Austin Butler & Jodie Comer Break Down a Scene From 'The Bikeriders'

[people talking]

Was this oil or moisturizer? Or are you just that,

I don't know

just a natural glisten. Have that natural sheen?

Yeah.

Hi everyone, I'm Jodie Comer.

And I'm Austin Butler.

And we are here doing Notes on a Scene with Vanity Fair

for The Bikeriders.

[people talking]

You see that? They're planning something.

Look at all of them whispering over there.

So this scene we're about to watch

is the moment in the movie where

Kathy, my character, and Benny, Austin's character,

they meet for the first time

and it's Kathy's initial introduction to the Vandals

as a whole.

Okay, so this is

[Austin] the one and only Tom Hardy. Exactly.

And Tom is the, I guess,

the king of the, He's the king.

[laughter]

He's the leader of the Vandals.

The leader of the pack. He's the top dog.

So here, we have many members of the Vandals

played by Boyd, Emory, Beau, and Carl.

And these guys were incredible.

[Austin] I feel like, Amazing.

Whenever we were in these scenes,

Jeff was often asking them to essentially improvise

and I feel like I was constantly overhearing

all of the stuff that they were coming up with

and I feel like they really created a little bromance.

There was a lot of love going

[Austin] on here. There's lotta love.

[Jodie] There's lotta love. Yeah. Yeah.

[Austin] I love this, what Carl's wearing here.

It's just the vest with nothing else.

[Jodie] Yeah, oh yeah.

Because Kathy makes that comment.

In the real audio of Kathy,

one of her like vivid memories

was that these guys had their bellybuttons showing.

Oh yeah. That's right. [Jodie laughing]

She's like, I walked into That's a lot of bellybutton.

This bar. And these guys had their bellybuttons showing.

Yeah. Yeah.

This is quite

a fashion choice. They were all wonderful.

I'm gonna go.

[Kathy] And that's when I see Benny.

Standing over at the pool table.

When I first met Jeff, he'd sent the script

and then made me aware that they had

like 13 minutes of audio interviewing her

in the 1960s.

And I knew she was from north Chicago.

But a lot of her vowel sounds were total contradictions

so it wasn't about like doing a great Chicago accent.

It was just about kind of like dissecting it

and trying to get the cadence right.

She spoke very quickly.

She was always on to the next thought

while she was speaking about one thing.

But yeah, some brilliant accents in this.

That was the difference

[Jodie] in my process. Mhm.

And in a way it's freeing when you don't have

any reference, but it also,

then I had to sort of figure out,

well, how does Benny fit into the tapestry

of the whole project?

And so, I learned a lot about Benny

from what everyone else said about him

because he was never interviewed.

I feel like this is a very iconic shot, right?

This is the moment where Kathy

sets her eyes on Benny for the first time.

And she always kind of spoke about how

when she set her eyes on him she was like,

oh my god, who is this guy? You know?

She's about to leave the bar and is stopped in her tracks,

and then goes back [laughter].

Goes back to her seat so she doesn't miss out.

But, yeah I mean the cinematography is so incredible.

Adam Stone. Mhm.

And this moment as well is directly influenced by,

in the photography book, there is an image of Benny.

And you just see the top of his head,

but he's leaning over the pool table.

So that's this moment that we're capturing.

And then we've got your Benny tattoo.

[Austin] Yeah. Yeah. Just in case

I forget my name. [laughter]

Just reminds me who I am.

Such an incredible shot.

Yeah. Yeah.

Do you remember the kind of like glass panes

[Austin] that were in the windows? Yeah. Yeah.

And they had the pool table. Yeah.

The juke box. Yeah it was amazing.

It was very,

it felt very authentic. Like it was,

you kind of felt like you'd stepped back in time.

It was beautiful, what the team had done.

[people chatting]

Who's that good looking guy

over at the pool table? Oh.

I love your reaction in this moment.

Because I couldn't see, I was so far away

I couldn't quite tell.

And the reaction on your face, it just always tickles me.

Well I don't think that I had spoken to Danny Lion

until we were on the shoot, on set.

And I actually think he came to set

when we were shooting this scene,

because it was a huge ensemble scene. So everyone was in.

And I just remember him saying that Kathy was,

she was very smart. You know?

