Rian John­son: ​‘Sondheim’s my guy’

It’s approach­ing two decades since Rian John­son announced him­self as one of genre cinema’s most intrigu­ing young tal­ents. His debut fea­ture, Brick, a high-stakes high school noir with a clock­work plot and killer script, set the tone for what was to come – not least its open­ing shot of a dead body lying face down in the dirt.

Aside from a sojourn in a galaxy far, far away, Johnson’s film career has remained ground­ed in mur­der and mys­tery ever since, from the swiz­zling exploits of The Broth­ers Bloom, to the time-skip­ping thrills of Loop­er, to the yarn-spin­ning larks of Knives Out. Nev­er one to repeat the same trick twice, John­son is back with Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mys­tery, anoth­er slick­ly con­struct­ed who­dunit that expands the world of his pre­vi­ous film while reac­quaint­ing us with Cajun crime solver extra­or­di­naire, Benoit Blanc.

LWLies: Glass Onion is not a direct con­tin­u­a­tion of Knives Out. You have Daniel Craig return­ing as Benoit Blanc, but it’s a new sto­ry, new cast. Was it always the idea not to do a direct sequel?

John­son: Yeah, that was always the inten­tion, even before we knew we were going to keep mak­ing these movies. The notion was, if we can make more, then they should be like mys­tery nov­els. Each one should have a new cast of char­ac­ters, its own set­ting, its own unique tone, and most impor­tant­ly its own rea­son for being. It’s the way Agatha Christie would do it.

And what about Daniel? He’s become almost like your Poirot figure.

I’ve been lucky to have had good rela­tion­ships with a bunch of dif­fer­ent actors over the years. But it’s rare that you end up being in the same lifeboat as some­one like Daniel Craig. Thank god we like each oth­er, because this could turn into a Hitch­cock lifeboat very fast if we didn’t. But we get along very well, and we’re both excit­ed by the notion of each of these movies tak­ing us by sur­prise and hope­ful­ly tak­ing the audi­ence by sur­prise. So for many, many rea­sons, I’m hap­py I’m in this boat with him.

Daniel had this long stint play­ing James Bond, and he was the only actor afford­ed the free­dom to flesh out the character’s back­sto­ry. It’s not quite the same thing in Glass Onion, but it def­i­nite­ly feels like you’re build­ing out Blanc’s char­ac­ter more, giv­ing us a glimpse into his pri­vate life.

Y’know, it’s fun to tease, to give lit­tle hints here and there… Christie did that with Poirot and Miss Marple. But I think a lit­tle goes a long way. The last thing I want to do is start build­ing up some deep back­sto­ry about Benoit Blanc. The point of these movies is the mys­tery behind each sto­ry. I’m not try­ing to fig­ure out ways to keep it fresh by intro­duc­ing his father… blah, blah, blah. The way I approach it, you can tru­ly have every sto­ry be dri­ven by com­plete­ly fresh winds, and Blanc can play his role in the mys­tery in his own unique way.

He’s always going to be the detective.

Yes, but odd­ly enough, the detec­tive is not the pro­tag­o­nist of the mur­der mys­tery. It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that. That’s the poten­tial trap, because obvi­ous­ly he anchors the mys­tery in the same way Poirot anchors it in Christie’s nov­els, but from a screen­writ­ing per­spec­tive if you start think­ing of Blanc as the pro­tag­o­nist then you’re kin­da dead in the water.

The way he’s styled here is amaz­ing; he’s got this Mon­sieur Hulot thing going on. Is that how you approached it, what would Benoit Blanc wear on holiday?

That was all Daniel. He very much leaned into the [Jacques] Tati aes­thet­ic, and he’s got a bit of a Cary-Grant-in-To-Catch-a-Thief vibe as well, includ­ing the high-waist­ed, wide-leg cream trousers. You real­ly have to be Cary Grant or Daniel Craig to pull those off – I would end up look­ing like Peter Usti­nov. Daniel worked with [cos­tume design­er] Jen­ny [Eagan] a lot, but it was his idea to go down the Hulot route. My thing was like, wher­ev­er Blanc goes, he has to look fabulous.

I love the idea that Blanc nev­er takes his shirt off… not even in the pool.

No, he’s not going to show his nip­ples [laughs].

In Knives Out, Ana de Armas’ Mar­ta becomes Blanc’s reluc­tant part­ner in solv­ing the case. You do some­thing sim­i­lar here by hav­ing him pair up with some­one unexpectedly.

And also, just in tech­ni­cal terms, the audi­ence knows there’s nev­er going to be a true threat against Blanc. They know the detec­tive is not going to die; the detec­tive is not going to get arrest­ed; the detec­tive is not going to make bad life choic­es. So, they need some­body who they care about, who they can become invest­ed in, who’s not Blanc. I hope we can find a way to keep doing that going forward.

