Michael Shannon Caps A Busy Year With Frank & Lola
He explains why he doesn't always go for blockbusters.
Easily the busiest actor of the year, Michael Shannon has had 10 films in cinemas and festivals in 2016. The latest to arrive in American multiplexes is Frank & Lola, a romantic mystery set in Las Vegas, in which he plays a man who uncovers some uncomfortable secrets about his girlfriend (Imogen Poots).
Michael Shannon talks 'Frank & Lola'
Shannon has made a career out of unexpected choices, switching between big blockbusters like Man of Steel and smaller independent dramas like this year's Midnight Special and Loving, both from his writer-director friend Jeff Nichols. "I'm not primarily profit-driven, necessarily," he laughs. And he finds it amusing that the films are never released in the same order that they're made. "If you look at something like Midnight Special, I made that quite awhile ago, and Warner Bros for some mysterious reason kept it in a closet for a year. With Frank & Lola, there is a Vegas part and a Paris part. And the Vegas part was like three and a half weeks and then we went to Paris for a week. But Elvis & Nixon was also coming together, so what we did was we went to Vegas shot the meat of the Frank & Lola story, did Elvis & Nixon in its entirety, and then did the Paris portion of Frank & Lola afterward! You get to the point where you're so tired and things just get sketchy."
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