Jeff Nichols: ​‘I think I can call myself a capa­ble direc­tor at this point’

He’s direct­ed four films in nine years and has anoth­er in post-pro­duc­tion. He’s received major hon­ours at some of the world’s biggest film fes­ti­vals and is regard­ed as one of America’s most excit­ing film­mak­ers. And he’s still just 37. So how does Jeff Nichols do it? We sat down with the ace writer/​director of Take Shel­ter, Mud and Mid­night Spe­cial to find out.

LWLies: The last time we last spoke, around when Mud was out, you spoke about how each of your films was part of a big­ger plan – where does Mid­night Spe­cial fit into that?

Nichols: Mid­night Spe­cial is the cul­mi­na­tion of this tra­jec­to­ry that I’ve been on since Shot­gun Sto­ries. Mud gets a bit of an aster­isk sim­ply because Shot­gun Sto­ries, Take Shel­ter and Mid­night Spe­cial were all writ­ten about how I was feel­ing in my life right then. Mud was a film about how I was feel­ing in high school – get­ting my heart bro­ken. So that films sits to the side. But Mid­night Spe­cial is kind of like my grad­u­a­tion. I feel like I’ve checked all of my tech­ni­cal box­es. I think I can call myself a capa­ble direc­tor at this point.

What box­es had you not checked before?

Well, Shot­gun Sto­ries was just about mak­ing the thing. Get­ting it done. Peri­od. On Take Shel­ter I start­ed to move the cam­era but in a very con­trolled way, real­ly think­ing about point of view for the first time. Not just to the char­ac­ters with­in the scene but the cam­era in rela­tion­ship to the char­ac­ters in the scene. Every­thing in that movie moves through a slow push in, which is real­ly just indica­tive of the super­nat­ur­al pow­er that is the storm. That move­ment is the pres­sure build­ing, that anx­i­ety that’s push­ing down on Michael Shannon’s char­ac­ter. I’m a big believ­er that when you move the cam­era you imme­di­ate­ly begin to indi­cate point of view. So if you’re mov­ing the cam­era on a char­ac­ter that’s sit­ting on the couch, you’re putting the point of view into an omni­scient place, which worked for Take Shelter.

Before Mid­night Spe­cial I’d nev­er real­ly moved the cam­era with the char­ac­ter, oth­er than small hinged moves here and there – because I’d nev­er used a Steadicam before. Mud was the first time I knew I real­ly need­ed to float the cam­era with these boys, I want­ed it to move like that riv­er. So now, after those three films, I feel like I have con­trol over cam­era move­ment as it relates to cam­era point of view, sto­ry point of view and char­ac­ter point of view. But I still didn’t feel com­fort­able with light.

Mid­night Spe­cial is all about light. Not just about the boy and the light in his eyes, but the chal­lenge of shoot­ing the film at night. Tak­ing my crew – Adam Stone my cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, Michael Roy my gaffer who’s been with me since Take Shel­ter – and light­ing these things in such a way that was aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing to me but still felt hon­est and nat­ur­al and real. I shoot on film and when you shoot film at night it betrays itself some­what – it los­es that organ­ic qual­i­ty that makes it great because you have to bring in so much light. It’s very easy for things to feel lit. So that’s what we were over­com­ing with this movie.

There’s a lot more going on in this movie, more gun fights, more car chas­es, more CGI…

Yeah, the CGI box I had checked on Take Shel­ter and the shoot out box I checked on Mud, so it was real­ly just the car chas­es that were left. Shoot­ing in cars sucks. It’s the worst thing ever. This movie required a lot of shoot­ing on real roads, we didn’t do any fake stuff with the cars. We tried also not to use a process trail­er wher­ev­er pos­si­ble, mean­ing the actors are real­ly dri­ving in a lot of the scenes. We had to build some pret­ty seri­ous rigs to shot the car stuff. So yeah, that was anoth­er box checked. Step­ping away from Mid­night Spe­cial, for the first time I feel like I’ve got all the tools that a direc­tor needs laid out and I’m con­fi­dent enough in my abil­i­ty to use them. All the pieces are final­ly start­ing to fit.

What about your next film, Lov­ing, which you’ve already finished?

Lov­ing feels the most directed.

What does that mean?

Well it’s a sto­ry that’s based on real peo­ple, which I feel sep­a­rat­ed me from the sub­ject mat­ter a lit­tle bit. I think I focused on the direc­tion a lot more. Plus, in every film up to Lov­ing, I’ve real­ly been try­ing to increase the scope, so each one is a big­ger bud­get, a big­ger con­cept… Lov­ing was the first time we took a step back­ward in bud­get and I just con­trolled every part of it. I felt like I had mas­tery over the cam­era – I got every bit of cov­er­age I want­ed. Every shot, exact­ly as I want­ed it. I’ve nev­er done that before.

Is that a dan­ger­ous­ly addic­tive feel­ing to have as a director?

It’s what you want. These things aren’t a mis­take. I’m not wan­der­ing through the woods won­der­ing what my movie’s about. I know what it’s about, and I want to be giv­en the time and the resources to just go out and get it. I mean, it’s hap­pened on all of the movies I’ve done, but the lev­el of anx­i­ety has decreased with each one because on Shot­gun Sto­ries, fail­ure wasn’t an option. It had to be finished.

On Take Shel­ter, the plane could’ve hit the moun­tain. If we slipped up, we didn’t have anoth­er day. We couldn’t afford it. We didn’t have the actors. My wife was eight months preg­nant. I need­ed to get that suck­er shot in those 24 days. It was very stress­ful. Mud was the first time I start­ed to relax into it, because I had the sup­port sys­tem nec­es­sary to do so. That was the first time I had the sys­tem of the film­mak­ing process behind me. I had that on Mid­night Spe­cial too, but we were try­ing to pull off real­ly big things for more mon­ey and time than we real­ly had.

You talk about big­ger bud­gets and big­ger con­cepts – can you see your­self one day mak­ing, say, a Mar­vel movie?

Prob­a­bly not. Now, I wan­na make big­ger movies. I wan­na make a $100m movie. But unfor­tu­nate­ly, I’ve made enough films now in this style, with this process – my team’s process – that I feel like it would be impos­si­ble to give that up.

We hope you nev­er do.

Lord knows they keep ask­ing. But it’s mine to give up. It’s mine to fight for.

Mid­night Spe­cial is released in the UK 8 April.