Interview: Rian Johnson peels back the layers of ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’

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Early in the morning at the 2022 Middleburg Film Festival, I witnessed first-hand the passion and ease that director Rian Johnson has when talking about his films. A humble, relaxed demeanor that expresses nothing but enthusiasm and whimsy with art form that he fell in love with early on as a child moving from Maryland to Colorado and then California, where Johnson filmed his feature debut, Brick, a neo-noir mystery.

Since that time, he has become one of the most original voices in modern cinema, making a caper comedy in The Brothers Bloom, an original sci-fi epic in Looper, the best Star Wars film since The Empire Strikes Back with The Last Jedi, and one of the most entertaining films of the last decade with Knives Out, the first entry in his new series of films following his original Southern detective, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig). Sprinkled in between all these projects, Johnson also made some of the most celebrated episodes of television, including the renowned “Ozymandias” episode in the final season of Breaking Bad.

Johnson’s latest film finds him returning to the world of Benoit Blanc, where the world class detective has been invited to a murder mystery party hosted by one of the richest men on the planet (Edward Norton). But as the guests assemble, there seems to be more than fun and games afoot, leaving Blanc to have to uncover the truth behind the secrets that lie inside the Glass Onion. Hilarious, shocking, and just down right entertaining, Johnson has struck gold again within this new murder mystery, with an all-star cast and enough fun to leave you coming back for more.

As I sat down with the writer-director to discuss Glass Onion, his positivity and politeness showed right off the bat by making just a small observation. “I like that background,” he said with a big smile on his face, noticing that it was a shot from his latest film. We talked about the first film that made him fall in love with the murder mystery genre, the expectations of making a second Blanc film, working with his new cast, and what other genres he wants to tackle in the future after he has given us one more Blanc adventure.

Ryan McQuade: Do you remember which murder mystery film you fell in love with within the genre, and what did you love about it specifically?

Rian Johnson: Yeah, Death on the Nile. The original version with Peter Ustinov is the one that is, for me, the platonic ideal of the murder mystery movie. It was, when I was kind of the perfect age, I was probably around 9 or 10 years old, and I remember it had an all-star cast. It was very fun. It also felt kind of scary. It felt like a very adult movie, and I remember standing behind the couch while my whole family was gathered around the TV watching it, and feeling like I was peeking into something that was both very fun for me to watch, but also very grown up. To this day, still, it’s my favorite. I can revisit it. I think the combination of self-aware fun, and genuine creepy mystery just hit its peak with that film. I love Ustinov enough as Poirot. He’s my favorite Poirot.

RM: I love that movie.

RJ: It’s so good.

RM: You’ve made a sequel before with The Last Jedi. Was making Glass Onion a different kind of pressure or a challenge for you since you are making a sequel to your own franchise that you’re creating, rather than an existing one?

RJ: I don’t know if it was different in that way. The big way it was different is that The Last Jedi was kind of a baton pass. It was picking up a story and continuing it, and then hopefully handing it off. So, it was a serialized storytelling experience, even though I tried to kind of do a self-contained, emotionally satisfying arc within that movie. Whereas this movie, the entire starting point for it was looking at Agatha Christie’s books, and thinking of this not as a continuation at all of the last movie. In fact, even with the setting, trying to plant a big flag for the audience that we’re in for a whole new ride with this one, and trying to not repeat myself, and trying to create something that’s also a fun mystery, but in a completely different mode. So, I guess that was more the challenge with this one, but also by challenge, I mean it’s also the whole reason I wanted to do it, the challenge in a good way.

RM: The film is highly entertaining, but much like the first film tackling immigration, this one tackles the dangers of the wealthy and the powerful that are in our society. How much does the murder mystery genre for you feel like the right vehicle to tackle these important topics?

