Director Rian Johnson Breaks Down a Scene from 'Knives Out'

Another funny thing, I don't know if

I should say this or not.

[laughs]

Oh, no!

Every single filmmaker who has a bad guy

in their movie that's supposed to be a secret

wants to murder me right now.

Hello, I'm Rian Johnson, I wrote and directed

Knives Out, and this is Notes on a Scene.

Know you heard something.

Spill it!

I just heard two things.

[Harlan and Ransom argue indistinctly in another room]

[Harlan] You think I'm really changing my will?

My will, and then there was more yelling.

And then I heard Ransom say, I'm warning you.

[Linda] Ransom?

So this is one of the first scenes

where Chris Evans' character, Ransom,

has just shown up, and it's right before

the family's gonna read the will,

and Chris has breezed into it and kind of

thrown everybody into chaos.

So this was also kinda the first scene

where we actually had everybody on set at once.

And with these actors coming together

to play in an ensemble, it was so much fun,

it was, because everyone showed up just ready to play.

The way it feels in the movie,

that everyone's kinda having fun,

that's genuinely the way it was on set.

So Jamie Lee Curtis, who I love so much,

she and Daniel and some of the other actors,

everybody was kind of setting the tone on set.

The fact that when all of these people came together,

I'll be honest, I had no idea it was

a bunch of movie stars, most of whom I've never,

all of whom I've never worked with before.

I had no idea how it was gonna go on set,

and whether it was gonna be a nightmare.

I had no clue.

But you get good people on set, like Jamie,

and you show up on set and there's just this warm,

inviting atmosphere, and everybody's

playing with each other, and everybody's having fun,

instantly, everybody just kind of gels.

And actors like Jamie, besides being fantastic on screen,

that's one of the great things she brings to it.

Hoo, boy, this frame is actually a good example

of one thing I tried to do a lot,

which is, you can see there's kind of a triangular

shape to it, in terms of Jamie here in the center,

Michael on the left, and then Don on the right,

with Ransom in the background,

but it creates, it gives the frame depth,

and there's always several layers of people

to look at in the scene at any given time.

Also, a little shout-out to the props department,

and know that any time a clock or a phone is in set,

somebody has paid very close attention to the time

and has made sure, has asked me what time

it's supposed to be in the actual scene.

The will reading, we said, is gonna be, like,

it's at 10:30 or 11 or something,

and so it made sense that at this moment

in the story, it was 10:15 in the morning.

Thank you, props.

Also, another funny thing, I don't know

if I should say this or not.

[laughs]

Not 'cause it's lascivious or something,

but because it's gonna screw me on the next

mystery movie that I write.

But forget it, I'll say it, it's very interesting.

Apple, they let you use iPhones in movies, but,

and this is very pivotal, if you're ever watching

a mystery movie, bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera.

So, there you, oh, no!

Every single filmmaker who has a bad guy

in their movie that's supposed to be a secret

wants to murder me right now.

Let's see what Jamie's saying.

Know you heard something.

Spill it!

Jaeden Martell, who plays Jacob,

first of all, he's just insanely kind

and so smart, and also such a cool kid.

I've been going to premieres and seeing him,

and going to different press things,

and he always shows up and he just

looks like he's stepped off the cover of a magazine.

He's always wearing the coolest stuff.

I think Jaeden actually wins the sweater game here

with the pink shirt and the lines.

It all lines up.

I just heard two things.

[Harlan and Ransom argue indistinctly in another room]

[Harlan] You think I'm really changing my will?

My will, and then there was--

Again, always looking for ways, composition-wise,

to get more than one actor, depth-wise, into the frame.

So you have a couple things.

You have Blanc, who is absorbing all this.

You've got Marta, who is watching Blanc,

because she's very nervous, she's trying to,

at this point in the story, kind of fool him.

And then, deep background, you've got Noah Segan,

which, it's always fun to have Noah Segan in the frame,

and then, Harlan looking over it all as the portrait.

A little technical thing, when we started

shooting the movie, we didn't have the painting.

It wasn't done yet.

We had done a bunch of revisions to it,

and we just didn't have artwork that we were happy with yet.

