Q&A photos by Marcie Revens – Print courtesy of Netflix
Southern detective Benoit Blanc takes a third stab at solving a murder in Director Rian Johnson’s comedic crime-drama, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.
In the latest installment of the Knives Out series, Johnson’s film finds Blanc teaming up with an earnest young priest to investigate a perfectly impossible crime when a monsignor turns up dead at a small-town church with a dark history.
On December 7, after the DGA membership screening in New York, Johnson discussed the making of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery during a Q&A moderated by Director Celine Song (Materialists). He is also scheduled to speak about the film following the Los Angeles screening on December 7.
During the New York conversation, Johnson spoke about how he approaches the mystery element of each installment of this series.
“You have to always remember at every stage of it the mystery part — the whodunnit, all the shiny baubles of clue gathering and reveals of information and twists — that is not going to keep an audience engaged. You have to start and finish with the same basic meat and potatoes building blocks that any movie runs off of. Who is the protagonist? Why do we care about them? What do they want? Why can’t they get it? Why do we care that they get it? And then how do they get it in a way you don’t expect at the end. You have to lash yourself to the mast to remember that no matter what clever shit you come up with in terms of little reveals and everything, if you don’t care about the central character and you’re not on a rollercoaster ride as opposed to just solving a crossword puzzle as audience member, none of it is going to matter.”
Johnson’s other directorial credits include the feature films Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Knives Out, Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi, Looper, The Brothers Bloom, Brick and episodes of the television series Terriers and Breaking Bad. He won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series for his 2012 Breaking Bad episode “Fifty-One.” Johnson has been a DGA member since 2009.
