In many ways, Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders and Lana Del Rey x Quavo’s “Tough” achieve the same dichotomous thing: acknowledging the death of what America used to “mean”/represent, while also making one nostalgic for it now that it’s gone. Or at least, that’s the intent. Some, however, are immune to such feelings of nostalgia, knowing full well that America was never anything other than what it currently is: a false promised land built on a literal Native American burial ground. (Hence, all the haunting things that consistently happen on it.)
In The Bikeriders, which was released at the beginning of summer (specifically June 21st—which, not so coincidentally, happens to also be Lana Del Rey’s birthday), the slow then gradual decline of the greatest marketing scheme ever created (read: the United States) is starting to make itself known through the “fringe,” embodied by bikers like Benny (Austin Butler) and Johnny (Tom Hardy). Only the so-called fringe has become the mainstream during the late 60s/early 70s period that The Bikeriders covers. Having increasingly come to represent the disillusioned and displaced everyman in America. Particularly as those who survived the throes of the Vietnam War were starting to come back with all manner of disenchantment when it came not only to the United States, but to the “American dream” itself. The veneer cruelly unmasked by the things they saw “over there” and could not then unsee back at home. Itself a battleground between the rich and the poor, the “normals” and the “freaks.”
This is part of why Johnny’s biker gang, the Vandals Motorcycle Club, started to turn sour as this new “element,” freshly returned from ‘Nam, began to render the nature of the club into something dark and violent. Something that Benny’s girlfriend, Kathy (Jodie Comer), must bear the brunt of in many ways. In fact, she can easily be seen as the “Lana Del Rey figure” of the outfit, all melancholia and style.
Of the sort that finds its way onto “Tough,” yet another ode (whether country or trap or however one wants to bill the genre) to Del Rey’s favorite subject: Americana. More specifically in this case, American resilience (also present on a song like “When The World Was At War We Kept On Dancing”). So it is that she paints the picture in the opening verse: “Tough like the scuff on a pair of old leather boots/Like the blue-collar, red-dirt attitude/Like a .38 made out of brass/Tough like the stuff in your grandpa’s glass/Life’s gonna do what it does/Sure as the good Lord’s up above/I’m cut like a diamond shinin’ in the rough/Tough.” As for the “blue-collar” mention, it’s no secret that Del Rey also likes to play up her “poverty” angle, therefore making herself a stronger representation of the American dream—i.e., pulling oneself up by their bootstraps and creating success of their own no matter what sort of background they come from.
Were it not for the fact that The Shangri-Las’ “Out in the Streets” is the constant (and era-appropriate) refrain of the film, LDR’s “Tough” could have fit in perfectly (though only as a supplement to “Ride”) with the overarching theme and “feel” of The Bikeriders. Which is that, through all the pain and agony of what it is to live in America, Americans still have the uncanny ability to “endure”—mainly by repeating, as though it’s a Jesus Prayer—that America is the “greatest country in the world” (much as New Yorkers like to repeat the same thing about their specific shitty city). Granted, this has become a much more difficult mass delusion to uphold in the twenty-first century. A difficulty that began far sooner than the aftermath of the 2016 election, arguably all the way back in 2000, when George W. Bush actually did steal the election (as opposed to Donald Trump insisting that’s what Joe Biden did in 2020).
As a matter of fact, in 2000, Del Rey would have been fifteen years old, turning “sweet sixteen” in time for 9/11 the following year. Bearing witness to these two indelible political events—the “election” of George W. Bush and the destruction of the World Trade Center—would have been formative to her obsession with a simultaneous elevation of Americana and continuous “hat tip” to American decay. A decay that many baby boomers would, in turn, trace back to the 1960s, when the conservatism and repression of the decade before that had to be blown to bits in order to “deprogram” from the lie of it all, as it were. Hence, Joan Didion famously quoting W. B. Yeats when she pronounced “the center will not hold” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
In the American summer of 2024, the same sentiment remains. Especially as the latest fraught election plays out like yet another bad soap opera (except this one has life-altering effects on a global and individual level). Perhaps that’s why the alignment of these two palpable homages to Americana and the decay of America itself (more notably in The Bikeriders) showed up during a season of theoretical “levity.” Alas, there is no such thing anymore in the climate of the U.S. at present. For even “light” fare like Charli XCX’s Brat has to be laden with the analysis that during times of recession, people just want to party to forget their troubles. And by “troubles,” one also means the existential dread of being an American forced to keep living the lie that insists the place is a “dream.”
The thing is, America has long been in a recession…only not the kind that anybody wanted to address until the elephant in the room (no Republican pun intended) became so big, it ended up trampling over everyone. Now no longer able to ignore it. At least not quite so easily. Which is precisely why two pop culture moments like The Bikeriders and “Tough” coincided during the same season. Because when the erstwhile “glamor” of Americana is paraded in the current era, even the suits in charge know that it’s too great an insult to the audience’s intelligence to not include some tinge of the bleak reality that belies it. In fact, such an acknowledgement is all in keeping with the old capitalism-related adage, “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
Because The Bikeriders is filled with so much death and tragedy, it’s to be expected that writer-director Jeff Nichols might want to throw the audience “a bone.” Even if it’s a bone coated in a subtly bitter taste for audiences who know how to gauge the real meaning behind Benny (Austin Butler) and Kathy’s (Jodie Comer) so-called happy ending. One that, throughout the course of the film, doesn’t seem like it will actually happen (and, in a way, it doesn’t). This thanks to the storytelling method Nichols uses by way of Danny Lyon (Mike Faist) interviewing Kathy from a “present-day” perspective in 1973, after the numerous power struggles and shifts that took place within the Vandals Motorcycle Club since 1965 (on a side note: the photography book itself documents a period between 1963 and 1967).
