Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in SoHo. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. On today's show, New York Times award show columnist Kyle Buchanan joins us to talk about the recent Golden Globe nominations. Musician Jsam performs live in Studio 5. The band is over there. There are so many of them, and they sound great. We'll hear about the new podcast, David Greene is Obsessed, from the host himself. That's the plan. Let's get this started with Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. [music]

After New England mansions and Greek islands, Knives Out has headed to church. The third film of the series brings together a new group embroiled in a fresh murder mystery. Many are also reckoning with their faiths. Josh O'Connor plays a young priest, Father Jud, who has had a troubled past that led him to God. He still can't shake his violent past as a boxer. To help, he's been sent to church in upstate New York led by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, played by Josh Brolin.

Right away, there is tension between Jud and Wicks. Jud prefers a gentler approach to priesthood, but Wicks maintains a cult of personality over his flock. He's controlling and embraces a warrior-like mentality of what it means to be a priest. He has a great head of hair. Wicks also has his own secrets and desires, all of which results in a murder mystery now familiar to Knives Out viewers and perfected by writer and director Rian Johnson.

Of course, the ensuing whodunit investigation is led by everybody's favorite dapper detective with a deep Southern drawl, Benoit Blanc, portrayed by Daniel Craig. The film is called Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. It's out on Netflix this Friday. Written and directed by Rian Johnson, who is sitting across from me in studio. Hi, Rian.

Rian Johnson: Hey, Alison. How are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm doing okay. I wanted to ask you about the pronunciation of the film. Is the stress on man like Wake Up Dead, Man, or is it Wake Up, Dead Man?

Rian Johnson: By putting a comma, different places, you can mess with it. Wake Up Dead, Man. Wake Up, Dead Man. I don't. It's a command. Wake Up Dead Man.

Alison Stewart: Wake Up Dead Man.

Rian Johnson: Let's do it. Let's wake up.

Alison Stewart: I wanted to get that out. The story takes place in a church, and previously, you were in New England, and you were on the Greek islands. How did you decide for the premise and the setting of the third movie in this trilogy?

Rian Johnson: I really want each of these movies, each time we do them, to give the audience something very different. It's modeled after the inspiration for all of this, Agatha Christie. She tried something incredibly different with each one of her books. With this one, I wanted to ground it a little more. I thought it'd be fun to take it to more of a gothic kind of tone. That led to the church.

A big reason it also takes place in a church and has to do with faith is because I wanted to also make it personal. I grew up very Christian. I was devoutly Christian up through my early 20s. I'm not a believer anymore. It's something I have a lot of personal feelings about. Trying to see if I could have a generous multifaceted conversation about that topic in a big fun Benoit Blanc mystery seemed like an interesting challenge.

Alison Stewart: How would you describe your faith at the moment?

Rian Johnson: How much time have you got?

Alison Stewart: Public radio. We got a lot of time.

Rian Johnson: Look, like I said, up through my early 20s, I wasn't Catholic, I was evangelical Protestant, I was a youth group kid. I was deeply personally Christian. My relationship with Christ was what I framed the entire world through. Today, I don't consider myself a Christian. I'm not like a hardcore atheist, but I don't really have an active belief in God. Still, that's such a foundational time in your life. As anyone who grew up with faith will tell you, the shape of that never quite leaves you. It's something you're in dialogue with for the rest of your life, I think.

Alison Stewart: How did it help you write this script?

Rian Johnson: It was essential. First of all, I don't think I would have attempted the topic if I didn't grow up in it and have personal experience with it. Because as a Christian, when I was younger, I also remember being so acutely aware of feelings of when Christians are portrayed in pop culture things, and how they can sometimes just be dumb or cruel caricatures, I guess. Also, because the only way to write honestly about the topic, I think, is to come from a place of personal experience with it. The movie it's not a faith-based movie. It's very honest. It's very multifaceted. I hope it is honest in the best way.

Alison Stewart: Where did you shoot it?

Rian Johnson: We shot it in London. It's set in upstate New York, but it's set in an old stone church in the middle of the woods.

Alison Stewart: It's a real church.

