Interview (Written): Jeff Nichols (“Midnight Special”)

A WGA interview with Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud) who wrote and directed Midnight Special which is debuting in selected theaters this weekend:

This film combines your organic, humanistic Southern style with the genre of sci-fi. Was marrying these disparate elements one of the things that inspired you to make this film?

I had the idea to make a sci-fi chase movie, and then I just applied my process to it. That begins with my process of writing, which is to ground things to the places that I know and the types people that I know. I don’t know anyone from a religious zealot ranch, but I know someone like the character that Mike [Shannon] plays in terms of how close to the vest he plays things.

So I just start to apply my aesthetics — and that doesn’t just mean my visual aesthetics, but also my narrative aesthetics — to the genre, which is a good way of starting to dismantle the genre a little bit, and starting to subvert some of the elements that make up the genre. My whole approach is trying to ground things and ratchet [them] down into reality as much as possible. So I pick these kind of fantastical circumstances, but I still just try to ratchet everything down into the way that I see things out in the world, you know, the way people dress, the cars they drive, the motels they stay in, the roads they’re on, the way they talk to one another, their behaviors, the emotions that I feel about my son and all these other things — these are very realistic things that I apply to a sci-fi chase movie. So by the time it goes through that ringer, it comes out the other end undeniably a part of me.

Was knowing how atypical of sci-fi your realistic, organic aesthetic was one of the things that attracted you to this?

Not really. To be honest, I approached this sci-fi stuff the way I’ve approached other things. Even though obviously I’ve never seen a boy shoot light out of his eyes, I started to think, organically, What does that look like and how are we going to do it? Which was certainly was a fun challenge, but I wasn’t like, Oh, I can’t wait to dip that in southern fried batter and find out on the other side what that is…

Close Encounters of the Fried Kind?

Exactly…God, please don’t use that as the headline…

Here is a trailer for the movie:

The official movie website: Here.

For the rest of the WGA interview, go here.