By: debbie lynn elias
Long before I saw MUD, Matthew McConaughey had me excited to see it. Raving about the film – and working with writer/director Jeff Nichols – back during the Spirit Awards, McConaughey had me chomping at the bit for a couple of months before I was able to see first hand what his excitement was all about. With only three feature films under his belt to date, MUD is the shining jewel in Jeff Nichols’ triple crown. The film is visually stunning. The story beautiful. The characters and their world indelibly etched on your heart. To paraphrase the Bard, this is the story, these are the characters, of which films are made on. A master class in storytelling and character development matched by the masterful performances of the actors.
With personal emotion and feeling that translates from the page to the screen to the audience, MUD is already one of my Top Ten picks of 2013. So just what is the key to Jeff Nichols’ creativity, truth and resonance? I sat down with him for this exclusive interview to talk about MUD, first love and the freedom of his kind of filmmaking.
I have to congratulate you, Jeff. I fell in love with MUD. I like your prior films, but MUD, already in your short career, this is the crown jewel in your Triple Crown. It is stunning. The story is beautiful. It‘s shot beautifully and very metaphorically.
My DP [Adam Stone], he knows what he’s doing.
Adam did an amazing job. It‘s so gorgeous. Using the water, nature, the sun and the trees, Ben Richardson did so much of that with Beasts of the Southern Wild; if I didn‘t know for a fact that Ben had not shot this, I would have thought it his work.
That’s a beautiful movie, too.
Where did this story of MUD come from? This is a romance from the male perspective which I so appreciate as it‘s something you really don’t see. You saw a few films back in the 30’s with Cary Grant, but not really in “modern day.”
Yes it is. Absolutely. Right. I think where that starts for me is I always pick a genre to work in and then I do everything I can to work against it and dismantle it. In this film, in a weird way, it kinda started as a “getaway film.” There was a guy hiding out on an island in the middle of the Mississippi River and I was like, “How can we distort that and work around that? Let’s tell it from the point of view of a 14 year old boy because how much more interesting is it to discover the man rather than be the man on the island?” I started asking questions about who this boy was and what was going on in his life. I don’t know. I think so often films that talk about romantic love are from the female perspective or, whenever men are talking about it love, it’s always tangled with sex and everything else and this was – I wanted to make a movie about first heartbreak which has actually very little to do with sex. It‘s really just about falling head over heels for a girl and getting your heart broken and how palpable that is. I remember when I was talking about Take Shelter, I would talk about, “Well, this movie’s about anxiety and I feel anxiety for the rest of the world and for my personal life, it was palpable.” The same goes for this feeling. It’s different because it’s something in my history, it’s something I”m thinking back on when I was 14 and I got my heart broken. But, it’s a palpable feeling. If you have an emotion that is that intense – I physically can remember what it felt like – I think that’s a great thing to build a movie around becauseI think really the only shot you have at affecting the audience. So, I was thinking about first love and it felt like a severe enough feeling to anchor an entire movie on. Then you just start to kind of build it out from there. This was a tough film to talk about in a way because there’s so much to talk about.
And you don‘t want to reveal!
Of course not! But I thought of this [story] back in college. I’ve carried this film with me longer than either of my other two. I just kept adding stuff and adding stuff. It‘s about adolescence and first love and male mentors and a dying way of life in the south and parents and home. There’s so many things I feel I put into this movie that it’s hard to hit them all as talking points.
You put “life” into this movie.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. And this is a bit more of a practical answer but, this was a part of my home state that I hadn’t really known before, the river. I found this book in the public library. It was a photographic essay of people who made a living off the river. I saw these houseboats for the first time. There was a mussel shell diver in that book with a homemade diving helmet and I thought, “Thatfs too good. I have to use that.” It was weird. It was my home, my home state, and there was this whole culture and this whole environment off the river that I got to rediscover for the first time. That played such a big part because that river and the pace of that river became the pace of this film. There’s a fluidity to the film that isn‘t in my other two films; partly by design and partly out of pragmatic reasons because we couldn’t afford to do it. But on this film, I knew I wanted to accomplish movement. This is more of a directing thing than a writing thing, but I wanted this film to flow – to flow like childhood, to flow like adolescence and to flow like the river.