In the beginning, the motorcycle club was “governed” by Johnny Davis (Tom Hardy), who also founded it. The inspiration for doing so stemming from catching The Wild One starring Marlon Brando on TV. And yes, Hardy is very clearly mimicking the “Brando vibe” in this role, while Austin Butler as Benny, his protégé, of sorts, embodies the James Dean spirit instead. Which, one supposes, would make Kathy the Natalie Wood in the equation, with Benny and Kathy mirroring a certain Jim and Judy dynamic in Rebel Without A Cause. Except the fact that Judy was ultimately much more game to live a life of rebellion and uncertainty than Kathy, making a pact with Jim to never go home again (like the Shangri-Las said, “I can never go home anymore”). As for Johnny, he serves as the John “Plato” Crawford (Sal Mineo) of the situation in terms of feeling Benny pull away from him once he becomes romantically involved. Indeed, the running motif of The Bikeriders is the “competition” between Johnny and Kathy to maintain a hold over Benny and influence which direction he’ll be pulled toward in terms of a life path.
While Johnny wants him to agree to take over the Vandals and lead the next generation of increasingly volatile men, Kathy wants him to “quit the gang” altogether and stop risking his life every single day. A risk that exists, more than anything, because of his stubborn nature. This stubbornness, of course, extends to an unwillingness to remove his “colors” whenever he walks into an out-of-town bar that doesn’t take kindly to “gang pride.” Which is precisely how The Bikeriders commences, with Johnny refusing to take off his jacket when a pair of regulars at the bar he’s drinking in ominously demand that he does just that. Johnny replies, “You’d have to kill me to get this jacket off.” They very nearly do, beating the shit out of him and almost taking his foot clean off with a shovel. And yes, if Johnny’s foot had been amputated, he might as well have died anyway, for his life means nothing to him without the ability to just ride. Which is exactly why he begs Kathy, while she visits him in the hospital, not to let them remove it. Fortunately for his sense of “manhood,” they don’t and Benny is instructed to avoid putting stress on his foot for at least six months while it starts to heal.
Advice that seems to go way over Johnny’s head as he decides to show up to the hotel where Benny and Kathy are staying to invite him to attend the Vandals’ biggest motorcycle rally yet. Kathy is appalled by both Johnny’s suggestion and Benny’s eager willingness to accept despite his current physical state. Constantly fearful that he’s going to end up hurt because of how reckless he is with his body and in his actions, Kathy reaches a breaking point when her own life is put in jeopardy as a result of hanging around the Vandals for too long. Continuing to keep the company of these club members even as the club mutates into what someone from the sixties would call a “bad scene.” The infiltration of more cutthroat, sociopathic youths like “The Kid” (Toby Wallace), as well as new members fresh back from Vietnam, riddled with PTSD and correlating hard drug addictions, means that the Vandals is no longer the same entity that Johnny had envisioned when he initially founded it.
The last straw for Kathy happens at another gathering of the members during which Benny ends up leaving in a rush to take one of the OG members, Cockroach (Emory Cohen), to the hospital after a group of new members beats the shit out of him for expressing the simple desire to leave the club and pursue a career as a motorcycle cop. With Benny gone, there’s no one around to protect Kathy from being attacked by another group that tries to force her into a room and gang rape her (this being, in part, a result of mistaken identity because she’s tried on the red dress of another girl at the party). Johnny manages to step in just in time to keep the man from harming her, but the emotional damage is done. Kathy can no longer live a life spent in constant fear and anxiety like this. Thus, she gives Benny an ultimatum: her or the club. In the end, Benny sort of chooses neither, running out on both Kathy and Johnny when each of them tries to strong-arm him into bending to their will.
It is only after hearing news of Johnny’s murder (at the hands of The Kid, who pulls a dirty trick on Johnny that finds the latter bringing a knife to a gunfight) that Benny decides to go back to Chicago and seek out Kathy for something like comfort. For she’s the only one who will truly be able to understand this loss. In the final scene of the movie, Danny asks what happened with Benny after all that. She informs him that the two are now living happily together (having relocated to Florida, as Kathy had originally suggested), with Benny working as a mechanic at his cousin’s body shop. Even more happily, for her, is the fact that he’s given up riding motorcycles altogether. In short, “he don’t hang around with the gang no more.” This being one of many key lines from the Shangri-Las’ “Out in the Streets,” which is played frequently as a musical refrain throughout the film.
That it also plays again at the end of the movie—an ending that, on the surface, seems “happy”—is telling of the larger truth: Benny has lost an essential piece of himself in choosing to give up riding. So, even though Kathy smiles at him through the window and he (sort of) smiles back, the playing of the song, paired with the distant sound of motorcycles in the distance as he stares wistfully into the abyss, makes it seem as though, like the rider of “Out in the Streets,” “His heart is [still] out in the streets.” However, in contrast to the woeful narrator of the song, Kathy isn’t one to acknowledge, “They’re waiting out there/I know I gotta set him free/(Send him back)/He’s gotta be/(Out in the street)/His heart is out in the streets.” Like most women, she would prefer to keep Benny inside their domestic cage, safe from harm. Safe, in effect, from truly living. For there is no purer freedom Benny feels than what he experiences on the open road.