Rian Johnson: It's a real church. They have a lot more of those in London. Actually, if you look at the outside of the church, I'm sure people who know about this stuff, the church is a couple hundred years too old for upstate New York. The interior of the church, though, if you watch the movie, is a beautiful set that our production designer, Rick Heinrichs built.

Alison Stewart: What did you know that you wanted to have on that set?

Rian Johnson: You mentioned Josh Brolin's character. Monsignor Wicks is the ruler of the church when Jud first arrives. The set had to reflect Wicks's church. It's spare. It's scary feeling. The centerpiece, which is supposed to be the crucifix on the wall, it's not there. There's just like the shape of it. That's indicative of what's wrong with Wicks' Church.

Alison Stewart: Also, there's a high, low dynamic. He's up, like way high in the pulpit, way ruling over the people.

Rian Johnson: There's a big beautiful ambo, which is the pulpit, and it's-- I talked to our production designer about Moby-Dick and about that great Jonah sermon. That's why it's the prow of a ship. It's a Moby-Dick thing. He towers above the congregation in more ways than one.

Alison Stewart: My guest is writer-director Rian Johnson. We're talking about his new movie, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. It's out on Netflix on December 12th. The film introduces us to Father Jud, played by Josh O'Connor. I just want to glaze Josh O'Connor for just a minute.

Rian Johnson: Let's do it. Come on.

Alison Stewart: Because we had him on the show for the Master Minds, and Kelly Reichardt was there and he was on Zoom. It was like having a conversation with three people going out to coffee. He had a million questions. I had a hard time getting a question out. He had a million questions for me, he had a million questions for Kelly, and it was just this-- It caught me off guard. It's like this is a really a genuine person who's interested in the world around him. How did you meet him?

Rian Johnson: I met him through Daniel Craig, as I meet most wonderful people in my life. No. Daniel knew him through Luca, who directed Challengers and Queer that Daniel was in. Daniel connected me with him, and I watched Challengers, and then I watched a film he did called La Chimera, and I was just like, "Who is this person?" Then when he started to work on the movie, exactly what you described, he-- Because I didn't grow up Catholic, one of the first things I did when I was writing, I connected with my aunt and uncle, who I'm very close to in Denver, who are very Catholic, and they connected me with their priest, Father Scott, and he was very helpful.

Josh got on a Zoom with him. I think he did several Zooms with him, and they talked for several hours and had these deep conversations about what life was like as a priest. I have a feeling it was probably similar to your interview. He's just. He's a genuinely wonderful, spirited person who is curious about life. I think you can see that in the breadth of amazing performances he's given this year.

Alison Stewart: He's going to be on Saturday Night Live this weekend.

Rian Johnson: I'm going for the first time. This is going to be my first time going to a taping. I'm really excited.

Alison Stewart: Oh, it's really fun.

Rian Johnson: I can't wait.

Alison Stewart: It's really fun. When you thought about Josh, once you assumed that he would be this role of Father Jud, what did you think that he was going to be able to do with the role that another actor couldn't?

Rian Johnson: I think I felt the same instinctive thing you felt from him, which is he has just a level of human empathy to him. Each of these movies, one of the tricks of them is that Benoit Blanc, the detective, is not the main character. There's always somebody who's the main character, and that character, the audience, has to be on their side. In the first movie, it was Ana De Armas' character.

In the second movie, Janelle Monae. In this one, it's Josh O'Connor. Somebody who can earn the audience's empathy without asking for it, I guess, is the big ingredient of the protagonist of one of these films. Josh has just so much sincerity and complexity to him. I don't know. I felt so lucky every single day that he was in that part.

Alison Stewart: When you think about Josh Brolin playing his antagonist, Jefferson Wicks, what did you want Josh to bring to that character?

Rian Johnson: Wicks, like you said, he's on war footing constantly. He phrases spirituality in terms of warfare and binds his flock closer to him through making them afraid of the outside world. It's a very us-against-them mentality, which Father Jud represents the opposite of. What I love, Brolin's somebody that I had wanted to work with a long time, and he can be scary, and he can be powerful and big. He's also incredibly funny, which is another essential thing to me. I don't know, I think he's a very funny actor. That was another essential part of it is he couldn't just be a one-dimensional bad guy. You had to also see why this flock kind of is drawn to his cult of personality. I would maybe follow Brolin as a monsignor. I don't know.

