Latest / All The Right Movies / Knives Out (2019) | Ep. 74 - Part 1

Transcript

Knives Out (2019) | Ep. 74 - Part 1 · All The Right Movies

0:04
All the right movies. Why is Benoit Blanc here?
0:08
I'm here because this morning someone dodged a very important
0:12
question. Who?
0:14
Me. Linda asked.
0:16
Who hired me? Who hired you?
0:19
I do not know. An envelope of cash showed up at
0:22
my apartment yesterday with a news clip and a throb is dead.
0:26
An envelope that worked. An envelope of cash for somebody
0:31
suspects foul play and goes through this hot chair dancer
0:35
hiring me of staying anonymous. It makes no damn sense.
0:41
Compels me though. When renowned crime novelist
0:45
Harlan Thrombie is found dead the morning after his 85th
0:48
birthday, his sprawl and dysfunctional family all become
0:51
suspects. But when a master detective
0:53
arrives to investigate, the web of lies, inheritance and
0:56
resentment begin to unravel. Wildly out of control, Ryan
0:59
Johnson's Knives Out sliced through the box office in 2019,
1:03
a love letter to the whodunner genre with a modern twist.
1:05
Boasting an All Star ensemble led by Daniel Craig and Anna
1:08
Amos, it proved that murder mystery was alive and kicking.
1:11
My name is Luke and the two fellows with me who have a
1:14
regurgitative reaction to Miss Truthan R Matt.
1:17
What were the overheard words by the Nazi child masturbating in
1:20
the bathroom? And Westie.
1:22
That was the dumbest car chase of all time.
1:25
ATRM are investigating A doughnut hole.
1:27
In the doughnut hole, the game is afoot.
1:48
Hi everyone, welcome to All the Right Movies, a podcast on
1:50
classic and hit films where we will not eat one I order of
1:54
shit. No, no, definitely not.
1:57
We're telling the story of Hollywood one film at a time,
2:00
and this time it's a bonafide modern classic.
2:03
Is that? Yeah, Daniel Craig with that
2:05
accent. It's Chris Evans in that
2:06
sweater. It's Ryan Johnson's delightful
2:09
Knives Out. Wonderful.
2:11
Yeah. Should be on fucking TV with
2:12
that accent. So before go rummaging through
2:18
the Thrombie estate, it is that time when we tell you about
2:20
becoming an ATRM patron. Lovely.
2:23
Now what you're listening to is our flagship podcast, a brand
2:26
new episode of which comes out every two weeks.
2:28
Huge, huge, huge deep dives into the biggest films and the most
2:32
recent 20 episodes are available on all podcast platforms.
2:35
The rest, well over 100 episodes now, are in our podcast archive.
2:40
There's certain to be a load of films that you like in there.
2:42
We've covered all the classics. You can listen to everything in
2:45
there by signing up on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and
2:48
Payreon. And also on YouTube and Page
2:51
Ron, you can listen to two brand new podcasts that we create
2:54
every month. These are the watch list where
2:56
we review new release movies and Double Feature where we talk
2:58
about films that we wouldn't necessarily get to on this show
3:02
just yet. Yes, indeed, that's the plan.
3:05
There are hundreds and hundreds of episodes, a whole dynasty of
3:08
content waiting for you on Patreon.
3:10
You can also vote for the films that we talk about and ask us
3:12
questions for the show as well. That's patreon.com/all the right
3:16
movies. Easy as that.
3:18
Easy peasy. If you do like us and you can't
3:20
support us, we'll make sure you're not written out of the
3:22
will. Thanks everyone.
3:24
Yes. Thank you so much.
3:25
Guys, you'll be in there. Now, Matt, you chose this film,
3:28
so the spotlight is on you first.
3:30
You've been talking about it for a while.
3:31
You've wanted to do it for a while.
3:33
That's true. Why do you want to talk about
3:34
Knives Out? I mean, I'm just a fan of
3:37
talking about films where their success is completely against
3:40
expectations. I mean, where did this come
3:42
from? The Who didn't murder mystery
3:44
wasn't exactly ripping up trees. No one was begging for that
3:47
genre to come back. So for Ryan Johnson to come up
3:50
with this, to come up with a completely new ID, with a new
3:53
character, he doesn't do what Guy Ritchie did with Sherlock
3:56
Holmes. Take an old one and just
3:58
reinvent them so he didn't even recognize them anymore.
4:00
Create someone. You cast Daniel Craig of all
4:04
people, in the lead with this outrageously entertained and
4:07
central performance that no one could predict.
4:09
This should have been just a moderate success, maybe a cult
4:12
film. But for it to land in the way
4:14
that it did critically and commercially, I think the
4:16
achievement of this to be as massive as it was can't be
4:19
understated. And I think one of the great
4:21
things about it is it doesn't matter that you know how this is
4:24
going to end now because the journey is just so much fun
4:26
every time. The way.
4:28
Johnson twists and turns the plot.
4:29
It becomes this ride of not knowing where you're going, but
4:32
the joy of it is trying to keep up with it all the same and
4:35
realizing you're on the hands of someone who's treating the
4:38
audience with intelligence. And ultimately, if you don't
4:40
like Knives Out, then eat shit and eat it.
4:44
You definitely eat it. One day?
4:50
What about USD? Yeah, this is one that escaped
4:52
me at the cinema. I was kind of put off by it,
4:54
just thinking, oh, this was, it seemed a bit try hard and a bit
4:57
needy. I wasn't a big fan of Brick.
4:59
I really like Looper. And then I saw the Star Wars
5:02
stuff and I was like, oh, not too sure.
5:03
About this down with. Johnson just really up and down
5:05
with him and I just thought, I think it looked really try hard.
5:08
Like I say, like you swing in the back at something that
5:10
shouldn't really exist and he's just going to really fall flat
5:13
on this because I didn't realize how into this genre he actually
5:16
is. And when I, when I watched it, I
5:17
was so surprised, so relieved, but just so entertained.
5:22
From start to finish takes 2 hours and 10 minutes.
5:24
And like Matt said, it's just kind of being at the theme park
5:27
where waiting in the queue is actually more entertaining than
5:29
the ride itself. And then when you get on the
5:32
roller coaster, you're like, I was, I was really entertained
5:34
just looking at everything that was around there in the queue.
5:36
Just kind of the anticipation is better than the payoff.
5:39
And it is such a lovely ride. And he does so well.
5:41
It's so intricate. There's so many brilliant
5:44
filmmaking techniques and he has so many narrative swerves.
5:47
He's writings incredible, he's directions incredible, and all
5:50
the performances just deliver. And they've all seem to have
5:53
their little niche within the film.
5:54
Nobody overlaps at all with their own performances.
5:57
There's really original characters built into it.
5:59
There's not like, oh, there's the Butler or there's this
6:02
person who you've seen a billion times.
6:04
There's no real stereotypes in this.
6:05
And even Blank is a stereotype of a stereotype of Daniel Craig,
6:11
which is almost like a stereotype of Bond really, which
6:13
is what he's tapping into. And I think Daniel Craig, like
6:16
I've said before, I think he enjoys in this character more
6:18
than he does enjoy playing James Bond much more.
6:20
Yeah, I would agree, definitely. And I think the whole film just
6:22
lands. It's just, it just sits really,
6:24
really nice. It was a perfect time for it to
6:26
come out. Ryan Johnson, of all people,
6:28
delivers. He really does.
6:30
I like you might. I saw this at the cinema
6:32
release. Incredibly positive reviews.
6:34
They were a big motivator for me to go and see it, and I loved it
6:38
from the word go. Just great casts, great setting.
6:42
I love a good murder mystery, and I feel the genre kind of
6:45
being lost until this film brought a racing back into
6:48
public consciousness. Best of all, it's just a
6:51
writing. I mean, it's just a delightfully
6:53
laid piece of work that always keeps you guessing.
6:55
And no matter how many times I've seen this, I still need to
6:58
listen intently to understand how Ransom actually did it.
7:01
And I still don't absolutely know the truth.
7:05
We'll try and get there. I'm sure the three wouldn't
7:07
figure it out. But knowing the killer doesn't
7:08
spoil the film. This has re watchability slapped
7:11
all over it. Yeah, it's better when you do
7:13
know. Yeah, it is.
7:15
It is then. You can.
7:15
You can relax a bit with it. Yeah, exactly.
7:18
Yeah. It's just a bloody good time,
7:21
and it always will be, yeah. Knives Out was written and
7:24
directed by Ryan Johnson Corporate used by Johnson and
7:27
Ram Bergman for MRC and T St. Productions.
7:30
Distributed in a movie theatres by Lionsgate on November 27th,
7:33
2018. Shut on location in
7:35
Massachusetts with some set work.
7:37
It stars Daniel Craig as the last of the gentleman sleuths
7:40
Spin while Blanc and at our Mrs. Marta Cabrera.
7:44
Chris Evans is Ransom Drysdale, and they're supported by one of
7:47
the best casts around, including ATRM favorite Jimmy Lee Curtis,
7:51
Christopher Plummer, Tony Collette, Michael Shannon, Don
7:54
Johnson, Lakeith Stanfield and M Emmett Walsh, to name only a
7:58
handful. Yes.
8:00
OK, so my house, my rules, my coffee.
8:03
We're headed to the Thrombie Mansion for the opening act of
8:05
Knives Out. The beginning.
8:13
We're welcome to the Impose and Thrombie world by two Alsatians
8:17
before the man in the house is found dead by his housekeeper,
8:19
his throat slit. We then Fast forward to one week
8:22
after Harlan Thrombie's demise. We're back at the house where
8:25
detectives are carrying out some family interviews.
8:28
And you're taking it away, Matt. I mean, people talk about great
8:31
character introductions in cinema, and they'll see, you
8:33
know, Orson Welles, The Third Man, Omar Shree, Florence
8:37
Arabia. I think this is up there because
8:39
it's so easy to miss the fact that Blanc is there all along.
8:42
You can just about see his legs at the side, the frame.
8:45
Yeah. But it's when those questions
8:47
start. Exactly.
8:47
And everyone gets into this stride.
8:49
I'm sorry. OK.
8:50
I think I've got this figured out.
8:50
Then Bing, it's that piano key. And that's the end of that.
8:53
Brilliant. And it's such a great torch that
8:55
when he announces his presence, he's out of focus in the
8:57
background. It isn't until he's hit that key
9:00
a few times that he comes into focus.
9:02
And that's when he realized, despite not saying a word, he's
9:04
one control in this whole process.
9:07
And what's great is that every time he hits the key, it's
9:09
because the conversations gone off track or he's heard
9:11
everything he needs to hear from that person.
9:13
So you're thinking, well, what's he picking up on there?
9:15
What have they given away that I haven't picked up on?
9:17
And we think that. And then it's when Richard,
9:19
played by Don Johnsley, just based attention was, I have a
9:22
question. Who the fuck is that?
9:24
And then you get your proper look at blanks sitting there
9:27
with such confidence in himself. The little smile on this is
9:30
playing with a coin. But as soon as you hear that
9:32
accent, I'm here on the behest of a client.
9:36
Well, this is amazing. I love this guy already.
9:38
I want to know where this is going.
9:39
And then the introduction of the family members has done so
9:42
neatly as well. You get such a quick handle on
9:45
who they all are, where the tensions in this family are.
9:48
Who doesn't like who for what reason?
9:49
And it's so funny when it's cutting between Walt, Meg and
9:52
Richard talking about Jacob, and Walt says my son Jacob be 16,
9:57
very politically active. That could be Richard.
9:59
The boy is literally an Etsy. That's amazing.
10:02
Yeah. And then back to Walt just
10:03
looking really good, like kids today with the Internet.
10:06
It's amazing. Like he knows exactly what Jacob
10:09
is. So, so much groundwork is laid
10:12
out here in terms of introducing Blanc, who he is, who everyone
10:15
in the family is, what they're set up with each other is like
10:18
how they all view Harlan, and it feels so effortless.
10:22
Just this incredible roster of actors one after another.
10:25
Amazing production design already, which I'm sure we'll
10:28
talk about. You get to the setup and you
10:30
just think, I'm just raring to go with the rest of this film.
10:33
Yeah, it's incredible. Jamie Lee Curtis identified with
10:35
the character of Linda being the daughter of famous parents.
10:38
She said that people have a funny way of taking away
10:41
anything you do creatively and reduce it to your privilege.
10:44
Yeah, Curtis assumed the role of the family matriarch.
10:47
She was coming off the back of Halloween on this, so she was
10:50
riding high, assuming the role of the family matriarch.
10:52
She cooked meals for the cast and befriended the woman who
10:55
owned the house. More on that later.
10:57
Oh nice. Oh nice.
10:58
She said I treated the house as if it were mine, which is nice.
11:01
You can see she feels well at home.
11:02
Oh. Definitely.
11:03
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just the most comfortable
11:05
character, most ground in the whole thing, Yeah.
11:07
And at the 17 minute mark, there's a photo of Richard,
11:10
Linda and Ransom in the foreground as Walt, as Colin
11:12
Ransom, the black sheep of the family.
11:14
And that picture was inserted digitally in post production
11:17
using green screen. And it was done so that the
11:19
audience could put a name to the face because at this point,
11:22
we've not yet been introduced to Ransom.
11:24
Yeah, you can't miss it. It's it's in the foreground,
11:26
it's in focus and everything else in the show.
11:29
Yeah, it's blurred. I don't know.
11:30
Well, I don't even know when to bring all these points up, but
11:33
there's so many little moments. I mean, that photograph of
11:35
Ransom, first time you've seen him is behind an elephant statue
11:38
because he knows to turn after the statue so he's not caught on
11:41
the camera. It's.
11:41
Brilliant, yeah. It's just all these little bits
11:44
all the way through, yeah. A lovely little detail as well
11:46
during the interview scenes is when there's a flashback to the
11:49
night of It's a different child sat next to Harlan as the cakes
11:52
being put down. Yeah, depending on who who's
11:54
telling the story. Right.
11:55
Yeah, yeah, yeah, It's a. Couple, isn't it?
11:57
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love that none of the
12:00
family can decide on where Martyr is from.
12:03
No, she's from your Paraguay, Brazil.
12:07
Brazil. Everybody wanted to their
12:13
funeral, but everyone was outvoted by the other one.
12:15
Yeah, that's such a great one and truck.
12:17
I wanted you there, but I was outvoted.
12:19
Yeah. So nobody wanted that there,
12:21
which is incredible. Yeah.
12:22
The moment where Joni says that she knows of Blank from a tweet
12:25
about an article in The New Yorker, a case about a tennis
12:28
player. This is a reference to sleuth
12:31
Joseph L Mankiewicz, 1972 mystery starring Laurence
12:35
Olivier and Michael Caine. At the start of the film,
12:37
Olivier's character is dictating the ending of his latest novel,
12:41
Death by Double Fault, about a body in the tennis court.
12:44
Brilliant death by a double fault.
12:45
I want to read that. Yeah, yeah, brilliant.
12:48
Yeah, it also ties into a scene later on where Ransom's reading
12:51
Martyrs blackmail note visible on the coffee table, copies of
12:55
The New Yorker, right when the plan is unravelled right at the
12:58
end. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:59
So this hints that that's where Ransom got the idea of hype
13:02
blank in the first place. Yes, right.
13:04
And the other thing about Blanc hitting the note on the piano?
13:07
If you notice Detective Elliott Lee, Keith Sunfield's character,
13:09
he then follows with a question relating to the time that
13:12
certain person arrived at the house.
13:14
And it's also being suggested that he hits the key when
13:16
someone is lying, right? Johnson has a couple of ever
13:19
presents in the cast actors who have appeared in all of his
13:22
films. Noah Sagan, who plays Trooper
13:24
Wagner, the policeman and Holland Thrombies fanboy.
13:27
He's great. Yeah, so, so funny.
13:29
But there's also a blink in your missive voice cameo from Joseph
13:32
Gordon Levitt. Yeah, he plays the part of
13:34
Detective Hard Rock, a character in the TV show that Marta's
13:38
sister is watching The start that's.
13:39
Right, Yeah, yeah, it is blinking.
13:41
You'll miss it that very much. Literally 2 lines Yeah, because.
13:44
It's low in the mix, but he's dialogues ludicrous.
13:47
He says you slashed his face open, You're left and bleeding
13:49
in the street like a stuck pig. Then you crushed his skull with
13:52
a forklift and burned his hands off to raise the fingerprints.
13:59
Great, that was just an outtake from break, wasn't it?
