The Dialogue: Rian Johnson

Has Rian Johnson birthed a new franchise with Knives Out? With a $40+ million open weekend gross over Thanksgiving, it may not have reached the dizzying highs of his last movie, 2017's Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi, but Knives Out is still a rare beast in 2019; an original murder mystery tale that is effortlessly drawing in audiences. Inspired by classic Agatha Christie wodunits, Johnson pays homage to the genre's legacy while at the same time dragging it into the modern era. It wouldn't be hard to imagine the future adventures o its central detective, Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc.

A weak whodunit betrays its artifice on a second viewing, where audiences are looking out for the film’s misdirection during the mystery. Knives Out is quite different.

Oh, thank God [laughs].

In this case, you’re just left with a better understanding of all the little clues you drop, and the mechanics by which you weaved between them.

We built little things in there, yeah. I think it’s important, even on the first viewing—even if there are things that you're not going to pick up until you see it again—that you, as an audience, are so tuned into it. You’re going to be picking up so much stuff, even if you don’t know its relevance yet.

And just as a fan of whodunits, I know that that big dénouement scene at the end, where you do your reveals, is only satisfying if it feels like you’re connecting dots that you recognize. It’s the recognition scene, and that’s where all the satisfaction comes from. So, planting those very clearly, that’s fun, and there are some tiny things that I’m very proud of that you probably will only catch on your second viewing.

How much of the film’s commentary, came from your experience of social media over the last couple of years?

Some of the immediate political stuff obviously sprang up out of the last couple of years, but weirdly, the basic bones of what it’s about—who Marta is as a character, and how that applies to the family—I’ve had for years and years, right before the election. That’s always been in the bones of it.

Did you have specific actors in mind while writing?

No, not really. I’ve kind of learned not to do that because, inevitably, they won’t be available, and you’ll be sad. So, I just write the characters as a blank slate, and then sit down with Mary Vernieu, my casting director, and figure out who’s available.

It might seem like a bit of a leap to imagine Daniel Craig playing a Southern detective like Benoit Blanc.

That’s the thing. I mean, he’s great as Bond. I had seen him in other things over the years. Obviously, it was Logan Lucky recently, where you see he’s willing to have fun and go a little wackier. I’d seen him on the stage. I just knew that he’s a great actor, and also, I got the sense that he was really looking forward to the opportunity to have some fun. So that, much more than the idea of somehow playing off of how the public perceives him, was the motivation. I just got the sense that he was ready to really cut loose and play with this one, and he did.

How did you come to Ana de Armas for the role of Marta?

I had seen her in Blade Runner 2049, but I wasn't really familiar with her work. It wasMary who brought her to my attention and said, “This girl is really something special, you have to look at her.” I looked at her work and I could tell that she was really good, but I googled Ana and saw glamour shots of her, and I was just like, “No, she totally wrong for it.” Then, I met with her and read her, and she was so right. Besides being just an incredibly skilled actor, she has that indefinable thing with her eyes. She’s got that Audrey Hepburn-type thing, where her eyes just bring you in, and you're instantly on her side, and that’s what we needed for the character. It was perfect.

Designing the interiors of your mystery writer’s mansion must have been a joy.

It was fun. One of my favorite films is the1970s version of Sleuth, with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. That movie is also obviously centered on a mystery writer, and largely takes place inside the mansion, but it’s like the inside of his brain. So, I gave David Crank, our production designer, and David Schlesinger, our set decorator, that reference, and they just ran with it. They completely score Massachusetts for oddities, strange curios, automatons and artwork, and its such a rich, beautiful tapestry they made, which to me was a joy. I would just wander around, seeing all the treasures they had gathered up.

Did you document all of that stuff?

Yeah. We have folders of photos of all this stuff, and a lot of it is still sitting in the warehouse somewhere. So someday, if I ever want to just deck the house out…We’ll see if [my wife] Karina would kill me. We’d have another murder on our hands.

Surely you took the wheel of knives?

I really wanted to, but half of those knives were rentals. It’s funny. The big, industrial barbecue grate and all the knives on it, half of them were antique knives that we rented. Priceless pieces.