Danny Lyon: The Bikeriders

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After being accepted as the photographer for Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lyon was present at almost all of the major historical events during the Civil Rights Movement. [5]

He is the founding member of the publishing group Bleak Beauty. He was greatly encouraged in his photography by curator of the Art Institute of Chicago [6] Hugh Edwards, who gave Lyon two solo exhibits as a young man. a b Feinberg, Scott (August 31, 2023). "Telluride Awards Analysis: 'The Bikeriders' Opens Fest, Puts Jodie Comer in Hunt for First Oscar Nom". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved September 1, 2023. Last fall, while I was working as a book designer for the Aperture Foundation, the photography nonprofit, a first-edition copy of of Danny Lyon’s The Bikeriders from 1968 was placed on my desk in a plastic folder. The Bikeriders will also play a headline gala at the BFI London Film Festival on October 5, with subsequent showings October 6 and 9. The 20th Century Studios title opens in U.S. theaters on December 1.Perhaps, it has something to do with the fact that I don’t come from here [America]. I am not an American, though I do have family in Nashville, Tennessee, and in Washington D.C. But more than any other American film I have seen in a long time, I felt that The Bikeriderstook me to the heart of what’s going on in the UnitedStates. It’s a movie that has helped me try to fathom why,” as Nichols put it, “there’s darkness everywhere and there’s evil everywhere.” Nichols creates a wide tapestry with The Bikeriders, drawing upon midwestern nostalgia and crafting characters from photographs and song lyrics, but this is both its strength and its downfall as the emotional heart of the story gets lost amongst all its formal choices. Well, you don’t want to say they’re cliché, which is women are drawn to the bad boys and that stuff, because we all are, because I’m as attracted to Benny as she is, not in a sexual way, but in that way…and that was honestly kind of the purpose,” Nichols said.

It was announced in August 2022 that Nichols would also direct the film, with Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, and Tom Hardy being cast. [3] Michael Shannon, Boyd Holbrook, and Damon Herriman were added to the cast later in the month. [7] That September, Toby Wallace, Emory Cohen, Beau Knapp, Karl Glusman, and Happy Anderson joined the ensemble cast. [8] Norman Reedus and Mike Faist were added to the cast the following month. [9] [10] O'Hagan, Sean (20 April 2014). "Danny Lyon's inside shots". The Guardian. London . Retrieved 4 November 2015.Tom Hardy, Austin Butler and Jodie Comer to Begin Filming New Movie in Cincinnati". Cincinnati CityBeat. August 8, 2022 . Retrieved August 11, 2022. Austin Butler as “Benny” in 20th Century Studios’ THE BIKERIDERS. Photo credit: Kyle Kaplan. All Rights Reserved. Photography is not merely [Lyon's] occupation or livelihood. This medium and his life are inextricably linked, and he reveals this plainly through a seamless weaving of the personal and professional... A lovely informality results from this combination of elements, as if we are rummaging unfettered through his studio."— photo-eye a b "Missouri Honor Medal Winners: Individuals". Missouri School of Journalism . Retrieved 16 November 2015. On a Lucero fan note, I'm noticing on this read through that Benny isn't even a central character in the text, but he's the most Lucero fan character, a born loser with a sort of charisma that makes him hard not to like. Dude was always getting into accidents, apparently.

Lyon befriended many of the prisoners. The book also includes texts taken from prison records, letters from convicts, and inmate artwork. In particular, the book focuses on the case of Billy McCune, a convicted rapist whose death sentence was eventually commuted to life in prison. In the foreword, Lyon describes McCune as a diagnosed psychotic, who one evening, while awaiting execution, "cut his penis off to the root and, placing it in a cup, passed it between the bars to the guard." I didn’t grow up with that chip on my shoulder of, I hate small towns. I kind of love them, and I love the culture and the personalities,” he explained with a sense of pride in his voice. Later, Lyon began creating his own books. His first was a study of outlaw motorcyclists in the collection The Bikeriders (1968), where Lyon photographed, traveled with and shared the lifestyle of bikers in the American Midwest from 1963 to 1967. [12] [13] Living in a rented apartment in Woodlawn, Chicago, Lyon followed the Chicago chapter of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club in an "attempt to record and glorify the life of the American bikerider". Seeking advice from Hunter S. Thompson, who spent a year with the Hells Angels for his own book, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, Thompson warned Lyon that he should "get to hell out of that club unless it's absolutely necessary for photo action." [14] [15] Lyon said of Thompson's response: "He advised me not to join the Outlaws and to wear a helmet. I joined the club and seldom wore a helmet". He was a full-fledged member of the Outlaws between 1966 and 1967. [15] On his time as an Outlaws member, Lyon said: "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 realised that some of these guys were not so romantic after all". [14]

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Patton, Phil (7 March 2013). "Two Looks at Danny Lyon's 'Bikeriders' Photos". Wheels.blogs.nytimes.com . Retrieved 28 November 2017. FROM EARLY ON, Lyon had not only harnessed but excelled at photographic composition, and the imprecise skill of capturing a compelling picture. This feat is all the more impressive since Lyon was really self-taught in photography, without models or mentors. At the University of Chicago (where he was a classmate of Bernie Sanders’s), Lyon majored in history and studied documentary photographs of the Civil War; he also admired the work of James Agee and Walker Evans, especially their first-person documentary account of living among Southern tenant farmers, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). In 1962, even before he had graduated, Lyon traveled to Albany, Georgia, to photograph civil rights demonstrations. At age twenty-one, he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); worked the front lines with activists Julian Bond, John Lewis, and Howard Zinn; and was jailed alongside Martin Luther King Jr. Lyon’s extraordinary civil rights images show the courage and integrity that became the hallmarks of his early work, as he waded into tense encounters with burly Southern cops and angry Mississippi mobs. Nichols told me that he called Adam Driver, who starred with Comer in Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, to ask what she was like to work with. Nichols told me that in deciding to make the film he was looking for patterns in society “and in humans, things we do, things we know we do. Sometimes we admit to them. Sometimes we don’t. I saw this pattern of people feeling like they don’t quite belong here in the mainstream, so they move to the outside. And that’s where the really interesting stuff starts to exist and starts to be created.”