14:03
Yeah, both of those actors are in both the Knives Out sequels
14:06
as well. Yeah, Gordon Lever plays the
14:08
hourly Dong in Glass Onion. Interestingly, yes.
14:12
Ludicrous. And there are a few deleted
14:16
scenes cut from the film. In one, Blanc goes to Walton
14:18
Donna's home and finds out from Donna that Walt's injured leg,
14:22
which allegedly happened during a bike accident, actually
14:24
happened at night when he got into a tangle with some unsavory
14:27
types that he owes money to. Great.
14:29
Yeah, in another scene, Blanc's got a skin rash, which leads
14:32
into a confrontation with Johnny about her Flam Beauty products
14:35
line, and it comes to the conclusion that she's actually
14:38
broke. Yeah, right.
14:39
That's why she left Twitter. I wasn't it?
14:41
Yeah. That's right.
14:42
Yeah. Yeah.
14:43
I'm on Instagram. DM me on Instagram not on.
14:45
Twitter. That's great, I love that bit as
14:48
well. When you mentioned Westie about,
14:49
I read a tweet about an article about you.
14:52
Not the article, she just. Yeah, just the tweet line.
14:55
She's got time. So both of those scenes give
14:58
each character a motivation for Bump and Harlan off wishes.
15:01
I think we've got that already, but I don't think we need the
15:03
additional scenes. No.
15:04
No. So after these characters have
15:06
been established and we understand their angles, it's
15:09
it's great to see them squirm under Harlan's microscope for
15:12
all of their dirty dealings. The sequence where Harlan clears
15:15
house and cuts Walt, Ransom, Richard and Johnny out.
15:19
I love that each character revels in the other person's
15:22
misery, but to smile his wife clean off their faces when
15:25
they're accused of something heinous.
15:27
And Ryan Johnson does a great job of intertwining interviews
15:30
with flashbacks and different perspectives and then returning
15:33
back to the present with a different interviewee telling
15:36
the their perspective of that story that we saw in flashback
15:39
Great Richard played by Don Johnson.
15:41
Just such a blabbermouth. He's brilliant, isn't he?
15:44
He's fantastic. He can't wait to dish the dirt
15:47
on Walt. He says he'd get into it with
15:49
Harlan and the cuts to blank and he's beady, blue eyes wide and
15:53
he said, did they get into it at the party?
15:58
Fantastic, but. When the heat starts to rise on
16:01
Richard, he then tries to implicate Joni.
16:03
What a sniffle and little. Change.
16:07
Don Jones is great in this role. I think he could get lost in the
16:09
crowd, but he really stands out. Yeah.
16:11
Oh yeah. He's fantastic.
16:12
And from a plotting point of view, we get motivation for all
16:15
involved. Joni's been double dip and Waltz
16:17
cut out. Richard's been cheating on Linda
16:19
so they all have something to hide.
16:21
And Johnson? Ryan Johnson, that is not Don
16:23
Johnson. Ryan Johnson presents the
16:25
information so deliciously. Yes.
16:27
And a lot of the action takes place in Holland study and one
16:31
of art director Jeremy Woodward's task was to design
16:33
the jackets for the body of Holland's work over 4 decades.
16:37
So this meant that given them an identity specific to the period
16:40
that what they were written in taken into consideration
16:43
Holland's journey through life where he was personally at that
16:46
time as well. So they've all got an identity
16:48
and there's not a display of them as such.
16:50
The just dotted around the place such attention to detail.
16:54
Yeah, yeah. It's there if you're looking for
16:55
it, and it's just absolutely great.
16:57
Just so much texture of the film.
16:59
Yeah, so the character of Holland Thrombie was named after
17:02
a character in the 1981 adventure novel Who Killed
17:05
Hollow Thrombie, which I think was a guest your own like and.
17:10
Ryan Johnson loved it. Yeah.
17:13
And great Nana Winetta is played by Kay Callan and despite
17:16
playing Holland's mother, she's actually six years younger than
17:18
Christopher Plummer, who was 90 years old at the time.
17:21
Wow, that's a great fact. Yeah, I love her.
17:25
When Linda's asked how old she is and she doesn't know.
17:28
Nobody knows. Yeah, we have no idea.
17:30
That's amazing. You don't question either.
17:32
You just love the cast. And don't you say Last Crusade.
17:35
It doesn't matter. It's great.
17:37
Love of a wall shouting at her asking if she's eaten.
17:39
For dinner. Salmon to eat?
17:49
That's what default. Well, we're going to break and
17:52
take our first question from an ATRM patron.
17:55
That's one of the benefits we mentioned at the top.
17:57
If you support us on Patreon, you can ask us questions.
18:00
And our first one comes from Heather Armantrout.
18:02
Hi, Heather. Hi, Heather.
18:04
Heather says hello gents. Greetings from Las Vegas.
18:07
Oh. Crossing the globe.
18:08
I love it. OK, nice, lovely.
18:09
Heather says Christopher Plummer did some of his best work well
18:12
into the 80s, including such gems as Spike Lee's Inside Man,
18:15
his Oscar winner performance in Beginners, and hilarious voice
18:18
work on Disney's Up. Yes, yes, that's true.
18:20
What are some of your favorite performances from actors
18:23
flourishing into their golden years?
18:25
Golden years it's. Great.
18:28
Great in the new world as well. Wonderful.
18:29
Yes, he is. Yes, yes he is.
18:31
Heather ends up with thank you for all your great work on the
18:34
podcast. That is our pleasure.
18:36
Thank you for listening. Thank you, Very.
18:37
Thank you very much. Yeah.
18:38
Wester, you want to take that first.
18:39
Well, I mean, there's one of my very, very favourites and we
18:42
spoke about this on Double Feature and it's Richard
18:44
Farnsworth in the Street Story. Brilliant. 100% I'm always
18:48
going. That's always going to come
18:49
straight to mind. Which links beautifully into
18:51
Harry Dean Stanton in Lucky as his last performance, right?
18:56
Beautiful, beautiful stuff. And that links nicely into Bruce
19:00
Dern in the Nebraska, which I think is a wonderful
19:02
performance. And then Christopher Lee.
19:04
These are all kind of like last performances, I think.
19:07
And Christopher Lee, Lord of the Rings, which I think was the
19:09
role he was born to play. Yeah, I think it's absolutely
19:12
fantastic. He's having so much fun.
19:13
And that's with them. Then four guys for me.
19:15
Wonderful. What about you, Matt?
19:17
One crossover there I was also going to mention Bruce Dern from
19:20
Nebraska, but also he's amazing in the Hateful 8 he.
19:23
Is, yeah. He's also great in Django.
19:25
He's only got the one scene, but he is great in Django and
19:27
Chained as well. He seems to find a new lease
19:29
like as he's really hateful characters for Tarantino.
19:33
Other ones that stand out for me, though, June Squib, also in
19:35
Nebraska, but in Thelma, the film that was out a couple years
19:38
ago, yeah, still turn out great performances.
19:41
And I thought Joe Pesci in The Irishman thought that was the
19:44
best he'd been in absolutely years.
19:47
Love it. Because that character is not
19:49
Tommy from Goodfellas. Really just as scary in his own
19:52
way. Yeah, I think the thing about
19:54
Pesci and the thing about Harry Dean Stanton as well as the
19:56
always looked over 50 years old no matter what.
19:58
That's always been at least middle-aged.
20:00
So I've never really thought of Pesci is like being oh, is he
20:03
old now? Yeah.
20:04
Yeah, he's always been like that.
20:05
He's always. Been like that.
20:08
Yeah, great. There is one crossover I was
20:10
going to say Richard Farnsworth as well in the Straight Story.
20:13
Yeah, I mean. Just one of the most effective
20:16
screen performances ever. Yeah, it's unbelievable.
20:18
Yeah. Wonderful.
20:20
You didn't mention Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine.
20:23
Oh yes, great. Trifle of that.
20:25
Reason there as well. Oh, yes, very much, yeah.
20:28
He's great and Argo as well. And then he pops up and Argo a
20:30
few years later. Go fuck yourself.
20:34
That's. Fantastic.
20:34
Yeah. Yeah, he's great.
20:36
He's into play with John Goodman.
20:37
Beautiful. Yeah, he's into play with
20:39
anybody in any. Day and finally I want to throw
20:42
in a curveball it's Ellen burst and that's not the curveball
20:45
because she's amazing everything she's in but her work in TV
20:51
season 4 of the Louis show I. Don't know if you.
20:53
Caught it. She's got about 3-4, five
20:56
episodes and it's just beautiful.
20:58
So much warmth and depth and decades of acting experience.
21:02
A real heartwarming performance. And the fact that she's in her
21:05
90s now and she's still out there finding interesting things
21:08
to do, it's. Incredible.
21:10
I mean, I mean, this is a whole episode done in itself, isn't
21:13
it? To be honest, we could go on for
21:16
ages. We could.
21:17
So let's get back to it. Thank you for the question,
21:19
Heather. Yeah, wonderful question.
21:20
Thank you, Heather. And over to you, Westie.
21:22
You're picking up the action here.
21:24
We're still in the middle of the interviews, but this is where
21:26
we're introduced to Marta and more importantly, we're blanks.
21:28
Introduced Marta now. This is just so clever through
21:32
performance, through blocking, through everything that we're
21:34
going to be introduced to. Like he's sussed it out now that
21:38
door, he looks down, he looks at her shoes and then looks at her
21:41
and says, I've been poking around.
21:42
As he says that, he looks down at shoes again and knows for a
21:44
fact that she's been there. There's blood on her shoe.
21:46
So that's it. And from there, he's
21:48
manipulating that all the way through the book.
21:50
And then obviously later on, he quotes Sherlock Holmes and he
21:53
says there's something afoot. And every time he says something
21:55
for, he references her involvement and all of it, which
21:58
is this is kind of where it all comes from.
22:00
I love the fact that she is not in the study yet.
22:03
He interviews her first outside. So it's more natural.
22:05
It's more honest. It's more of a creative space
22:08
where she can breathe and she can just be honest about things.
22:10
Because I think even now he knows that you might have
22:13
something wrong where she needs to be sick or something else is
22:16
going to happen. So he's given her that safe
22:18
space in which to do it, and that's where we find out the
22:20
regurgitate of reaction to Miss Truth.
22:22
Amazing dialogue that. And that it's it's brilliant
22:25
dialogue and how can I say it certainly out And I just, you
22:27
know, he's just forever the gentleman.
22:29
Wonderful. That cigar, which is just an
22:31
obvious, not the Colombo that he's figuring it out.
22:33
And that's amazing. There doesn't seem like a cigar
22:35
smoker really, but it totally fits the character.
22:37
And then we find out as an audience that could be played
22:40
just so stupidly for laughs. Then every time she'll I mean,
22:43
imagine that like the Naked gun or something, he just to tell a
22:46
lie and it'd just be stupid. But this is just so beautifully
22:49
laid out. It's just like this little
22:50
nugget of information and you genuinely feel sorry for her
22:53
because you know that she's suffering with this.
22:56
It's like an ailment that just had all my life and she can't
22:58
really explain it. You know what, you could tap
23:00
into eating problems, or it could tap into anxiety or it
23:02
could tap into depression or anything that she's been through
23:04
with a, you know, a mom and be supported at any time.
23:08
It all leads back to these like issues that she could have with
23:10
just worry and panic. But it's so more carefully done.
23:14
But then when she is pushed and she does lie and she throws up
23:17
in the pig statue, which obviously shows that she's
23:20
allergic to like greed and wealth and throws it uses them
23:24
to like catch the vomit. So it's which is a fantastic
23:28
touch. And that motif comes up again
23:30
later on. Then we'll find out because of
23:33
that ailment that she has. Blank doesn't necessarily push
23:35
it, but he knows when to stop it.
23:36
And the other two guys are there kind of say, right, that's
23:38
enough, that's enough. But he finds out all three
23:40
motives in this scene. All three motives really well
23:45
played out. I mean, the writing of just this
23:47
scene as a short film in itself, of how you interview somebody
23:50
who's a suspect but not necessarily a suspect.
23:52
She kind of you're on her side at the minute.
23:54
It just flows from here. It's just fantastic stuff.
23:56
Right at the start of the scene, I absolutely love it when
23:58
Marta's inside and she can hear Blanc and the two policemen
24:02
talking and she's guilty as sin the way the world is on her
24:05
shoulders. Yeah.
24:06
He leans in. Listen to the conversation
24:08
outside before Blanks eye comes peering in through the window.
24:11
That's really funny. Yeah, and the Grand Painting of
24:14
Holland wasn't really there. It wasn't completed before
24:17
production started. So had be added in digitally
24:20
during post production, Johnson said.
24:21
Every single shot you see in the movie with the painting and it
24:24
was a green screen. We took a high quality photo of
24:26
the painting and they comped in every shot.
24:28
Nice. Seamless.
24:30
Yeah, it is seamless. This painting is fantastic, and
24:32
I'm not sure if it changes all the way through the film.
24:34
I feel like it does, but there's a definite smile at the end.
24:37
When you say that again, it goes from a frown, confused, to when
24:41
everything's figured out and she last looks at it again.
24:43
You get that close up and there's that, definitely.
24:45
Definitely. Yeah, definitely.
24:46
It's subtle, but it's there. Yeah.
24:48
Such a great move. It is.
24:50
It's wonderful. Johnson knew that Marta had to
24:52
lie during the film and wanted to make it as difficult as
24:55
possible for the character to get out of it.
24:57
And he was inspired by a scene from David Mamet's House of
25:00
Games from 1987, where the characters talk about certain
25:03
tales that people have when they're lying.
25:05
And. He came up with this.
25:07
Yeah, he said. Given the tone of the movie,
25:09
what's something? A little splashy, so to speak,
25:11
that we can write. And so I thought, well, maybe
25:13
she pukes when she lies and she can't hide that, so that would
25:16
be fun. Right.
25:17
It is fun, it's really memorable and we can buy it because of the
25:21
things that you said, Wesley, it might be like kind of like an
25:24
extreme reaction to certain circumstances, traumas in the
25:27
past. So it is viable.
25:30
Oh absolutely. Yeah, totally.
25:32
Because it's not overhand or overplayed.
25:34
That's right, and it's beautifully paid off in that
25:36
scene as well at the end. Oh yeah, it's it's a wonderful
25:39
thing when it comes full circle. So many things come full circle.
25:42
Yeah, it's ridiculous. It's like the Olympic badge
25:47
circles in it. So a seemingly open and shut
25:52
case has now been blown wide open with tales of rejection and
25:55
tales of infidelity. Yes, with Martin back inside,
26:01
we're now going to dig into the reason for Benoit Blanc's
26:03
presence before going back to the night of and the
26:05
circumstances surrounding Harlan's death.
26:08
And I'm starting with an explanation of Blanc's presence
26:11
at the house this morning. Somebody dodged a very important
26:14
question. And that somebody was Benoit
26:16
Blanc. He's underway who hired him, but
26:18
he compels him. An envelope of class shows up at
26:21
his apartment and a news clip. And I love that.
26:24
Wagner says an envelope that worked and Blanc's reaction is
26:27
an envelope of cash. I never look wonderful of cash.
26:33
Big Ward. Yeah.
26:35
Now this is a mystery inside a mystery inside the murder.
26:38
Why would somebody anonymously hire a private detective to
26:41
solve a seemingly straightforward suicide case?
26:43
As he says, and makes no damn sense.
26:46
And before it all sparrows out of control, Johnson pulls the
26:49
strings together for the audience by having Detective
26:52
Elliot go back to the night of and give us everyone's
26:55
whereabouts, time stamps, circumstances.
26:57
It reinforces characters, reinforces motivations, gives us
27:01
the on the surface facts that we've got, and brings us up to
27:04
speed. It's not all the details, and
27:06
we'll find those out later with very different perspectives, but
27:09
Johnson packages everything together so very neatly here
27:12
just to make sure that we're on track.
27:13
Track because there are loads of things happening.
27:16
Yeah, it's real smart writing. Yeah, there it is.
27:19
And editing as well, and the structure of it.
27:22
Great stuff. Yeah.
27:23
And then from there, Mardi in viewed again and this is when we
27:26
get her flashback. And I mean, to follow on from
27:29
what our pair on Heather said, Christopher Plummer is just so
27:32
good in this. I mean, he's got 17 or 8 minutes
27:35
of screen time maybe, but he just dominates the film all the
27:38
same. His presence, he gets there.
27:40
And Harlan is so in control of everything.
