Tom Hardy’s critical The Bikeriders scene, in which Johnny finds his inspiration in movie legend Marlon Brando, came straight from Danny Lyons’ book, says director Jeff Nichols.

Hardy’s Johnny watches Brando’s The Wild One and finds his calling as a biker, and as The Bikeriders director Nichols explained, the scene was directly inspired by an image in Lyons’ photobook. Check out his remarks below (via Little White Lies):

We’ve all done that. That was taken actually from the book. There’s a photograph of the real Johnny, his kind of family scrapbook of the club. And one of the pages was a TV Guide with Marlon Brando on it. So that actually happened. I think it was kind of up to me to then turn that into not just an instigating moment for the character, but also a defining moment because… And I think Tom certainly embraced this with his voice and everything else, but he’s just playing the part. He’s just acting like Brando and it catches up with him in very dangerous ways. He’s not really part of that world. He has a house and a family and daughters and he knows deep down he’s not really the guy on the screen.

More to come…