All of this isn’t to say that the ending isn’t “generally” happy. Though that perspective also depends on one’s values. And yes, The Bikeriders makes a grand statement about the sacrifices that are frequently necessary for a relationship to work (and also just to secure a little more lifespan longevity). In Benny’s case, it was giving up the essential core of his identity. Which begs the question: if that’s what it takes to make a relationship work, then can one really be all that happy? Judging from the “sunken place” look on Benny’s face, the answer is looking like a no. As Mary Weiss puts it, “I know that something’s missing inside/(Something’s gone)/Something’s died.” And in place of that is what society refers to as an “upright citizen.”
Although Jeff Nichols’ latest film, The Bikeriders, is absolutely correct in wielding The Shangri-Las’ “Out in the Streets” as the constant musical refrain throughout the narrative, one song that feels as though it’s “missing” in many ways is Lana Del Rey’s “Ride.” However, since Sofia Coppola is typically the only director to condone using anachronistic music in a period piece, it makes sense that “Ride,” originally released in 2012, couldn’t be “accurately” used in The Bikeriders. And yet, even placing it in the credits would have been a compromising consolation to those who can’t unsee or unhear “Ride” within the context of a story like this.
It’s possible that Del Rey herself, like Nichols, came across Danny Lyon’s seminal photography book (also called The Bikeriders) at some point before she hit the big time. After all, the book was released in 1968, a prime year within the decade that Del Rey is famously “inspired” by (complete with the Manson Family, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan and Woodstock). So it’s not unfathomable that Lyon’s work would have crossed her path. And since she describes “reading Slim Aarons” as though he were a writer instead of a photographer, it’s apparent that Del Rey does know how to “read” imagery and repurpose it. One of the key gifts of any postmodern artist. And oh, how Del Rey put her postmodern skills to use in the video (or “short film,” if you prefer) for “Ride.”
Directed by Anthony Mandler, who had spent the better part of the 00s directing Rihanna videos, “Ride” opens with the now iconic image of Del Rey on a tire swing (that looks as though its rope extends all the way to the heavens), swaying back and forth (à la Mariah Carey in the “Always Be My Baby” video) with her dark curled hair billowing in the wind. As though to presage the idea that she would “go country” with Lasso, Del Rey also sports cowboy boots and a fringed denim jacket—emblems of her love for “the country America used to be.” Which, in her mind, was a country where a girl could be “fragile” and “delicate” without condemnation. Where rugged men like John Wayne still existed, and were idolized by other men, as well as sought after by women.
This rugged archetype is present throughout “Ride” in the form of the rough-hewn, usually much older bikers that Del Rey rides with. Whether “playing” (a.k.a. languidly leaning over the machine) pinball while one of the bikers lecherously hovers behind her or letting another man brush her ribbon-bedecked hair, it’s clear that Del Rey yearns for a time when “men were still men,” as it is said. The kind of men that Lyon documented in those years from 1963 to 1967. Men that didn’t fit into mainstream society—whether because of the way they looked, dressed, thought or acted. The kind of men that find community only through “just riding,” as Del Rey would say.
These are the bikeriders that Nichols brings to life onscreen, with Johnny (Tom Hardy) and Benny (Austin Butler) positioned as the embodiment of camaraderie (and yes, even a father-son sort of dynamic) within the outlaw motorcycle club niche. But it is Kathy Bauer (Jodie Comer) that acts as the true anchor of the story, with her character serving as the important feminine/outsider perspective needed. In some ways, Del Rey does mirror Kathy’s role, not merely aesthetically, but in terms of being “taken in” and glamored by this lifestyle she never knew before. At the same time, Del Rey asserts that she’s just as much a rider—therefore a true part of the gang as opposed to just a wifey—as any of the other boys. This is her tribe in ways beyond the romantic or sexual, something that separates her from Kathy, who ultimately finds that she just wants to settle down and lead a normal, quiet life. A task that’s impossible to achieve with a man like Benny. He who refuses to ever surrender to that oh so hideous word and concept: responsibility.
An aversion that Del Rey, in this nomadic “persona,” can certainly identify with. And, in turn, identify with the type of men who pursue this life as the only thing they can really “commit” to. This much is evidenced by the opening of her monologue: “I was in the winter of my life, and the men I met along the road were my only summer.” Here, too, it’s interesting to note she says “winter of my life” rather than “winter of my youth,” as though she knows that those who embrace the transient, rebellious biker lifestyle are doomed to “live fast, die young.” A small tradeoff, in their eyes, for being able to experience pure freedom.
That feeling is displayed in the “Ride” video as Del Rey sits on the back of a motorcycle with the wind whipping in her face (“I hear the birds on the summer breeze”). This kind of unbridled, undiluted liberty is also shown in a scene from The Bikeriders where Benny guns his bike down the streets and highways in a high-speed police chase. By cutting them off at a red light, he gains ground and takes to the open road, letting out a loud cry of joy as he passes by a signature silo of the Midwest. Of course, that sense of victory and liberation is soon counteracted by the realization that he’s out of gas, and will now have to surrender to the police when they catch up.