It definitely does do that. One of the key things that I truly loved watching the film, again, with your lensing, you catch the ripples in the sand and you can see the tide flowing and the reflective nature of the sun on the water, just as each of these characters is reflecting back on their lives and events. It‘s soft and subtle.
It’s funny. I didn’t grow up in a small town. I grew up in Little Rock, which is a small city. It’s by no means a big city. I was a suburb kid. But, my parents grew up in a really small town and so summers, holidays, everything, I was back in that small town with my grandparents. So, I had this really beautiful look into small town Southern life. I think had I grown up in a small southern town I might not like it as much. Itfs like I had insider access with an outsider’s point of view. The thing about Ellis’ character – and this is a long way to talk about this – is that he doesn’t want to leave this river. He loves this river. He loves this place. So many people would see those houseboats and go, “Yes! Get me out of there!” My wife would say that [laughing]. But Ellis loves this place and he loves this place because of the environment because of the river and the nature that‘s all around it. That place was teeming. When I first went down there, I had a second cousin who had one of these houseboats and he took me out for 3 days. It’s just beautiful. I saw Bald Eagles, I saw black panthers, I saw snakes hanging from trees. It’s alive. It‘s a giant living organism this river. It was not hard to imagine a 14-year old boy thinking this was the center of the universe and to have to leave it would just be devastating.
You really capture that wonder and joy of Neckbone and Ellis that had me feeling like they‘re the modern day Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
There’s a scene in Tom Sawyer where Tom swims out to a sandbar and takes a nap. I read it in 8th grade. I was sitting in kind of a dreary classroom and I was like, “Ahh. I want to be doing that.” There’s an essence in that book – it’s the essence of childhood. It’s why MUD can probably stand apart from the two I made before and probably ones to come is because since it’s about kids, it has to have a different tone. It doesn’t mean it’s not serious. It doesn’t mean it’s not realistic or anything like that. But it has to have a lighter feel to it.
That wide-eyed wonder.
Yea! They don’t have the pressures of the world weighing down on them yet. The adults around them do, but they don’t have that yet. If we’re gonna truly tell this from their point of view, there has to be a levity to it. It’s not comedic. It’s what it hopefully feels like to be a kid. That’s what I get out of Mark Twain’s stuff. He nailed that. I wanted to try my hand at it.
Matthew McConaughey and I briefly talked about MUD at the Spirit Awards and I hadn’t seen it yet. He was going on and on about it. So enthusiastic.
It’s really funny. He’s seen it now, gosh – I kinda stopped watching it after a period of time and he doesn’t! He’s like, “Man! It makes me cry every time. Makes me cry!” We were actually at the premiere Sunday night and McConaughey didn’t watch it and his wife was with us. She’s lovely. The waiter was like, “Ma’am, what do you want?” And she said, “Nothing. I’m going back to watch the movie. I don’t feel right being here and not watching it. It’s playing.” [laughing] And that’s genuine! They really like it. I couldn’t have a better actor and a better supporter.
Talking about your actors, Tye Sheridan. We saw a glimmer of what he had to offer in Tree of Life. This is a tour de force performance.
He‘s the real deal.
He is mesmerizing. What led you to Tye and how did you know he was “the one”? And equally important is Jacob Lofland [Neckbone]. Because if those two didn‘t work as best friends…
Yep. Yep. Well, they’re always in the frame together. So if one’s dropping the ball, we’re screwed. I’ll start this part of the discussion by saying when you write a movie that hinges on the performance of two 14-year old boys, you just have to kind of have hope that when you start looking they’re gonna be there. You can’t cast them early. You can’t go find the kid that was good in that other thing because he’s already too old. I didn’t have the benefit of seeing Tree of Life even. I obviously saw it before I made MUD, but I had Tye cast pretty much when I finally had seen the Tree of Life by the time it came out. Sarah Green is one of my producers who produced Tree of Life and she just said, “You’ve gotta meet this kid.” I think they called him their “torpedo”. If the scene was getting flat they would send Tye in and he would just “bop-bop-bop.”
