This writer will go out on a limb and say that, since this first-time feature film director is still working to make his name known to movie audiences at large, that most introductory paragraphs profiling the director will cut right to the part about his father being Max Nichols, director of the seminal 60’s classic on the confusion of young adulthood, The Graduate. Even further, any number of write-ups probably make the next logical step in comparing this director’s first film, about recently graduated millennials navigating the new-age waters of hook-up land, again, to the Dustin Hoffman classic. And while all of the above statements are entirely true, it’s not all entirely accurate, in getting to know Max Nichols. A self-professed metal-head loving music video director, I recently spoke with the forty one year-old father, who, in a phone interview, relayed nothing but humorous and thoughtful conversation, honest self-reflection, and effortless cool. Max Nichols, delivering his first big-budget (or more accurately, bigger budget) film, talked about youth culture, his earliest film-viewing and on-set experiences, and what he learned to be extremely careful of when reading future scripts. We begin:
HI MAX, MR. NICHOLS. HOW ARE YOU DOING?
…I’m going to apologize in advance for the rambunctious toddlers in the background…
TWO NIGHT STAND OPENS IN THEATERS THIS FRIDAY- HOW HAS THIS JOURNEY BEEN FOR YOU?
It’s been thrilling every step of the way. I read so many scripts before coming across one that made me think, “Oh man, I gotta do this movie,” which is exactly how I felt the moment I read Mark Hammer’s Two Night Stand. From that auspicious beginning, to meeting Analeigh (Tipton) and Miles (Teller), and winding up with this incredible cast and amazing crew, at the risk of sounding a little corny- it’s been a dream come true.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST FILM YOU SAW THAT TRULY AFFECTED YOU ON A DIRECTING LEVEL, THAT MADE YOU THINK, ‘I WANT TO DO THAT‘?
Probably The Breakfast Club. I was at the perfect age when that movie came out, in that I was a little bit younger than the characters but old enough to have an appreciation of how unprecedented the honest depiction of what it’s like to be that age. It just seemed completely different than any movie I had ever seen before.
Obviously I worship at the alter of John Hughes now, but at the time I was like “This guy gets it!” To provide this word of teenager-dom that I was so fascinated by- it was like John Hughes was some sort of wizard.
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST EXPERIENCE LIKE BEING ON A SET? I KNOW YOU STARTED OUT WORKING IN THE MUSIC VIDEO WORLD.
Well my dad is a director, so I’ve spent a fair amount of time on set with him when I was a kid, including when I was just a little baby. So we’d probably have to turn to another source for a good anecdote about my very first experience on set…
One early set memory that I have, and it’s certainly not a particularly elevated one from a “cinema” standpoint, was, I remember being on set with my dad in Texas, while he was shooting Silkwood. And I couldn’t believe that there was a whole truck parked there, that could make you a cheeseburger anytime you want, and that you could have as many cheeseburgers as you wanted in any given day. And then there was a whole other place where there was just a whole stack of candy that you could just go take. I mean, more than anything, that probably told me, “This is where I need to work.”
Honestly, it felt like an opportunity to bring my friends, or at least maybe younger versions of my friends, to life on the screen in a way that, at least it didn’t seem to me, was happening at the moment.
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST DIRECTING EXPERIENCE? DID YOU MAKE IT A POINT TO HAVE THE SAME CRAFT SERVICES YOU REMEMBERED SEEING AS A KID?
[Laughter] Oh man, if only that had been possible!
The first video I directed was, and I had worked in the music business a little bit when I was younger, so I’d been on set with other music videos, but the first music video I directed was for a fantastic band named American Minor. Just like a great, contemporary classic rock band, if there is such a thing. And they had this great song called “Buffalo Creek,” and we shot it in this basement in this hideous, disgusting basement in LA, that I’ve since been told many times has been used for pretty much every other either gore or porn movie out there, but we put it to other use that day.
And no, I mean, as far as microscopic budget, I think maybe one pizza, or a couple Subway subs for the whole crew to share at lunch time. And since all we could afford was to have the band perform, I think they performed for about thirteen hours straight. I hadn’t quite properly factored in the toll that would take on them, and when we were done I was like, “Cool man, you guys wanna go out and get some drinks?” And I think they pretty much collectively collapsed.
DID YOU FIND THAT BEING THE SON OF A LEGENDARY FILM DIRECTOR HELPED OR HINDERED YOUR OWN BURGEONING CAREER AS A DIRECTOR WHEN FIRST STARTING OUT?
Um, I don’t know? I came to directing through this music video world where it was sort of, you know, maybe a thing that people knew, or maybe they didn’t? But it didn’t seem to have sort of a tremendous cache in that world, because it primarily came down to, “Well, who else have you done videos for? What do they look like? Were they hits?” So I think it was nice for me to have an opportunity, through the many twists and turns that life takes, for me to spend a long time working in that realm, and have an opportunity to develop some, what I hope is at least a little bit of skill and talent as a director, before turning to a feature. Maybe it made the whole thing a little less loaded for me, than it might have been otherwise.
RETURNING TO TWO NIGHT STAND, ABOUT TWO YOUNG COLLEGE GRADS WHO ARE AWKWARDLY SNOWED IN TOGETHER AFTER A ONE-NIGHT FLING… THE FILM SO HEAVILY RELIES ON THESE YOUNG ACTORS’ CHARM AND PERFORMANCES, AS WE’RE PRETTY MUCH TRAPPED IN THE SAME ROOM WITH THEM FOR THE ENTIRETY OF THE MOVIE. WHAT WERE YOU EXCITED TO BRING TO THE SCREEN AFTER READING THIS SCRIPT?
One of the things that I was sort of most drawn to, in that regard was, the voice that Mark Hammer wrote and captured for Megan (Tipton). It just rang like, head and shoulders above so many other young female characters that I read as authentic, and was so evocative of so many smart, funny, sarcastic young women that I know.
Honestly, it felt like an opportunity to bring my friends, or at least maybe younger versions of my friends, to life on the screen in a way that, at least it didn’t seem to me, was happening at the moment. And that when it came to Miles and Analeigh embodying those characters…there was something particularly when I first met Analeigh. She just seemed so singular, and distinct to me, and was sort of unlike any particular human I had met before, in this wonderful way that, I knew that if I felt that way over her, that people would buy having such a powerful reaction to her in their short time together. And I felt that audiences would feel really drawn to her in the short time that they spent with the characters as well. And I’m lucky to say that, at least so far, that’s been the case.
THIS BEING YOUR FIRST FEATURE FILM, WHAT ARE YOU ULTIMATELY WALKING AWAY WITH, AND HAVING LEARNED AFTER MAKING THIS FILM?
I think coming off this movie in particular, I have learned to be very, very careful should I ever encounter the word “snow” or “ping-pong” in a script again, for completely different reasons. Both are almost impossible to re-create in a scene. I realize now that it is extremely easy to write: “Megan and Alec play ping-pong.” Shooting and covering a scene where Megan and Alec play ping-pong, with anything resembling continuity…if there’s a director out there effortlessly, my hat is off to ’em.
