Rian Johnson: ‘I think it’s important to remember how small an ecosystem Twitter actually is’

The Star Wars director talks to Clarisse Loughrey about confronting privilege, reckoning with internet culture after The Last Jedi, and providing a modern twist on Agatha Christie

Rian Johnson: ‘When you’re writing, you have to recognise something in yourself and want to work through it on the page’ (Rex)

Rian Johnson understands how easily privilege can be swept under the rug. “Especially in America,” he says, “the way your circumstances aided you are ebbed away, and it becomes the story of you climbing the mountain nobly on your own.”

Ignoring privilege is what the characters in Johnson’s latest film, Knives Out, do best. When the children of wealthy novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) come under suspicion following his sudden death, their interrogations become less about accounting for their whereabouts, and more about justifying their own existence. His eldest daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) clings to the idea that she is a self-made woman, despite the fact her real-estate business only got off the ground after a $1m loan from her father.

Johnson has already scaled his own mountain of success. His mesmerising debut, 2005’s neo-noir Brick, eventually led to the sci-fi hit Looper (2012) and three episodes of Breaking Bad (the last of these, 2013’s “Ozymandias”, is frequently cited as the best of the series). Lucasfilm then came knocking – Johnson was picked to direct The Last Jedi (2017), the second instalment of the new Star Wars trilogy. He’ll soon return to that galaxy far, far, away to work on a new, top-secret set of films for the franchise.

Yet the director’s forthcoming about the leg-up that got him here. Back in 1997, he was a wide-eyed film school graduate with a labyrinthine script that nobody would touch. His story of high-schoolers who spoke the language of hardboiled detective novels was just too big a risk for investors, who were hesitant to cough up $450,000 to a newcomer with big ideas and zero experience. As his 30th birthday approached, having spent most of the decade chasing funds, he had a stroke of luck. Relatives in the construction industry received a sudden influx of money, and invested it in the film. Brick finally became a reality.

It’s rare for a Hollywood name to be so open about their not-so-humble beginnings, but Johnson sees no reason anyone should try to hide their privilege away. “That doesn’t mean you didn’t work your ass off to get where you’re at,” he says. “It’s not saying that you shouldn’t be here, but it’s recognising that there are systemic problems.” Once you face up to those advantages, it only makes it easier to – as he describes it – “drop the drawbridge” for others.

Knives Out, then, is a social satire that’s canny enough to also look inwards. “When you’re writing, you have to recognise something in yourself and want to work through it on the page,” he explains. “It was important for me to self-indict my blind spots and ways that I am privileged, and create fictions in order to protect that privilege.”

The two of us are huddled together in armchairs set up in the corner of a London hotel room, on a floor so quiet it seems to be inhabited only by ghosts. It’s the end of the day (he’s about to jump on a train to Belgium) and there’s a general lack of fuss that’s allowed the conversation to flow a little more casually than usual. It’s clear, however, that Johnson is constantly in the process of re-examining himself and the world around him. Sometimes, he struggles to reach the end of his sentences, because his brain’s already leapt to a different angle or another way to view things.

That mentality has always been clear in his work. In each of his films, there’s a moment where a character will take a step back and see the bigger picture. In Brick, it’s when the protagonist (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) realises he’s just a kid who’s walked into a situation he’s not equipped to handle. 2008’s crime-caper The Brothers Bloom – which stars Mark Ruffalo, Adrien Brody​, and Rachel Weisz – circles back to what it means to have ownership over your own story.

But Johnson always serves his themes with a generous spoonful of pure, old-fashioned entertainment. Knives Out is, above all, an ingenious murder mystery packed with twists only a soothsayer could see coming. “I’ve read Agatha Christie books since I was a kid. I just love that genre,” he says. He’d always hoped to find his own spin on it and, around a decade ago, he landed on his hook: “A whodunit, but with the engine of Hitchcock thriller in the middle.” To say more would spoil the fun.

Other projects came and went, but once he focused his energies, the rest of the process went by in a flash. “I started writing in January, we had wrapped the movie by Christmas,” he says. “It was crazy.” Daniel Craig, who plays Detective Benoit Blanc (complete with a molasses-thick Kentucky accent), was the first to sign on. It was easy to bulk out the rest of the cast, since “everyone wanted to work with Daniel”. Craig and Curtis were joined by Chris Evans, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Ana de Armas, Toni Collette, and Lakeith Stanfield.

While Christie created caricatures out of people she recognised in her own world – “Everyone had an uncle who was a colonel in the war and now doesn’t quite know what to do with themselves” – Knives Out brings things up to 2019. Now, there’s an “Instagram-famous lifestyle guru” and an “alt-right troll” among the suspects.

In fact, the film’s so culturally on point that many have (incorrectly) assumed said “alt-right troll”, played by Jaeden Martell, is a direct reference to the toxic online reaction to The Last Jedi. Star Kelly Marie Tran received the worst of it. She deleted her Instagram after a wave of sexist and racist abuse, later writing about her experiences in The New York Times.

Johnson had his fair share of harassment, too, by individuals who believed someone making a Star Wars movie they didn’t like is tantamount to an international war crime. Their grievances came to dominate the narrative of a film that grossed more than $1bn at the box office. The same arguments continue to flare up on social media, even two years down the line.

But Johnson, just like his films, values the importance of taking a step back. “I think it’s important to remember how small an ecosystem Twitter actually is,” he says. “It’s easy to have your head inside of the echo chamber and think that is what the whole world is hearing. As big as the numbers seem on Twitter, you put that in relation to the actual population… and it’s minuscule.” He adds: “I think, ultimately, I do have this kind of doe-eyed optimism that when you sit down in the theatre and the lights go out, all of that garbage disappears. You’re having a pure experience of a movie. Whatever happens in those two hours in the theatre is between you and the screen.”

The director talks about cinemas with a deep sense of reverence. They are, to him, “a haven where you can believe for a few hours”. As easy as it is to lose hope – and as understandable (and sometimes necessary) as cynicism can be – there is a magic to cinema that lifts up the veil of darkness and dares to lay the path to a better future.

Indeed, Johnson’s own work has always preached compassion as our ultimate saviour. As The Last Jedi reminds us: “That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.” Even Knives Out sneaks in a little optimism, underneath all the backstabbing and falsehoods of the Thrombey family.

“It’s not just a fairytale that we’re spinning in the dark,” says Johnson. “If you are kind and have a good heart, that will manifest itself, and that will make a difference. In the words of Paul Simon: ‘That’s why God made the movies.’”

Knives Out is released in UK cinemas on 27 November