She was kind of underestimated

but that she was smarter than them all.

Yeah. And I think he told me that Benny was beautiful

but very dumb. [Laughter]

If I remember correctly. [laughter]

Perfect! Yeah.

Kathy you don't want to go out with him.

Why not? He don't look like the rest of these animals.

Because nobody wants to go out with him.

Why?

Because he cracks up on his bike.

Every time he gets up on his bike, he has an accident.

Oh, okay.

Let me get you a pop.

[pool balls clacking]

[60s music] [people chatting]

Oh yeah, so this moment.

[Jodie] This is a great moment.

This was. So Tom was sitting over,

he's like sitting over here. And,

yeah there he is. And um,

you drew some angry eyebrows. [laughter]

So that's Tom, with the spiky hair.

And, we were rehearsing the scene.

I'm making it worse. And I still don't know

if he was joking the first time he said it, but

he said you gotta turn the chair around.

Yeah. And uh,

'cause we were figuring out how I was gonna come up

and see you. 'Cause you kind of,

the whole plan was that Benny kind of sneaks up.

But, you know he kind of comes

and she hasn't seen him. Like unexpectedly.

Yeah. Yeah. Shows up, and says hello.

And he told me to turn the chair around.

And I took it as a challenge and I said

Oh I can, I'm gonna turn that chair around.

[people talking]

I'm Benny.

Hello.

I love your reaction here.

These little eye movements that you do are so good.

[60s music]

Well, so what are we doing here?

Just uh, shooting the breeze?

[Austin] Oh god, the smoking. Yeah.

Like so much smoking in this film.

Like these sets absolutely stunk.

There was like a hue everywhere you went.

You know? Yeah.

Like a kind of just mist of like

the smoke was being so contained in this tiny little bar,

which I guess is very real and true to what it would've,

Yeah.

It would've been like.

Let's talk about Erin. Yes!

Our brilliant costume designer.

I mean, every detail, from what we're wearing

to everybody that you see in the background.

She thought about every detail here.

I mean what was great with Erin was,

I mean, she already has, I mean she's so talented

and she herself has such an innate sense of style

and kind of instinct, so what was really fun

was when we met for the first time

we just kind of chatted about

the images that we had.

Like I think I had 3 images of Kathy at the time.

And, you know, she asked me what I'd noticed

or was there anything that I felt was really

kind of necessary.

That I wanted. And there were some things like,

Kathy loved a tank. Loved texture.

You know everything was kind of fuzzy or ribbed

or you know really kind of lived in.

Mhm.

Her pants always looked like they were

a little bit ill fitted.

You know a lot of the images of the women in Danny's work,

you know, they were just immaculately, immaculately kind of

dressed. Whether it be makeup or clothing. And,

Kathy was always a little,

a little bit messy, a little bit undone.

You know, looked like she'd kind of either

come off the back of a bike or been carrying her kids

and the kids had been pulling at her kind of beehive, and.

So it was those kinds of things that we

we really wanted to keep.

[people talking] Yeah I guess.

Well I gotta go home.

Oh, okay.

[60s music] [people talking]

You gotta go.

I remember this bit. When she's like, I gotta go home.

And you're like, go on then.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's kind of like

that moment of go on then, and she [laughs].

She just stays there. But you don't move.

No. And then he goes. Yeah, you gotta go.

And she's like, Ah! God!

[people talking]

One thing that I love, when Jeff talks about.

Is the idea of nostalgia. Mhm.

Nostalgia for a time and an environment

that doesn't really exist anymore.

Yeah.

And that's, you know, some of what he was capturing

with this.

Is even as time goes on, and these characters are now older,

you know, how they would look back on this time in life.

When Kathy falls in love with Benny.

She falls in love with, you know,

everything about him in a sense of his kind of

he's not tethered to anything, you know.

He's very free and,

and does his own thing. And there's a mystery there.

And a lore. And over time those are the things that end up

causing her quite a lot of friction as the group becomes

a little bit more kind of engulfed in crime.

And I think as a result of that,

she kind of wants to take him away from the Vandals.

You know, I guess for them to experience love

in a different way. And for her to have him around her more.

Kind of, selfishly, but from a good place.

So yeah. Great.