This is Behind the Curtain. Today we're learning how Rian Johnson combines the
whodunit and thriller genre, what the Walter White test the Ryan gives the
protagonist is, and the only advice Rian Johnson thinks is worth the damn
well as
I started thinking about the genre I mean it's interesting
Hitchcock hated whodunits famously and his whole thing about whodunits was it's
a big build-up to one big surprise at the end which was a very cheap coin for
him narratively and that's why he was all about suspense he's like, "give them
the information early and make them lean forward in their chair" and I love
whodunit and I fundamentally agree with Hitchcock so the idea approaching this
was to kind of put the engine of a Hitchcock thriller in the middle of a
whodunit so hopefully we get all the great stuff we still love about whodunit
so we get the questioning we get kind of the old mansion and the eccentric family
all the suspects and we get the great scene at the end where the detective
does the Dana MA in the library and lays it all out but in the middle of it we
kind of have this more suspense driven Hitchcock thriller story that centers on
and the Dharma's character and so with this we do you know you can recognize we
do the Columbo thing we did we basically with a couple of very crucial
differences the Columbo starts with the scene where the killer does the murder
and you see who it is and then it that makes it suspense not surprised that
means there is no surprise you know it and you're waiting to see how Columbo is
going to catch them and so we kind of do that in this movie you gotta do
something that starts as whodunit turns into a Hitchcock thriller then turns
back into a whodunit at the end then hopefully the feeling is that this
whodunit has been hiding underneath this thriller the entire time and the
thriller itself was just a bit of misdirection why the really interesting
things to me was okay what if he did the Columbo thing but the audience was
genuinely on the side of the quote-unquote killer
if you're rooting for her to actually get away with the fact that we know you
know how these things work and we know that balanc the detective always figures
it out at the end and catches the the killer the very mechanics of the genre
were all familiar with become the antagonist of the movie even if the
detective himself is a sympathetic character that's why I have Blanc say
that line to her this machine that's what it does as well I love genre you
know it gives you a it gives you a game board to play on and then even just you
know before I even start collaborating even for writing for myself having the
boundary isn't having kind of knowing okay we're I love this kind of genre so
I'm gonna try and do something that gives the audience the pure pleasure of
what I love about it having bad is like the goal that then gives you yeah it
gives you it gives you a field to play that gives you a chessboard to work on
you know you know what I want is to eventually get to a place where we
become nervous in terms of how far Martha's willing to go how to cover her
tracks and is she willing to is she going to hit a place where she's willing
to do things just as bad as what the family is doing in order to win at the
end of the day I basically had to gave her the Walter White choice of like you
know watching Jesse's girlfriend watching Jane like dying and he can do
the right thing and save her or he can just be passive and do nothing
and and that felt like interesting also in that moment with Martha where she's
watching Fran die and she she's a nurse and she has a medical bag and she can
save her but Fran has just told her I know it was you I'm gonna make you pay I
mean the way that I write is I you know I write very structurally I start just
kind of mapping it out and I do think in I've trained myself to think in
sequences and so I draw a time line I write in the smaller moleskin notebooks
and I draw a time line on one page it's just an arc line and then I split out
with little you know little vertical lines and that kind of create my
sequence of sequences and and split into acts basically so I do like the
structure thing but those sequence I'm not at that point even thinking in terms
of plot um I'm thinking in terms of story I guess we did like it's a weird
how to exactly ascribe it's basically I'm thinking in terms of the audience's
experience and what's drawing an audience through sequence by sequence
from before each sequence what are they worried about whether they lean forward
about what's the big change that happens at the end of the sequence and how does
that change catapult us into the next thing that so it really is thinking as
basic and fundamental as that and then plot comes next and yeah the big plot
thing to figure out we're just it's stuff like the mechanics of of the
morphine switch-up like how do you play that in such a way where
it fits their requirements which is she has to believe she did it we have to
believe she did it and I also need to be able to kind of undo it at the end in a
way that makes sense the trick is to have that slight bit of
silliness but at the same time you don't want it to tip over into oh come on yeah
you don't you don't want to break in basically it has something in common
with time travel I think in movies where it's something that doesn't really make
it I mean it makes sense in terms of like the interior rules of it doesn't
really make sense that someone would do this in order to you know in their the
