Michael Shannon sinks into the dark aftermath of school shooting in 'Eric LaRue'
Michael Shannon swore he’d never direct a movie.
The Academy Award–nominated actor thought it sounded like an enormous pain. But then the playwright Brett Neveu, Shannon’s friend and fellow Red Orchid Theatre ensemble member, handed him a script on the closing night of a play they did together in 2018. (The same night was memorialized by a viral photo of Shannon watching "The Shape of Water" — a film he starred in — win the Oscar for best picture from a barstool at the Old Town Ale House.)
The script was a screen adaptation of "Eric LaRue," a searing play about the aftermath of a school shooting, which Neveu wrote in 1998. Suddenly, Shannon changed his mind about sitting in the director’s chair.
“For some reason, when I read it, I just felt it very deeply in my bones,” he said before a recent screening at Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center, alongside Neveu. “I wanted to nurture it and protect it … make sure that it was all that it could be.”
"Erica LaRue," which had its stage premiere at A Red Orchid theater in 2002, which opened in select theaters on Apri 4, will thereafter be available for rent on streaming services. Shannon’s directorial debut tells the story of Janice (Judy Greer), a mother in a small, nameless town whose son has killed three classmates in a school shooting.
When Neveu originally wrote the play, the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado had not yet happened. Neither had the 2012 shooting at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary, which left 26 people dead, mostly first graders. Nor had the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida (2018) or Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas (2022).
Over the years, Neveu’s prescient story of anguish has remained startlingly relevant. Now, Neveu and Shannon are hoping the movie adaptation — which unflinchingly lingers in the suffering of the survivors — will renew a conversation.
“I feel like we’re caught in the loop, and I want to get out of this loop,” said Neveu, who lives in the Chicago suburbs and teaches screenwriting at Northwestern University. “I am so emotionally affected by this movie. I don't want to see this story anymore. But I’m going to sit and see it, because we have to. We need to get this perspective.”
In the film, Greer wears deep sorrow on her face as her character prepares to meet with the mothers of the murdered boys and, eventually, visit Eric in prison for the first time.
Shannon says he did not want to draw upon the “usual” dramatic actresses for the part.
“I felt like the way to go was to find somebody for whom this would be a very different experience than what they’re accustomed to,” he said. “Not somebody who’s used to showing up and turning on the waterworks and grabbing their trophy and going home.”
Alexander Skarsgård joins Greer in the all-star cast as her emotionally stunted husband who has turned to church for comfort. Alison Pill plays his eager churchgoing companion and sometimes flirtatious coworker, while Steppenwolf ensemble member Tracy Letts and Paul Sparks appear as dueling pastors. Several Red Orchid ensemble members — including Jennifer Engstrom (who appeared in the original play), Lawrence Grimm and Mierka Girten — round out the cast.
From the jump, Shannon — who says he didn’t really hold auditions for the film — knew he wanted a strong A Red Orchid showing on screen, although he never considered joining the cast himself.
“I just wanted to pay homage to the fact that this came from Red Orchid,” Shannon said. “And I was delighted with the work that they all did. I was so proud of them and proud of our company.”
The anchor is Greer, whom Shannon met while doing a 2017 Christmas comedy called "Pottersville." He knew that Greer, a “national treasure” he says, could do more than play the wacky best friend as she has often been cast in such films, for example, as "13 Going on 30," "27 Dresses: and "The Wedding Planner." The result is a performance that Shannon called a "relentless pursuit.”
“I don’t think there are words for what Judy does in this movie,” Shannon said. “I’ve never seen an actor give as much as she did.”
The team shot the film in 2022 in and around Wilmington, North Carolina. Originally, the plan was to film in Arkansas, but that summer, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade; Arkansas was among the first states to enact a trigger law that put in place a near-total ban on abortion. At a friend’s urging, Shannon decided to relocate the film, which was then in the early stages of location hunting.
“To my knowledge, we’re the only movie that did that,” Shannon told attendees at the recent Siskel screening, drawing applause.
Ultimately, the backdrop feels, appropriately, like it could be Anywhere, USA. The plainness feels both familiar and claustrophobic, especially the tiny, boxed-in house where Janice and her husband, Ron (Skarsgård), numbly navigate their new reality and avoid their son Eric’s bedroom, torn apart by police following the shooting.
Shannon said this fimmaking experience was a career highlight.
“It’s one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever done as an artist, including all my acting work and everything,” he said.
Do it again? He won’t say.
"Eric LaRue" will run April 4-11 exclusively at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and then it's available to rent on AppleTV and Prime Video starting April 11.