For those who can’t fathom taking such risks for the “mere” sake of feeling free—from the pressures of society, family and even so-called friends—Del Rey addresses it best when she also mentions in her monologue, “When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I had been living, they asked me why. But there’s no use in talking to people who have a home. They have no idea what it’s like to seek safety in other people. For home to be wherever you lie your head.” Further explaining that she has “an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about. And pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me.”
The same goes for Benny in The Bikeriders (and, to a lesser extent, Johnny and Kathy). He has to be free, no matter the cost. No matter if it means alienating others or alienating himself from anything resembling a “future.” Nothing else matters but the ability to cut and run, to take to the open road whenever he feels the call. Something Kathy can never quite grasp, which is exactly why “Out in the Streets” is so perfect for describing their relationship, for its lyrics speak directly to how stifled and repressed Benny feels now that “he don’t hang around with the gang no more.” As our woeful narrator, Mary Weiss, also describes in the song, “He don’t comb his hair like he did before/He don’t wear those dirty old black boots no more/But he’s not the same/There’s something ‘bout his kissing/That tells me he’s changed/I know that something’s missing inside/Something’s gone/Something’s died/It’s still in the streets/His heart is out in the streets.” A characterization that fits Benny to a tee by the end of the film.
And yet, for as tailor-made as “Out in the Streets” is for The Bikeriders, so, too, is “Ride.” For Del Rey even speaks from a Kathy-esque perspective when she pleads, “Don’t leave me now/Don’t say goodbye/Don’t turn around/Leave me high and dry.” At the same time, she knows that, when you live this life, it’s filled with perpetual goodbyes and moving ons. From her own Benny-centric view of things, that’s exactly why she likes it, can’t get enough of it.
As she says in the closing monologue of the “Ride” video, “Every night, I used to pray that I’d find my people. And I finally did, on the open road. We had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore. Except to make our lives into a work of art. Live fast, die young, be wild and have fun.” This might as well be the Vandals’ mantra, too.
At another moment, she declares, “I believe in the country America used to be.” This line unwittingly speaks to an overarching theme of The Bikeriders, which is an acknowledgement of an America in increasing decay, and one that is, accordingly, evermore morally bankrupt. Even so, Del Rey still insists, “I believe in the person I want to become. I believe in the freedom of the open road. And my motto is the same as ever. I believe in the kindness of strangers [as does Blanche DuBois]. And when I’m at war with myself, I ride. I just ride.” Much the same way Benny does. For, even though Kathy and many others outside/on the periphery of the motorcycle club might not understand it, it can best be summed up with the Del Reyism: “I am fucking crazy. But I am free.”
Thus, while the baleful, sustained “ooooh” at the beginning of “Out in the Streets” is a perfect fit as a musical refrain for the film, it has to be said that Del Rey’s almost equally baleful “mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm” (though some will say it’s an “ooooh” not an “mmmm” sound) opening to “Ride” is as well. Not to mention the fact that the plot of her “Ride” video is très The Bikeriders oriented (well, minus the part where she’s vibing out in a war bonnet a.k.a. “Native American headdress”). And so, it’s hard to say, within this ouroboros of being inspired by Danny Lyon’s photography, if maybe Nichols wasn’t in some way also inspired by “Ride.” Either way, the song’s absence in the film is partially what makes it simultaneously feel as though it’s there, out in the streets like a sonic specter.
One wonders, sometimes, if there was ever truly a period in U.S. history that was “golden,” so much as the nation being in an ever-increasing state of decline from the moment it was roguely founded. For while the present set of circumstances befalling the United States has rightfully convinced many Americans that things can’t possibly get more dystopian/reach a new nadir, to some extent, that has been the story of America for most of its relatively brief existence. And yet, starting in the early sixties (circa 1962), it was apparent that the United States was already beginning to experience the symptoms of some major “growing pains” unlike any they had ever known. A seismic cultural shift was afoot, and perhaps one of the most notable signs was the increase in “outlaw” motorcycle clubs across the country.
Such as the one created by Johnny Davis (Tom Hardy), leader of the Vandals Motorcycle Club. An “MC” based on the real-life Outlaws Motorcycle Club that Danny Lyon was a member of from 1963 to 1967 (two years before Easy Rider would enshrine “the culture”), becoming one for the purpose of being able to authentically photograph and generally document the life and times of this “fringe” society. It is Lyon’s book that serves as the basis for Jeff Nichols’ fifth film, The Bikeriders (the same name as Lyon’s photographic tome). And, although Johnny is the founder of the Vandals MC, it is Benny Cross (Austin Butler) who serves as the “true” representation of what it means to live the biker lifestyle: being aloof, mysterious (through muteness) and not at all concerned with or interested in settling down in any one place, with any one person. That is, until the anchor of the story and its telling, Kathy Bauer (Jodie Comer, wielding her best impression of a Midwest accent), shows up one night in the bar where the Vandals hang out. As she retells it to the film version of Lyon, played by Challengers’ Mike Faist, a friend of hers called her up and told her to come by and meet her there.