RJ: It’s an incredibly potent vehicle for attacking these topics, and a big part of the reason why I was excited to start making these movies is it hadn’t been used for that I felt for a while. Being a fan of the genre, growing up loving all these murder mystery movies and TV shows, the vast majority of them were period pieces that were set in England. For me, realizing that Agatha Christie was not doing that, she was writing to her time and her place, was a big revelation. If you think about the genre, it’s almost the perfect vehicle to create a little microcosm of society, with all of the suspects, and the power structure of the suspects with somebody who they want killed up at the top. It’s a brilliant tool for examining the current state of things within the candy-coated shell of a fun mystery. So no, that was a huge part of this is just saying, “Okay, we’re going to do a whodunit set right here and now in America, and not try and be timeless. We’re just going to unabashedly talk about this stuff.”

RM: No, for sure. It’s so relevant still, too, and it gets relevant, weirdly, every single day.

RJ: I know. In a bad way.

RM: Can you speak to the process behind the production design, especially the invitation boxes that we see in the opening sequence of the film, but as well as the Glass Onion house itself and how integral you were into all those details? Is it on the page, is that in the creative process when you’re going over that with your production designer?

RJ: Well, it’s kind of both. It starts on the page, but then Rick Heinrichs, who is our production designer, who I had worked with before on The Last Jedi. Rick, he’s the one who kind of really brought all this to life. Rick came up working with Tim Burton on his movies. Rick is incredible at doing very artful, nuanced character-based design on a very large canvas on a grand scale, which is exactly what we needed in this movie. So, the script describes the intent of it, but then Rick gets in there and actually realizes all the details. Similar with a Puzzle Box, I had really specific ideas about it. I worked with Chris Peck, our props master, and he got a bunch of amazing craftsmen together and actually physically built all the little pieces of the puzzle box. So, we had a few weeks we were shooting insert shots of all these carved bits and pieces sliding. It was so much fun being able to be so hands-on with it.

RM: What was the collaborative process like working with Daniel [Craig] on this second Blanc adventure? Was there something specifically you both wanted to explore more with Blanc that you guys didn’t the chance to in Knives Out?

RJ: No, not really. We wanted to work together again. That was really the big thing. We had a good time on the first one, and we wanted to see if we could pull it off again. It’s not like there was anything like even the stuff about seeing Blanc at home, or this or that, it’s not like that was a premeditated thing on our part. That just ended up being the needs of the story. The process was very similar to the last one. I wrote the script and then sent it to him, and then we talked about it, and tweaked a couple of things, and he found his way into it. It’s a very easy, natural collaboration between the two of us, which I think is why we want to keep doing it.

RM: Janelle [Monáe] is fantastic in the film. What it was working with her and creating Andi together through this process?

RJ: I cannot talk up Janelle Monáe enough. I had been a fan of hers, her work on the screen, her music, and I guess what I would say is if you look at her albums, and you look at her music, one of the first things I said to her when I sat down was how much of a storyteller she was. She very much has a storytelling spirit, and that’s what this part required. I needed somebody who was going to come in with me and understand the story of this character, and put the work into making that clear for the audience. She put her back into this role, man. She really worked her butt off in it. I’m very excited in the movie to be out there in the world, and for everyone to see it so that we can all start talking about what she actually pulled off in the movie. I find it really exciting.

RM: When casting a large ensemble like this, what are you looking for most to make sure you know they are the right fit for the characters?

RJ: Well, you’re looking for the best actor for the part. I work with my casting director, Mary Vernieu, who I’ve worked with on many movies now. It’s just kind of the dance of who feels right for it, who would be fun to see in it, who is not who we would expect to see in this role, and that’s what’s fun about it. There’s also the additional layer that, because a big part of making these movies is just us having a good time making them.

I think that’s reflected on the screen, and we know that this is going to be an ensemble that has to come together, and work together, and be in the same hotel together for months and months. It’s a bit like writing up the guest list for a dinner party. So frankly, you want to just invite cool people who are going to get along and have a good time, and so that’s the other big consideration with this. We were able to with this one. Everybody was just lovely, and we were all playing murder mystery games together on the weekends at the hotel bar. It was a good gang that really clicked together.

RM: Was the bonding experience of that, was it different with this crew and this cast than with Knives Out? Or was it sort of similar in some aspects?

