In “Wake Up Dead Man,” writer/director Rian Johnson unveils the third captivating Benoit Blanc murder mystery. What fueled this blend of belief, apprehension, and reasoning? Johnson elaborated on this with Mashable Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko during a Say More interview. Their dialogue commenced with Johnson’s adoration for theater, which includes his aspirations for Miss Piggy to perform “Oh, Mary!” He also conveyed his enthusiasm for merging both highbrow and lowbrow aspects and talked about Josh O’Connor’s “hot priest” neck tattoo that has garnered significant online attention.
Fun fact: O’Connor crafted the tattoo himself. Johnson wove it into the script, expressing his apologies to O’Connor for the effort required, saying, “I know this is going to be a lot of work. We’ll hardly catch a glimpse of it, and nobody might even notice it, but I feel like this conveys a lot. This is like the essence of this character.”
Johnson went on, “It’s something that Josh created. Because that was another thing, all I wanted was just a tiny little peek of it. [I told him], ‘I want you to choose what it is, and I want you to design it.’ And I can’t quite recall what it was. It was some sort of symbol or something. It wasn’t a word or anything, but it was something that Josh kind of devised a backstory for that explained what this symbol actually represented.”
Johnson holds an optimistic view for the future of cinema. In spite of worries regarding a potential Netflix/Warner Bros. merger and the emergence of AI, he stays assured that human-created art in theaters will persist. “I’m not fearful,” Johnson remarked, “Because I attend the movies, and what I witness there are young audiences. And I observe young folks flocking to films. I see them eagerly going with friends to share that experience. And I mean, AI is a bunch of nonsense…I don’t care how proficient it gets. I believe there’s an aspect of the movie-going experience that’s a bit like theater, where the viewers recognize they’re interacting with another individual, even if that person is the filmmaker, while they’re consuming something.”
He added, “And I think that’s the reason you’re witnessing directors like Guillermo [del Toro], directors like Director Bong [Joon Ho], and directors like PTA [Paul Thomas Anderson]. And I notice fan bases emerging around them because they serve as voices, and the audience connects with them while enjoying their films. An AI-generated product was never going to forge that bond with an audience because it has never experienced life. So no, I think these are extraordinary times, and I acknowledge there are genuinely challenging aspects to these times. But ultimately, I’m confident that people will continue to desire to come together and enjoy stories.”
For more insights from our Say More interview with Johnson, check out the complete interview on YouTube. “Wake Up Dead Man” is currently streaming on Netflix.