From the moment Kathy walked in, she said she had never felt more out of place in her entire life. This being further compounded by all the ogling aimed in her direction. Creeped out to the max, Kathy tells her friend she’s going to leave, but is stopped in her tracks by the sight of the muscular Benny standing in front of the pool table. She decides to go back to her chair, waiting for the inevitable moment when he’ll come over and talk to her. But before that happens, Johnny approaches her first, assuring that he’s not going to let anything happen to her. Kathy’s response is of an eye-rolling nature and, when she and Benny finally get to talking, she still tells him she has to go. And she does…but not without being pawed on the way out. So pawed, in fact, that when she makes it back onto the street, her white pants are covered with handprints. Alas, the pursuit isn’t over, with Benny casually walking outside, going over to his motorcycle and mounting it as Kathy watches, realizing that the hordes from the MC are coming out to essentially force her to take a ride with him so as to avoid their wolf-like, unsettling nature.
From that night onward, Benny waits outside her house once he drops her off, sitting on his motorcycle with stoic determination. Which, yes, comes across as even more stalker-y than Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) showing up to Diane Court’s (Ione Skye) house in Say Anything… to hold a boombox over his head and play Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” Even though Kathy already has a live-in boyfriend, Benny just keeps waiting. Irritating the shit out of the boyfriend with his presence until he finally splits in a huff, leaving the door open, so to speak, for Benny to make his move without Kathy being able to have any excuse to “resist” him. Although she starts out by telling Danny that her life has been nothing but trouble ever since she met Benny, with him constantly getting in brawls, being thrown in jail, etc. (indeed, it smacks of the sentiment behind Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please”), she admits that they got married just five months after meeting. Thus, her house effectively becomes another home away from home for many of the boys in the club. A hangout where motorcycles parked on the sidewalk vex Kathy to no end as she warns them that the neighbors will start to complain of a “bad element” in the vicinity.
Ironically, of course, the main reason many of these boys chose to join up was because they were deemed a “bad element” based on their appearance alone. As Johnny’s right-hand man, Brucie (Damon Herriman), tells Danny, “You don’t belong nowhere else, so you belong together.” Basically, the misfits create their own “utopian” society where they can at last find acceptance in a world that has otherwise rejected them. As Johnny Stabler (Marlon Brando) puts it to Mildred (Peggy Maley) in 1954’s (or 1953, depending on who you ask) The Wild One, when she asks, “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?”: “Whaddaya got?” In short, these are the men rebelling against everything, including their own effective banishment from “polite” society. (And, needless to say, Johnny is inspired to form the club in the first place as a result of watching this movie.)
While Lyon’s original book documents years going up to 1967, the film version of The Bikeriders goes up to the early seventies, with things taking a shift toward the decidedly sinister as the end of the sixties arrived, and more and more of the types of men joining up were drug users and/or recently returned from Vietnam with the PTSD to go with it. As Lyon himself remarked while still part of the club, “I was kind of horrified by the end. I remember I had a big disagreement with this guy who rolled out a huge Nazi flag as a picnic rug to put our beers on. By then I had realized that some of these guys were not so romantic after all.”
To that point, many who had tried to remain in the “lavender haze” of America’s postwar “prosperity” in the 1950s were starting to realize that maybe capitalism and communist-centered witch hunts weren’t so romantic after all, either. The sixties, indeed, was a decade that shattered all illusions Americans had about “sense,” “morality” and “meaning.” This perhaps most famously immortalized by Joan Didion writing, “The center was not holding. It was a country of bankruptcy notices and public-auction announcements and commonplace reports of casual killings and misplaced children and abandoned homes and vandals who misplaced even the four-letter words they scrawled. It was a country in which families routinely disappeared, trailing bad checks and repossession papers. Adolescents drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins, children who were never taught and would never now learn the games that had held the society together. People were missing. Children were missing. Parents were missing. Those left behind filed desultory missing persons reports, then moved on themselves.”
Like Didion, Lyon was also part of the New Journalism “movement” in news reporting. He, too, inserted himself into the situation, into the “narrative.” One ultimately shaped and experienced by his own outsider views (like Didion documenting the “dark side” of Haight-Ashbury hippies in 1967’s “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” quoted above). And what his photos and their accompanying interview transcriptions told the “squares” of America was this: their precious way of life was an illusion built on a house of cards. By a simple twist of fate, they, too, might find themselves as one of these “lost boys” or as one of the women who loved them. And oh, how Kathy loves Benny, even though it’s to her emotional detriment.
With that in mind, it’s no wonder that the musical refrain of The Shangri-Las opening “oooh” in “Out in the Streets” keeps playing throughout the film (because who knows more about biker boys than the Shangri-Las?). A constant callback to remind viewers of the track’s resonant lyrics, including, “He don’t hang around with the gang no more/He don’t do the wild things that he did before/He used to act bad/Used to, but he quit it/It makes me so sad/‘Cause I know that he did it for me (can’t you see?)/And I can see (he’s still in the street)/His heart is out in the street.” This song foreshadowing what Benny will end up sacrificing for Kathy by the end of the film.
Though, ultimately, the sacrifice is a result of knowing that the motorcycle club will never be what it was during its pure, carefree early years. Years that were untainted by vicious, violent power struggles—this most keenly represented in The Bikeriders by a young aspiring (and ruthless) rider billed as The Kid (Toby Wallace). It is his way of life, his lack of regard for anything resembling “tradition,” “integrity” or “honor among men” that most heartbreakingly speaks to how each subsequent generation of youth becomes more and more sociopathic. Whether in their bid to prove themselves as being “better” than the previous generation or merely exhibiting the results of being a product of their own numbed-out time. Either way, in The Bikeriders, the generational divide will prove to be the undoing of both sides, “old” and young.