So, when we actually shot this and every single shot

that you see in the movie that has

the painting in it was a green screen.

We just had green inside the frame.

And we had some amazing effects guys

who went in there and comped, we took

a high-quality photo of the painting

and then they comped it in for every shot.

Isn't that crazy?

[laughs]

Also, Daniel Craig wasn't there for the entire shoot.

He just did all of his stuff

[woman laughs] on a green screen stage

in one day, no, that's not true.

Daniel was so dialed-in.

It's funny that in this scene he's not talking at all,

'cause I'm about to talk about

the last 30 minutes of the movie,

where he just talks the entire time.

And Daniel showed up to shoot those last 30 pages,

and had the whole thing memorized

like it was a stage play.

He just had it down.

He could've done, I ended up throwing out

all my little shots and going for longer

and longer takes so that I could just

give him runway so that he could just keep going.

'Cause he had it down, and the longer

you gave him, the better it got.

And Ana de Armas as Marta, who, again,

is mostly listening for this scene,

but, you know, Ana has done great work before,

and she's been working for a while,

but compared to how high-profile

most of the other actors were in this movie,

she was one of the lesser-known actors

who were showing up.

And she is, again, really the center of the film,

and for Ana to step into the center of the movie

with the confidence that she had,

and really carry the film to the extent she did,

I just think she's extraordinary.

Was more yelling.

And then I heard Ransom say, I'm warning you.

So this is a good example of Michael Shannon

being, you would not maybe expect this,

but he was the funniest person on set.

And so, this little football goal gesture

that he does, which cracked me up on the day,

that was entirely just him coming up with that.

But there were a lot of lines,

we're gonna get to a line down the road,

which were some of the funniest things in the movie

that Michael just came up with on the day.

[Rian laughs giddily]

This cookie right here!

Inside his mouth!

[crew member laughs] I'm so happy I have this pen.

You would never know this,

so I'll get the, mmm, oh, yum!

Look at those cookies!

Delicious! [crew members laugh]

These were these Belgian cookies, right here,

and, actually, when we screened the movie

at the Ghent Film Festival in Belgium,

everyone was so excited that we had

the cookies in there, 'cause they

were like, Belgian cookies!

They're very buttery, and I picked them just 'cause I

thought they looked cool, and then, poor Chris.

Any time you see an actor eating food in a scene,

pity that actor, because they've had

to eat that food all day long.

And these cookies, you eat, like, two of them,

and you feel like your throat is coated in butter.

And Chris was pounding these all day long.

So I feel very bad for him.

Ransom?

What's that mean?

This is all about blocking, and blocking,

or staging, was kinda my big lesson in this movie.

Any time there is multiple people in the frame,

especially, trying to figure out how

to line up your shots, first of all,

so there's depth, so that it's not just

kind of a police lineup with everyone in the same frame,

but then, also, so there is kind of a shape to it

and multiple things to look at, so you're getting value

out of all of these amazing actors

in the same frame at the same time.

I think it means our father finally

came to his senses and cut this worthless

little brat out of his will.

So I guess you're gonna have to sell the Beamer

and give your notice at the country club--

Michael Shannon, who is one of my

favorite actors working today.

I was excited that he wanted to do this part,

because usually, when Shannon shows up on screen,

he can be playing very intimidating characters.

He's incredibly good at kinda playing heavies

and bringing kind of a menace or bringing

a strength to the screen, and the idea of seeing

what he would do with a part that's kind of

supposed to be the weaker brother who's kind of trying

to compensate for that by acting tough,

but is not really there, that, to me,

seemed really, really interesting.

And he's also hilarious.

After working with him, I think he's gonna do more comedy.

Michael Shannon for SNL, please.

And kick whatever fashion drug you're on,

because if you think--

This scarf!

I just wanted to call out this scarf.

Jenny Eagan, who was our costume designer,

I gave her the note that I wanted Ransom

to be wearing incredibly nice clothes

that he obviously didn't take care of.

And so, that's why he's wearing beautiful sweaters

throughout the movie that have holes in them.

And he's wearing, you barely see them,

he's wearing these Gucci loafers,

but they're completely worn out, and he's stamped

the heel back on them and kind of ruined them.