27:43
He's in control of his family, but even in control of his own
27:46
death, when he realizes Mard has given him an overdose, he
27:49
doesn't freak out. He gave me 100 milligrams of the
27:51
good stuff. What is the good stuff dosage
27:53
supposed to be? And Marda, obviously, and she
27:56
panic. Let's not call it that right
27:57
now, OK? 3 milligrams.
27:59
And then here's the blame. Oh, that's much less.
28:01
Just like. That's fine and.
28:04
Then says I'm going to give you an emergency shot so you don't
28:06
die in 10 minutes. Oh well, no pressure, that's
28:09
fine. Like it's just the epitome of
28:11
calm And I love how he starts dropping this down for future
28:13
novel I got This is really interesting I could use.
28:15
This, yeah, yeah. So dying out on this.
28:17
This is. Great, so is he already putting
28:19
it together in his head that this isn't an act?
28:22
Mard would not make this accident, she's too good.
28:25
So is he putting it together? Don't know.
28:27
Maybe there's that ambiguity, which I really like.
28:29
I think to Amos is brilliant here because she just epitomizes
28:33
that horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach when you've
28:36
messed something up bad and she's messed up to the worst
28:39
possible degree. He is.
28:40
So she's. Actually, she's fantastic, yeah.
28:42
And it's that level of compassion that Holland shows in
28:44
his final moments. All he cares about is protecting
28:47
Martyr and the inheritance that she doesn't know about yet.
28:50
And also because he knows about her family and where they've
28:53
came from and what will happen to them if she gets into
28:56
trouble. I mean, that is so resonant
28:58
today, like his last action. See to protect Marta from soon.
29:01
Some of the news we're watching at the minute.
29:02
So it's a brilliant same because everything is now turned on its
29:05
head and what we thought was going to be the case isn't the
29:08
case at all. But no one knows how to part
29:10
from Marta. Yeah, I love to arm us.
29:13
The contrast in just her real warmth of character.
29:16
When she's playing goal with Harlan and she's making jokes,
29:19
they've obviously got an amazing relationship.
29:21
But then that turns when she gives him the overdose.
29:24
Like you said, Matt, you know, that sickness feeling, it's
29:27
palpable, isn't it? I also love it that when she's
29:30
being interviewed, she's positioned in the ring of knives
29:34
as opposed to everybody else who have been kind of like set aside
29:37
adjacent to it. All the knives are focused in on
29:40
her head here. And as we've been talking about,
29:42
the impressive circular knife prop plays a big part in
29:45
proceedings, Johnson said. I had that written in the script
29:49
as a religious icon made of knives.
29:51
A big Halo of knives. Yeah, they went through a lot of
29:53
different designs that didn't hit the spot for Johnson.
29:56
But just a few days before production started, production
29:58
designer David Crank found a huge industrial BBQ grit which
30:02
cut the mustard. Once the knives were mounted on
30:04
it, Johnson was blown away. I mean it's it's 1 great movie
30:07
prop. Oh, yeah, it's wonderful.
30:09
Yeah. I mean, you wouldn't want it in
30:10
your house. It's fairly threatening.
30:13
That's it in front of this. No, I'm all right.
30:16
Thanks. I'll see you later.
30:18
And Crank was also tasked with filling the grand old house with
30:21
art, facts and details that one would expect to see in Holland
30:24
from Peace House. And it's a visual representation
30:26
of Holland's mind. Yes, yeah, you can see that set
30:30
decorated. David Schlesinger found an old
30:32
dollhouse. I don't know why they find in
30:34
BBQ grits and old doll houses where they where they search in
30:37
the skins, Crank said. I looked at it and said, what's
30:40
the worst thing you could do with the child's toy?
30:43
Why don't we turn it into a bar? So that's the bar in the.
30:46
Yeah, great. Yeah, all of the SEC declaration
30:49
as well. There's loads of skulls and
30:50
skeletons and everything and all of the pains, which is what they
30:53
used to do in Victorian times. It was the memento Mori of like,
30:56
remember that you're mortal, Remember that you're going to
30:57
die. So no matter how much wealth you
30:59
have, death is always there. Yeah, that's that's littered all
31:02
the way through the whole house. I think the house itself as a
31:04
character is fantastic. It's amazing, brilliant.
31:06
It's one of the great movie houses.
31:08
Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is.
31:09
And this game of gore that they're playing is quite telling
31:12
because Martha says that she's able to win because she's not
31:14
trying to beat Harland. She's trying to build a
31:16
beautiful pattern. And that's what happens in the
31:18
film. Everyone's trying to get what
31:20
they can from Harlem, whereas Martha just wants to do the
31:22
right thing, even if that does mean her going to jail.
31:25
Yeah, amazing. But she does win by being, you
31:27
know, the dark aside, moving through the white aside, which
31:30
is the immigrant walking through the white privilege and just
31:33
playing it with kindness. And that's how it cuts through.
31:35
That's a great, great visual. Yeah.
31:38
There's a nice bit of foreshadowing here as well.
31:39
When Harlan's talking about Ransom, he says that he doesn't
31:42
know the difference between the stage prop and a real knife.
31:45
Yeah. And we see that playing out at
31:47
the end when he. Tries to circle down.
31:49
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brilliant.
31:51
Great. So seeing how much he cares
31:53
about martyr. And then it just goes to this
31:55
wonderful moment where we've seen it like 100 times, but not
31:59
as fresh or as clear, as concise as this, where he gives us this
32:02
list of how to get out of it. And it's almost reading it from
32:06
a book. And the voiceover work is
32:07
fantastic. It's so well positioned and so
32:11
well played through. It's Ryan Johnson's work of time
32:14
manipulation here and his grasp on filmmaking technique.
32:17
And now you are just not lost at all.
32:19
Call attention to the time or it's midnight, walking straight
32:21
out. This has been parodied so many
32:23
times, but he brings it back to kind of where it belongs and you
32:26
take it seriously. You know, the confusion about
32:28
the before, the after with the elephant.
32:30
She's questioning the voice over as she's moving and drive and
32:32
it's like, that's brilliant. That's really well worked in.
32:35
And obviously she goes in front of it, which is supposed to go
32:37
behind, which we'll find out later on when the review and the
32:39
tapes. That's really important.
32:41
Then she climbs the trellis, but then she's at the bottom and she
32:43
says you've got to be kidding me.
32:45
And then the voiceover just replies, I'm not.
32:47
It's just so, so great, so well done and put the guy, he must
32:51
have been writing this going, yes, I'll do that.
32:53
And then when you say there's that child coming through the
32:57
painting that hides the windows is that false wall.
32:59
So that painting of the kid actually shows what's going to
33:02
happen through the window. So that's brilliant.
33:04
That's a little bit of foreshadowing.
33:05
She comes through you say she doesn't scrape a fun on the
33:08
window sill, totally avoids that.
33:10
So on 2nd view and that's really rewarding.
33:12
And then when she drops down, don't be seen and then drops
33:15
down at the bottom, you know, just when you take me robe and
33:18
take me cap and you figure out how did the same and he just
33:20
kind of that's a bit of a throwaway, but that works again
33:23
so well. And it's like don't be seen And
33:25
it's just like, Ransom, are you back again already?
33:27
But it's because of the age of the character, the confusion of
33:29
the character, the way the character has already been set
33:31
up. They don't know how old she is.
33:32
You don't know what's going on. And then it comes a full circle
33:35
with how she's going to get out with this.
33:37
How's this actually going to work when you can't lie?
33:40
And it's just tell the fragments and we've seen everything and
33:43
they are the perfect fragments of how to tell that story
33:45
without implicating yourself into anything.
33:48
Honestly, it's just like lying in a lazy river.
33:51
Just like I'm just having so much fun.
33:53
This is just great. That's when this is over.
33:55
I'll probably just do it again. This is nice.
33:57
And you just feel like you're just so well guided through it,
33:59
where you're not getting agitated, where you don't, you
34:02
don't necessarily want to know the answers because there's so
34:04
many questions. And it's like you said at the
34:06
top. Look, I think it's a perfect
34:08
word for I think this moment, this whole montage is just
34:11
delicious. It is.
34:13
It really is. It gives it loads of different
34:15
layers because in a previous flashback, Detective Elliot says
34:19
that he checked his time. It's 12:00.
34:21
And the viewer, you're thinking that's a little convenience,
34:25
that it's bang on 12:00. How could he remember the time?
34:29
But then we found out in this flashback that Marta brings
34:32
attention to the time. It's great.
34:34
Midnight already. And then he looks again.
34:36
It's reinforced for the audience as well.
34:38
Yes, exactly. Obviously this moment Harlan is
34:41
on the road out because Marta has mixed up his medicine and
34:43
gave him an overdose of morphine.
34:45
At least that's what she thinks. But allegedly, morphine acts
34:48
very quickly, and Holland would not have lasted as long as he
34:50
did with the amount he was given.
34:53
So there's a clue to the fact that he was given the right
34:55
medication by a master. It just had the wrong label on
34:58
it. Yeah.
34:59
And I guess in her panic, she hasn't realized that.
35:02
Yeah, no, of course not. I mean, it's too late anyway
35:05
when she goes in. His mind's made-up, so there's
35:06
nothing she could do to change that anyway.
35:08
Great, so Martin has got blood in her hands, and considering
35:11
her reaction to tell her lies, it's only a matter of time
35:13
before the game is up. Yeah.
35:19
The director. The first outing for Ryan
35:23
Johnson on All the Right Movies, he'd been sharpening his blades
35:26
behind the camera for almost 15 years before getting to Knives
35:30
Out. Our thoughts on his work here as
35:33
director will get room as a writer later on.
35:36
And I think that on top of everything else that Johnson is
35:39
spinning a compelling narrative. Great characters, classic
35:42
mystery, honour in the genre. He keeps us thoroughly
35:45
entertained with what is going on in the frame, specifically
35:48
his use of depth. He's given us texture details
35:51
and torn with just his backgrounds.
35:54
If you take that Thrombie house, it's not just a set, we've said
35:57
it, it's a character. Every room stuffed with clues,
36:00
red herons, portraits, Knick knacks, books, weapons on the
36:03
wall. And Johnson stages his actors at
36:05
different distances from the camera, so your eye is
36:07
constantly being drawn deeper and deeper into the frame.
36:10
There's always something happening behind the person
36:13
talking, a family member lurking in a doorway, or a reaction shot
36:16
that tells you more than dialogue does.
36:18
And it rewards multiple viewings because you're catching things
36:21
in the background that you just missed first time around.
36:23
And I think that's a real skill because it's doing 2 jobs at
36:26
once. On the surface, it's building
36:28
this rich, lived in world where every object feels like it has a
36:31
story behind it, but underneath that, it's planted information.
36:35
Johnson is hiding things in plain sight and trusting that
36:38
the audience is smart enough to find them.
36:41
That depth of frame isn't just there for pretty compositions,
36:44
it's storytelling as well. Visual storytelling at its best.
36:47
Yeah, yeah. So regarding having depth in the
36:49
frame and things going on in the background, Johnson referenced
36:52
the works of Michael Curtis and Old Hollywood and said it's much
36:56
more interesting if you can have her fame where there were
36:58
multiple things happening at once and orchestration in Maison
37:01
sent in the whole shebang. Yes, Curtis directed Casablanca,
37:05
The Adventures of Robin Hood. One of my favorite moments here
37:09
is when Marta comes back to the family near the end and she
37:12
wants to confess. She's got them all lined up and
37:15
they're positioned like a family portrait.
37:16
Some are sitting down, some are standing up, and it's like a
37:19
jewel. They're on one side, they've got
37:20
their positions, and on the other side is Martyr in the
37:23
foreground, with Blank behind her and the portrait of Holland
37:26
to his left. Johnson's telling us visually
37:29
who's on who's side here. Yes, exactly.
37:31
That's incredible work which I think just could easily get lost
37:34
under everything else going on because it's so multi layered.
37:37
Yeah, I think the reason this works is because he understands
37:40
cinema and he understands the language of cinema and he
37:43
understands the narrative of it. And if you think about how much
37:47
balance this up between how much the writing plays towards how
37:50
much the camera work plays and how much you see in the frame
37:54
and how much dialogue is exposition and how much is
37:57
explained and what's happening, or are we seeing what's
38:00
happening being explained. So I think most of it is visual
38:03
in the revelation of what's happening.
38:05
We're seeing more than we hear about, and I think that's really
38:08
important and he's really got a grasp on that.
38:10
And the use of all of these influences is just the tone and
38:13
the feel of this. And I think to create something
38:16
like this is incredibly, incredibly difficult because
38:18
just going off that montage. Then Holland tells Mark how to
38:21
get away with it. If those shots don't match later
38:24
on in the film, you are fucked. You are done for if you if you
38:28
don't cut from her walking down the stairs to turn around at the
38:30
same point of when he speaks and then you go to his point of view
38:33
earlier on. If you don't match in your head,
38:36
you're done for. And that's why films like this
38:38
on 10A Penny, that's why they don't come around as often as
38:41
they do. Because to pull this off is
38:42
incredibly difficult because everything needs to be In Sync.
38:46
Everyone needs to be fired and on all cylinders and everyone
38:50
needs to be so into what's going on.
38:52
Every single person on this film needs to be firing on all
38:56
cylinders. And Ryan Johnson brings that
38:58
energy. You can see he's got that
38:59
energy. And this needs to be done from a
39:01
director that's incredibly rare and incredibly refreshing.
39:04
And not only has he done it this time, he's done it twice after
39:07
this to the same degree level of attention to detail.
39:12
It's just a big shout to Hollywood and the state of it
39:15
right now. Like, find somebody who really,
39:17
really appreciates where all this came from.
39:19
Make it a little bit more modern and a little bit more for an
39:22
audience that just going to dive into it with a little bit more
39:24
modern themes. But if you move away from
39:27
Classic Cinema, you're going to pay the price.
39:29
If you stay the course like he has, you're going to make
39:32
millions, which is what he did, and that's his influence as a
39:35
director. Absolutely, yeah.
39:38
Talking about his influence and talking about Classic Cinema so
39:41
that he didn't shoehorn himself down a particular path with one
39:44
piece of workers inspiration, he said that he put himself in a
39:47
general mindset of murder mystery which gave him a blurred
39:50
vision. Right.
39:51
However, there are a number of influences at play for Johnson
39:54
in Knives Out. Specifically and unsurprisingly,
39:57
the work of the Grand Master of murder mystery, Agatha Christie,
40:00
a writer whom he grew up reading, and his love for the
40:03
genre grew from there. Yeah, well, of course.
40:05
Why wouldn't? Of course.
40:06
Yeah, exactly. And he later adored the Christie
40:08
movie adaptations in the 70s and 80s with these huge ensemble
40:12
casts in incredible locations. And he said, I said to my
40:15
producer, we want an All Star cast to be one that old skill
40:18
entertainment. We're putting on a big show type
40:21
feel. Yeah, it's murder and the Orange
40:23
Express and Evil under the Sun, isn't it?
40:25
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, talking about those,
40:29
Johnson tweeted photos of Porsche he had hanging up when
40:32
he was editing Knives Out in January 2019.
40:35
These were posters that served as inspiration for the film in
40:38
one way or another. And they were evil under the
40:41
sun. Gosford Park, murdered by death.
40:43
Death trap clues, death on the Nile, the last of Sheila, Murder
40:47
on the Orient Express, the Mirror Cracked, the private
40:50
eyes, and finally Pokémon Detective Pikachu.
40:54
Obviously the most influential. I was going to say that.
40:57
Yeah. And one film missing from that
40:59
rogues gallery is Sleuth, the Lawrence Olivier and Michael
41:02
Caine. As mentioned earlier, outside of
41:05
Agatha Christie, it was Johnson's biggest inspiration
41:07
for Knives Out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
41:09
He loves it. And there were nods to it all
41:11
over this film, specifically all the little figurines and
41:14
characters strewn about the house.
41:15
There were shots of them in the opening scene, including a
41:17
sailor that looks just like Jolly Jack Tar from Sleuth.
41:21
It is Jolly Jack Tarf. It looks like it's the same
41:24
thing. The founder when he found the
41:25
dog was out, surely? Yeah.
41:27
Yeah, yeah. Must have anybody?
41:28
On the same. Skip I think he just brings so
41:34
much attention to detail throughout all of this.
41:37
The plot, the various character motives and alibis.
41:40
Everything makes sense in his water type.
41:42
But Johnson, He's also playing fairly with the audience.
41:45
There's no great revelation that he springs out of nowhere.
41:47
Everything is set up, everything is in plain sight.