You’ve said that Knives Out was writ­ten on and off over a 10-year peri­od. What was the time frame for this one?

It wasn’t 10 years, let me tell you. It was very quick. I start­ed it from scratch after the suc­cess of the first one, because even though in the abstract I thought it would be fun to do more of these, I did not have a draw­er full of ideas. It’s the same right now, I’m start­ing to gath­er ideas for the third one. Obvi­ous­ly time is a nice lux­u­ry to have, but one advan­tage of writ­ing over a short­er peri­od is that, if you’re set­ting it in the here and now, it allows you to write about what­ev­er is going on. With Knives Out, that came towards the end. But it’s still a nerve-rack­ing process. Actu­al­ly it’s fuck­ing ter­ri­fy­ing. Espe­cial­ly with this one, because peo­ple liked the first one, so the expec­ta­tions are high­er. You’ve just got to get stuck into it and try to do your best.

The smok­ing gun of this film is a cock­tail nap­kin with a bil­lion dol­lar idea scrib­bled on it. Do you have some­thing sim­i­lar at the start of the writ­ing process?

I do! Years ago, I start­ed work­ing in these lit­tle Mole­sk­ine books [John­son holds one up to the cam­era; it’s filled with text and anno­tat­ed sketch­es]. Nine­ty per cent of the process is just in these things. It’s most­ly com­ing up with the struc­ture of the movie and how it’s gonna tick. But that hap­pens along­side what is almost an entire­ly sep­a­rate process, which is think­ing in terms of char­ac­ters and themes and the emo­tion dri­ving it. There’s almost like two tracks run­ning par­al­lel to each oth­er that inter­lock at some point.

You’ve opt­ed for a more exot­ic loca­tion this time. Was that always the plan? You said you start­ed writ­ing dur­ing lock­down… I can see the appeal of a Greek island.

We all want­ed to be on a Greek island, right? It was a com­bi­na­tion of things, but I def­i­nite­ly want­ed to give the audi­ence clear road signs that this was going to be its own thing. So think­ing of a set­ting that was as dif­fer­ent as pos­si­ble from Knives Out seemed like a good idea. Y’know, Knives Out was this cosy fam­i­ly dra­ma, which is what peo­ple often asso­ciate Christie’s nov­els with, but when I was a kid and start­ed get­ting into this genre, it was stuff like Evil Under the Sun and Death on the Nile, these big glam­orous vaca­tion movies.

Her­bert Ross’ 1973 film The Last of Sheila is clear­ly a big influ­ence on Glass Onion.

For sure. Again, just for the glam­our of it, the fun of it… The Last of Sheila has the most ​’70s cast of all time. I love it so much. Dyan Can­non in that movie, oh my god.

Speak­ing of The Last of Sheila, there’s a Stephen Sond­heim con­nec­tion there too. He co-wrote the film with Antho­ny Perkins, and he was well-known in the­atre cir­cles for his love of games and puz­zles. And in Knives Out there’s the scene where Blanc is singing ​‘Los­ing My Mind’ in his car. Could you talk about Sondheim’s influ­ence on your work?

Sondheim’s my guy. I’m a big musi­cal the­atre fan, and his work has meant a lot to me over the years. But yes, he’s some­one who cross­es over into the mur­der mys­tery world as well. I don’t know if this is apoc­ryphal or not, but there’s a sto­ry that the main char­ac­ter in Antho­ny Shaffer’s play ​‘Sleuth’ was mod­elled on Sond­heim, and the work­ing title was appar­ent­ly ​‘Who’s Afraid of Stephen Sondheim?’.

In my movie there are some cameos which I’d pre­fer to keep a secret for your read­ers, but we do have Sond­heim in a scene briefly. He had seen Knives Out and had appre­ci­at­ed the lit­tle nod, so we just took a swing and some­how we man­aged to get him on a Zoom call for 15 min­utes, and I got to meet one of my heroes. He was very game in record­ing his lit­tle cameo.

Sond­heim was famous for hold­ing his own mur­der mys­tery par­ties for his friends. Who would you invite to your dream mur­der mys­tery party?