But this scarf, when she put that on him,

I was just like, Ah, yeah, that's awesome!

[Walt] If you think that after all the bridges you burned,

after all the shit you said, after everything

that you put this family through--

Riki Lindhome is a comedian, singer, and writer,

and she's in this singing duo, comedy duo,

called Garfunkel and Oates, and I've known Riki for years.

She had an amazing scene with Daniel's character,

with Benoit Blanc, that is one of two scenes

that ended up getting cut from the theatrical version

of the movie, and they are both extras on the home video,

so you'll finally be able to see her great work

in this scene with Daniel, which I'm really happy with.

And then, Katherine Langford is awesome.

She is, along with Toni, Katherine's also an Aussie,

and she's so good at accents.

I slowly realized when you're just talking to her

in between takes, depending on who she's talking to,

she will adjust her natural accent to match yours.

And so, when she was talking to me,

she was talking in an American accent.

Talking to Toni, she's back into

her Australian accent.

Daniel, I swear it starts to lilting English.

It's just she's just so skilled at it,

it's just like, she's not messing with you,

it's just second nature to her.

And she's been working so much internationally, also.

She's like, every single movie she does,

she's in a different country, so it's possible

her brain is just not sure at this point

what accent she [laughs] actually is.

But she was lovely.

And Toni Collette!

The thing that I had seen that she had done before,

that, oh, she's working constantly, but obviously,

her amazing performance in Hereditary

was so intense, and I think it was fun for her

to bust out this California lifestyle guru thing

and kind of get into a bit of a,

you know, a little bit lighter than Hereditary.

Just a little.

You put this family through for the last 10 years,

that any of us are gonna support you,

that any of us are gonna give you,

like Dad liked to say, a single red dime, you're nuts!

Story-wise, Ransom, who is kind of

a very main character in the movie,

I'm not sure how far we are into the movie here,

probably about 40 minutes or so,

45, maybe in a little bit more.

And deciding to wait until then to have him show up.

One of my favorite movie statistics

is that Han Solo doesn't show up in Star Wars

until 45 minutes into A New Hope.

And there's something about the energy

of what Ransom means to the story.

It's like a fresh breeze coming into the movie,

just when you kind of feel like you have a handle

of all the chess pieces that are on the board,

and to mix two metaphors, it kind of

refreshes things in a nice little way.

[Ransom silently mouths]

Don Johnson, ladies and gentlemen.

My less-attractive younger brother Don Johnson.

Because Don has done his TV show, first of all,

he, obviously, working on Miami Vice,

but also Nash Bridges, 'cause he's done it

for so many years, he's a director's actor.

He's very aware of the technical elements of shooting.

And so, he's aware of what you're doing with the camera,

and why, and he's very good at playing to that.

He's got an incredible skill, and he's an incredible pro.

And I think he's quite funny in the movie.

Son.

Father?

[exhales sharply] Did Harlan tell you

he was gonna cut you out of the will?

[Ransom's hands fall to lap]

Yup!

[Walt pops lips]

I love Michael Shannon just doing

that little [pops lips] thing, which,

why do I feel like we shot Shannon's thing first,

so he, I don't know how he knew it

to even [laugh] do that.

Well, then, he's done what none of us

were strong enough to do.

Maybe this might finally make you grow up.

This might be the best thing

that could ever happen to you.

Thank you.

My mother, ladies and gentlemen.

There's all these crazy, I mean,

we've been kind of in close-ups for a while here,

but you can always watch the movie, if/when you get bored,

you can always just look at the background,

and David Schlesinger, who was our set decorator,

he filled this place up with all

of this incredible stuff back there.

There's always something to look at,

whether it's the paintings on the wall

or the knickknacks on the table or what have you,

all of that stuff is David.

David Crank was our production designer,

and he and Schlesinger just really went to town on this.

Look, this is not gonna be easy for you.

So with Ransom here, there was that other angle

which was kind of 45 degrees off to the right of this,

and then there's this angle, and we have

two cameras on him getting them both simultaneously.

Which is really useful because of eye lines,

which is an absolute nightmare anyway,

and in that situation, it is a beast.

