'The Bikeriders' stars Austin Butler and Jodie Comer break down a pivotal scene where their characters Benny and Kathy meet for the first time. Jodie and Austin provide an inside look at working alongside director Jeff Nichols to create the moment where Kathy is introduced to the world of the Vandals, an intense moment full of allure and nostalgia.THE BIKERIDERS is now playing only in theaters, https://www.fandango.com/the-bikeriders-2024-233140/movie-overviewDirector: Funmi SunmonuDirector of Photography: AJ YoungEditor: Alex MeyersTalent: Austin Butler; Jodie ComerAssociate Producer: Emebeit BeyeneProduction Manager: Andressa PelachiProduction Coordinator: Elizabeth HymesTalent Booker: Meredith Judkins; Paige Garbarini (on set)Camera Operator: Lucas VilicichAudio Engineer: Gray Thomas-SowersProduction Assistant: Lauren Boucher; Shenelle JonesPost Production Supervisor: Christian OlguinPost Production Coordinator: Scout AlterSupervising Editor: Doug LarsenAssistant Editor: Billy Ward
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00There's this oil, moisturizer, or are you just that?
00:05I don't know, just naturally.
00:06You have that natural sheen.
00:07Yeah.
00:08Hi, everyone.
00:09I'm Jodie Comer.
00:10And I'm Austin Butler.
00:11And we're here doing Notes on a Scene with Vanity Fair for the bike riders.
00:15You see that?
00:18They're playing or something.
00:22Look at all of them whispering over there.
00:27So the scene we're about to watch is the moment in the movie where Kathy, my character, and
00:33Benny, Austin's character, they meet for the first time.
00:36And it's Kathy's initial introduction to the Vandals as a whole.
00:43Okay, so this is the one and only Tom Hardy.
00:47Exactly.
00:48And Tom is the, I guess, the king of the...
00:54He's the leader of the Vandals.
00:55The leader of the pack.
00:56He's the top dog.
00:59So here we have many members of the Vandals played by Boyd, Emery, Bo, and Carl.
01:07And these guys were incredible.
01:08I feel like whenever we were in these scenes, Jeff was often asking them to essentially
01:16improvise.
01:17And I feel like I was constantly overhearing all the stuff that they were coming up with.
01:22And I feel like they really created a little bromance.
01:28There was a lot of love going on here.
01:29There was a lot of love.
01:30There was a lot of love.
01:31Yeah.
01:32Yeah.
01:33I love this, what Carl's wearing here.
01:34It's just the vest with nothing else.
01:35Yeah.
01:36Oh, yeah, because Kathy makes that comment.
01:38In the real audio of Kathy, one of her vivid memories was that these guys had their belly
01:42buttons showing.
01:43Oh, yeah.
01:44That's right.
01:45She's like, I walked into this bar and these guys had their belly buttons showing.
01:49Yeah.
01:50Yeah.
01:51It's quite a fashion choice.
01:52They're all wonderful.
01:53I'm going to go.
01:54And that's when I seen Benny, standing over at the pool table.
02:03When I first met Jeff, he'd sent the script and then made me aware that he had like 30
02:08minutes of audio interviewing her in the 1960s.
02:12And I knew she was from North Chicago, but a lot of her vowel sounds were total contradictions.
02:16So it wasn't about like doing a great Chicago accent.
02:19It was just about kind of like dissecting it and trying to get the cadence right.
02:23She spoke very quickly.
02:25She was always on to the next thought while she was speaking about one thing.
02:28But yeah, some brilliant accents in this.
02:31That was the difference in my process was, and in a way it's freeing when you don't have
02:38any reference, but it also, then I had to sort of figure out, well, how does Benny fit
02:45into the tapestry of the whole project?
02:48And so I learned a lot about Benny from what everybody else said about him because he was
02:52never interviewed.
02:54I feel like this is a very iconic shot, right?
02:58This is the moment where Kathy sets her eyes on Benny for the first time.
03:03And she always kind of spoke about how when she set her eyes on him, she was like, oh
03:08my God, who is this guy?
03:10She's about to leave the bar and has stopped in her tracks and then goes back to her seat
03:16so she doesn't miss out.
03:18Yeah, I mean, the cinematography is so incredible.
03:21Adam Stone.
03:23And this moment as well is directly influenced by, in the photography book, there's an image
03:30of Benny and you just see the top of his head, but he's leaning over the pool table.
03:35And so that's this moment that we're capturing.
03:38And then we've got your Benny tattoo.
03:40Yeah, yeah.
03:41Just in case I forget my name.
03:42What's the point?
03:44It just reminds me who I am.
03:46Such an incredible shot.
03:48Do you remember the kind of like glass panes that were in the windows?
03:51And they had the pool table, jukebox.
03:55It was very, it felt very authentic.
03:58Like it was, you kind of felt like you'd step back in time.
