Michael Shannon was a teenager when he first heard REM. “I was out at my cousin’s trailer; he lived in the country. He put Document on his little cassette recorder, and I sat in his room with him and listened to it. Any art I find compelling is usually because it seems singular, like the people who are making it are the only people that could be making it.”
Shannon is used to making singular art himself, as a distinctive presence in notable films for many years: Nocturnal Animals, Knives Out, The Bikeriders, The Shape of Water, Bullet Train and more. But he can also sing – in George and Tammy he played the country legend George Jones opposite Jessica Chastain as Tammy Wynette, doing all his own performances.