Essentially, the deal is, right here,

Chris is looking left to right, he's looking this way,

at Toni, who is talking to him.

And the reason for that is because on Toni's shots,

if I can get back here, she's looking right to left,

she's looking that way.

So the characters are essentially,

you feel like they're looking at each other,

it creates that illusion.

Basically, the reason we have that other coverage on him

is because there are other characters

who have the opposite orientation,

like Don is looking [click] that way at him,

so this would feel like they were

looking across from each other.

If Chris' chair is here, and Chris is sitting

in the chair right here, this is Chris,

essentially, the camera you're looking at

is low and here, and Blanc is back here,

and the other camera for the other angle is over here.

And so, this simultaneously covers,

if he's looking at Toni, who's over here,

so his eye line is this way, so,

well, you can see with this other camera,

he'd be looking left to right, not right to left,

but with this camera, because Don, he's over here,

this camera covers for when he's

looking at these other characters.

So, anyway, and we did that a lot,

we figured out how to use multiple cameras

to cover eye lines.

Very occasionally, there'll be situations

where we'll use two cameras and get

kind of a wider shot and a closer shot.

Usually not, though.

Usually, if we're using two cameras,

it's a similar size on the same person,

and that's because of lighting.

If you take a look at the lighting on Chris,

there's this beautiful shaped lighting

that Steve has done, where this side of his face

is kind of shadowy, you have bright here,

and there's all of this equipment,

there's probably, right off screen here,

a massive lit-up flag that's kind of creating that shape.

And so that's, a lot of times where,

if somebody is in a wide shot, you just can't

light their face with the same amount of detail,

and so, it doesn't behoove you to shoot both at once.

You're gonna be sacrificing one or the other.

[pen clicks]

The other thing I like, again,

even though this is, for all intents and purposes,

a close-up, the fact that you still have

some depth back behind him, that you have

[taps screen] Blanc kind of lingering over one shoulder,

and [taps screen] Harlan over the other shoulder,

which I quite like.

[taps screen] And that's one thing,

especially when you're shooting in close-ups,

especially when you're shooting anything with an actor,

always trying to figure out when you're doing the blocking,

geography-wise, having part of your brain thinking,

Is there a depth back behind them?

It's always gonna be prettier than if they're

just up against a wall.

Sometimes it's unavoidable, but, and it can get tough,

'cause this was a real location, this was

a real living room, actually, in a real house.

And it can be tough, because that means you're

usually kind of scrunched in, and it can be a battle.

And a lot of times, it's incredible

what you'll end up cheating, and what

you can get away with in terms of cheating.

Not in this shot, in this shot, it kind of worked out,

but very often, you'll have something where,

let's say if in the space of the room,

the chair that they're sitting in

is actually literally right up against the wall,

and you have to be shooting in this direction.

You'll be amazed, especially in a shot like this,

where it's sort of a longer lens and the background

is kind of out of focus, very often,

I mean, usually, we'll pull the chair out

an absurd amount, sometimes even halfway into the room,

and find that when you shoot it,

you can get away with the cheat,

and it just ends up looking a little prettier.

It'll be good.

Nothing good is ever easy.

Up your ass, Joni.

You've had your teeth on this family's tit for a

long time-- Up your ass?

Oh, very nice. Oh my God,

Ransom! Matter of fact, eat shit.

The original line, actually, as written in the script,

it was [beep] you, instead of [laughs] Eat shit.

And so he was like, [beep] you, [beep] you,

[beep] you, [beep] you, and that was gonna be it.

But essentially, I changed it right

before shooting because I realized

[taps table] that would have given us an R rating,

and a big thing with this movie

[taps table] for me was remembering back

to the Agatha Christie movies that I

grew up watching with my family

when I was 10 to 13 years old, in that range,

remembering how much fun those movies were,

the whole family sitting down and watching 'em together,

and I realized before shooting,

You know what, I want this movie to be PG-13.

So I went through, there were actually

a ton of F-bombs in the movie,

I ended up taking all of them out,

except for two, I think.

We got away with two.

We had cast Chris at that point, so we were

riffing, like, What should he say besides, '[beep] you'?

And, yeah, Chris was like, I think

a good 'eat shit' always works.