41:50
And fair enough, you'd have to be very clever to pick some of
41:52
them up. Being the fact that the dogs
41:54
don't bark at Martyr, but they do bark at Ransom is a huge game
41:58
because obviously somebody is the dogs barking in the middle
42:00
of the night. But all the same, it is there if
42:03
you're paying attention. If you think about it, you know
42:05
he points out the blood spot on Marcus shoe well before it
42:08
becomes important and he threads it together with such a neatness
42:11
that you don't feel foolish for not working it out yourself.
42:14
You just feel like you've been treated like an adult watching
42:17
this. And he's got he's such a real
42:19
patience. He doesn't rush anything.
42:21
He doesn't spell anything out over the any trust the audience
42:24
and as much as he's open and expectations.
42:27
So there's actually not a murder to solve.
42:28
At first it's a suicide, but then actually, no, it's a tragic
42:31
accident. So when we go from there, but
42:34
it's done with such a confident, it's like every 10 minutes he
42:37
lays out a fresh piece of evidence or a new twist or a new
42:40
revelation that takes you somewhere else.
42:42
And it's like he's dangling the resolution in front of the
42:44
audience, but just keeps pulling it away until he lets he catch
42:48
up at the end. And as much as he interlaces the
42:50
film with humor, he never lets it become a spoof either.
42:53
Which it easily could be. This could just be silly.
42:56
It could be, yes. It could be Clue, yeah.
42:58
It could be clue, it could be one step away from the naked gun
43:01
and it's you know, he knows when the let scenes play out with the
43:04
comic twist, but he knows when to pull back on that as well.
43:07
So the top's like the ultimate compliment.
43:09
I compare director. It's this is so incredibly
43:12
complicated put together, but he just makes look so easy.
43:15
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's effortless, isn't it?
43:18
Yeah, it's just them influences, isn't it?
43:19
I mean, he's just pulling them left, right and centre and just
43:21
making complete sense of them, just like you say.
43:23
Even that little bit about the dogs, Yeah, it comes from
43:26
Sherlock Holmes, a Silver Blaze, where he finds out like the the
43:29
bad guy through the silence of the dog because it knows him.
43:32
So it's like that little and just sprinkling that all the way
43:35
through, which is fantastic. Yeah, that's amazing.
43:37
And the initial concept for Knives Out came to Ryan Johnson
43:40
after he finished his directorial debut Brick in 2005.
43:43
He had planned to revisit the idea after the release of sci-fi
43:46
film Lupa in 2012, and he even mentioned it in a 2010 interview
43:51
with an independent that he would like to write and direct
43:53
an Agatha Christie style murder mystery next.
43:55
Yeah. What took you so long?
43:57
Yeah. Exactly.
43:58
But yeah, but Lupa brought Johnson more critical success,
44:01
and with that came and offered to direct the second part of the
44:03
Star Wars sequel trilogy, The Last Jedi.
44:06
And how can he pass it on? Security like bars?
44:08
Well, that's true enough. Yeah, it was only after that
44:11
wrapped you could focus on his murder mystery idea.
44:13
Yeah, and once Daniel Craig was signed on to the project by the
44:17
director, whose last film made over a billion dollars, it
44:20
wasn't difficult to get finance. And we'll get to create later
44:23
on. Yeah.
44:24
Yeah. And the script was sent around
44:25
to generate a buzz going into the Toronto Film Festival
44:28
market. But even before Johnson and his
44:30
team set off for Canada, MRC stumped up the 40 million
44:33
needed, with Lionsgate coming on board to distribute as well.
44:36
I mean it's incredible right now and not surprised to got snapped
44:39
up. And while there are comedic
44:41
elements in the film, Johnson rendered great lengths to
44:43
highlight that Knives Out is not a parody of murder mystery films
44:46
in the way that others are, like Clue or Murder by Death.
44:50
It honors the tradition, doesn't it?
44:51
But clearly he's got a love for the genre and I think it's fair
44:55
to say now it's in the great lineage of murder mystery films.
44:58
Oh, definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
45:00
So bringing up Sleuth again. And that was a major reference
45:02
point for the set decorators and production designers when
45:05
building the world of Holland Thrombie inside the mansion as
45:08
we've been discussing. I mean, it has to be, doesn't?
45:10
It Yes, of course it is. Yeah, The Thrombie House was
45:12
shot in three different locations.
45:14
The main one was the Ames Mansion in Borderland State
45:17
Park, Massachusetts. Nice.
45:19
Production designer David Crank said when you walked in, it had
45:21
character because nobody had wiped it clean and modernized
45:24
it. It had been with the same family
45:26
for a few generations. Imagine that just went in,
45:29
started cleaning it and like cranked and said what the fuck
45:31
are? You.
45:33
Doing I used the first floor of the house only the upper floors
45:35
were constructed on set because the hallways didn't accommodate
45:39
the shoot, but they were all based on the style of the Ames
45:41
mansion. And the library, along with
45:43
exteriors. They were shot in another
45:45
mansion in Massachusetts. Because there were three
45:47
different locations, the placement of the room subsets
45:50
did make actual physical sense. Consider in the space
45:52
downstairs. Yeah, it's the overlook, isn't
45:54
it? Yeah.
45:55
Yeah, exactly that. Yeah.
45:57
Yeah. One of Crank's favorite rooms to
45:59
construct was Harlan's study, which was also shot on a stage
46:02
set decorator. As we mentioned, David
46:04
Schlesinger's crew created these weird dioramas of murder scenes.
46:07
I think you mentioned earlier, Westie, they served to reinforce
46:10
the notion that the film is a visual representation of
46:13
Harlan's mind. It's just full of detail.
46:16
Yeah. And the house acted as a hub for
46:18
the actors, with everyone bonding.
46:19
They're making for a happy working environment that
46:22
actually spent so much time in the house that producer Ram
46:25
Bergman said that they actually wasted a lot of money on
46:27
trailers for the actors, which were barely used.
46:31
So a director completely at home with the material making it sing
46:34
on screen. He's got many years ahead of
46:36
him, but Ryan Johnson probably will struggle to top Knives Out.
46:40
So yeah. The cast.
46:48
An incredible cast of Knives Out.
46:49
We'll be talking about the support as we go, but here we're
46:52
talking about CSIKFC, the black sheep of the Thrombie family.
46:56
But first, Harlan's nurse from Uruguay and the Dharmas as Marta
47:01
Cabrera on the Umat. Yeah.
47:03
I mean, I think one of the really interesting things about
47:06
all three of these films is Blanc is kind of the protagonist
47:09
of the main character, but he also isn't in a lot of ways.
47:12
We don't really find out anything about him.
47:14
And I love the fact that we don't get the cliche a bit where
47:17
we find out like his mother was murdered, but they never found
47:20
the killer and that's what inspired him.
47:22
You don't need that. So instead what you do is you
47:24
shift that focus on to someone else in all three of these
47:27
films. And it works so well with Marta
47:30
because the Amos is just so incredibly likeable.
47:33
She's just got this real innocence and generosity of
47:36
spirit, which contrasts so effectively to all the conniving
47:40
that's going on from the thrombies, all the greed that
47:43
feels everything they do. And all she wants to do is be a
47:45
good person and do a good job. That's why it's such a great
47:49
twist that she thinks she's responsible for Holland's death.
47:52
And it does look like she is, albeit accidentally, because how
47:55
does she get out of that? And her performance is so good
47:58
because he can see the guilt just weighs so heavily on it.
48:02
And it puts us as an audience in a quandary because we think she
48:06
is responsible, but at the same time, we wanted to get away with
48:08
it. So how, how is that going to
48:10
resolve itself? And because she's so likable,
48:13
you're just completely on her side.
48:15
And even the vomiting thing is really clever because it's not
48:18
just a cheap guy that actually puts her in a real bind because
48:21
she can't lie about what's really been going on.
48:23
She's. Backed into a corner.
48:24
It's just backed into a corner, which gives it this tension and
48:27
it makes it such a such a fascinating character to have in
48:30
this situation. And the last thing I want to
48:32
mention, that kind of last cliche it avoids.
48:34
Obviously, by the time you get a Glass Onion, we find out a bit
48:37
more about Blanc's personal life and the sexuality.
48:40
But just going on this on this loan, if you didn't know that,
48:43
I'm just really glad they avoided the glacier of Marta and
48:45
blank, like having a romance or having a play.
48:49
Because honestly, going into it, I thought it's it's going to go
48:52
there, isn't it? Because, you know, Daniel Craig
48:54
and Anna de Armas, they're going to get together.
48:56
And I'm so glad they didn't go there.
48:59
Yeah, I'm so glad they didn't. That would have been rubbish.
49:01
It wasn't just the lack of romance in this whole film.
49:04
So refreshing this house. Exactly.
49:06
Yeah, I just think Anna Dalmis, it's just a breath of fresh air.
49:08
She's a beautiful counterpoint to the Thrombie family.
49:12
And they're kind of like, as you've mentioned, Westie, their
49:14
white privilege, their harshness, their spikiness,
49:17
their out of contempt for everybody else.
49:20
And Anna Dalmis has just got so much vulnerability, but also
49:23
like resolve and strength of character.
49:26
Yeah, she's great. You know, there's no element of
49:29
her performance where you think she doesn't deserve what she
49:31
gets. Yeah, exactly.
49:33
Yeah, Johnson was looking for a little known actor in the part
49:35
of Monitor display of vulnerability and obviously the
49:38
underdog quality. It was casting director Mary
49:41
Veranu who brought the Armas to Johnsons attention.
49:44
And Ryan Johnson had seen that in Blade Runner 2049, but that's
49:48
about it. Initially, he thought she was
49:50
too pretty to play a martyr convincingly, but changed his
49:52
mind when she came in to read. How did you change your mind
49:55
when she came? So in the flesh, she was just
49:58
not too. I would have.
49:59
I would have made it even worse for me.
50:01
Oh, there she is. That's that's ludicrous.
50:05
Johnson said. She's got that Audrey Hepburn
50:07
type thing. Some actors have that magical
50:09
quality where you feel like their eyes are just windows
50:12
right into their souls. And that's what Anna's got.
50:15
Yeah, She's got that all right. Yeah.
50:16
Definitely, she's fantastic. But the armistice's initial
50:19
impulse was to actually turn the role down.
50:21
She wasn't interested in playing Latin specific roles, but after
50:24
reading the full script she was just drawn to modest strength of
50:27
character instead. Yeah.
50:28
She was only given like kind of like a brief outline of the
50:31
script at 1st and it said like 3 words like young, pretty.
50:37
And she said I'm not interested in doing any kind of Latin
50:40
specific roles. And then when she got the full
50:42
script, she realized, yeah. There's a lot more to it than
50:45
just three. Words.
50:46
So that's a lot more subtle than she probably thought it was
50:49
going to be. Yeah.
50:50
She also liked the idea of martyrs regurgitate reaction to
50:53
untruths, she said. I'm a master at gulping and
50:56
making the sounds now. So she may not have been well
51:01
known in 2019, but that all changed with Knives Out and it
51:05
almost bringing warmth, vulnerability and resolve to the
51:07
screen as Marta Cabrera. Next up, an outrageous turn from
51:14
James Bond at the time of release, Daniel Craig with his
51:16
foghorn Leghorn Sullivan drawl as Benoit Blanc.
51:20
Wesley, over to you. He's great, isn't he?
51:22
I mean, he's having so much fun and I just love.
51:25
I mean, Matt touched on it before the introduction to this
51:28
character is so brilliant because it's he's in reduction
51:31
in nearly every film before this.
51:33
It's a head reduction is Bond. He's in reduction and wrote the
51:35
perdition. It's just this low angle.
51:37
He sat on the chair just like who is this guy cloaked in
51:41
darkness? And it's just a real parody of
51:44
all of these parts that he's played before.
51:46
But he brings such a lightness of touch here, such this lack of
51:51
matches more. Like I said before, there's no
51:53
masculinity to the part without it being overly effeminate.
51:56
But he's just very understanding and very emotional.
51:59
Yes, but you don't expect this guy to have a fist fight.
52:02
No, you don't expect them to like be caught in the middle of
52:05
something like there's a bar room brawl and it's all right
52:07
because blanks there and you take care of everything.
52:09
You'd see him just leaving. He would just leave.
52:12
I've had enough. And even in a car chase, he's
52:13
just trying to phone her to calm everything down.
52:15
Hanging out the window. He's just like, will you answer
52:17
the phone? It's just brilliant.
52:20
I love the way it just it takes all of your expectations and
52:23
just slams them on the heads like he's being James Bond for
52:25
Christ's sake. He's almost finished being James
52:28
Bond at this point, and I think he's just taken all of that
52:31
bravado, all of that build up, and he's just went, how can I
52:33
subvert this completely into a Peter Sellers kind of role where
52:37
people are going to take it seriously And it's not
52:39
slapstick, but his confusion is so palpable because he's leading
52:43
the films. When he's confused.
52:44
We're really confused, but he's confused on purpose because he's
52:48
just manipulating everybody of all people.
52:50
I would never have thought Daniel Craig.
52:52
No, I wouldn't. No, I would have.
52:54
And I think this is Daniel Craig's way of going, right?
52:56
I've got a new character, I've got a new way of looking at it.
52:58
It's completely subverting the James Bond trope, and I'm going
53:01
to go for it. And he absolutely dives in head
53:04
first. But the beautiful thing about
53:05
his performance is that everybody else is diving in head
53:07
first with him. You can say that they're all
53:09
going at the same pace, and it's just a wonderful thing to say.
53:12
What an invention of a character and what a reinvention of a
53:15
career. Yeah, nice.
53:17
In the middle of being James Bond, Yeah.
53:19
The fact that he's able to bring something more memorable to the
53:22
screen. Yeah, Benoit Blanc.
53:24
In my opinion anyway. Yeah, yeah, I'd agree.
53:26
Feels really free, doesn't he? Yeah.
53:29
Yeah, shackles are off. Yeah, it's a real freeness and a
53:32
playfulness to the character. Yeah, I really love that one
53:35
sided interaction between Blanc and Great Nana.
53:38
Yeah, he's able to make that absolutely compelling.
53:41
She's not saying a word. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
53:43
The warmth of his character. He knows that she knows
53:46
something and he's trying to draw it out of her.
53:48
Love that. It's just talking about being
53:50
tired all the time. They're all getting more tired.
53:52
I'm like, yeah, it's fantastic. The way that it's lit as well.
53:54
It's so nicely done. Oh, it is really elegant.
53:56
Yeah, it's beautiful. And Johnson conceived of Blanc
53:59
as an American prowl, and it seems fitting now we've got an
54:02
Englishman playing an American because it was generally an
54:05
Englishman playing the Belgian prowl in movies without, just
54:08
like Albert Finney, Peter Usnoff and David Sushi on TV taking the
54:11
role. That's right.
54:13
Yeah. Grace Johnson had Craig in mind
54:15
for the role from the start. He liked the fact that it's
54:17
averted to his one persona, which it absolutely does, and he
54:20
knew that he had the range to play comedic after seeing him on
54:23
stage and in Soderbergh's Logan Lucky.
54:25
Obviously, yes. He's very funny in.
54:28
That he is, yeah. Great.
54:29
Johnson said that Craig relished the idea of Blanc.
54:32
I could tell how much fun he was going to have.
54:34
He looked like he was a little kid I in a Christmas present.
54:39
Wonderful. But he almost didn't get his
54:41
man. Craig couldn't commit to nights
54:42
out because of his obligation to No Time to Die.
54:45
But when production was delayed on that, Craig jumped at the
54:47
chance to fill Benoit's shoes as long as it started filming in
54:51
six weeks time. Right.
54:52
Yeah. So because the tight turn
54:54
around, Johnson cut short a holiday with his wife to get the
54:56
ball rolling straight away. Right.
54:58
I'm sure she was over the moon with her.
55:02
You see the final bit though, It's a Yeah, fair enough.
55:05
Yeah, yeah. And with Craig's star power, the
55:07
rest of the cast fell into place quite quickly.
55:09
Johnson targeted actors who were available at short notice for a
55:12
short period of time. Johnson explained if you shoot
55:15
in sometime next year, everybody in the back of their head is
55:18
thinking about keeping their options open in case a big
55:20
Marvel movie comes up. But in this case in Can you show
55:23
up in 4 weeks in Massachusetts and just have fun with us doing
55:26
this murder mystery? Yeah, he thought that that was
55:29
just a lot more appealing than seeing Put This in your diary
55:32
for like 12 months time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
55:34
Johnson said that he was able to ground the film in reality
55:36
because of the cast who were given big performances without
55:39
disconnecting from reality and making the film a parody.