bump their grandfather off but at the same time within the telling of the
story it makes perfect sense and probably more important within the genre
that the audience knows the story is taking place in it makes sense this is
the sort of thing people do in murder mysteries and so we buy it
the only advice that I think is actually worth the dam is is to not get your head
wrapped up in how do I break in how do I make a career how do i what do I do to
get an agent what do I do to get into the industry that that really is putting
the cart before the horse I really I really believe that your only job is to
work on your voice and to work on just make as many movies as you can don't get
precious don't worry about making them look professional don't worry about
shooting with great equipment don't worry about any of that shoot with your
phone use your friends as actors anything you do just make them make them
make them make a make them and develop get better and better at telling a story
with a camera and I really believe that like if you develop that and you get to
the point where you're making interesting stuff and putting it out
there that's the stuff that then attracts the industry to you in some
shape or form the story for me was about using each one of these characters is a
different facet to explore honestly kind of you know in myself more than anything
else both privilege and also the more
fundamental thing than that which is kind of just that basic human thing of
when something you believe is yours is threaded what how do you react to it and
that kind of giving a very clear spotlight as to the moral compass of
every one of us and there's something about the murder mystery genre that is
uniquely suited to looking at class I think because the murder mystery by its
very nature it creates a little microcosm of society this contained
group and then through all the suspects you're getting a cross-section of that
society from the high to the low and then investigating the relationship with
the top of the power pyramid and so because of that is something that by its
very structure in nature is ideally suited to investigating class now what's
interesting to me is the whodunit is usually done in the context of a a
period piece because it's usually an Agatha Christie thing so it's usually
diskin from our present time and be it's
usually in Britain because again it's usually an Agatha Christie adaptation
and so the idea of taking this thing that was a great x-ray machine of that
stuff and applying it to America and 2018 seemed like that could in addition
to be very being very entertaining also kind of yield some interesting things
because I grew up reading anger the Christie because I'm just a whodunit
junkie also I didn't have to go and do any real specific research for this it
was more about just kind of investigating my own lifetime love with
a genre and trying to kind of boil that down to its essence I guess there's a
lot of math that goes into figuring out like all the connections and all the
plotting and everything but I mean the analogy I always make is you know the
work really goes into making sure that for the audience it feels like a roller
coaster ride not a math problem and so making it feel simple even if it's
complex and making a feel like one thing flows into another and you're having
this ride that that that's it's where most of the work goes into even if your
wall looks like you know the serial killers wall you have to make sure the
audience actually can stay oriented throughout the whole thing
really what's satisfying is not the sense that you could solve it although I
guess technically you could but what's satisfying is that at the ends every
single payoff is something that you recognize it's almost like a recognition
game and so in that big explanation at the ends every single thing he lays out
is something we can flashback to and show that we did set up and there's
something very satisfying about that so I was thinking more about that and less
about how do I build this thing where the audience you know has a chance of
like solving it you know a much more useful place to write is not thinking in
some other way of where the audience's head is going to be but really entirely
thinking through the eyes of the characters that we're seeing the story
through so I think I would go a little crazy if I started doing all the math of
what is the audience gonna be thinking it's much more okay what does martha
thinking I got a couple like trusted friends that
I'd show it to every time my producer is someone I show it to and then just right
there friends really you know people that you can like get that will really
be honest with you because you want brutality in that fit you don't want
brutality but you need brutality in that phase you know and then it's just
working it over and over and over again and just trying to you know just
simplify simplify and just but you know it sounds like you're ready you know
it's it's like it the tough balance is always you get notes from people and you
realize trying to parse out with a very small sample size what what notes you
want to what notes you need to you need to get in there and do changes for and
what notes are you know either personal preferences or quirks or how the person
was feeling that that that's the part that like I feel like you never quite
figure out you always kind of just got to do your best dinner
hey this is Nehemiah Jordan the creator of behind the curtain if you'd like to
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