And I'm like, Oh, yeah, that sounds, I trust you.

Oh no. What?

[Ransom] How's that?

One of the nice things about the house

was the natural light.

It was a beautiful, beautiful set,

and when we first walked through,

my cinematographer, Steve Yedlin, and I,

we just noticed how gorgeous the light was.

This is the first movie that we've shot entirely digital.

We didn't shoot on film for this,

even though I love film and I wanted a filmic look,

and Steve did all of this crazy color science

and added grain and added gate weave and added

all the stuff you need to make it look like film.

One of the benefits of shooting digital was,

if you shoot film, you just need more light,

and so, generally, with something like this,

we would have big light fixtures outside the windows

pumping in lots of light, and then we would

be getting fill light inside also.

With digital, one of the advantages

is we could just let the natural light

light the scene and match to that.

And in this and in a lot of the stuff in the house,

that ended up being a big advantage.

In fact-- Please do not use

that word in front of my son!

Eat shit, eat shit-- If I wasn't

practicing-- Eat shit--

You entitled prick!

Don't talk to-- I would slap that--

Okay, so this is is actually an example

of where we break the eye line,

and it doesn't really matter because

he's talking to the other people.

But I wanna show you this so you can see,

if this were in a dialogue situation,

it would be a problem.

So, in this, this is his eye line from when he's

talking to Toni, so he's moving left to right.

If he was talking to Don, and then we cut to Don,

you can see there would be a disconnect there,

'cause it looks like they're both looking

at the same direction, and it doesn't

feel like they're looking at each other.

That's why you pay attention to eye lines on set.

You entitled prick!

Don't-- I would slap--

[laughs] Also, maybe, yeah, just for a second,

just, 'cause Don is yelling, but watch Jamie's reaction.

Watch what Jamie's doing.

You entitled prick!

Don't talk to-- I would slap--

[giggles] She goes, Oh!

I just love it.

[giggles]

Eat shit.

You entitled prick!

Don't talk to-- I would slap

that smug smile-- your mother that way!

Ransom! Definitely, you eat shit.

[arguing intensifies] Eat shit.

You can all eat shit!

[Walt] Ransom!

This little toss of the baseball,

besides giving him just a little bit of business to do,

it guides us into the next scene.

Anything you can do to kinda do this,

in terms of the action of the scene.

The next scene, the baseball is gonna play

a big part, 'cause the dog is gonna come up

and want the baseball, and he throws it,

and that's how he gets the clue,

So I'm using this to kinda dovetail into what's coming next.

[indistinct arguing]

[Walt] I'm not eating one iota of shit!

I'm not eating one iota of shit

is a Mike Shannon special.

That's [laughs] another one that he just came up with.

And here, you can kind of see the layout

of the room, and you can also see,

it's a big room for a room in a house.

It's not a big room to stage a bunch of actors in,

especially once you get the camera in there.

You also have to kind of realize

that getting the camera in is not just

like a camera on a tripod, you usually

have a dolly and you usually have track laid

for the dolly, so the camera equipment itself

can feel like it's taking up half the room.

So once you're dealing with real-world spaces,

you're a lot more hemmed-in than you think.

You can actually see, the tiny little detail,

but this is the sort of thing that,

when we're talking about color management

and what Steve does to make it look like film.

So film does this thing called halation,

and if you look at the bright edge

between the window, between the darkness

of the window and where it's flaring out outside,

you can kinda see, if you look up close,

there's kind of a rainbowy sort of glow to it.

And that's something you get with film,

and you get it on the edge of it,

there's an actual lamp or a light on the set,

or if there's an example like this,

you'll get that halation effect

that you don't get on digital.

And so, Steve actually wrote a script,

it's such a tiny detail, but he wrote a thing

that created that, and he would apply that

to every shot where it would make sense.

It's almost like a subconscious thing

you would never even look twice or think about,

but it just adds to kind of the soup

of stuff that we look at and we say,

Oh, yeah, that feels filmic.

I think we've covered it.

That was an extensive breakdown of the

eat shit scene from Knives Out,

so thank you so much, Vanity Fair,

[smacks table] and for letting me do this,

and thank you guys for joining.