NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic. This information is shared with social media, sponsorship, analytics, and other vendors or service providers. See details.
You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. You can adjust your cookie choices in those tools at any time. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites.
Johnson has always been a storyteller with many tricks up his sleeve, back to his high school noir film debut “Brick,” and his underrated 2008 followup “The Brothers Bloom,” which equated his love of a good con with that of a well-told story. In 2012, he grounded the time travel tale with “Looper,” and was later hired to write and direct “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” one of the most innovative in the entire franchise.
The night after the film had a centerpiece screening at this year's Chicago International Film Festival, we sat down with Johnson and Michael Shannon to talk around the big thrills of “Knives Out.” Our spoiler-free discussion included Johnson’s feelings about “The Brothers Bloom” more than ten years later, Shannon’s dreams of being on “Saturday Night Live,” the movie’s emphasis on being a good person and more.
Michael Shannon — The Shape of Water. While we get to see him show off some different shades in KNIVES OUT, Michael Shannon’s specialty throughout his career has been playing menacing, intense characters, and his role in Guillermo del Toro’s THE SHAPE OF WATER is a perfect example of such work. Knives Out has just recently hit the cinemas. Ana De Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, LaKeith Stanfield, Katherine Langford ja Jaeden Martell.
In Knives Out, Martell plays Jacob Thrombey, the internet-trolling son of Michael Shannon's Walt. Interestingly enough, this isn't the first time Martell and Shannon played father and son on the. But there's one member of the extended brood who manages to stay out of the fray: Riki Lindhome's Donna, wife to Michael Shannon's Walt Thrombey. Until now, that is. Knives Out (2019) Michael Shannon as Walt Thrombey. You're a pack of vultures, knives out and beaks bloody. Well, you're not getting bailed out, not this.
The tricks within this movie reminded me of your 2008 con artist movie, “The Brothers Bloom,” which has since become one of my favorite films. But what does that movie mean to you now?
RIAN JOHNSON: I actually went back and took a look … [to Michael] this is the second movie that I did, with Adrien Brody and Rachel Weisz. That movie has a really special place for a lot of reasons for me, and the experience of making it. I had just been broke in my 20s trying to get “Brick” made, and then for my second movie I wrote this big globe-trotting adventure, because I kind of wanted to have an adventure? You know what I mean? And that’s exactly what it was. It was Ruffalo and Rachel Weisz and we tromped around Eastern Europe like a traveling circus and just did all this wacky stuff. And this movie was really personal to me, and it came out and kind of landed with a wet fart, and nobody saw it. It didn’t get filleted by critics, but it got what I felt was really mixed. And so I sort of felt like I had let everyone down. And it was one of those really personal things where I felt like I kinda failed, and then over the years it has been really nice meeting people who the movie really connected with, and it still is really incredibly personal to me.
Knives Out Michael Shannon Book
I’ve seen “Bloom” many times and I know how meticulous it is with every detail, especially with lighting, color, etc. But as a project that came further down the line, was 'Knives Out' more meticulous and less meticulous?
Knives Out Michael Shannon Divorce
RJ: Well, “Knives Out” is more concise I think. “Brothers Bloom” is like a big sloppy kiss, sort of. This is much more tightly wound, I think. It has to be by nature, by the type of movie it is. It very much is an exercise in engineering in terms of all the plot stuff. But then of course you put great actors in it, and let them go to town having fun, and hopefully you get the best of both worlds.