When Michael Shannon heard that a film adaptation of Richard Yates' 1961 novel Revolutionary Road was in the works, he knew he wanted to be a part of it. He'd read the book and "just couldn't stop thinking about it," he says. The post-World War II tale of suburban ennui centers on a couple, Frank and April Wheeler, struggling with the constraints of a cookie-cutter life neither of them envisioned. Shannon figured he'd be right either for the role of Shep, the couple's silently suffering next-door neighbor, or for the one he really wanted: that of John Givings, the mentally ill son of the Wheelers' realtor.
It was a "classic audition scenario," says Shannon, who pushed his reps to submit him. How did he win over the casting director? They read the scene in which John tells his mother to shut up, he says, "and she said she never felt so demoralized in her life." The tape went to director Sam Mendes, who brought the actor in for a chat and asked him to play John. Shannon couldn't have asked for more. "I've had the great fortune of being able to do a variety of different things," says the 34-year-old, who got his SAG card in 1992 and has extensive film and stage credits. "I would say this definitely ranks in the upper part of the spectrum just in terms of sheer giddiness. I was just so giddy about it."
The critical role requires an actor of Shannon's caliber and style, and Shannon turns in a riveting performance that is amusing and unsettling. He says he found John's lack of pretense refreshing: "You're always being put in a situation as an actor where you have to hide things from the audience or slowly reveal certain aspects of your character, and with John you just cut right to the chase. It almost didn't really feel like acting."
The character appears only twice — totaling perhaps 15 minutes of the film's two-hour running time — yet he creates a structure for the Wheelers' tragedy. "I've heard it referred to as almost like a chorus," says Shannon. "He's like the three witches in Macbeth; he comes in to tell the central characters that someone is observing what they're going through."
In John's case, it's not merely observation. He steers the story as much as either main character — resulting from his intense interactions with them. For this, Shannon goes head-to-head with Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank and Kate Winslet as April, as well as Kathy Bates as John's ashamed suburbanite mother. Shannon has high praise for his scene partners. "Leo's just unstoppable," he says. "He really has to just lose it. He must've done it, I don't know, 70 times, and every time it had the same ferocity and the same precision." Of the dynamic with Bates, Shannon remarks, "It was so hard to be mad at her, because, without being over the top about it, she managed to find a way to show her concern for [John] at all times in a very subtle, beautiful way. Sometimes I felt like it wasn't even fair how mean I was to her, but then I had to remember the book and the story and what's actually happened and forget just what a nice wonderful person she was."
With the wrenching material, the care that the participants had for the project, and Mendes at the helm, the shoot was grueling but rewarding. "We did lots and lots of takes," notes Shannon, "which was really exciting for me because I'd just come off some jobs where I was working with people that didn't like to do lots of takes, so that I would kind of walk off the set saying, 'Oh boy, I hope I didn't mess that up. I really don't have any idea what just happened.' But with Sam, you can really walk off the set feeling like, 'Well, if it isn't in there somewhere, then it just wasn't meant to be.'"
Shannon adds, "More than anything I was just sad when the day would end and it'd be like, 'Oh, I don't get to do this anymore,' because it's very rare that you find opportunities like this, to work on something so sophisticated and stimulating. So when it was over, when we would finish a scene, no matter how many times we did it, I would always be kind of melancholy not to do it again."
Outtakes
Film credits include Cecil B. DeMented, 8 Mile, Bad Boys II, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and the upcoming neo-noir mystery The Missing Person
Originated roles in Tracy Letts' first three plays, most notably the off-kilter Peter Evans in Bug, which he reprised in the 2007 big-screen version
The 2004 New York Times review of Bug said Shannon evoked "an off-center, intelligent Leonardo DiCaprio" — with whom Shannon shares much of his screen time in Revolutionary Road