And then of course I talked to Jessica [Chastain] who I’m friends with and she was like, “You can’t do better.” I take Sarah’s and Jessica’s opinions and I weigh that very heavily. I was already excited to meet the kid and then I walk in and it‘s just like, “There‘s Ellis.” He was just sitting there. It was literally like, “What are you doin’ here, Ellis?” Down to the haircut, the way he spoke, the boots he was wearing. He’s from Elkhart, Texas which is very small, actually from Palestine, Texas. He lives on ranch land. He knew how to ride a dirt bike, he knew how to drive a boat. He was fully formed as Ellis right there in front of me, not to mention just “that stuff” which is great and very important, but you meet him and he’s quiet but not shy. There’s a difference. He’s observant. That’s what Ellis is. That‘s what the whole movie was based on; a boy looking up at the people around him, the adults around him, looking to see if he could find an example of love that works. And he’s looking in terrible places! And Tye just struck you that way. If you asked him a question, hefd answer it politely. I think Ellis is a polite boy.
Even Neckbone is polite. He‘s a little rougher around the edges, but still polite, and I think it’s because he doesn’t have the maternal influence to add a little more propriety to him. But both are nice, polite little Southern boys that we don’t see anymore. But they are out there!
Absolutely! They exist! They’re in my movie! You should see these guys on the press route. I wish you could talk to them because they’re just like that. The point I try and make whenever I talk about them is – because I think so often to get truly honest performances out of kids what people typically do is they remove all the dialogue and they say, “Okay, we’re gonna just kinda let you speak. This is what’s going on but I’m not gonna give you lines to memorize because that gets pretty stilted pretty fast.” I think it’s what Malick does too. Tye never had a script for Tree of Life. You’re just kind of getting moments out of these kids. But this script was so specifically written that I knew that I had to have these kids say lines and say the lines that I wrote. You get a long way down that path by casting a kid who‘s very similar to the part but these kids “did” this. They ingested this material, these lines, and they gave it back to us in an honest, believable way. That‘s acting. It’s not some fluke of some kid showed up and we ran the camera at the right time and we caught an honest moment. It’s far too complex for that. I want everybody to know that “they did it” – they did the movie. They said the lines. I think that makes it all the more extraordinary and their performances need to be known as such. It was them. It wasn‘t me. They did that.
How did you then find Jacob to wrap into the meld with Tye?
We had Tye. We had a great local casting agent in Little Rock. I worked with her on my first film. Her name is Sarah Tackett. They put an ad in the State paper. There’s only one big State paper in Arkansas. It just described Neckbone; kind of as a smart-ass, but it was a paragraph that explained the character. Jacob’s mother read it and went, “That sounds like Jacob!” [laughing] They live in, I don’t even know the name of it – the town, it’s between two other towns that I don’t know the names of and it’s the smaller “pass through” town. I was getting these QuickTime clips of the hundreds and hundreds of boys that they were seeing and people were sending in videotapes and everything. [This was] because of the ad, not just from agencies, because I didn’t want an agency kid. I was looking at those because you never know, but I didn’t have hope. I wanted a real kid. I’m scrolling down and I just see this face. His mouth was shut and I thought, “That looks like River Phoenix.” And then I click on it and he opens his mouth and those teeth come out and then his voice came out and it was just him talking about his hobbies. I immediately wrote an e-mail to Sarah Green and said, “Holy Hell! Jacob Lofland!” And the first plane ride he ever had in his life was to fly down to Austin to read with Tye and I. We were in a motel, or hotel room, which he was excited about because they had a swimming pool – again, something else he hadn’t experienced – and we had moved the furniture out. They had the scene. I had laid out a diagram of the boat, when they first saw the boat [up in a tree]. He said the lines well and everything, but I wanted to see if he could shake it up. So I said, “Alright. Don’t worry about the lines. Just pretend like you’re seeing this boat for the first time.” And Tye, having been through Tree of Life, he just immediately was, “Look up here! Oh, I wonder what’s in here.” And he started going around. Jacob sat there a second and just watched him like, “What the hell is this?” After about 30 seconds he saw what was going on and jumped right in. From that point on, I had Neckbone and Ellis. They were fully formed right there in front of me. The second time that Jacob Lofland got an airplane was to go to France for Cannes.
