional transference, from me to the audience. That’s my stated goal as a filmmaker, is to come up with an emotion that I feel in my own life that is extraordinarily palpable, and says something about the way I feel about the world, and show that to people and hopefully show them in a way that they can experience it.
That’s what happens at the end of this movie, in my opinion, for people that are really in the movie. And if it doesn’t happen, that’s when they can get mad at me. Like, that’s when they can tear up their ticket and ask for their money back. But I don’t think I’ve let them down in that particular arena. I think if you show up and pay attention, then you’re going to be able to take part in this emotional experience. Now, that doesn’t mean that your’e going to get the final conclusions of a plot, but my point of view is not a plot. My point of view is an emotion and that’s what’s important.
Top Photo: Warner Bros.
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