55:43
Yeah. And with the large ensemble
55:44
cast, Johnson said film it was so much fun that it became like
55:47
summer camp with the size of the cast.
55:49
Managing people was just as important as actually making the
55:51
film, he said. If you cast generous actors and
55:54
actresses that seem like good people, it'll make the set life
55:57
better. Yeah.
55:58
Yeah. But because of the large cast,
56:00
Johnson named a lot of them after musicians he loved just to
56:03
keep track of them. So Linda and Richard were named
56:06
after Linda and Richard Thompson.
56:08
Walt and Donna were named after Walter Becker and Donald Fagan
56:11
from Steely Dan. Johnny was Joni Mitchell and her
56:15
late departed husband Neil was Neil Young.
56:18
Neil Young. And Benoit Blanc is obviously
56:22
distinctive because of his accents.
56:25
In the original script for the film, the character is described
56:28
as having a subtle southern accents.
56:31
Not sure it ended up that way. No, cross that word out.
56:36
Yeah, that's because when doing research, Daniel Craig came
56:39
across right in the story and Shelby Foot and based his accent
56:43
largely on his. Yeah, and if you've heard Foot
56:46
Talking, you know that Craig has certainly taken the animated
56:49
Southern drawl up quite a few notches.
56:52
There were a few other sources of inspiration, which may
56:54
account for the slightly exaggerated accent.
56:56
Craig has said that there's a little Tennessee Williams thrown
56:58
in there alongside Monsieur Hulo from the Jacques Tati films from
57:02
the 50s and 60s, Yes. Nice.
57:04
There's also influence of Christopher Guest's Harlem
57:06
pepper investment show Goodbye with Carrie Grant.
57:09
Flair for the spoken word into Catch a Thief.
57:12
Yes, yeah. Craig worked with a dialect
57:14
coach for authenticity. Yeah, it's larger than life, but
57:18
I'm certain that it's authentic. Oh yeah, yeah.
57:20
Oh yeah, 100% don't. Doubt it for a second.
57:23
And as we're on Benoit Blanc, we've got our second Patreon
57:26
question. This one comes from Jasmine
57:28
Christensen. Hi, Jasmine.
57:30
Hi, Jasmine. She says I'm so excited you guys
57:32
are doing this movie. I love all the Knives Out
57:34
movies. My question is what mystery or
57:36
thriller would you insert Benoit Blanc in and how fast would he
57:39
solve the crime? Sending well wishes all the way
57:42
from Alaska. Oh, lovely.
57:44
Wow, lovely, Fantastic. I like this kind of placement of
57:48
people. Yeah, tell us where you're from.
57:50
Yeah. Tell us where you're from.
57:51
That'd be great. Yeah.
57:51
Great stuff. Yeah, excellent.
57:53
Well, thank you very much for the question, Jasmine.
57:55
And firstly, I'm going to go with Clue.
57:58
We've mentioned it already, Blanc, in that mansion with
58:01
Colonel Mustard, Mrs. White and Wadsworth working together.
58:05
He'd love it. I think he'd solve all three
58:07
different endings at once. Yeah.
58:09
Yeah, of course he would. And 2nd, I'm going to go with
58:12
Scream Blank in Woodborough picking apart the slasher movie
58:16
references. I think he'd be on Stu and
58:18
Billy's ass halfway through the second act.
58:20
He did it. And finally, forget Freddie and
58:23
Jason. This would be the crossover
58:24
event around them all. Murder on the Orient Express.
58:27
Poirot versus Blanc on the same train, the same case. 2
58:31
legendary detectives going at it.
58:33
Yeah, I think Blanc would know immediately, but he would let it
58:37
play out to the end because he's just having too much fun.
58:40
Yeah. Fair enough.
58:42
What about you, Matt? I've got two.
58:43
First one is murder by death, which I think great, that guy
58:48
getting all those authors around the dinner table.
58:50
You can't solve this murder, and it looks like an impossible
58:52
murder to solve. Blanc would get that done in 5
58:54
minutes, then he'd be ready for dinner.
58:56
That'd be absolutely fine. And then the second one in the
58:59
heat of the night, obviously being a Southern gentleman
59:02
himself. He wouldn't get.
59:04
Anywhere near the issues that Sidney Potty has in that trying
59:07
to solve that murder. So again, heat of the night,
59:09
he'd solve that one very, very quickly.
59:11
Nice. Fantastic film as well.
59:13
It's great film, love it. Yeah.
59:16
All right. USD.
59:16
Some that actually needed solvent a little bit quicker for
59:19
me without the pain at the end. Right.
59:23
First one, put them in seven. You replace both of them.
59:27
Just going through each of the murder scenes, you can have some
59:29
of the dialogue imagines going. Ladies and general, we have
59:31
ourselves a harmless side. That would be amazing Gluttony.
59:39
My goodness doesn't. Make him Yoda.
59:42
Just because a boy has a library card does not make him Yoda.
59:45
That would be absolutely wonderful.
59:47
He's fucking with us, That's what he's doing.
59:49
Do this all day you're. Right.
59:52
It's amazing. It would be put him in seven.
59:55
Fucking Dante. Oh, fucking Dante.
1:00:06
I don't know how we do the ending, but if you amazed him,
1:00:09
no has the upper hand. It's blurred.
1:00:18
It's but that's great. We would just be on his shoe.
1:00:22
So yeah, that's my first one. The second one is just because
1:00:27
it's such a brilliant film. And please guys, if you haven't
1:00:30
seen this, please check it out. But Sean Penn directed Jack
1:00:33
Nicholson, starring the pledge. Lovely.
1:00:36
That film is incredible, but put Blanc in there and it's solved.
1:00:39
It's done. Don't have that ending.
1:00:41
Amazing. And then one for Jasmine,
1:00:43
especially being from Alaska, I would say Insomnia the Chris
1:00:46
Nolan. Yeah, lovely.
1:00:48
Yeah. I would like that to be solved a
1:00:49
little bit easier. I don't want to shoot a dead
1:00:51
dog, no. Yeah, this might work with your
1:00:54
Mama. Oh, God, let's just scrap the
1:01:02
rest of this and let's just do different films.
1:01:05
Different films. Yeah, that would be great.
1:01:08
Lovely. Thank you very much for the
1:01:10
question, Jasmine. PL.
1:01:12
AM C fuck off. He was found here with garbage
1:01:21
bags. Wrapped in garbage bag.
1:01:33
It's great little thing to remember.
1:01:38
Wonderful. And that brings us to the end of
1:01:40
our conversation on Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc.
1:01:43
Unfortunately. Sure, wonderful range and a
1:01:47
great sense of humor in a now iconic role.
1:01:50
Yes, Finally, the antagonist in the story, the entitled,
1:01:55
delightfully chunky knit sweat, a clad Hugh Ransom Drysdale,
1:01:59
played by Chris Evans. Asshole.
1:02:04
I want to talk about this performance because I think I
1:02:06
said a while back on one of our shows, I can't remember which
1:02:09
one it was, that the current crop of actors being run through
1:02:12
the Hollywood meat grinder. And for the most part, they're
1:02:16
all called Chris. Yeah.
1:02:17
A role indistinguishable from each other.
1:02:20
From my point of view. They just seem a little bit
1:02:22
bland. They seem to lack a little bit
1:02:24
of personality, but I think Evan stands above the pack.
1:02:28
And that's certainly true here because in the eight years Pride
1:02:31
and Ives out, he'd appeared in 11 Marvel films.
1:02:35
Yeah, 11. That's a lot of stars and
1:02:38
stripes. It is.
1:02:39
Yeah, I'm doing the right thing. So to see him turn up here as
1:02:44
this absolute nightmare of a human being is a real breath of
1:02:48
fresh air. Yeah, it is.
1:02:49
Yeah. And he doesn't come in in the
1:02:50
second act either, so he's got a lot of catching up to do.
1:02:53
But boy, oh boy, he does just that.
1:02:56
He creates A shitstorm before the will.
1:02:58
Reading, eating biscuits and lounging around like he owns the
1:03:02
joint. It's a grand entrance and a law.
1:03:04
He is an entitled prick. There's something undeniably
1:03:07
satisfying about watching him stick it to every single member
1:03:10
of his family. Yeah, yeah, because they're all
1:03:12
terrible people. Evans pulls that superior,
1:03:16
entitled attitude off really well.
1:03:18
I think Ransom has the safety net of wealth, so he can just be
1:03:21
an asshole to anyone and everyone because you know what
1:03:24
they're going to do about it. He doesn't care.
1:03:26
Yeah, exactly. And Evans plays that with such
1:03:29
ease that you'd think you'd be doing this kind of role his
1:03:31
entire career. I don't think he's ever done
1:03:33
anything like this up until this point.
1:03:36
No. I think there's a swag under it,
1:03:38
You know, he's got the sweater, which set tongues wagging.
1:03:42
The way he carries himself. He looks like he's having the
1:03:44
time of his life, and that energy that he's got is
1:03:46
infectious. He looks great as well.
1:03:48
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the great thing
1:03:49
about Craig is Blanc is it subverts the James Bond troll,
1:03:52
but this submits the Captain America troll. 100% it doesn't.
1:03:56
So I can get away with anything, some Captain America.
1:03:58
Exactly. Yeah, eat shit.
1:03:59
Eat shit. You know, it's brilliant.
1:04:00
It's brilliant, Casson. And I think that's what I find
1:04:02
so impressive about this performance after over a decade
1:04:05
of playing the most virtuous, morally upstanding character in
1:04:08
cinema. Yeah, Evans flips it entirely
1:04:11
and makes you love him for being the worst person in the room.
1:04:14
Yeah. And I think it takes a lot of
1:04:15
charisma to pull that off. And it proves that there's more
1:04:18
to Chris Evans than just that shield and that good guy nature.
1:04:21
Yeah. Definitely.
1:04:23
And Ransom is named after the main character Elwyn Ransom in
1:04:26
CS Lewis's The Space Trilogy, also known as the Ransom
1:04:30
Trilogy. Johnson was a big fan of the
1:04:31
series as a kid and said. I've always just thought that
1:04:34
was a weird cool name and I was happy I was able to steal that.
1:04:37
Nice, I thought it was after the Belle Gibson film.
1:04:39
Give me back my son. Johnson was well aware of Evans
1:04:44
clean cut superhero persona but knew that he could play against
1:04:47
type. Haven't seen him on stage in
1:04:48
2018 in Kenneth Lauren's lobby Hero play the character of Bill
1:04:54
in that. Yes, Johnson said.
1:04:57
You've got to see it not as baggage but as ammunition.
1:04:59
If there was somebody in that part who the audience inherently
1:05:02
wanted to like, that would help the ARC overall.
1:05:05
Yeah, it works a treat. It does.
1:05:07
Yeah, and he was persuaded to come on board because of
1:05:10
convenience and proximity. Having wrapped on Avengers End
1:05:13
Game, he was planning some recuperation time at Holborn,
1:05:15
Massachusetts. But then they said, well, it
1:05:17
films in Boston. And I said I just can't see an
1:05:19
order this. Yeah, it's like what we said
1:05:22
before, Johnson saying can you come and do this fun, quirky
1:05:26
movie for six weeks in Massachusetts and in the
1:05:29
proximity and people's availability is what he played
1:05:32
upon. I'm giving away some of the
1:05:34
trade secrets in Hollywood, Johnson.
1:05:36
Let's slip a key detail for you to keep an eye open for in any
1:05:39
film that will allow characters to have iPhones in movies, but
1:05:43
not the bad guys. Yeah, Really.
1:05:46
Wow. You'll notice that Ransom is an
1:05:48
Android guy in this film. Right.
1:05:50
Samsung, Google, they obviously root for the bad.
1:05:53
Guy. Fair enough.
1:05:54
Yeah, they don't mind. After revealing this detail,
1:05:56
Johnson said every single filmmaker who has a bad guy in
1:05:58
their movie that's supposed to be a secret wants to murder me
1:06:01
right now. Great, great.
1:06:05
I love that little detail. So an incredible cast where at
1:06:09
least eight of them deserve a mention in this segment.
1:06:12
But with the Armours, Craig and Evans, the film has three
1:06:15
outstanding actors, all given very different performances.
1:06:18
Yeah. Yeah.
1:06:26
All right, movies. We'll be right back.
1:06:28
Thank you for supporting us by listening to the sponsors for
1:06:30
this episode. Thank you for listening to our
1:06:33
sponsors. And now it's back to the show.
1:06:39
The middle. In the second act of the film,
1:06:43
something is afoot and Blank recruits Marta to be his
1:06:47
confidante. Poor Marta here.
1:06:49
I mean, she's been through the ringer today.
1:06:51
She's been the subject of some casual racism.
1:06:53
She's just had a panic attack, and now things are ramped up
1:06:56
because she cannot shake Benoit Blanc, who's beautifully
1:06:59
revealed in the shadows of the garden when he lights up the
1:07:01
cigar. Yeah, it's amazing.
1:07:03
He observes the facts without biases of heart or head.
1:07:06
Lovely dialogue. Yeah.
1:07:08
Great. And he's making his plans to
1:07:09
start his investigation tomorrow.
1:07:11
And once martyred by his side because he trusts her kind heart
1:07:14
and the fact that she had nothing to gain from Holland's
1:07:16
murder. He's smarter than the average
1:07:17
bear. Because by the end, with his
1:07:19
revealed Armada, we've already discussed it.
1:07:21
He's known all along. Yeah.
1:07:24
And he's been manipulating everybody.
1:07:25
As harsh as it sounds, he has been manipulated in everybody,
1:07:28
including. He's like Derren Brown.
1:07:33
So the truth will out eventually, because Marta is a
1:07:36
good person and she's bound to crack, and she does get there.
1:07:40
So she goes back to her home, her head spinning with all this
1:07:42
guilt and confusion. As far as she knows, she did
1:07:45
kill Harlan, and Armus plays that wonderfully.
1:07:48
How on earth did she get herself into this situation when she sat
1:07:51
down? She's looking at the TV.
1:07:52
The TV, incidentally, is an episode of Murder She Wrote.
1:07:56
Yeah, it's dubbed in Spanish. It's called Who Threw the Barber
1:07:58
Tolls in Mrs. Fletcher's Chowder.
1:08:01
It's about a dinner party where somebody is murdered.
1:08:03
Are they all? And then we flash back to the
1:08:08
grizzly details of Holland's final moments.
1:08:10
Martha's tears and fears are real.
1:08:12
Holland's affection for her is genuine.
1:08:14
But when she went back in that room, did you really have to
1:08:18
slightly throw it in front of her?
1:08:19
That image will stay with her for the rest of her life.
1:08:22
Very cruel. Yeah, but I guess the reason
1:08:25
that he had to do this is because Marta would have stopped
1:08:27
him otherwise. Yeah, because she was just about
1:08:30
to go in and it gives us that delicious plot point, the close
1:08:33
up of the blood splatter Armada sneakers.
1:08:35
Yeah. Yeah.
1:08:36
She's being caught red footed, but she's being strong for her
1:08:39
mother. That's a detail that's captured
1:08:41
without any dialogue when it comes back from the flashback
1:08:44
and she holds her mother's hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:08:46
Because she knows what's at stake here without any dialogue.
1:08:49
That's really good. Yeah.
1:08:50
Yeah, it doesn't take a coat off and get comfortable either.
1:08:53
No, they should be removed from the scene at any point.
1:08:55
Yeah, yeah. So straight after that, she's
1:08:57
going to have to try and cover our tracks in more ways than
1:08:59
one. Yeah, I mean, it's it's great
1:09:02
when we go in there and, you know, we have this really great
1:09:05
setup and we've got all the modern technology, as he stated,
1:09:08
which is just so funny because it's just VHS tape.
1:09:11
It's absolutely shit. Top loader as well.
1:09:14
Yeah, Top. Loader the earliest.
1:09:16
Earliest just eats tapes like popcorn, but I kept this one,
1:09:20
you know, and I've kept this one great performances all around,
1:09:23
but it's just the way that this is all building now towards
1:09:26
we're thinking how she's going to get away with this because
1:09:29
Blanc's now trying to entrap her saying that he wants her
1:09:32
involved. Otherwise she can takes control
1:09:35
and Fast forward in the tape and then ejects it and you see that
1:09:38
the tape's smoking and blocks like turns his back.
1:09:40
He's back on us. If he knows that she's trying to
1:09:42
manipulate somehow and he's distracting Elliot and the other
1:09:44
guy and just trying to talk to them, can we get this digitized
1:09:47
properly somehow? He's like helping her get away
1:09:49
with it in The Walking through and she's got the magnet just
1:09:51
rubbing it against the table, which is obviously going to
1:09:53
erase it. I was going to cause trouble
1:09:54
with the VHS tape, which is lovely.