Ah, jeez. Sond­heim, obvi­ous­ly [laughs]. I’ll tell you a sto­ry: When we were mak­ing the movie, we shot the first half in Greece and the sec­ond half in Bel­grade. That’s where all of our stage work and all of our sets were. It was at the height of the Delta wave, so we were in our pro­duc­tion bub­ble, and we were stay­ing in a very nice hotel, but we were going a lit­tle stir crazy. So on week­ends we would rent out the rooftop bar and the whole cast would get togeth­er for our own mur­der mys­tery par­ties. Janelle [Monáe] would show up in full cos­tume – lit­er­al­ly a Sher­lock Holmes cape and pipe, false mous­tache, the works – and she would have cre­at­ed a whole char­ac­ter with a back­sto­ry and she would stay in char­ac­ter all night. Which is all to say that I would def­i­nite­ly invite Janelle. And I would invite Dave Bautista, because he was unique­ly ter­ri­ble at it. I know I could beat him [laughs].

In the film there’s this lit­er­al ​‘glass onion’ which is described as infi­nite­ly com­plex but with a clear cen­tre. I’m aware you bor­rowed the title from the Bea­t­les’ song, which is famous­ly self-satiris­ing; it’s John Lennon pok­ing fun at him­self and peo­ple who would over­analyse the band’s lyrics. Does the title have mul­ti­ple mean­ings for you?

It absolute­ly does. Most of them are laid bare in the movie. It’s what you said but also in rela­tion to The Bea­t­les, it’s that thing of peo­ple think­ing they were play­ing 3D chess when, in real­i­ty, they were in the stu­dio mak­ing shit up and see­ing how it would sound, which plays into the movie as well. And also, y’know, the song is just a com­plete banger.

There’s also a love­ly moment, which is ulti­mate­ly played for laughs, where Edward Norton’s char­ac­ter strums ​‘Black­bird’. Do you have a favourite off ​‘The White Album’?

‘Glass Onion’ is def­i­nite­ly up there. To me, ​‘Dear Pru­dence’ is the best song ever writ­ten. But ​‘Glass Onion’ has always been a per­son­al favourite, too. It’s so inter­est­ing, because when I start­ed show­ing the script to friends, I didn’t think the con­cept of a Bea­t­les deep cut exist­ed, but I was amazed by how many peo­ple didn’t recog­nise the song or didn’t know it. I guess it’s one of the more obscure ones in their cat­a­logue. It’s not ​‘Let It Be’.

Maybe the film will have a Stranger Things-Kate Bush effect and peo­ple will start to catch on.

That’d be nice. We’re real­ly gonna put those Bea­t­les on the map! [Laughs]

Look­ing at your own back cat­a­logue, there’s a line in The Broth­ers Bloom I like where Adrien Brody says, some­what sneer­ing­ly, ​“My broth­er writes his cons the way dead Rus­sians write nov­els, with the­mat­ic hooks and embed­ded sym­bol­ism”. It feels quite point­ed­ly self-analytical.

Yeah, and it’s some­thing that’s inter­est­ing to talk about for a lot of rea­sons. Part of the game of writ­ing movies is build­ing some­thing that is a piece of pop enter­tain­ment that can work entire­ly on that lev­el. That’s its own form of crafts­man­ship. Then there’s this aspect of try­ing to lay­er in all these things that I’m angry about. I’m not in the busi­ness of mak­ing mes­sage movies, so any social com­men­tary has to work in the con­text of deliv­er­ing a big, fun movie.

Glass Onion def­i­nite­ly feels more overt­ly polit­i­cal than Knives Out, in terms of the types of peo­ple you’re satirising.

The first one was very much about a fam­i­ly; about the argu­ments you’d have over the din­ner table with rel­a­tives. With this one… it’s hard to not go big with it because every time you turn on the news or open Twit­ter, you’re con­front­ed with this ter­ri­ble, car­ni­va­lesque real­i­ty, to the point where it seems like there’s not a small sub­tle way to ref­er­ence it. If you want to talk about this stuff, you have to raise your voice.

The Edward Nor­ton char­ac­ter is fas­ci­nat­ing. He’s this incred­i­bly self-serv­ing, self-mythol­o­gis­ing tech bil­lion­aire who wants to change the world. There’s a run­ning joke that no one can quite fig­ure out whether he’s a genius or an idiot.

Yeah, well, there are so many spe­cif­ic exam­ples of that in the real world. But when writ­ing the char­ac­ter, I very quick­ly found the more spe­cif­ic I was, the more bor­ing it became. The Elon Musk jokes didn’t seem very fun or inter­est­ing. Some­times you have to take a step back and look at the over­all struc­ture and the sys­tems that allow these peo­ple to exist. And why we look up at these peo­ple on pedestals.

The cur­rent moment cer­tain­ly feels like fer­tile ground for writ­ing a char­ac­ter-dri­ven satire, which is part­ly what Glass Onion is.