Alison Stewart: It makes you wonder, the role of the priest as a leader, it can be good or it can be bad.

Rian Johnson: Yes. Like any position of leadership, it can be used in different ways. That's the other thing. I feel like the two different modes that this movie presents in terms of operating within the Church, to me, it's incredibly applicable to any kind of micro society outside of that, especially today in 2025. I feel like it's not just the Church that is fighting this us-against-them them, let's all get in our camps and put up the walls mentality. I feel like no matter what social group you're in these days or wherever, that's a common thread.

Alison Stewart: One more Josh O'Connor question.

Rian Johnson: Come on, let's do it.

Alison Stewart: Where did the accent come from?

Rian Johnson: Josh is British, obviously, and I guess not obviously because so many of the roles he's done, he's got an American accent, so people might be shocked to hear his [crosstalk]--

Alison Stewart: He's very British.

Rian Johnson: He's incredibly British.

Alison Stewart: Played Prince Charles, actually.

Rian Johnson: Yes, he did. You don't get more British than that. It's a fairly neutral accent he had tested out doing. He had an idea because the guy was a boxer of maybe having a slight Boston accent. We pulled the plug on that pretty early.

Alison Stewart: That can go wrong.

Rian Johnson: That could go south pretty quick. It ended up being a fairly neutral accent, but he's very good at it.

Alison Stewart: My guest is writer-director Rian Johnson. His new movie is Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. When did it become clear to you that you could pull off this humorous murder mystery? It's weird to say that, but it is humorous while also wrestling with these larger issues of faith.

Rian Johnson: All of my favorite movies, including the heaviest films, all have humor in them. Having grown up in the church as a teenager, as a youth group kid, I think from the outside, people who didn't grow up in the church sometimes see it as it's probably sanctimonious, or they take it very seriously. The reality is, especially if you're a young person in the church, it's your life. That means it's also funny. That means there's a lot of-- We had a lot of farting and church humor.

The thing is, it's a bit like I remember, in was it The King's Speech, that movie where they have the ceremony and there's the crown for the king, and then after the ceremony is over, backstage, you see the servants tossing the crown around and just putting it. That's a little bit when you actually are living in the world of faith. It's a real day-to-day thing that you're not handling with kid gloves. The idea of applying humor to it, I don't know, I didn't really blink twice at that because that was part of my experience.

Alison Stewart: The introduction of Benoit Blanc. How did you know, in terms of the pacing, when to introduce him into this story?

Rian Johnson: He comes in a little later than he does in this one. This one has more of a traditional murder mystery structure, where the first act, we meet all the suspects, you get an idea of who's going to get killed, they get killed, and then the detective enters. It also, it made sense to me to hold off his entering the story because I think that first act, because of the complexity of the theme of it and everything, just giving the two Joshes, O'Connor and Brolin, that first act to really establish that conflict and for you to get a real sense of what Jud wants and what he's up against.

Because once Benoit Blanc enters, there's a whole other gravitational force at play. It felt like the right place for him to come in. When you have Josh O'Connor in the movie, I haven't had anyone who's said they were frustrated because Daniel Craig enters so late, because we were having such a good time with Josh for that first act.

Alison Stewart: Blanc says it's an impossible crime when he learns the details. What about this feels unsolvable to him at first?

Rian Johnson: There is a very specific subset of the mystery genre, which is the impossible crime or the locked door mystery. I name-check an author in this movie, John Dickson Carr, who was a very big influence on this film. Carr, he was American, actually, he's one of ours, but he mostly worked in England. He was a contemporary of Agatha Christie's. He was part of the golden age of detective fiction.

I've only discovered him within the past few years, and he's become one of my favorite mystery writers. He specialized in these little locked door mysteries, which it's always a thing where it's impossible for the murder to have happened. It's somebody in a locked room with no windows. They've locked it from the inside. They walk in alone.

Alison Stewart: How did they die?