RJ: It was eerily similar. Yeah. Daniel and I both felt like we really lucked out. It’s almost like catching lightning in a bottle twice, because with the first one, it was a very similar thing. It was a group coming together for an ensemble. Each one of them were movie stars who could carry their own movie, but they all came together in the spirit of forming a true acting ensemble. Lo and behold, it happened again on this one. Yeah, I think Daniel and I are just going to hope it happens a third time because again, it leads to such a joyous experience making these things.

RM: Beyond the marvelous ensemble, there are a ton of fun cameos in this movie. Were those written in the script, and what was it like assembling those appearances for the film?

RJ: Yeah, they were written in the script, and I didn’t know if I would get them. I assumed I wouldn’t when I was writing them in the script. All of them were pie-in-the-sky, like God, this’ll never happen, but this will at least give you a sense of what we’re going for. Then lo and behold, somehow we were able to get them. It was astounding to me. The two that are not really spoilers I can talk about are Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury. They have, it’s just one very fun little moment at the beginning of the movie, but the fact that we have those two legends doing cameos in this film, more than that, the fact that I got to meet both of them. The fact that I got a few minutes with each of them filming these things to tell them what their work meant to me, it’s an incredibly special thing.

RM: What excites you the most about returning to this world you’ve created for your third Benoit Blanc in the near future?

RJ: Yeah, and I had kind of thought, well, I should probably do something totally different next, but honestly, I just try and follow my nose. I just have to go after what’s the most exciting, and right now I start thinking about other things and my brain just keeps coming back to the next Benoit Blanc mystery. What’s exciting to me is feeling like… First of all, it’s the notion of learning from each one of these and figuring out how do I get better at writing these mysteries? It’s also the excitement of how can this be totally different from both the first and the second movie? How can we use the third movie almost to show the wingspan of with an audience, it can be this, and it can be this, and it can be this.

It almost gets more exciting the more challenging, the more of them you do. The notion of you have to dig even deeper and swing even wider in order to give the audience a truly exhilarating feeling of, I don’t know where this is going. So, that’s a genuinely exciting creative challenge for me, and you pair that with just having such a great working relationship with Daniel, and the fact that I know it’s going to be just a comfortable, wonderful working experience, and getting to get a whole ‘nother group of actors together. I don’t know. Nothing seems more exciting to me right now.

RM: Beyond the murder mystery, beyond these films, is there another genre or story that you haven’t tackled yet that you would want to explore down the road?

RJ: Yeah. I’d love to do a musical someday. I’d love to do a Western, I’d love to do a melodrama. It’s funny, watching Douglas Sirk movies, and doing a pure melodrama. So, I would love to come back to sci-fi. Sci-fi Is such an expansive genre and there’s so many different modes that it can operate in. Even Star Wars is something I hope to come back to someday. I grew up, like a lot of us, watching genre movies and there’s so many of them I have a deep personal connection to. Using them as a mode to try and do personal storytelling is something that just, at the moment at least, it really gets me excited. So yeah, we’ll see what’s next.

RM: My last question, if you were inviting other directors, past or present, to a murder mystery party, who would you want to invite and why? Also, which person do you think would be the killer?

RJ: Oh wow. That’s a really good one. I’ll be selfish. I can’t really think of it in terms of murder mystery solvers, but just directors I’d love to have sitting around a table. So the thing is, I would invite John Huston. I would invite Hitchcock. Let’s invite Ida Lupino in there, because she’d be a firecracker. Oh my God, who else? It would be interesting to get Lubitsch in there, get Billy Wilder around that table. You kidding me? The thing is, we would get all these people and then we would pass out the cards to play Mafia, and we would all just get drunk and totally forget we were supposed to be playing a game, I think. But that would be just a hell of an evening though. Can you imagine?

RM: I think that would be a night we’d all want to see.

RJ: Do it, man. Invent the technology. Talk to Elon. It’s within our grasp. (Both laugh)

RM: I have no connections to him, and I don’t think I want to.

RJ: I doubt he wants to hear from me right now. (Both laugh)

RM: He’s got his own problems. But this is a fantastic movie. It’s always a pleasure talking to you.

RJ: Likewise, Ryan. Thanks so much. Talk soon.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery completes a one-week theatrical run on Tuesday, November 29. It will be available to stream December 23 on Netflix.