Incidentally, this might be most poetically exemplified by a scene of Kathy and Benny watching an episode of Bewitched where Dick York is still the one playing Darrin, not Dick Sargent. Obviously, York was the superior Darrin. Not just because he was the original, but because he exuded a sleek, effortless sort of class that Sargent didn’t (though, funnily enough, York ended up leaving the show because of his painkiller addiction, related to the health issues he had sustained from a back injury while filming a movie five years before Bewitched—a meta detail as Benny is also laid up in bed due to his own “work-associated” injuries). The same goes for the old versus new guard motorcycle club members in The Bikeriders.
Jodie Comer is no stranger to rave reviews, but The End We Start From is the first time she’s received them for the unfamiliar role of a mother. The Emmy winner has briefly played mothers in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and The Last Duel, but Comer considers Mahalia Belo’s survival drama to be her first proper exploration of motherhood and all its nuances. Based on Megan Hunter’s book and Alice Birch’s adapted screenplay, Comer plays a character simply credited as “Woman,” and at the start of the film, her water breaks around the same time that London is hit by a devastating environmental crisis, resulting in mass flooding.
With a new baby in tow, Comer’s character and Joel Fry’s husband/father character retreat to the countryside like the rest of the city, but food shortages and civil unrest soon cause their young family to separate, amplifying the challenges of being a new mother. So Comer’s character and her baby known as Zeb, the only named character in the film, have to find sanctuary and food on their own. Comer ultimately worked with 15 different babies in the role of Zeb, and it presented a new challenge for her as babies are basically improvising all the time.
“They don’t really take direction or notes, and you are at the mercy of that. You have to be present, and it can create really beautiful and spontaneous moments,” Comer tells The Hollywood Reporter. “You just have to roll with it and work with it, and there can be a real freedom in that once you get over your brain initially going, ‘This isn’t what it’s supposed to be.’”
The month of December was originally going to be quite memorable for Comer, as her acclaimed work in Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriderswas also supposed to be released on Dec. 1. However, due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, New Regency and 20th Century Studios balked at releasing the pic without actor promotion, and once the strike was resolved on Nov. 8, New Regency instead found itself looking for a new distributor. Focus Features then stepped up for a June 2024 release. Naturally, Comer is disappointed by this course of events, but less so for herself and more so for Nichols, who’d been doing months of press to support his sixth feature film and first film since 2016.
“I’m a big believer in things happening when they should. I think it’s a shame, obviously, but especially for Jeff. But I think the film is going to be really supported and really celebrated at Focus [Features],” Comer says. “And I am really excited that we are all going to be able to support it and speak about it in a way that we couldn’t this year. So it’s a shame, but I think it’ll all work out for the best.”
There was once a time where Comer would’ve played Josephine in Ridley Scott’s recently released Napoleon, but due to Covid’s impact on schedules across the industry, her other commitment to Suzie Miller’s one-woman play, Prime Facie, led her to exit what would’ve been her second film with Scott, following 2021’s The Last Duel. Comer’s decision worked out quite well as she now boasts a Laurence Olivier award and a Tony Award for the role of Tessa Ensler.
“That was a choice I had to make and I didn’t look back in a sense,” Comer admits. “I knew I really wanted to do the film, but now, Josephine is Vanessa’s [Kirby] role. I’m so happy for her and I wish her all the success with that movie. A lot of this industry is sliding doors, and I do feel like I was always supposed to do that play. So I was happy with my decision.”
Whenever a high-profile role is up for grabs, Comer, being a young, award-winning actor, ends up on most casting shortlists, and she certainly finds her name being thrown around in online casting rumors, namely Fantastic Four’s Sue Storm. And while such rumors get fans’ hopes up for better or worse, Comer finds the whole situation to be slightly amusing.
“It’s so funny because people come up to me — even friends and family — and they’re like, ‘Are you doing X, Y and Z?’ And I’m like, ‘No,’” Comer says. “I’ve always felt very clear on where I want to go, and some rumors that come up may not necessarily be something I’d be interested in right now. But I’d never shoot them down because who knows where I’m going to be or what I might want to do in years to come. People change, their interests change. So it’s always just fascinating, and sometimes, I’m like, ‘Where did they come from?’”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Comer also discusses The End We Start From’s dance party with Benedict Cumberbatch and Katherine Waterston, as well as the elaborate prosthetic that covered her middle and upper body.
So where did The End We Start From fall on your timeline of conquests?
(Laughs.) On my timeline of conquests, this script came to me when I was in the rehearsal process of the London run of PrimaFacie. It’s quite hard to remember, but I remember the script coming through with our director Mahalia Belo’s name attached. I wasn’t familiar with Megan Hunter’s book, so I read the book and the script before I met May [Belo], and I was really struck by the story. I’d always wanted to work with Mahalia after seeing one of her films on Channel 4 many moons ago. So I was really delighted when I saw her name, and I was really excited about her vision. I could see what she wanted to explore on camera and how stripped back and bare she wanted to go and how much she wanted to portray a truthful representation of motherhood, the good and the bad. And then we started shooting it four weeks after I’d finished the [Prima Facie] run in London, so it was all pretty quick.
Did Benedict Cumberbatch’s company first approach you with it?
Yeah, SunnyMarch.