1:09:56
Puts that magnet in her pocket, but I just even before that when
1:10:00
they see it on the screen is that look that dialogue where
1:10:02
he's like, it looks like a Japanese horror movie.
1:10:04
Absolutely love. That are we all going to die in
1:10:06
seven days there's. A little knot of the ring there.
1:10:09
I really love that. That was really, really good.
1:10:11
And there's just that real great back and forth between Blunt,
1:10:14
like looking stupid, but also being very intelligent with and
1:10:18
taking note of everything around him, everything that's going on.
1:10:21
Because from this point we know that there's tracks there.
1:10:23
He's probably already seen them. He's distracting the other two
1:10:26
guys while she walks ahead. He lets her do it yes and then
1:10:29
goes as a render. It's weird stop This is really
1:10:32
important and waits at that point when Marta's gone too far
1:10:35
Marla and then he's actually not like necessarily shouting, but
1:10:38
she plays that so well. So as an audience, we don't we
1:10:41
don't know that back. So the supporting each other as
1:10:44
she's going back over the tracks and he's letting her do it.
1:10:47
If he'd suspected that she would just be in jail by an hour.
1:10:49
She was like the murderer that would be done.
1:10:52
He's just trying to. So many levels here in this
1:10:54
thing. And he's trying to solve it with
1:10:56
that, and he's letting her do it because by her doing this, he's
1:10:59
going to find out what really happened.
1:11:01
And he knows that there's something else going on with it
1:11:03
from the final moment of covering the tracks.
1:11:05
And the dogs run in, destroy the tracks yet again.
1:11:08
But it's their relationship to Martyr that then he blank, looks
1:11:10
down and goes, the best judge of character is a dog.
1:11:13
Yeah, he's trying to piece it together.
1:11:15
We think we know what's happened, but we don't know.
1:11:17
It's just another great couple of layers in the middle of the
1:11:20
film that shouldn't be this brilliant, but it really is.
1:11:23
Yeah, it really is. It's absolutely fantastic.
1:11:25
So many layers. So the role of Mr. Proof Rock,
1:11:28
the security guard Johnson wanted act that and magician
1:11:31
Ricky Jay. Unfortunately, Jade died just
1:11:33
before film was about to start. So he got the great Emmett
1:11:36
Walsh, who's fantastic in that. He's had a great performance.
1:11:39
So he took his place. And if you actually look in this
1:11:42
scene, when Walsh puts that picture of the house up with the
1:11:44
magnet, there's a little picture of Ricky Jay just on the right
1:11:47
hand side. Yes, there is.
1:11:49
Wow. Just a little homage.
1:11:51
Yeah. Really nice touch, yeah?
1:11:53
Yeah, that's amazing. And Walsh said Ricky J was going
1:11:55
to do it and he went and died. Then they had to come and get
1:11:58
somebody that wasn't as good, so they got me.
1:12:00
I'm brought in because they can't get who they want.
1:12:02
That's normally the way I get hired.
1:12:04
A work cheap must be. Bless me, lovely, brilliant.
1:12:08
Afterwards died in 2024, Ryan Johnson tweeted and it came to
1:12:12
set with two things. A copy of his credits, which was
1:12:16
a small type, single space, double column list of modern
1:12:18
classics that filled the whole page, would be yeah yeah yeah,
1:12:22
and $2.00 bills, which he passed out to the entire crew saying
1:12:26
don't spend it and you'll never be broke.
1:12:28
What an absolute legend. What a guy.
1:12:30
That's amazing. Yeah.
1:12:31
Yeah. And then after this, we've been
1:12:33
talking about him. We've seen him briefly already,
1:12:35
but this is our first proper introduction around some, I
1:12:37
mean, Chris Evans having the time of his life here.
1:12:40
As we've been saying, he's not Captain America and he's
1:12:43
overjoyed about that for once. And he just devours the scene
1:12:47
and it's incredible how much chaos Ransom causes when he
1:12:50
doesn't actually see it or do that much to 'cause it.
1:12:53
He just has to show up, I mean. Just sits in the middle.
1:12:56
And it explodes. I mean, he turns up, the dogs
1:13:00
don't like him. There's clue number 1, He tells
1:13:02
the cops only the help column, Hugh.
1:13:04
There's clue #2 which you're going to have to remember.
1:13:07
But you brush that off and then he's into the house and he
1:13:10
listens to all of 2 words from Blanc and he just comes out with
1:13:13
CSIKFC. And then he's on and he just
1:13:17
Saunders into that room. All just ran around, insults Meg
1:13:20
just in that chair with his cookie psyche.
1:13:22
He's Lord of the Manor Michael Shannon in this scene.
1:13:26
He is. He's amazing.
1:13:28
He's. Walt clearly fumed at Ransom for
1:13:30
not being at the funeral. Yeah.
1:13:35
But then Ransom rings of Jacob that makes a kick off between
1:13:38
Megan, Jacob, Altright troll, Liberal Snowflake, and that
1:13:41
could back to Walt. I don't know what any of that
1:13:44
means. Like he doesn't understand the
1:13:48
son at all. And then Richard dives in, just
1:13:51
has to pop out of nowhere joylessly masturbating the
1:13:54
pictures of dead deer about Jacob so that that ends up with
1:13:57
he and Walt actually getting into a proper scrap with each
1:13:59
other. And this is just the funniest
1:14:01
thing Ransom's ever seen in his life.
1:14:03
He's just kicking back and join his cookies.
1:14:06
He's barely said a word. And he's caused all this and
1:14:08
he's having a will of the time. You know, we got to do this more
1:14:11
often. And then even when it's revealed
1:14:13
he's been cut out, the will. So, you know, Walter's like,
1:14:16
yes, yes. Yeah, yeah.
1:14:18
I love that. And then he's in his face
1:14:20
rejoicing and Ransom is just like, wow, like he just doesn't
1:14:24
care. And then it all kicks off again
1:14:26
and it's clear like by this point he's had enough for the
1:14:28
rest of the family. Taking them off 1 by 1, the
1:14:31
better. I mentioned right at the top,
1:14:32
eat it, Eat it, Definitely eat it.
1:14:35
Just amazing the scene, so funny.
1:14:37
Yeah, it's great. Johnson was able to get the
1:14:40
reaction from the dogs when Ransom shows up by giving Chris
1:14:42
Evans 2 toy balls. The dogs were leashed by their
1:14:45
trainers off screen and Evans showed the dogs that he had the
1:14:48
balls before the camera started rolling to get the reaction.
1:14:50
Yeah, they went wild. They loved it.
1:14:53
Brilliant. Similar thing.
1:14:54
The opening shot of the dogs render was the camera was
1:14:56
achieved by them getting them to run from one dog trainer to the
1:15:00
other. The camera and behind.
1:15:02
Yeah. Yeah, brilliant.
1:15:03
And Johnson wanted Ransom to eat milk and cookies in this
1:15:06
introduction scene to make him seem juvenile.
1:15:08
And Evans, he had so many biscuits for that scene.
1:15:10
He said his mouth felt like it was coated in butter.
1:15:16
We've mentioned Ryan Johnson last film was The Last Jedi had
1:15:19
polarized its fervent Star Wars fan base, and there was a lot of
1:15:23
backlash, which was widely documented on social media.
1:15:26
And he used this as inspiration for the character of Jacob
1:15:29
Thrombie, right? In this scene, the boy is
1:15:32
literally a Nazi. Yeah.
1:15:34
He's always on his phone, described as politically active
1:15:36
by his dad. Basically, he's a troll on
1:15:38
Twitter. And that's exactly what Ryan
1:15:40
Johnson's poking fun at here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:15:43
And the original script for Knives Out was actually littered
1:15:45
with F bombs. But Ryan Johnson had an 11th
1:15:48
hour change of heart and softened the language to make it
1:15:50
PG13. And he'd reminded himself of the
1:15:52
reason he was drawn to the genre in the 1st place, which is those
1:15:55
family friendly Agatha Christie who done it.
1:15:58
They just don't have any blue language in them.
1:16:00
Yeah, I mean, he literally went through the screenplay and just
1:16:02
struck all the F bombs out. Yeah, in this scene where Ransom
1:16:05
tells everybody to eat shit, he was supposed to tell them all.
1:16:08
Fuck you. Right.
1:16:09
Yeah, right. Yeah, right.
1:16:10
So it's Richard's the only one that survived, the one right at
1:16:12
the start. That's right, yeah.
1:16:14
Yeah, that's why it's so funny. It is, yeah.
1:16:16
Yeah. And the actor stuck to the
1:16:18
script, pretty much to the word. But there were a few off script
1:16:20
moments that happened when the big cusk got together during the
1:16:23
eat shit moment when Blanc leaves through Michael Shannon
1:16:26
improvise the line. I'm not eating one.
1:16:28
I odor of shit which is so funny.
1:16:33
That is brilliant. Yeah, he improvised that
1:16:35
celebration. When he finds out, he's out of
1:16:37
the way as well. That's brilliant, just in the
1:16:40
background. Shannon's amazing in this man.
1:16:42
He really? Yeah.
1:16:43
So with Ransom on the scene, everything is in chaos.
1:16:46
The Will Reedon should settle things down though, surely?
1:16:48
Yeah. Almost certainly.
1:16:52
In the upcoming sequence of events, Blanc finds some key
1:16:55
evidence and Linda asks Marta a very pertinent question.
1:16:59
Was she Boink and her father? Yep.
1:17:03
Who knows that? Over to you.
1:17:06
Yeah, so it's all kicking off for the family.
1:17:08
So Blanc and Marta leave them to it.
1:17:10
Everything's spinning around. We've already seen the dog with
1:17:13
that piece of trousers already. Key piece of evidence in its
1:17:15
mouth. Blanc throws the ball, the dog
1:17:18
comes back with that classic draw.
1:17:19
Works really well, but it's the tension for her character again,
1:17:23
it's it's this element of everything starting to fall into
1:17:26
place for Blanc, but it's going to expose martyr, or so she
1:17:29
thinks in the process. You know, this is part of the
1:17:32
trellis, but it's in you break. So where does that come from?
1:17:34
Is that a secret window? Let's go and have a look.
1:17:36
It's classic who done it stuff I have to mention when they walk
1:17:39
back into the house and that argument is still raging.
1:17:42
I mean to talk about Michael Shannon when he is right in
1:17:45
Ransom's face with that packet of cookies.
1:17:48
How about small cookies? You, you want some more cookies?
1:17:53
I swear. I'm sure you can see Chris Evans
1:17:54
is trying not to laugh because he's probably in his face and I
1:17:58
think Chris Evans is really struggling not to break
1:18:00
character there. Maybe Holland left you a cold
1:18:02
glass of milk and as well, asshole.
1:18:05
Brilliant stuff from Shannon. Improvised line as well.
1:18:07
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then we're back upstairs.
1:18:10
Blanc finds the muddy footprints, and you can see the
1:18:12
cogs whirring in his head. And that's what, say, it's only
1:18:15
a Rep spec. You realize he kind of knows
1:18:17
about Martyr already, so this is just more manipulation of her.
1:18:21
And there's that wonderful tension to it because on one
1:18:23
hand, you want to see Blanc get things right.
1:18:25
It's really exciting, the same demonstrate the smarts.
1:18:28
But at the same time, you don't want Martyr exports.
1:18:31
So when he says the game is a foot, a Watson, that expression
1:18:34
on the face mean we'll talk about the nitware.
1:18:36
But like, she's wearing that scarf like it's a noose.
1:18:39
Like it's getting tighter around her neck.
1:18:41
Yeah, it's a great sequence, and it forms part of a really great
1:18:46
little detail, a thread that runs through this entire film.
1:18:50
It can often go overlooked. It's the invisible ink letter
1:18:53
that Harlan writes to Linda and threatens Richard.
1:18:55
You tell her or I will. Yeah.
1:18:57
Once Harlan pops off, Richard breaks into the drawer in his
1:19:00
desk and retrieves the letter, relieved that it is blank.
1:19:04
But he then sets off chain of events that incriminates him in
1:19:06
Linda's eyes. Something would get beautifully
1:19:09
paid off in the NC, yeah. Yes, the way that this all
1:19:12
starts. Firstly Richard throws the
1:19:14
baseball out of the window, then an unsuspecting blank walks past
1:19:18
it, picks it up, puts it in his pocket as he's talking.
1:19:21
Later he throws the ball for the dog, who then brings it to
1:19:24
Linda. She goes to Holland Study to
1:19:26
return the ball and finds the letter.
1:19:28
Wonderful. And the rest we don't see, but
1:19:31
it winds up with Richard getting a black eye.
1:19:32
So presumably Linda reads it and clocks Richard for cheating on
1:19:35
her. And we can come to that
1:19:37
conclusion because there's a scene earlier in the film where
1:19:40
Linda is crying over Holland's all letters to her, all of which
1:19:43
have a burn mark on them, where she's obviously used the lighter
1:19:46
to reveal the writing. Yeah, and spoke about the games
1:19:49
that the player and how that's how they used to communicate.
1:19:51
It was a game, Yeah, Yeah. Also, there are a few frames
1:19:54
when Richard first retrieves the letter shown some lettering on
1:19:57
the paper when the sunlight catches it.
1:19:59
Right. Lovely.
1:20:00
Yeah. So now we're getting down to the
1:20:02
nitty gritty of it. It's the actual will reading,
1:20:04
and we're going to find out what all of this is about, or we're
1:20:07
really going to find out what all this is about because it
1:20:09
just gets more complicated for me, really.
1:20:11
So it's wonderful to see Frank Oz in there.
1:20:14
Yeah. Always wonderful.
1:20:15
He's recognizable. He is, and right now as well.
1:20:17
That's brilliant. Just sitting there and
1:20:19
everyone's got their own compositions.
1:20:20
The way that they just stood as families, as units, as a couple.
1:20:24
And that's what, you know, love that.
1:20:25
That's who wants each of the part of this world.
1:20:28
There's three separate parts to it, and then you've got that
1:20:30
wonderful shot of Ransom in the background and he's stuck in the
1:20:33
king on top of the chess pieces to show that obviously he's now
1:20:37
going to be the king. He's now going to rule what's
1:20:39
going on because he's got the other hand on everybody, that
1:20:41
lovely slow pushing on him. Everyone else just stays on like
1:20:44
a meter away just to see everybody in that frame.
1:20:47
Jamie Lake Curtis is so good in this.
1:20:50
Just every little bit when it's just like this isn't going to
1:20:52
take very long. She's like, yes, great, I've got
1:20:55
this is no problem. Yes, wonderful dress.
1:20:57
Please, please continue. Yes, that's fine.
1:20:59
Everyone is just so confident, just so cocky.
1:21:02
The assistant that Alan who's Frank Osborne is reading the
1:21:04
world. She just points down.
1:21:06
She's like the house. Oh, yes, there's the house that
1:21:08
that's going to go and there's 60 million and yes.
1:21:10
And then there's the 60 million years.
1:21:11
Yeah. And then there's the ownership
1:21:13
of Blood Like Wine, which is a publishing company.
1:21:15
Thank you. So it's just basically that's
1:21:16
the three things that we want to go on.
1:21:18
That's all left to martyr, just one after the other.
1:21:20
Just knocks all the pins down just one at a time.
1:21:22
And the frustration. Isn't it?
1:21:24
And the pain that's a strike for everybody when they're getting
1:21:27
let down one after the other after the other.
1:21:29
It's so well done. Then beautiful compositions and
1:21:32
it just slowly pushes in on ransom and he knows what's going
1:21:35
on. And then there's that shot of
1:21:36
martyr because pushes past belong and he doesn't know
1:21:38
what's going on and it goes on her and she definitely doesn't
1:21:41
have a clue what's happening here.
1:21:42
But just look at the way the camera tells the story.
1:21:44
And then it finally gets to the house.
1:21:46
Everybody's arguing the toss and say it's still our house.
1:21:49
You get out whatever. And then to find out that the
1:21:51
house is being left to martyr that wide shot which everybody's
1:21:55
in and then leakers turns around because you bitch, you just
1:21:58
point straight at the like that's the last straw.
1:22:02
That's it and just pointing at her and you get out and police
1:22:05
get out and everyone get out and then she knows she's got no
1:22:07
right here and she and as the character and as the performer,
1:22:12
as the actress herself, as JBL Curtis was part of that house
1:22:14
and made herself so integral. You can see that she's really
1:22:17
connected to that yes and when she flips because she's
1:22:20
self-made she's made the business.