04:02It was beautiful what the team had done.
04:04Boy, who's that good looking guy over at the pool table?
04:08I love your reaction in this moment because I couldn't see, I was so far away, I couldn't
04:13quite tell.
04:15And the reaction on your face is just always tickles me.
04:18Well, I don't think I'd spoken to Danny Lyon until we were on the shoot on set.
04:25And I actually think he came to set when we were shooting this scene because it was a
04:29huge ensemble scene, so everybody was in.
04:31And I just remember him saying that Cathy was, she was very smart.
04:36You know, she was kind of underestimated, but that she was smarter than them all.
04:40Yeah.
04:41And I think he told me that Benny was beautiful, but very dumb, if I remember correctly.
04:49Perfect.
04:50Yeah.
04:51Cathy, you don't want to go out with him.
04:54Why not?
04:55I don't look like the rest of these animals.
04:57Because nobody wants to go out with him.
04:59Why?
05:00Because he cracks up on his bike.
05:02Every time he gets up on his bike, he has an accident.
05:05Oh.
05:06Okay.
05:07Let me get you a pop.
05:08So this moment, this was, so Tom was sitting over, he's like sitting over here, and yeah,
05:33there he is.
05:34And he drew some angry eyebrows.
05:37Sorry.
05:38So that's Tom, with his spiky hair.
05:43And we were rehearsing the scene, and I still don't know if he was joking the first time
05:49he said it, but he said, you got to turn the chair around.
05:53And because we were figuring out how I was going to come up and see you.
05:57Because he kind of, the whole plan was that Benny kind of sneaks up, but you know, he
06:01kind of comes and she hasn't seen him.
06:04Yeah.
06:05And he shows up and says hello.
06:06And he told me to turn the chair around.
06:08And I took it as a challenge, and I said, I can, I'm going to turn that chair around.
06:12I'm Benny.
06:14Hello.
06:15I love your reaction here.
06:20These little eye movements, you are so good.
06:27So what are we doing here, just shooting the breeze?
06:31Oh God, the smoking, like so much smoking in this film, like these sets absolutely stunk.
06:41There was like a hue everywhere you went, you know, like a kind of just mist of like,
06:45the smoke was being so contained in this tiny little bar, which is, I guess, very real and
06:50true to what it would have, it would have been like.
06:53Let's talk about Aaron.
06:54Yes.
06:55Brilliant costume designer.
06:58I mean, every detail from what we're wearing to everybody that you see in the background,
07:03she thought about every detail here.
07:05I mean, what was great with Aaron was, I mean, she already has, I mean, she's so talented
07:09and she herself has such an innate sense of style and kind of instincts.
07:14So what was really fun was when we met for the first time, we just kind of chatted about
07:19the images that we had.
07:20Like I think I had three images of Cathy at the time and, you know, she asked me what
07:24I noticed or was there anything that I felt was really kind of necessary, that I wanted.
07:30And there was some things like, Cathy loved the tank, loved texture, you know, everything
07:34was kind of fuzzy or ribbed or, you know, really kind of lived in.
07:39Her pants always looked like they were a little bit ill-fitted.
07:43You know, a lot of the images of the women in Dani's work, you know, they were just immaculately
07:50kind of dressed, whether it be, you know, makeup or clothing.
07:54And Cathy was always a little bit, a little bit messy, a little bit undone, you know,
08:00looked like she'd kind of either come off the back of a bike or been carrying her kids
08:05and the kids had been pulling at her kind of beehive.
08:08And so it was those kinds of things that we we really wanted to keep.
08:16I guess.
08:20Well, I got to go home.
08:23Oh, OK.
08:40You got to go.
08:42I remember this bit when she's like, I got to go home.
08:45And you're like, go on then.
08:47You know, it's kind of like that moment of like, go on then.
08:49And she just stays there.
08:52You don't move.
08:53No.
08:53And then he goes.
08:55And then she's like, oh, God.
09:03One thing that I love when Jeff talks about is the the idea of nostalgia,
09:09nostalgia for a time and an environment that doesn't really exist anymore.
09:13Yeah.
09:14And that's, you know, some of what he was capturing with this
09:19is even as time goes on and these characters are now older,
09:24you know how they would look back on this time in life.
09:28When Kathy falls in love with Benny, she falls in love with all, you know,
09:31everything about him in a sense of his kind of he's not tethered to anything.
09:36You know, he's he's very free and and and does his own thing.
09:41And there's a mystery there and a law.
09:44And over time, those are the things that end up causing quite a lot of friction
09:47as the as the group becomes a little bit more kind of engulfed in crime.
09:53And I think as a result of that, she kind of wants to take him away
09:57from the vandals, you know, I guess, for them to, you know,
10:01experience love in a different way and for her to have him around her
10:04more kind of selfishly, but from a from a good place.
10:09And yeah. Great.