Rian Johnson: Scream, they break down the door, they've been stabbed in the back. How is it possible? They're like little chess puzzles, basically. The other thing that Carr did, he was a great writer, and he wrote in a gothic horror, almost Edgar Allan Poe-like tone. That's really delicious. That also informed the movie. Anyway, but in this one, we try and do a proper impossible crime puzzle. I think it was a real challenge to write for the screen because there are more limitations than when you're writing a book. I don't know, I think it's a fun challenge.

Alison Stewart: You said that this was one of the harder movies that you had to write.

Rian Johnson: Yes, the hardest.

Alison Stewart: What was difficult?

Rian Johnson: That specifically, the impossible crime thing is no walk in the park. The difficult part, honestly, was more the fact that it was about religion and the fact that that meant a lot to me and the fact that that's such a complicated thing. I wanted the movie to be balancing many things. I wanted it to essentially have a generous spirit. I also, though, didn't want it to just feel like it was tiptoeing around and trying not to offend anyone. I wanted it to be an honest conversation about all of it.

Doing that in the context of a big mystery took a lot of rewriting, took a lot of balancing.

Alison Stewart: You did have to do a lot of reading and writing on this.

Rian Johnson: A lot of rewriting. You always do. This one in particular, I really, really worked and reworked and reworked. I just really wanted to get it right.

Alison Stewart: Does someone read your drafts in between?

Rian Johnson: I have several friends on this movie in particular. To very dear friends of mine, Dan and Stacy Sheridan, who are a husband, wife, writing team I've just been good friends with since college. They were invaluable in just giving me feedback. I would actually pass them 30 pages after I wrote them, and I would say, "This isn't working right." They'd lovingly say, "No, it's not." Dan is actually in the movie. He plays one of the cops who's reviewing security footage. He's also--

Alison Stewart: With a beard?

Rian Johnson: He was with the beard. The other person who cast Dan in movies is Paul Thomas Anderson. Dan is comrade Josh in one battle after another, who's on the phone with Leo, who won't give him the path, given the location. It's me and Paul putting Dan Sheridan to work.

Alison Stewart: I like it. The name of the film is Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. I'm speaking with its writer and director, Rian Johnson. I read somewhere that you write your scripts by hand in Moleskine notebooks.

Rian Johnson: Yes, I do the first 80% of the process in little pocket-sized Moleskine notebook.

Alison Stewart: You just made public radio listeners love you.

Rian Johnson: No.

Alison Stewart: By saying that

Rian Johnson: With a fountain pen. Is that a step too far? Is that a step too twee? Yes, I do. If I work for a script on the year, the first 10 months are in little Moleskine notebooks. For me, it's very, very useful, especially for these movies because in a genre that can tends very easily towards the complex, it's important for me to keep in my field of view the simple thing that's driving the story. When I am working, I do everything. I do dialogue, I write ideas, all that, but also I'm doing diagrams of the movie. I worked very structurally. On one little, 3-inch by 5-inch page, I will draw a line and do little cross-hatches and lay out the whole film for myself. Being able in one visual gulp to see what the journey of the film is from the start to the end for the protagonist, for Father Jud, in this case. It lets me just remember what that simple arc of, you throw a stone at the beginning of the movie, and where it lands at the end is where it's going to give you that emotional impact.

For me, it's tremendously helpful to work in that place as long as possible before you get lost in the woods.

Alison Stewart: Final draft.

Rian Johnson: Yes, final draft.

Alison Stewart: Do you ever show people the originals in the Moleskines?

Rian Johnson: Just as a curiosity, because the reality is it's indecipherable. It's like the notebooks at the beginning of Se7en. It's indecipherable. It doesn't mean much to anyone. My producer used to be worried that I would lose one of these notebooks when I was writing. I'm like, "If I do, good luck to the person who found those." They'll just think it's the rantings of a crazy person.

Alison Stewart: How do you manage hand cramps?

Rian Johnson: I don't know. I must say, though, I can't say I'm a disciplined enough writer for that to become a problem.

Alison Stewart: This movie, Wake Up Dead Man, it includes an incredible cast. Jeffrey Wright, Kerry Washington, Glenn Close, Andrew Scott, Jeremy Renner, Mila Kunis, Daryl McCormack, and more. What did you like about working with a specific group of actors? Because they are often on set together.