As fantastic as the kids are, you also add great depth and breadth by bringing in Joe Don Baker and Sam Shepard. And we won’t even talk about Michael Shannon because it‘s a given you had to have him in the film somewhere.
I wrote that part for [Shannon]. I also wrote that part for Sam Shepard. I wrote that part for McConaughey. I wrote that part for Ray McKinnon. I like to do that. I like to write parts for people I don’t know and then hopefully I then befriend them and they‘ll say yes.
Does this ever backfire?
No. Not yet! I’ve been real lucky because they’re our there. And I don’t mean bad actors, I mean actors you don’t want to work with. I’ve heard the legends and I’m terrified of it but I’ve been so lucky in every instance. Matthew [McConaughey], Reese [Witherspoon], Sam [Shepard], Ray [McKinnon], Michael [Shannon], Jessica [Chastain] – all these people – Shea Wigham, who was in Take Shelter , I love him – they all end up owning the work and taking the work more seriously than I could imagine.
You bring all these heavy hitting guys in but what’s also interesting is that you still have their male perspectives and the testosterone flowing, and then you toss in Reese Witherspoon. You could have two very wimpy simpy women in MUD, three actually when you look at Ellis’ first love, but instead what you have are women making very specific decision for very specific reasons and not just on a whim.
I think the women are the strongest characters in the movie.
They are extremely strong but we need to see the male perspective in order to see the women’s perspectives.
Yep. It’s all point of view, all from Ellisf’ point of view. Those are the rules. You don‘t get to go see their side of the story. It‘s all through Ellis. But if you’re gonna be judged by anyone, Ellis is a great person to be observed by, it’s not even “judged”. He believes in Juniper [Witherspoon’s character]. He falls in love with Juniper. She’s the first one to break his heart in that bar scene. But I think all these characters are making hard decisions for themselves to try and better their lives. I see the mother character and I see Juniper’s character as very similar. They have to make a very tough decision in order to improve their lives. I understand that. I don’t see them as vengeful women or anything like that. I see them as women who, it’s just time for them to make a choice in their life and it has to be separate from the men that are in their lives. I see both those characters as very similar and very strong. Ultimately how they are observed and how they impact the story thought, it comes back to that male point of view. They have to break these men’s hearts. Like, Ellis’ father [Ray McKinnon] has his heart broken. Ray and I talked a lot about that. We often talked about Senior, the character that he plays, kind of knowing in his heart that he’d married a woman who was probably better than him and that’s always bothered him and now it’s manifested itself. There’s a lot of thought put into those characters.
With the work that you‘ve already done between the writing and directing, what‘s the greatest gift that filmmaking has given you?
So much. It’s my life. I can answer that question kind of pragmatically or be a little bit more lofty with it. The loftier answer is, it‘s given me freedom which doesn‘t often exist in this business. I‘ve been allowed final cut on all of these films; on the first one because it was my money and no one was paying attention. On the second one because we didn’t talk about it and it just happened. And on the third one it was contractual. I had to have it written in this time, for sure! [laughing] But it‘s given me the freedom to “figure it out.” I‘m learning. On all these three films the learning curves are extreme, but I’ve been given freedom to make mistakes and make the movies that I wanted to make. I‘m very proud of all three of these films. I got to buy a house! I didn’t pay cash, but. . .
Well, that just means you have to make a 4th and 5th and 6th movie!
Yes! To pay for the house now. It got me a down payment on a house, I should say. That’s good. I’m not a renter!
What’s the greatest thing you learned in making MUD?
It just reaffirmed the experiment that I’ve been trying – that, in order to connect people, because that’s all I‘m trying to do, and have them feel an emotion that I felt, you just have to get really specific and really personal. [MUD] has reaffirmed that. If I talk about an emotion or feeling that I’ve felt and I‘m true to that, then it will translate to the audience. That’s a good thing to learn.
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