Yeah, absolute­ly. I guess this one is a bit more Strangelove in tone than what came before it, and prob­a­bly what will come after it. But it goes back to this idea of try­ing to get into what Christie was doing in her day. She was nev­er polit­i­cal per se, but she always engaged with the cul­ture at the time. I think it’s some­thing that’s kind of been lost from the genre.

When we see con­tem­po­rary peri­od pieces that are adap­ta­tions of Christie’s work, they often feel over­ly lav­ish and quaint. But when you read Christie now, it still feels fresh. Y’know, she was deal­ing with class and gen­der dynam­ics in a real­ly inter­est­ing way. There’s this per­cep­tion of her work that it’s like the cov­er of a game of Clue. It’s stuffy British soci­ety, it’s the body in the library… Which Christie her­self lam­pooned in her books. She was very aware of that and was con­stant­ly sub­vert­ing the genre, which I think has helped to pro­long her legacy.

In terms of your own career, you’ve direct­ed a sequel before, but this is the first time you’ve made a fol­low-up to one of your own movies. Does that bring its own added pressure?

With The Last Jedi and this, I’d say the pres­sure was kind of dif­fer­ent, but there’s still the same click­i­ty clack of rid­ing the roller­coast­er. The instant you’re at the top, that’s when the nerves set in. With Star Wars it’s a whole set of mas­sive pres­sures, where­as the suc­cess of Knives Out cre­at­ed a good prob­lem for me to solve. That said, a suc­cess­ful movie can quick­ly turn into this gild­ed object that is some­how out­side of you – even though you made it, it sud­den­ly seems beyond your reach. I’ve nev­er real­ly faced that before in terms of writ­ing some­thing as a fol­low-up. It was pret­ty ter­ri­fy­ing and I’m sure it will be the same doing the third one.

When does num­ber three start?

I don’t know. I’m just start­ing to think about ideas for it, but I think I’m prob­a­bly going to make it as my next film. We’ll see how quick­ly we can get it togeth­er. Let me put this one out there first. Just give me a minute [laughs].

We’ve touched on the polit­i­cal and satir­i­cal side of the film but, as with Knives Out, it’s telling that you once again end things on a pos­i­tive note: truth will out in the end.

As I see it, that’s an essen­tial part of the who­dunit. A lot of aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ers have char­ac­terised the genre as being essen­tial­ly Con­ser­v­a­tive: a crime is com­mit­ted; chaos is cre­at­ed; the pater­nal detec­tive swoops in and solves the case, restor­ing order to soci­ety. I see it much more in terms of moral order being restored. So when you step out of the the­atre, you’re sat­is­fied that things have been set right in the end. But now that you men­tion it, maybe I should do a bum­mer end­ing for the next one. The killer gets away with it…

Would watch.

Shit, don’t tell me that. Don’t tell Net­flix that!

Sor­ry, Net­flix. By the way, I very much enjoyed see­ing Noah Segan pop up in this.

[Laughs] I like the idea of him being a bit like Patrick McGoohan in Colum­bo. He just turns up wear­ing a dif­fer­ent beard each time. But y’know, we’re best friends, and hav­ing him hang out on set is always a blast. We’ll always fig­ure out some­thing for him to do.

Has he read ​‘Gravity’s Rain­bow’ yet?

Noah? No… No one has! [Laughs]. I gave him a copy and I think he got like a hun­dred pages into it.

What were you read­ing while you were mak­ing Glass Onion?

I’m all about audio­books, they’re kind of my obses­sion. Typ­i­cal­ly non-fic­tion. It was 2020 and we were in lock­down, so I was prob­a­bly busy mak­ing sour­dough starter or some­thing. When I’m writ­ing I don’t gen­er­al­ly read Agatha Christie books, just because it feels too close to what I’m doing. Right now I’m read­ing the Sher­lock Holmes short sto­ries and nov­els for the first time, which Daniel sug­gest­ed to me. They’re very good.

And what about music?

I have a Glass Onion playlist that I’ve been build­ing since I start­ed writ­ing it. ​‘Long Black Lim­ou­sine’, the Elvis Pres­ley ver­sion, was one that I lis­tened to over and over. Also, the George Har­ri­son song ​‘Gone Trop­po’ off his weird album [of the same name]. Oh, and also Nino Rota’s main theme from [1978’s] Death on the Nile. That was a big influ­ence on Nathan [Johnson]’s score.

You and Nathan record­ed the Knives Out score at Abbey Road. Did you get to go back for this one?

I didn’t get to go sad­ly; I was busy shoot­ing my TV show [Pok­er Face]. It was mag­i­cal being there for Knives Out though. The fact we got the oppor­tu­ni­ty again to record Glass Onion there, with the whole Bea­t­les con­nec­tion, that was pret­ty special.