Rian Johnson: That's the key to it. That's the unique thing about these movies is we're building an ensemble out of movie stars as the people who are usually number one on the call sheet.

Alison Stewart: Yes, definitely.

Rian Johnson: To me, the inspiration for that, I grew up not just loving Agatha Christie's books, but really the big inspiration for these movies are the late '70s, early '80s adaptations like Death on the Nile with Peter Ustinov and Evil Under the Sun, and Murder on the Orient Express. I was the perfect age for those. That was just. If you think about it, that's the model for these movies. An all-star cast, a beautiful location, a really fun mystery that has all the great little mystery things about it, but is still a blast to watch.

Anyway, I think there is something to casting movie stars and having them come and be part of an ensemble because I don't know, I've never had to deal with a movie star ego on set from any of the three casts we've had. Everyone's just shown up. I think the reason is there's no reason for them to say yes to this unless they want to have that ensemble experience. Everybody shows up, not wanting to go back to their trailer and just wanting to hang out with all their fellow actors and wanting to have that summer stock theater experience. You can see them showing up hungry for it, and it's-- I don't know. For me, that's a joy.

Alison Stewart: Benoit Blanc, he looks a little different this time. His hair's a little bit longer. What evolution has happened to him in your head when you're thinking about, like, when we meet him? What has happened in his life?

Rian Johnson: I think he's going through some stuff, man. I think he's in a place right now. He's wearing the Yves. Yves Saint Laurent suits kind of. He's got his hair grown out.

Alison Stewart: Little heels on his boots.

Rian Johnson: Little heels on his boots. He's feeling his oats. It's funny because I don't write a proper backstory, really, for Blanc. Daniel and I talked about it a little bit, and I think we had a line in the movie at some point that I cut, where Blanc mentions, like, when he heard about this mystery, he left the ashram and picked up his car, and it was like, "Okay, he was on ashram. He's figuring some stuff out."

For me, I like that it's that you're wondering where he's just been and where he's at. I would never, I think, want to burden the audience with a flashback of why Blanc became a detective or a big backstory of where he's at in life. To me, what's the great detectives, they reveal their character, and they reveal themselves through detecting, through solving these crimes. I always want to learn more about Blanc, but I always wanted to do it in the context of him trying to solve the case.

Alison Stewart: I want to ask you two more questions. Poker Face, starring Natasha Lyonne, was not renewed for a third season by Peacock Boo, but you're shopping it around?

Rian Johnson: Yes, we're trying.

Alison Stewart: With Peter Dinklage?

Rian Johnson: Yes, with Peter. If we can get this new version of it going, I'd be really happy. Still in progress.

Alison Stewart: Still in progress?

Rian Johnson: Yes. We'll see.

Alison Stewart: Fingers crossed. Finally, the Netflix news. Time for the merger question. [laughter] Netflix's merger with Warner Brothers could mean fewer movies in the theaters. You have to walk that line when you're dealing with Netflix. As a director, how are you thinking about the potential future of movie mergers?

Rian Johnson: Boy, you saved a big one for the last question, I see. Look, I'm in the same waters as everybody in this industry. I'm just trying to swim. I'm just trying to figure out. I think all of us are. The reality is this is such a monumental shifting of plates that we'll see where-- We just have to see what happens, where it all ends up. I truly love the people on Netflix. I've had a great experience with them. I also truly value and love seeing movies in theaters. More than that, because I think that just middle-aged people like me wagging our fingers and preaching the theatrical experience is valuable. That carries no weight at all.

The thing, though that I see I see young people specifically coming out to see movies, and I see them excited about going to the movies, and I see them going to revival stuff and seeing old movies. I say I'm showing up for new movies. It is a young audience that's driving that move to the theater. That means it's not just a relic of how things used to be. It is the way that human beings want to experience movies and entertainment going forward. I think that's very, very important.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. It's out on Netflix on December 12th. Rian, thank you so much for being with us.

Rian Johnson: Alison, it's always a pleasure. Thank you.