The recently released feature film ‘The Bikeriders’ is an American crime-drama story, inspired by the 1967 photobook of the same name by photographer and filmmaker Danny Lyon.
The film depicts the lives of the Vandals MC, a fictional version of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, founded in 1935.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, actor Mike Faist, who plays Lyon in the show, explained he took inspiration from his previous co-star in ‘Challengers’ Zendaya’s habit of taking photographs of the sets she works on.
Speaking to the publication Faist said:
“Toward the tail end of Challengers, Zendaya got me into photography. She had her cameras on set and was always playing around with them and whatnot. So I got interested and played around [with them], and I ordered a camera of my own.
“So, when Jeff called and said, ‘Hey, do you want to play a photographer in a movie I’m doing?’ I figured that was a sign that I should go ahead and take on this job.”
According to the club’s website, the group was founded in 1935 as The McCook Outlaws Motorcycle Club, out of Matilda’s Bar on Route 66 in McCook, Illinois. It is the oldest outlaw biker club in the world, with a membership of over 3,000, and is the third largest in the world, behind the Hells Angels, and the Bandidos.
Lyon spent four years riding with the Outlaws, beginning in 1963, and became a fully fledged member of the club in “an attempt to record and glorify the life of the American bike rider.”
The series of photographs became incredibly popular, and by 1967, Lyon was invited to join Magnum Photos, the international photography cooperative.
In an interview with Bomb magazine, Lyon described how, in the beginning, he a “funky old Leica M2 that scratched every picture.”
Eventually, the Nikon F would become his “real workhorse.”
“It was a Nikon Reflex, that early, single-lens Reflex. It was such a fabulous camera with a prism on it—no light meter. I had a 2 1/4 inch for The Bikeriders also. When I got to Manhattan in 1967 and realized what I was getting into, making architectural pictures, I went to Olden’s on Broadway and 43rd Street and got the cheapest view camera you could get—a Calumet.”
Before portraying Lyon in the film, Faist was lucky enough to spend time with the man himself at his cabin in Maine.
“We spent the weekend shooting photography and fishing, and he actually introduced me to a friend of his who showed me his studio. So then we developed film, and we went through some of Danny’s old works.”
Speaking about 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".
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