Jodie Comer in The End We Start From
Republic Pictures
What’s most frightening about this story is that it doesn’t feel too out of reach. I’m sure new parents felt a version of this during the pandemic, but it doesn’t seem like a distant future.
I completely agree with you, and hopefully, that’s why it will potentially have a greater impact or move people in a particular way. I feel like we can see ourselves mirrored within this story, and I connect with something more if it feels like it’s more based in reality and is less extravagant. Don’t get me wrong, the CGI and visual effects in this film are incredible, particularly when you look at independent film. But this was more about an exploration of how we behave on a human level. How would we potentially cope with this? Especially when you look at Woman’s situation of being a very, very new mother.
I recently spoke to Daisy Ridley about playing a mother for the first time, and outside of briefly portraying her Star Wars character’s mother, plus another short stretch in TheLast Duel, I’m pretty sure this was your first substantial turn playing a mother, as well.
Yeah!
Normally, you’re focused on your character’s wants and needs, but with a child in the equation, did you lead with their wants and needs?
Absolutely. There was a lot of prep, and there was a lot of time spent with the babies. The first babies I met were eight weeks old and they were tiny. I was terrified [to hold them], and my hands were shaking. But I was very fortunate as well that one of my best friends had just had a baby before I started filming. So I was able to ask her the very personal questions that I couldn’t necessarily ask one of the new mothers or midwives I’d just met, and that was invaluable.
The wonderful thing about working with babies is that they do what they want to do. They don’t really take direction or notes, and you are at the mercy of that. You have to be present, and it can create really beautiful and spontaneous moments. You just have to roll with it and work with it, and there can be a real freedom in that once you get over your brain initially going, “This isn’t what it’s supposed to be.” Some of my favorite moments within the film are when we’ve been able to capture the baby and you see things from Zeb’s perspective.
Jodie Comer in The End We Start From
Republic Pictures
When she’s tending to her foot in the forest, there’s an exchange between her and Zeb that felt like it could’ve been impromptu. Was that the case?
We were in Scotland in the teeming rain, and we always liked this idea of [Woman] being like, “Can you carry me now?” She was just so exhausted. So there was always a moment of something in the script, but I don’t think it was necessarily on paper.
I definitely had some impromptu moments with Katherine [Waterston], who plays O. The moment where she finds the eyelash on my face and blows it, that was improv. And then we were shooting the moment on the beach, and I said to May, “I feel like she would give her a kiss.” And May said, “Well, don’t tell Katherine. Just try it.” So that’s also in the film, and I think that came from our shorthand and relationship that we developed with each other. So there were a few moments, and there’s probably a lot with the baby doing something that we didn’t expect. The baby was probably the best at the improv. (Laughs.) An Improv star, I have to say.
Katherine Waterston and Jodie Comer in The End We Start From
Republic Pictures
You worked with 15 different baby Zebs. In the States, there’s a 20-minute rule, so did you also have to swap babies every 20 minutes in the U.K.?
Yeah, and I was like, “I think these babies are onto something.” (Laughs.) But they do get swapped out every 20 minutes. There were a couple of babies for each age bracket. So you could be in the middle of a really emotional scene when the baby has to go, and you then have to manufacture what you just felt when the baby was there. So there are things like that that you just have to accept, and it felt a little strange at first. When you’re on a tight schedule, you’ve got so much to get in such a short space of time, but you learn to deal with it.
Zeb is the only properly named character in the film. Your character is credited as “Woman,” while the rest are just initials. What was the rationale there?
Well, in the book, Zeb was the only one who had a name. For script purposes, it would’ve been an absolute nightmare if nobody had any sort of name, so everybody was given letters. But I loved Megan’s choice, and I’m really curious about viewers’ experiences and whether they will be very aware and think, “Oh wait, we don’t know what these people are called.” But what it enables us to do is attach ourselves in a different way. Like you said, this could be any of us, and there’s something about that choice that almost intensifies that a little bit.
Yeah, I suppose it’s also meant to symbolize that their identities in the old world are no more.
Yeah, what is your identity within this new space?
Benedict Cumberbatch and Jodie Comer in The End We Start From
Republic Pictures
You, Katherine, and Benedict have a dance party at a certain point, and the characters desperately need that release. Did you also need that catharsis after performing such heavy material for however long?
(Laughs.) I was laughing the other day with May at a Q&A because I remember that Friday night so vividly. There was a full moon and the moon was so big, and Benedict had come in for a day’s filming. We danced so much, and I remember so vividly that we only got two takes of that. [DP] Suzie Lavelle was on handheld camera, and we again had limited time. So we did the first take, and I remember May coming over to me and saying, “Just take it down a bit.” (Laughs.) I suddenly realized I was dancing because I hadn’t had that release myself. I hadn’t been out dancing myself, and it’d all been very, very full on. So, yeah, that really made me laugh because I was definitely going for it.
Every department was on their game, especially makeup and prosthetics. When her water breaks and her home starts flooding at the same time, did the belly prosthetic do half the work for you during that harrowing sequence?
Yeah, I was honestly just so excited to have the opportunity to wear a prosthetic like that and see myself as I potentially would be if I was pregnant. When do you get that luxury or that insight? But the prosthetic was incredible. In the opening sequence, I had a prosthetic on from my neck to my waist. It took over three hours to get on, but it was so beautiful.
