MICHAEL SHANNON
☮️Quiet and silence, 🎨Henry Taylor, 🎥The Elephant Man, and more.
Michael Shannon is a New York City-based actor, known for his extensive and unmatched filmography, from standout roles in Take Shelter, The Shape of Water, and Knives Out—to, my personal favorite, his performance in the iconic HBO series Boardwalk Empire. Be sure to watch out for his Tribeca-premiering directorial debut, Eric Larue, which hits theaters this April. Beyond his on-screen accomplishments, Michael is also a talented musician. Last year, he toured alongside Jason Narducy, performing R.E.M.'s Murmur in full. This year, the duo returns to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Fables of the Reconstruction, and you can grab your tickets here. Lucky for us, Michael is here to share what he's been into.
🚶
I like to take long walks, typically in the park. I live in Brooklyn, New York and I like to walk around Prospect Park. At the south end of the park there's a little area with a couple of benches in it, like a little sanctuary and I like to go over there to sit on the bench and watch all the different birds out in the pond. I like to go there in all different kinds of weather and see how it changes throughout the year. I just really get a kick out of nature and it actually can be pretty quiet there sometimes, which is hard to find in New York City.
Feb 12, 2025
☮️
I'm a big fan of quiet. I like quiet and silence. I saw a movie once a long time ago. It's called Into Great Silence and it's a documentary about monks in this monastery and it's quite long actually but there's no dialogue in it. The whole movie is watching these monks and it made a huge impression on me.
Feb 12, 2025
🎬
There's a movie I recommend called Alphaville, by Jean-Luc Godard. They rereleased it last year. I went to see it kind of every day it was in the theater, every day that I could go, because it was such a rare opportunity to actually get to see it on a screen. I highly recommend it, particularly considering the state of the world as it is these days and everything that's going on with Ai– Alphaville is such a fascinating imagining of AI from a historical perspective. That always blows my mind, all the things that are happening nowadays have been predicted in literature and film from a while ago. To see these things manifesting in our current reality– it's really trippy that these artists and writers anticipated all this. I don't know how they did that, but if you watch Alphaville, I think it'll kind of send a chill down your spine to see. Of course, he didn't have the technology available at the time he made the film so he's doing it old-fashioned style but still capturing the sense of what it is that we're going through.
Feb 12, 2025
🖼️
For museums, I recommend the Whitney Museum in New York. I think a lot of people go to the Met or the Museum of Modern art. They’re quite popular, understandably so, they're incredible collections. Anybody who comes to town asks me where they should go, inevitably I say they should probably go to the Whitney museum because they always have the most interesting exhibits. Their permanent collection’s amazing too. They had an Edward Hopper exhibit, not too long ago that really blew my mind. They also had a painter Henry Taylor…
Feb 12, 2025
🎨
Oh my God, this guy Henry Taylor, I saw that exhibit at the Whitney. I took everyone I knew to go see the exhibit. I must have seen it seven or eight times. This guy is the most brilliant painter I have seen in a long, long time. I actually got the coffee table book. I never get the coffee table book. He just moved me to tears. He did a painting of Philando Castile getting shot that's one of the most powerful works of visual art I've ever seen in my life from many time period ever. So I recommend Henry Taylor and The Whitney Museum and general because I think you'll always find something interesting there.
Feb 12, 2025
🎷
For music I mean… music's so hard. I love music so much. I was looking at this picture called A Great Day in Harlem and it's a collection of jazz artists taking a picture on a stoop in Harlem. It's a very iconic photograph. Sonny Rollins is in the picture and he's still alive– I think he just turned 90. He's been around a long time. Sonny Rollins is my favorite player of all time and that's a hard thing to say because there's a lot of sax players I love.
He's got a record called East Broadway Rundown that is just one of the most astonishing recordings I've ever heard in my life. There's a song on there called East Broadway Rundown and it's quite long, almost 20 minutes long I think. That's one of my favorite songs to listen to. The places it goes to, you just don't hear very often.
There's a big component of the jazz or genre of jazz, I guess called free jazz that can get pretty out there, and a lot of people hear it are like, “oh, that just sounds like cats in pain or something” and they're not really into it, and I can understand that sometimes. It's not for everybody. Sonny, on this song, gets to a place that's even beyond free jazz. It's some world that exists only in this song. I've never heard it in any other song.
Sonny Rollins in general, his devotion to playing, the fact that he was already successful in his field and yet took time off to to practice on the bridge because he wasn't satisfied with where he was at and he wanted to push himself even further. I just always admired the heck out of him.
Feb 12, 2025
🎶
Although one of my favorite artists of all time and I've said this quite a few times over the years is Thelonious Monk. Which reminds me, a film that I saw recently that I think everybody should see is Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat. It's a documentary about Patrice Lumumba, who liberated the Congo, the Democratic Public and Congo and then unfortunately died not too long after that. It's the story of that juxtaposed with jazz music. I saw this movie in New York City and I know in New York City you get access to things sometimes that you might not get access to all around the country, but if you should definitely hunt this movie down and see it. I've seen it twice and it is one of the most exciting films I've seen in this, I guess they call, award season or whatever. I sure hope it wins or gets nominated for an Academy Award because I mean considering how dark ultimately the subject matter is so full of joy and life and just beautiful performances of jazz music particularly of Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach, the music they used to make together, which I just find so remarkable . It's funny, I guess that I started off by saying I recommend quiet, but I guess I must be into extremes. I either like quiet or I like to hear Abbey Lincoln laying it all out there. I guess the noise I don't like. It's just kind of idle chithatters, you know, static or mediocre music or it just seems to be so much noise around to keep people from a higher awareness of things. Distraction, noise as distraction. I'm not a fan of that.
Feb 12, 2025
🧆
I'm not a vegan, but I do care about the environment very much and it's been brought to my attention by some of my vegan friends that if you claim to be an environmentalist and you eat meat then you're a hypocrite, which which makes me feel guilty so I haven't sworn off meat entirely, but I am a fan of having meatless meals at the very least if and when you can. or just trying to eat less meat in general, because I do think they have a point. So all that’s to say I'm going to recommend falafel. I'm a big fan of falafel right now. you can find it at least in New York City, you can find lots of different high end falafel situations. I like to try different places. It's like a hush puppy but better, I guess it's ostensibly healthy for you.
Feb 12, 2025
🎥
I was very saddened by the passing of David Lynch recently. I was devastated by that and I recommend David Lynch in general, everything about David, his films, his cartoons, his art, his weather report, everything about him. I haven't seen his version of Dune so I'm not gonna go on the record saying I recognize that, but I did see The Elephant Man not too long ago and that film is a masterpiece. I think my favorite currently, and this changes, you know, because life is long, but I think currently the most astonishing performance I've ever seen in a movie is John Hurt as the elephant man in that movie. It's literally magic what he did. I don't know how he did it. He obviously completely covered up with the loads of makeup and prosthetics and you can barely even hear him when he talks. He's able to communicate with all of those obstacles in his way that you can't even understand how he's doing it, understanding what this person is thinking and feeling so deeply with all this hindrance to him being able to express himself. It literally moved me to tears watching that performance. I think the movie as a whole is just exquisitely beautiful, and the way Lynch photographed it. It's interesting because I think Anthony Hopkins, who's also as usual, incredible in the film, but I think he wasn't entirely sold on David lynch when he was working with him. he wished it was perhaps an older and more well- established director, because that was pretty early in David's career, I believe it's only his second feature film, so Anthony Hopkins was always like, “who is this guy?” But I think Anthony came to appreciate actually what what a fine filmmaker Mr. Lynch was.
Feb 12, 2025