![]() I loved the idea that Blanc is working on the case and he’s got this big showstopper of a song in his head. I was listening to “Follies” while I was writing. I was like, “How long are these things actually? Cause I have in my head that it’s like 10 minutes at the end, but I’ve written a half-hour thing.” And I went back and watched it and I’m like, “Oh, thank God, it is usually 20 to 30 minutes of actually just explaining it.” But generally if I’m drawing from something it’s kind of a deeper well, it’s something that I just love and it’s kind of already there. For this one, I did go back and look at “Death on the Nile” and “Evil Under the Sun” and timed out how long the denouement was at the end. The times that I’ll specifically go to influences are often when I get stuck. Generally I’m thinking less about direct influences and more just about my idea for the story and what it means to me. When you’re sitting down to write, do you already have a mental list of references or influences? You can read books written in the ’20s where the characters in the books are joking with each other about how they found themselves in a murder mystery. It’s such a meta thing to do, but that felt right because the murder mystery genre has always been a meta genre, even from its roots. ![]() Johnson recently sat down to sift through the matrix of references and influences within the world of “Knives Out.” His finished product bursts with such references, whether “Sleuth” and “Deathtrap,” Agatha Christie adaptations or lighter genre spins like “Clue” and “The Private Eyes.” The movie also includes a glimpse of a “Murder, She Wrote” episode, dubbed in Spanish, a made-up Danica McKellar Hallmark movie called “Murder by Surprise,” and the voice of Johnson’s longtime collaborator Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a David Caruso-like cop on a TV crime show.īut rather than some kind of hodgepodge of ideas from other books and movies, “Knives Out” feels singular, wholly of itself with a spirit of madcap invention. While editing “Knives Out,” Johnson essentially created a syllabus of whodunit inspirations by posting a series of photos online of various movie posters. Into their midst come two local police officers (Lakeith Stanfield and Noah Segan) and an eccentric private investigator named Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig). His entire family, whose lives depend in no small part on the patriarch’s vast wealth, could be considered suspects - the formidable ensemble includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Evans, Don Johnson, Toni Collette and Michael Shannon - as could his young caretaker Marta ( Ana de Armas). Along with its twisting, surprising storytelling, the movie engages with many contemporary topics, from immigration to social media and more.Ĭhristopher Plummer stars as Harlan Thrombey, a preeminent crime novelist who is found dead the morning after his 85th birthday. ![]() The latest movie from writer-director Rian Johnson - who dipped into mystery with his high school noir debut “Brick” and upended expectations in a distant galaxy with “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” - is a playful story of money, privilege and murder. “Knives Out” is a whodunit with a lot more on its mind than just catching a killer.
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