{"id":397,"date":"2008-03-26T16:06:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-26T20:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/?p=397"},"modified":"2018-11-09T13:49:10","modified_gmt":"2018-11-09T18:49:10","slug":"shotgun-stories-siblings-revenge-and-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/26\/shotgun-stories-siblings-revenge-and-consequences\/","title":{"rendered":"SHOTGUN STORIES: Siblings, Revenge And Consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>All great stories have an anchor in the human condition, examining on some level the emotions that drive us all.<\/p>\n

While it should be left to history to determine if writer\/director Jeff Nichols debut feature Shotgun Stories<\/strong> will be considered a classic or not, it is definitely at play in the same fields used by other writers, examining the complex hatred that exists between two sets of half-brothers in a small Arkansas town.<\/p>\n

\u201cI liked the idea of working with universal themes,\u201d Nichols states in a recent phone interview. \u201cShakespeare would take an emotion and anchor a story on it. The movie\u2019s action is set off before the movie even starts. In that way, the characters are very star-crossed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Son Hayes (Michael Shannon) and his two brothers, Boy (Douglas Ligon) and Kid (Barlow Jacobs), have grown up from poverty, doing their best to earn a living. When they were children, their alcoholic and abusive father abandoned them to an angry and bitter mother. Although their father eventually sobered up, he remarried and started a second family, who harbor no good-will to Son and his brothers. Although uninvited to their father\u2019s funeral, Son, Boy and Kid still go, exchanging words and then blows with their half-brothers. The funeral is just the start of an escalating feud between the two families that they may not be able to escape from.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way things are going in the country and the world, revenge seemed an appropriate topic,\u201d Nichols says, further elaborating on Shotgun Stories theme. \u201c\u2018An eye for an eye\u2019 thinking is very prevalent now.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a theme that film festival audiences immediately connected with, sometimes in surprising ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first question I got after the screening was \u2018Is this an allegory for Bush\u2019s political policies?\u2019\u201d Nichols states of Shotgun Stories<\/strong>\u2019 debut at the Berlin Film Festival. \u201cIt was interesting to watch the film through the perspective of a foreign audience. They appreciate a filmmaker examining what it means to be violent and what it means to be a man in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>For Michael Shannon, who carries the film as the taciturn Son, the screenplay stood out immediately upon his reading it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was flabbergasted,\u201d Shannon admits. \u201cI\u2019ve read a lot of screenplays over the years and this was one of the best I had ever read. The writing was really mature. It reads as if it were written by someone much older than Jeff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shannon was so impressed that he committed to the film almost immediately. \u201cI called [Jeff] up and said, \u2018I\u2019ll do this whenever you want. I don\u2019t even care about the money. As long as I have a place to sleep, I\u2019ll come down and do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Shannon\u2019s quick acceptance to work on the project came as a relief to Nichols.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had written the part for him,\u201d he says, adding that he was inspired to tailor the part of Son to Shannon based on a videotape the actor doing some workshop readings at the Sundance labs of another script that never was produced. \u201cLuckily he read the script and saw something in the film he liked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Setting the film\u2019s stage are long, wide views of the Arkansas countryside, vistas that aren\u2019t normally seen in film, but which Nichols says are inspired by the camera work in David Lean\u2019s Lawrence Of Arabia<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, the horizon lines are so flat and vast, it seemed an appropriate way to go,\u201d he states, drawing a parallel between the flat expanses of the Midwest state and Lean\u2019s desert-set opus. \u201cWhile on the one hand we are an indie film, on the other hand the film is an epic with its epic emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

While filming outside of the traditional Hollywood locations can lead to more complicated production, Nichols found shooting in rural Arkansas to run smoothly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe communities opened up to us like a flower blossom,\u201d he states. \u201cIt was the greatest gift for a film production. And it was not because they were small town folk enamored with Hollywood, because it was really just me and eight buddies with our gear in a pickup truck. They were just generous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nichols says that he got his biggest compliments from the owner of one of the film\u2019s locations after a local screening.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said to me, \u2018You got it Jeff. You got it. These are the people we work with.\u2019\u201d Nichols reports. \u201cThat meant a lot to me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All great stories have an anchor in the human condition, examining on some level the emotions that drive us all. While it should be left to history to determine if writer\/director Jeff Nichols debut feature [click for more]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1695],"tags":[8127,1346,8128],"series":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-features","7":"tag-jeff-nichols","8":"tag-michael-shannon","9":"tag-shotgun-stories"},"aioseo_notices":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[2],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":false,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}