There’s quite a little bit of nudity within the film. Before we started to film, Mahalia and I went to a little cafe in North London to have a full English breakfast, and we sat with the script and went through all of these moments. We spoke about the significance of them and what it is that they’re actually saying. So those moments always felt very important to me and it was very important not to shy away from them. But as soon as you have something like that on you, it almost feels like armor. So it was beautiful to be able to see a mother’s body in that way, and for me, it was so transformative. It makes you walk differently. It makes you hold yourself differently. So it was good to experience that, and I tried to remember it for the moments that I didn’t have the real prosthetic on.
The end of a day on a film set, TV set and stage, which one leaves you most exhausted?
Theater, definitely. Theater is very physical, and that can’t be underestimated. It was something that I didn’t appreciate before. There’s also something about the energy that’s present and shared within a theater. More oftentimes than not, you could be completely exhausted, but you go home and your body is vibrating. So it can take a little while to come down off of that.
Jodie Comer in The End We Start From
Republic Pictures
Once you arrived on the End We Start From set, did you feel pretty sharp after all the mental exercise of a one-woman show?
I think so, yeah. When I went on to The End We Start From, I was suddenly like, “Whoa, what do you mean we’re not shooting in order? What do you mean we have ten minutes to do this scene?” And I suddenly realized, “Oh wow, I’ve actually been living through an entire story every night, sometimes twice a day, for the past three months.” So it’s a very, very different process, and I had to readjust again. I had to be on the ball and remember where it is that you’ve come from, even though you might not have shot that scene yet, and also be aware of where you may go. So that took me a minute.
Whenever there’s a coveted role in town, your name comes up in rumors and whatnot. And while I’m sure it’s flattering and validating on one level, is it somewhat stressful since expectations are being formed that are beyond your control?
I definitely don’t get stressed about it, but it’s always interesting. And it’s so funny because people come up to me — even friends and family — and they’re like, “Are you doing X, Y and Z?” And I’m like, “No.” And they’re like, “Oh, well, it says online that you’re doing it.” And I’m like, “I’m not doing it.” But I don’t think I’d ever get stressed out about that kind of stuff. I am so clear in what it is that I want and in a sense of my gut feelings. I’ve always felt very clear on where I want to go, and some rumors that come up may not necessarily be something I’d be interested in right now. But I’d never shoot them down because who knows where I’m going to be or what I might want to do in years to come. People change, their interests change. So it’s always just fascinating, and sometimes, I’m like, “Where did they come from?”
Your Last Duel producer Kevin Walsh and I talked about you recently, and he mentioned how they went to Prima Facie’s opening night on Broadway. Did your Olivier and Tony awards ultimately make up for the sting of your schedule no longer aligning with Walsh and Scott’s Napoleon?
(Laughs.) Yeah, it was all fine. That was a choice I had to make and I didn’t look back in a sense. I knew I really wanted to do the film, but now, Josephine is Vanessa’s [Kirby] role. I’m so happy for her and I wish her all the success with that movie. A lot of this industry is sliding doors, and I do feel like I was always supposed to do that play. There was something almost cosmic about it, when I think of it in its entirety and the people who I met and just how profound that experience was. So, yeah, I was happy with my decision.
Selfishly, I wanted to see you do press with Ridley again. It’s always riveting material.
(Laughs.) Yeah, you never know what you’re going to get.
Austin Butler and Jodie Comer in The Bikeriders
20th Century Studios / Courtesy Everett Collection
Lastly, I’m a huge Jeff Nichols fan …
Me too.
And I’ve been impatiently waiting for his next feature since 2016. We thought it was happening this month with The Bikeriders, but then the rug was pulled out from underneath us. Was that a tough pill to swallow, especially since your performance was getting rave reviews?
I’m a big believer in things happening when they should. I think it’s a shame, obviously, but especially for Jeff. Due to the strike, we couldn’t do any press, so Jeff had been holding the fort and doing press for three months, only for the film to then be put on hold. But I think the film is going to be really supported and really celebrated at Focus [Features]. And I am really excited that we are all going to be able to support it and speak about it in a way that we couldn’t this year. So it’s a shame, but I think it’ll all work out for the best.
*** The End We Start From is now playing in L.A. and New York, before going wide on Jan. 19.
Focus Features has acquired worldwide rights to the New Regency movie, which was previously set up at Disney’s 20th Century.
Directed by Jeff Nichols, the movie about a motorcycle club in the 1950s stars Jodie Comer, Austin Butler and Tom Hardy. It had been been scheduled to open in theaters on Dec. 1 after making several stops on the fall festival circuit, including opening the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day weekend.
However, Disney and New Regency subsequently announced that The Bikeriders was being taken off the release calendar. Behind the scenes, insiders say New Regency had been given the go-ahead to take the film elsewhere.
Plans are for Focus to release the film theatrically in 2024. Focus will handle the pic domestically, while Universal Pictures International will have overseas duties.
“We are delighted to add such a riveting project to next year’s strong slate of films. We look forward to once again working alongside New Regency and reuniting with the multi-talented Jeff Nichols on another one of his visionary projects,” Focus Features Chairman said Peter Kujawski in a statement.
Added New Regency chair-CEO Yariv Milchan, “We are excited to team up again with our Focus Features partners and look forward to another successful collaboration. And we couldn’t be prouder of The Bikeriders, Jeff Nichols and all the talent he has brought together to create this truly exceptional film.”
