Michael Shannon on Echo Boomers, Hollywood funding and working with young people

Two-time Oscar nominee and respected actor Michael Shannon has expressed his frustration on how movies are made in Hollywood.

Of course, there’s an irony in a movie that criticises capitalism and wealth inequality being made and distributed within a Hollywood system that props up those same institutions.

And Echo Boomers, a film about disenfranchised, educated Millennials with few job prospects that take generational revenge by robbing the rich, is caught in exactly that vice.

Echo Boomers star Michael Shannon is well aware of the irony.

“Hypocrisy is across the board on a cellular level; it’s pretty hard to avoid it,” Shannon told news.com.au on the phone from Byron Bay where the usually US-based actor had been shooting TV series Nine Perfect Strangers.

“Hollywood and the studio system, and all these conglomerates and monopolies, it’s getting to the point where it’s hard for me to say, if someone goes, ‘Oh, I want you to do this, I got Amazon to pick up the show, you want to do it?’

“Well, I don’t really want to work for Amazon, I don’t really want to work for Apple. I really don’t want to work for this, that and the other thing, Disney, all these people. You know?

“Because you just look at the business model and it makes you sick to your stomach.”

Echo Boomers is hardly the first movie that takes issue with the very system it’s born from – and will enrich – but Shannon has hit on a point that the entertainment industry is often slammed with – the hypocrisy of messages that contravene its very own practices.

Despite his damning words, Shannon also thinks there is a way to work within the system and still tell stories that can make a positive contribution – perhaps it’s how you reconcile the two opposing philosophies.

Michael Shannon with Patrick Schwarzenegger in Echo Boomers.

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“The thing is, people like to watch stuff and some people like to make it,” he explained. “You can either make stuff that’s about nothing or stuff that’s about something. No matter who’s paying for it, that’s the bottom line. The more money you get to make it, it tends to be easier and perhaps more effective, that’s the unfortunate situation.

“Because it’s not funded charitably, so it’s not like there are patrons. And if there are patrons, they’re the same billionaires that are screwing everything up in the first place. So, it’s a really warped system. I don’t personally have a solution on how to fix it.”

A film like Echo Boomers appealed to Shannon and co-star Jacob Alexander, who plays one of the young thieves, because it sought to ask questions about the experience of a generation of Americans who did what they were told to do – went to university, took on mountains of debt – only to end up unemployed in a society rigged to favour those who already had money and connections.

Alexander said he found the themes really familiar and that he has friends who had gone to school and now have a “surplus of degrees and no job”. For Shannon, he said his younger sister went to law school and couldn’t get a job at the other end of it, then needing to go back for yet another degree.

“It’s crazy how few jobs there are out there, how few opportunities there are to succeed,” Shannon said. “America’s supposed to be this country where everybody can make their dreams come true, but I don’t think that exists anymore.”

But Shannon also argued that movies, including ones like Echo Boomers, aren’t going to solve anyone’s problems – “I’ve never seen that happen” – but where it can add to audiences’ perspectives on the world they live in is to “curate” a focus.

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“You can keep certain issues at the forefront,” Shannon said. “I understand that entertainment is an escape, and I [make those projects] from time to time, but it’s just not my lot in time.

“It’s like keeping the ball in the air. The sweet spot is you make a movie that deals with these issues and is also very entertaining, hopefully get a one-two punch in there.”

One of those other social parable Shannon films is 99 Homes, an astute drama with Andrew Garfield that examined the way the real estate industry was stacked against financially challenged homeowners in the wake of the GFC.

While it had a lower profile than The Big Short, 99 Homes was the more effective indictment of the finance industry’s destructive forces on everyday families.

Shannon attached his name onto Echo Boomers early on in part because he wanted to root for director Seth Savoy – “He’s a Chicago filmmaker and that’s a hard thing to be” – and because he hoped his involvement would help the movie find financing.

It didn’t come easy. “I don’t think the general public understands how phenomenally difficult it is to get a movie like this made,” Shannon said. “It came together and fell apart and came together and fell apart. It’s like trying to fly out of the Death Star before it blows up.”

Jacob Alexander (far right) with his co-stars Patrick Schwarzenegger, Gilles Geary, Alex Pettyfer and Hayley Law.

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For a movie whose story was so entrenched in generational warfare – Millennials versus Baby Boomers – as a Gen X-er, Shannon didn’t feel a distance between himself and his younger co-stars, which also included Patrick Schwarzenegger and Alex Pettyfer.

“Younger actors tend to have really strong bulls**t meters; they can really see through you. If you’re giving a grand performance, they let you know it pretty quick,” Shannon said. “They keep you honest, that’s for sure.

“When I started acting, I was typically a lot younger than the other people I was working with, I’ve always remembered that. Because the older people I worked with always treated me with respect and as a peer, and I try to make sure that I return the favour.

“Because with acting, it’s not like you become older and become a better actor. Sometimes you become worse and sometimes the young ones are unfettered and clear and have something genuine to offer.

“So, I always try and treat people with respect, except on the off-chance that I can sense they have an attitude, then I might give it back to them a little bit.”

That didn’t apply to his Echo Boomers castmates, who Shannon said he had “a ball” working with.

As an up-and-comer, Alexander relished the opportunity to learn from Shannon, who has been twice Oscar-nominated, for Revolutionary Road and Nocturnal Animals, and also starred in Boardwalk Empire, Knives Out, Midnight Special and The Shape Of Water.

Alexander admitted it was a little intimidating at first.

“I adore Michael and his work, and his work ethic, and that impact he’s had on me was really the culprit of my feelings of being nervous, and just really wanting to be present while he’s there,” Alexander said.

“So, when you have that experience and exposure, you want to be in tune and be on it.”

Echo Boomers is available for digital purchase on February 24

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