1:22:21
She's the only one who stood on her own 2 feet really.
1:22:24
She had a bit of help of her dad, which is kind of She's got
1:22:26
something to fall back on she's. The only one who doesn't face
1:22:29
the wrath of her dad either. Exactly.
1:22:31
Yeah, it could stay outside and that camera couldn't be any more
1:22:34
loose. Yeah, it is just so handheld and
1:22:37
just. So time as well.
1:22:38
Isn't it? It's the only time.
1:22:40
Lovely transitions between seeing Richard knock on the
1:22:42
window and then the camera comes down and then see a wider view
1:22:45
of Martin the car trying to start.
1:22:46
Yeah. And now we got Ransom coming in
1:22:48
to save the day and he just pulls in at the back and does
1:22:51
the same gesture that Richard did to her earlier at the beck
1:22:54
and her in and then have her as like manipulate her and say,
1:22:57
well, you're from Paraguay, so did it.
1:22:59
Well, so so it's the same that he's done taking that to
1:23:02
manipulate that, but she doesn't know that.
1:23:04
And then she's taking out of this whole mess and you just
1:23:07
think Ransom is a good guy, He's taking her out of it.
1:23:09
He needs to understand what's going on.
1:23:11
And then we're going to that next scene and we'll see, oh, on
1:23:13
his side. Is he on her side?
1:23:15
Are these the guys we've got to read for now?
1:23:17
And then we're straight and Act 3.
1:23:19
You mentioned there when she comes out of the house, it goes
1:23:21
from a steady counter, a handheld.
1:23:23
Obviously it puts us in Marta's headspace, but it was born out
1:23:26
of necessity. Ryan Johnson broke the
1:23:28
Steadicam, so they had. Oh, amazing.
1:23:31
Yeah. That's it.
1:23:32
Better. Yeah.
1:23:33
And when all the family are crowding Marta's car, Toni
1:23:35
Collette improvised the line. I'm not on Twitter anymore.
1:23:37
DM me on Instagram. Great.
1:23:40
And then when the cop as well, when the when the tournament
1:23:42
says, have you seen her Insta? She's an influencer.
1:23:44
Yeah, that's absolutely brilliant.
1:23:46
So it really hits home, which is like, she's got a presence, but
1:23:49
not one that's been paid for by her, which is great.
1:23:51
That line also links into a deleted scene where Joni, it's
1:23:54
mentioned that she had to shut down a Twitter account due to
1:23:57
negative comments about a skin care company, which, again, is
1:23:59
even funnier because she's useless.
1:24:01
She's just an absolute Lech. Yeah.
1:24:05
Tony Colette. Just magnificent.
1:24:07
Oh, she's wonderful, Yeah. Her back story of the party when
1:24:09
she's just dancing and everyone's ignoring her, just
1:24:11
absolutely love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:24:14
It's great, great. Kind of echoes of Gwyneth
1:24:17
Paltrow's skin care company. I would imagine that was her
1:24:20
influence. Yeah, Yeah.
1:24:22
I imagine that's why she started the company.
1:24:24
Yeah, yeah, very possibly, yeah. And when everyone has gone crazy
1:24:28
and shouting at Marta, Jaden Martel's character Jacob calls
1:24:31
her an anchor baby. This wasn't in the script and
1:24:33
was an adlet by Martel. It wasn't picked up on the first
1:24:36
Take Law, but Michael Shannon heard it and told Ryan Johnson
1:24:39
that Jayden had a really funny line.
1:24:41
Johnson loved it, so they didn't have to take to get it.
1:24:44
Shannon died in a crowbar. Every bit of improv that we hear
1:24:47
from everybody, including themselves, as they tried to get
1:24:50
Ryan Johnson off script. Come on, man, the script's not
1:24:52
good enough. Anger, baby, Come on.
1:24:56
Yeah, if you're unfamiliar, the term anchor baby means a child
1:24:59
born in or a country to illegal immigrant parents, allegedly for
1:25:02
the reason of getting citizenship to that country.
1:25:05
It's really funny. It's just in the background, he
1:25:08
says. It's like it's without
1:25:10
understanding. It's just, he's heard on
1:25:13
Twitter. Anchor Baby.
1:25:17
So with all of our principles all together in this will
1:25:20
reading, we've got our third and final question from Petron of
1:25:23
all the right movies. And this is Ryan Chipple.
1:25:26
Hello, Ryan. Hello.
1:25:27
Ryan. Ryan asked.
1:25:28
If you were assembling a cast for a whodunit, who would you
1:25:30
choose and what would be the setting?
1:25:32
Matt, why didn't you go first? Yeah, I mean I've got 2 IDs for
1:25:36
this. The first one, OK, I can't claim
1:25:38
this is totally original because it's based on, I don't know if
1:25:41
you've seen this clip of Sesame Street did a version of Benoit
1:25:44
Blanc called Beignet Blanc and there's the God Daniel Craig to
1:25:49
watch it and he thoughts the funniest thing ever.
1:25:51
So I think based off that, you know, like Muppets Christmas
1:25:54
Carol where you've just got Michael Caine as the one human
1:25:57
actor. The rest of The Muppets you
1:25:58
could do that with Ben Raw Blanc just in The Muppets.
1:26:01
That's great. And he just doesn't react to
1:26:03
them at all. He just treats totally straight
1:26:05
face like Michael Caine does. So I would do that in some kind
1:26:08
of like rundown hotel in the middle of nowhere, that kind of
1:26:11
history. The other idea is I think he
1:26:13
could go quite meta in terms of Daniel Craig and make it about
1:26:17
like connections with him in his past.
1:26:19
So you could have one where you've got Timothy Dalton, PS
1:26:22
Brosnan, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Wishaw, Naomi
1:26:26
Harris. Then I'd have Ken Branner in
1:26:28
there as well for the pro connection.
1:26:30
And then the last one would be Rachel Vice, because obviously
1:26:33
she's Daniel Craig's wife in real.
1:26:35
Life brilliant. And I think you could do
1:26:37
something like on a Hollywood film set, like kind of screen
1:26:40
three, that kind of meta thing. Yeah.
1:26:42
Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:26:44
What about you Westie? What's your cast and setting for
1:26:47
the whodunnit? Plot wise, I'm just going to
1:26:49
have to stick to the original. You know, there's like the
1:26:52
family and there's been a murder in that house, and I'm just
1:26:54
going to stick to that premise. I'm not going to go too deep
1:26:56
into the plot or anything, but the cast would be, we've seen it
1:26:59
all a million times, but the cast would be classic mother,
1:27:01
father. So the mother would be Goldie
1:27:03
Hawn. Oh lovely.
1:27:05
The dad of the family? Kurt Russell, obviously.
1:27:06
Of course. The Butler Anthony Hopkins.
1:27:09
Oh. Yeah, spoiled son and his trophy
1:27:13
wife would be Colin Farrell and Mia Goth.
1:27:16
Lovely. Them two together, lovely,
1:27:17
hilarious. That'd be really, really good.
1:27:19
The daughter of the family, Emily Blunt, and the detective
1:27:23
who has to solve it all, Mark Ruffalo.
1:27:26
Now you're talking. There we are.
1:27:28
Rolled in cameras. That would be my idea for me.
1:27:31
That's great. Yeah, Yeah.
1:27:32
I mean, I love recasting questions.
1:27:34
Very nice. And it taps into something I
1:27:36
mentioned earlier, because unlike the current crop of
1:27:39
leading men, who I think are quite interchangeable, the
1:27:42
amount of excitement actresses working right now is an absolute
1:27:45
embarrassment of riches. It is.
1:27:47
It is. You're right.
1:27:48
So my whodunit is going to be all female and they're all
1:27:51
playing themselves meta. Oh nice.
1:27:53
OK, so the setting's an old Hollywood mansion during award
1:27:56
season. A legendary producer, reclusive
1:28:00
producer, maybe he's hosting an after party for the ceremony.
1:28:04
So 8 actresses, all nominated that year, all rivals, all with
1:28:07
history and by mourn. And the horse is dead in the
1:28:10
library. Nice, nice.
1:28:11
So the cast, I'm going to throw Anodamus in because she's amazed
1:28:15
and I wanted to play against, so I'll play against Martyr.
1:28:18
So she's true in confidence. I didn't put in me Goth, but I
1:28:22
should have because she's amazing as well.
1:28:24
But I've got Anya Taylor Joy in there, who'd be the one that
1:28:27
everybody suspects because she's got those striking eyes.
1:28:29
Yeah. Mikey Madison.
1:28:31
I think she's going to be the wild card that nobody sees
1:28:33
coming. Curry Condon, who we obviously
1:28:36
love. Yes, yes.
1:28:37
She'd be the quiet one in the corner who knows more than she's
1:28:39
letting on. Got Keke Palmer in there
1:28:42
bringing energy in the one liners.
1:28:43
And I think she'd keep everybody on their tours.
1:28:46
Margaret Quali, who is just incredible.
1:28:49
Yeah, yeah. She's amazing, Thomas and
1:28:51
Mackenzie brilliantly understated.
1:28:53
She'd be the one that you rule out maybe a bit too early and 10
1:28:56
day as well. Biggest star in the room.
1:28:58
She's got a target on her back and her makes of the most
1:29:00
interesting subject of the lot. So 8 actresses, one mansion, one
1:29:03
dead producer. Throw Daniel Craig in there as
1:29:06
the detective and you've got your 4th Knives Out movie.
1:29:09
Sounds wow. Nice.
1:29:10
Get on the phone, Ryan. Yeah, yeah.
1:29:12
And a great question, Ryan. Thank you very much.
1:29:14
Yes, thank you mate. So back to the film.
1:29:17
And once Martyr has made it out of the will reading, she's there
1:29:20
with Ransom the high tailor to a bar where he fills her full of
1:29:23
beans and sausage. So while the Thrombie households
1:29:27
Scrabble around to salvage, they are lost inheritance.
1:29:29
Talking of the Slayer rule, Ransom makes Marta spill her
1:29:32
guts one way or another, the sneaky bastard.
1:29:35
Spill the beans. Almost.
1:29:36
Spill the beans. Very good now.
1:29:38
That is great because he knows it's not suicide because he
1:29:42
killed him and he knows about Marta's condition and he's
1:29:45
backed her into a corner. That's really good writing.
1:29:47
Yeah, it is brilliant. Yeah, and after Martyr has told
1:29:49
her story, we don't hear the details because we cut back to
1:29:52
the family talking about the Slayer room.
1:29:54
Ransom continues his sniveling little ways by trying to cheat
1:29:57
his way into his grandfather's inheritance, and he's a very
1:30:00
dangerous individual because he'll happily kill his own
1:30:03
grandfather for it. We'll later find out.
1:30:05
And he's not to be trifled with because this is an elaborate
1:30:08
plot that he's concocted. He is a smart kid.
1:30:10
And this is where Mona has to face up to her own reality.
1:30:15
She did kill Harlan, and she's going to have to face the music
1:30:18
in her eyes and in our eyes at this point, and the ripple
1:30:21
effect of which could have severe consequences for a
1:30:25
family. And you can see that etched all
1:30:27
over to Armistice's face in this scene.
1:30:29
There's pain. There's a width that she's
1:30:31
carrying around. And finally, when she has a
1:30:34
conversation with Meg, Meg comes off the phone and you think
1:30:36
she's speaking in hushed tones because she's hiding from the
1:30:39
family. But then there's the beautiful
1:30:41
reveal of all of the family standing behind her as the
1:30:44
camera comes round. It reminded me of imagery from
1:30:47
Get Out a little bit. Great scene.
1:30:52
And there is a fine, fine display of knitwear throughout
1:30:54
Knives Out, none more so than Ransoms impeccable chunky knit
1:30:59
white number in this scene. Ah yes, the Internet went crazy
1:31:02
forward and sales of replica sweaters went through the roof.
1:31:05
Yeah. Oh, it's a wonderful piece it.
1:31:06
Is like, yeah. That's a lovely piece.
1:31:10
The costume designer was Jenny Egan, and her brief from Ryan
1:31:13
Johnson was that Ransom's clothes would be these
1:31:15
incredibly expensive pieces that he didn't take care of.
1:31:18
So she made holes in the sleeves of his sweater and wore down the
1:31:22
heels on his shoes as well. If you look, you can see on the
1:31:25
on the sleeves and on the collar, there are holes in that
1:31:27
sweater. It's a lovely detail, Yeah.
1:31:30
Incredible. Yeah.
1:31:31
So Marta has the keys to the Thrombie Kingdom, and everybody
1:31:34
wants a piece of her. It's a nice piece.
1:31:40
The crew. A tight knit crew on Knives Out
1:31:45
with Ryan Johnson using crew he used throughout his career.
1:31:48
We're starting with his work as writer on Knives Out, the title
1:31:50
of which came from a Radiohead song on their Amnesiac album.
1:31:55
The work and title for the film was Morn and Belle, also a song
1:31:58
from the same album, right? Yes, Matt, your thoughts on Ryan
1:32:01
Johnson screenplay? Clearly the work of someone who
1:32:04
knows the genre inside out, but more importantly, he knows what
1:32:07
the appeal is, and the appeal is there might be called whodunit,
1:32:10
but that's not the important thing.
1:32:11
The important thing is the how, not The Who, because we can all
1:32:15
guess The Who and any who done it and have a good chance of
1:32:17
getting it right. And there's no real attempt to
1:32:19
master the fact Ransom's the bad guy here.
1:32:22
The joy of it is how. And this is such an intricately
1:32:25
created how. We think it's suicide, but then
1:32:28
it's manslaughter. But how did it get to that point
1:32:30
and what are the ramifications of that?
1:32:32
It can't just be be a tragic accident.
1:32:33
There has to be something else going on.
1:32:36
And that's where you can't guess.
1:32:37
And that's what Johnson knows is the key to it.
1:32:38
Also, to work out from there the whole plan, how thorough it is.
1:32:43
It's the kind of right And you go, I don't know where you'd
1:32:45
even start without, let alone finish it in a way that is so
1:32:48
detailed but so logical at the same time.
1:32:51
And then as well as creating this incredibly compelling case,
1:32:54
he's creating a new character from scratch.
1:32:56
He just leaves off the page. It's filled with really good
1:32:59
jokes, memorable dialogue, and at the same time it has subtext.
1:33:02
It does talk about stuff. It talks about privilege and
1:33:04
racism and deep grain prejudices in American Society in class.
1:33:09
To make all of those elements and make them balance against
1:33:12
each other, that is some achievement.
1:33:13
I mean, we often say, don't we? On these episodes, the script
1:33:17
was fluid. It wasn't finished.
1:33:18
It wasn't complete. By the time they got, everyone
1:33:21
had a little bit to say. I imagine this was pretty much
1:33:23
to the letter once the camera started rolling.
1:33:27
Say, for Michael Shannon, everything else was trying to
1:33:30
get away. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:33:32
What about you, Westie? Ryan Johnsons writing.
1:33:34
I can't really praise it highly enough.
1:33:36
I can just. It creates pictures in my mind
1:33:38
of just a completely and beautifully plotted piece of
1:33:41
hair. But you're just watching the
1:33:43
plats come together and there's about 6 different threads, but
1:33:46
you're watching small plat. They're here, and you're
1:33:48
thinking this is going to be a mess at the end.
1:33:50
But then you look at it and you just think, well, that's just
1:33:52
beautifully done. Yeah, it's beautifully weaved
1:33:54
together, and that's what it reminds us of.
1:33:56
And it's watching them do it. It's watching that plat come
1:33:58
together and seeing how joyous that is and not worrying about
1:34:01
the technique because whoever you're watching do that has done
1:34:03
it very well and knows exactly where this is going.
1:34:06
It's the ability to flow through this film without getting
1:34:09
agitated or frustrated. Yes.
1:34:12
Like, what did that that mean? Where did he go there?
1:34:14
It seems that Ryan Johnson's got just the right amount of ideas.
1:34:17
And I think it's taken him a long time to write this because
1:34:19
it's just been in his head more than it's been on the page.
1:34:22
And I think he's probably been driving somewhere.
1:34:25
He's been filming Looper, He's been doing Brick just thinking
1:34:27
just like Holland does and just writing these ideas down.
1:34:30
Or that that would be a bit too much.
1:34:32
All the mood on the scoring ball, but not his, right?
1:34:35
That would just be the twist on any of the narrative.
1:34:37
You would see others mud there. There's a fingerprint there and
1:34:40
that's the end of it. I mean, if you think about how
1:34:42
loose something like The Fugitive is, none of that is
1:34:47
about anything to do with like this.
