Michael Shannon for Wear Many Hats
I sat next to Michael Shannon on the subway and we talk about R.E.M., playing guitar, and his directorial debut
I run into stars all the time but this time it was on NYC subway, Q line heading south.
I walk into the subway station at Canal St. for the Q train and as I board, I see Michael Shannon chatting with a friend. After his friend left, I sat down next to him and had the chance to chat with Michael Shannon. This is the (unofficial by chance) Wear Many Hats IRL conversation with Michael Shannon.
I begin by telling him that I enjoyed his R.E.M. performance with Michael Stipe.
Shannon was surprised and happy to hear that from me. He asks if I was at the shows. I tell him I wasn’t there but I saw the videos, his conversation on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and clips from Talkhouse’s Ian Wheeler’s Instagram Stories.
Shannon asks me what my favorite R.E.M. song is and the other day I told him I was listening to “Shiny Happy People” at 6:45am because I wanted to have it clipped to a Matsar IG post of photographing all the lovely people who showed up to the Tata Bazaar market. I recount the time watching R.E.M. music videos on MTV that morning in my teenage years. Although “Losing My Religion” sticks with me as you can tell by my last post. Everyone kept messaging me that I’m a man of Allah now. Thanks for checking in on me. I’m not fasting.
We talk about the 19 date US tour Shannon recently came off of with Jason Narducy to perform R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction. I asked him what rituals he does, what’s on his rider, and how did he prepare to do that with all the other projects he’s doing.
He just tells me he does it.
I was expecting the younger Michael Shannon from the movies but I didn’t expect him to be a lot older than he looked. He still looked amazing at 50 but my Español teacher is 49 years old and is full of life running around the class. I guess thats what happens when you’re still making hardcore punk. Shannon was tired or I’m in a state of R.E.M. and this never happened.
Shannon asked me what I do and I told him that I play guitar too. I obviously knew what he meant meaning for work but I didn’t want to tell what I actually do for work. I want to be left alone with a bunch of people hearing that I’m a musician as well and that I play guitar and sing. This is how much I want to be a musician. That I play guitar in a band called Smog Cutter and that I’m a solo musician. I tell him Smog Cutter comes from a karaoke bar that was closed in Los Feliz. Shannon tells me he’s been there and that he used to live in LA. He also asks me if I lived in LA and I said for work and that I’ve played a couple shows there. I’ve only played one show in LA.
I want to share this moment of being an “Artist” with him. A conversation of playing music, covering songs, and talking about movies with him. I want to leave out advertising, design, CPG, and capitalism. I want my dream of being a musician alive. I want to be in entertainment so bad and so I’ll hold onto that dream for as long as I can.
We switch to talking about the movies. I ask him if he can share anything he’s acted in lately. Shannon is in Death by Lightning streaming on Netflix and is about to come out with his directional debut called Eric LaRue. I told him that he should have a screening at the Director’s Guild of America theater because one of our good friends is a member of the DGA and obviously in the film industry and got us to see Nosferatu with a Q&A with Robert Eggers. It inspired me to hopefully one day get into film and television.
I tell him I’m on my way to a watch party for The White Lotus. Shannon hasn’t caught up but is friends with some of the actors on the show. I’m glad we didn’t dive too much into this. No need to share White Lotus stories now.
Then it was my moment to switch back again and give Michael Shannon stickers of Wear Many Hats. I told him about the podcast and that I’ll hopefully have him on one day. We finally arrived at my stop and I asked him if I could take a portrait of him with my film camera. Shannon said yes and told him I had to go. This is me.
He said nice meeting you Rasha.