Michael Shannon relishes life of film
When an actor rolls up in a sleek black SUV for an interview, it’s usually in the vicinity of a red carpet at a big film festival or in front of a swank hotel laden with freeloading junket journalists.
This was different. Two-time Academy Award nominee and longtime Chicago resident Michael Shannon rolled up in a rapper-worthy SUV, but it was in front of the Billy Goat, just off Lower Michigan Avenue in Chicago, at 8 in the morning. No glamour. No witnesses.
“All the years I lived in Chicago, I’ve never been here!” Shannon says. He ducks and heads down the steps, and we order egg and cheese sandwiches and coffee. Shannon is taken with the pickle stash and relish bin next to the register. “Now we’re talking,” he says.
In Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” the 43-year-old actor plays the government operative who has captured an Amazonian river creature, half-man, half-amphibian. Shannon shares the screen with other splendid talents — Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer and Michael Stuhlbarg, among them.
Stuhlbarg said Shannon always seemed to be conferring with del Toro on set, asking about cameras and lenses. Stuhlbarg thought: Here is a director in the making.
“You can’t help it,” Shannon says. “You spend a lot of time on these sets. I guess for me it started when I was shooting ‘Boardwalk Empire.’ I just started asking directors: ‘Whaddya doing? Whaddya doing now?’ I mean, you’re there; you might as well learn a few things.”
By Shannon’s estimation, “there are two things telling the story: the picture and the cut . ... The actors are responsible for 0.003 percent of it. I don’t want to be too self-deprecating about it, and there’s nothing more thrilling than a great performance. But you can also have people in front of the camera who have no idea what they’re doing and still end up with a great movie.”
On “The Shape of Water,” Shannon was impressed by del Toro’s highly mobile camera. “All the movies I’ve made,” he says, “I’ve never seen a camera in motion to that degree. But it was always motivated; nothing fancy for the sake of being fancy. The camera was always saying something.”
Directing, Shannon says, seems like a recipe for insomnia. “I always wonder when the director sleeps . ... The actors boohoo all day, ‘Wow, long day, lotta waiting around,’ but the director shoots 12 hours and then checks out a location, and then looks at dailies . ... I don’t know how they do it.” Pause. “I should try it at some point.”
Shannon finishes his egg and cheese. He declares it “a winner.” He checks out some of the celeb photos on the Billy Goat’s wall.
“Wait. Is that Ron Howard? Was he here? Huh.” Yes, he was. And so was Michael Shannon. Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
“You’re there. You might as well learn a few things.” — Michael Shannon, on watching directors work on set