1:34:49
It's just right. He's guilty.
1:34:50
That's it. What What about with the what's
1:34:52
and the where's and the who's? Well, that doesn't fucking
1:34:54
matter. That's all this film's about,
1:34:56
and Johnson knows that. And that's where the
1:34:58
entertainment is. That's where the genius is.
1:35:00
But it's also the dialogue. It's also the characterization.
1:35:03
It's also the fact that he isn't hitting cliche after cliche
1:35:06
after cliche, but he's still trying to embody a work that is
1:35:10
naturally built on cliche. That's what this is.
1:35:13
It's always over who done it. There's always a knife involved,
1:35:16
there's always blood involved. There's always footprints and
1:35:19
tracks and hidden entrances and mansions and rich people and
1:35:21
poor people. He knows all of that, he takes
1:35:24
all the cliches and he makes something brand new.
1:35:26
That's how good the rightness. Yeah, it is.
1:35:28
It's incredible. Even just on a surface level,
1:35:31
you could watch it and just have fun with the mystery without
1:35:34
having to really chime in with all of the details.
1:35:37
Doesn't matter. Second view, Third view, 4th
1:35:39
view. Different layers reveal
1:35:40
themselves. Yeah, absolutely.
1:35:43
And for me, it's the structure and the economy of the right.
1:35:45
And Johnson does something really incredible.
1:35:47
He gives us the answer halfway through the film.
1:35:50
Very similar what you're saying, Matt.
1:35:52
We see what happened to Harlan in any other mystery that would
1:35:55
kill the tension. But Johnson flips it.
1:35:57
So instead of asking who did it, well now, like, will Martin get
1:36:00
away with it? And how will she get away with
1:36:02
this? And I think that's a really
1:36:04
brave structural choice because you're suddenly rooting for the
1:36:06
suspect, which is the complete opposite of how these things
1:36:10
usually work. And I think you need an
1:36:12
incredible actress to pull that off as well.
1:36:14
And then he pulls the rug again at the end by revealing there's
1:36:17
another layer on underneath that we didn't see coming.
1:36:19
So it's a triple bluff. And the right is so tight that
1:36:22
it feels organic. And I think what makes that
1:36:24
possible is the economy because there's not a wasted line.
1:36:27
Every joke, every seemingly throw away a comments, every
1:36:31
insignificant detail comes back around the mug, the blood on the
1:36:34
shoe, the toxicology report, the baseball that we've discussed.
1:36:38
Johnson plants seeds so carefully that you don't notice
1:36:40
them until they bloom, and it does it while keeping the tone
1:36:44
light and entertaining. It's two hours, 10 minutes and
1:36:47
it feels like 90 minutes. All killer nor filler.
1:36:49
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think it takes real confidence
1:36:52
to leave your cards on the table at the midpoint of a mystery and
1:36:54
back yourself to keep the audience engaged.
1:36:57
I think it's a risk that most wouldn't take.
1:36:59
But Johnson trusts his structure, he trusts his
1:37:01
characters, and he trusts that the audience is smart enough to
1:37:04
go along for the ride. Yeah, exactly.
1:37:06
And we do, because I think every scene is doing at least two
1:37:09
things at once. It's entertaining us and quietly
1:37:12
setting up the next revelation. That's pretty spectacular
1:37:15
writing. Yeah, yeah.
1:37:16
And the whole process came together in the space of a year
1:37:19
from start to finish. Johnson started writing in
1:37:21
January 2018. The script was done by June.
1:37:24
Production wrapped by Christmas the same year.
1:37:26
Yeah. Yeah.
1:37:27
That's economy for you. Yeah.
1:37:28
Yeah, like I say, I think this just been living in his head.
1:37:32
And when he started writing, Ryan Johnson was reminded of
1:37:35
Alfred Hitchcock's comments and who done it, where he said they
1:37:38
rely entirely on the surprise and that outside of this they
1:37:42
are generally narratively weak. Johnson said the idea was to
1:37:46
figure out how to give the movie an engine that was something
1:37:48
beyond just a collection of clues and the mulling over of
1:37:52
suspects. Once I had that, I began to dig
1:37:55
a little deeper, and that's when I came up with the actual story.
1:37:58
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got the surface level in
1:38:00
there. That's the start point.
1:38:02
Just the mystery is the start point, yeah.
1:38:05
And we mentioned earlier that Johnsons main inspiration was
1:38:07
Agatha Christie, which extended to his characters.
1:38:10
He said that she wasn't a political or socially active
1:38:12
writer, but that she did write characters from British society
1:38:15
that readers would have been familiar with.
1:38:17
So you said it was very important that we didn't just
1:38:19
skin it with the modern day world, but that we did what
1:38:22
Agatha Christie didn't actually try to use it to engage with
1:38:25
some of the character types that were experienced at the day.
1:38:28
So the family would argue, like all families do, and elements of
1:38:30
that, a political points of view that views could relate to in
1:38:33
2019 still relevant now. Very relevant.
1:38:36
Yeah, Johnson said that unlike noir movies, where pretty much
1:38:40
every scene features the detective and Christie
1:38:43
mysteries, Pyo was often accompanied by the character of
1:38:46
Captain Hastings, who was his psychic.
1:38:48
Yeah, that's why he leaned into the character of martyr quite
1:38:51
heavily. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:38:52
And he also conflated the mechanics of a Hitchcock
1:38:55
thriller like The 39 Steps, where there's the central
1:38:58
mystery but also a character we care about who was emotionally
1:39:00
involved. That's what he had in mind when
1:39:02
writing the character of Martyr. It comes across, doesn't it?
1:39:05
Yeah, yeah. We've mentioned it throughout,
1:39:07
but there are a number of clues that point to Ransom's guilt
1:39:10
running throughout the film, a few of them that we may not have
1:39:13
mentioned. Ransom's interaction with
1:39:15
Holland on the night of is the only one that we don't get to
1:39:17
see. Yeah, yeah.
1:39:19
When Harlan is talking about the family tomato, there's a knife
1:39:22
in the foreground cover and his throat.
1:39:24
When he mentions Ransom just before, he says the difference
1:39:27
between the stage prop and a real knife.
1:39:29
Yeah, yeah, He lifts it up, doesn't he?
1:39:30
And kind of that's right, yeah. And during the will reading,
1:39:34
Ransom is the only person not to react angrily to the news that
1:39:37
Martyr gets everything. The reason being he already
1:39:39
knows that he's been cut out the well and that it's all going to
1:39:42
her. That's right.
1:39:43
Blank remarks that dogs are good judge of character as he
1:39:46
mentioned earlier when the Greek Martha with warmth.
1:39:49
The opposite to be said when Ransom shows up.
1:39:51
This fact is doubled down upon when Mega's walking up by the
1:39:53
dogs. This isn't referred to again,
1:39:55
but we can assume that this was Ransom coming back to the scene
1:39:58
of the crime. Yeah, that's a great little
1:40:00
detail. It's not hammered home.
1:40:01
No, not really, but it's just there.
1:40:04
Yeah. So an outstanding piece of
1:40:05
writing from Ryan Johnson. Honour in the genre with great
1:40:08
affection, layers of intrigue, wonderful characters.
1:40:11
Wonderful writing. Next is the music on Knives Out.
1:40:16
We're talking about popular music in the film and the score
1:40:18
by Nathan Johnson. Now, I think the score's a real
1:40:22
treat. I think it's sharp, it's
1:40:24
playful, it's got a sense of mischief running through it that
1:40:27
mirrors the film very nicely. That opening string quartet sets
1:40:31
the tone immediately, those precise strings that feel like
1:40:35
they're creeping up on you. And from there, it opens out
1:40:38
under a full orchestral score that's got some real personality
1:40:40
to it. It's got this quality where it
1:40:42
feels both classic and modern at the same time.
1:40:45
Yeah. You can hear the influences of
1:40:47
those grand symphonic scores from the golden age of cinema,
1:40:50
and I actually think there's something in the strings that
1:40:52
reminded me of Pinot Dinagio's work on Don't Look Now And going
1:40:57
back to We'll cover that Untoable feature years ago.
1:41:01
Some of Pinot Dinagio's music in that when we talked about it
1:41:04
doesn't necessarily fit the bill, but I can certainly hear
1:41:08
it in the strings. I know what you mean.
1:41:10
It sounds very European, Yeah. Yeah, very much yeah.
1:41:13
For a film, this stuff with plot and conversation, the score
1:41:16
doesn't overwhelm it, but it dances around the dialogue
1:41:19
rather than trampoline all over it.
1:41:20
I think it's understated. I think it's sharp.
1:41:22
I think it's elegant, much like the film itself.
1:41:26
And just a credit to the song choices as well.
1:41:28
I think they give you a peek into the characters journey vibe
1:41:31
into more than this at the party.
1:41:33
And trying to drag Linda up to dance is a joy.
1:41:36
Yeah, because we've all know that person who tries to drag
1:41:38
you up the dance. It's horrible.
1:41:40
Yeah, leave us alone. Yeah.
1:41:42
And blank singing, losing my mind outside the laundromat.
1:41:46
We'll talk about that later. But it is wonderful.
1:41:48
He's just alone with his headphones and he's just letting
1:41:50
it all hang out. Yeah, it's great.
1:41:54
Yeah, it's great. And any film that ends with
1:41:56
Sweet Virginia by The Rolling Stones.
1:41:57
I mean, well, yeah. That's going to send me home
1:41:59
happy, yeah. That's a shoo in.
1:42:01
Yeah, I think it's one of those where I think you would have to
1:42:04
stream it on Spotify or something to really get into it
1:42:06
and appreciate it. It's not one where it's really
1:42:09
bombastic. The themes aren't any face.
1:42:11
But when you do listen to it, and I know it's difficult to
1:42:14
judge this and say this, but I think if you listen to this not
1:42:16
knowing the thing about the film, how do you think you'll
1:42:18
go? This sounds like a mystery
1:42:20
genre. This sounds like the music from
1:42:22
a Who? It instantly nails the genre
1:42:24
with the strings, the piano, as you say, Luke, it's kind of
1:42:27
sinister bit foreboarding this tension in there, but it is
1:42:30
playful at the same time and I think that just sums up the
1:42:33
genre. So it's one of those where
1:42:35
because it is quite subtle, I see you have to specifically
1:42:38
listen to it. But if this wasn't in the film,
1:42:40
you would notice so much just dead air in the film you would
1:42:44
really miss. It there, wouldn't there?
1:42:45
Yeah. You know, that's what this music
1:42:47
is doing. And then the song choices, I
1:42:49
mean they are sparing, but each one does hits home as well
1:42:52
because it does as you say it tells you about the character.
1:42:54
Yeah, I love it. I think it's fantastic.
1:42:56
I think the range that you would go through, but it feels to me
1:42:59
like each track on this is like a room in the house.
1:43:03
It has it's like own identity where you're going and where
1:43:06
it's moving you through the house.
1:43:07
But you just, you can never judge what each room's going to
1:43:09
hold because it all seems to look the same but look so
1:43:12
different. Yeah.
1:43:13
And all seems to sound the same but sounds so different.
1:43:15
But if you listen to that, the opening credits are the opening
1:43:17
boom where that hits. And that's massive in the mix.
1:43:20
And them dogs are running and you're like, oh, yeah, this is a
1:43:22
Sherlock Holmes film, right? Yeah, yeah.
1:43:24
It's a murder mystery. There's some.
1:43:25
There's the Moors and there's the haze on it and there's fog
1:43:28
in the background and there's a mansion.
1:43:29
Perfect. But listen to the last track
1:43:31
when they're all coming out, when Ranson is being taken away.
1:43:34
That's as close to jazz as you're going to get on that
1:43:36
soundtrack. It is totally like 16-4 or
1:43:40
whatever the rhythm is. It's all over the place, totally
1:43:43
disjointed. There's instruments coming in
1:43:45
left, right and center because the family are just so
1:43:47
dispersed. Everyone's confused.
1:43:48
Nobody knows what's going on. So it's not necessarily a
1:43:51
soundtrack for the audience. It's just a soundtrack to kind
1:43:54
of relate to the family what's going on.
1:43:56
Like Matt said, you can miss this music totally at the start.
1:44:00
Yes, you can see it because you're locked in, but there's so
1:44:03
much dialogue, there's so much going on.
1:44:04
There's so much with the camera movement, there's so much with
1:44:06
the technique. You forget this music on this.
1:44:09
And like a lot of times we've done where you have not
1:44:11
necessarily a lazy director, but one that doesn't have the
1:44:13
confidence that Ryan Johnson has here, where the music speaks for
1:44:16
the scene. This is how you should feel.
1:44:19
You should feel like this. You should feel upset, you
1:44:21
should feel misery. You should feel angry, you
1:44:23
should feel horrified. None of the music does that
1:44:25
here. It basically sets the tone of
1:44:27
the room. You're in the room and you've
1:44:28
got to figure it out. That's.
1:44:30
Yeah, I like that. It doesn't drag you by the hand,
1:44:32
does it? No, not at all.
1:44:34
A lot of the music in the film aligns to the mystery at the
1:44:36
center of the narrative. When Martyr and Ransom are in
1:44:39
the restaurant, Gordon Lightfoot Sundown is playing with the
1:44:42
lyrics. If I find you creeping around my
1:44:44
backstairs. Very good.
1:44:46
Similarly, the song that's playing at the end is The
1:44:48
Rolling Stones. Sweet Virginia with the lyric.
1:44:50
Got to scrape that shit right off your shoe.
1:44:53
Wonderful. Great.
1:44:55
Not very Ryan Johnson for me, though, because that's not deep
1:44:57
enough. So I've looked into Gordon
1:44:59
Lightfoot Sundown. That song was written about a
1:45:02
groupie who he's on and off with.
1:45:04
Lightfoot at the time called Kathy Smith.
1:45:06
Kathy Smith, the same one got 15 months in prison for fatally
1:45:10
injecting a speedball that caused the death of John
1:45:12
Belushi. The overdose.
1:45:14
Wow. Wow.
1:45:15
Which is exactly what Marta did. Or what she thought you did.
1:45:19
Amazing. Amazing, isn't it?
1:45:21
That's great. Classic Ryan Johnson.
1:45:22
Yeah, More than three layers to every decision he's made.
1:45:26
Ludicrous. Yeah.
1:45:27
That's amazing. Yeah, we mentioned the score, of
1:45:30
course, and that's by Nathan Johnson.
1:45:32
That's Ryan's cousin, right? He scored all of his films apart
1:45:36
from The Last Jedi for obvious reasons.
1:45:38
Yeah. And from the early days of
1:45:40
Ryan's concept, he and Nathan conceived with the music that
1:45:43
scores the film to have a grandiose classical feel, which
1:45:46
was unlike any of the Ryan Johnson movie up to that point.
1:45:50
So that took influence from Maurice Jar's work on Lawrence
1:45:53
of Arabia, Nino wrote his music on Death on the Nile and the
1:45:56
work of Bernard Herrman in general.
1:45:58
Yeah, nice. The Johnson saw these works has
1:46:01
given each instrument in the orchestra a voice.
1:46:03
They weren't blurred into one sound.
1:46:05
Each element had its own identity, something which was
1:46:07
mirrored by the cast, who all have their place on the chess
1:46:09
board. Yeah, they've all got their kind
1:46:11
of like, audible identity. Yeah, yeah.
1:46:14
Nathan started his work by visiting the set ture in
1:46:16
Principal Photography and Visitor regularly to get a feel
1:46:19
for the production which informed his work.
1:46:22
The score was recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios as
1:46:25
well, and I mentioned that there are multiple themes for each
1:46:28
character. The individual Thrombie themes
1:46:30
are all variations on the main family theme, which comes from
1:46:33
the Master of the house, Harlan Thrombie.
1:46:36
Yeah, Nathan said. He's the stream that everyone
1:46:38
flows out of. He created this house for them
1:46:41
all to live in. All the stuff in the house is
1:46:43
Sophie's written into his books. That's great, yeah.
1:46:46
The main theme, Knives Out String Quartet in J Minor drew a
1:46:50
line in the sand for Nathan. It plays at the opening of the
1:46:53
film and sets the standard and it's great.
1:46:55
It is always forget because it is really quiet.
1:46:58
So I was turning it up yesterday.
1:47:00
It's the volume up on this and that one.
1:47:04
You turn this down, but. Nathan's favorite piece of music
1:47:09
is called The Will, and it plays obviously at the Will reading
1:47:11
scene, he said. In that queue, the orchestra
1:47:14
plays around with a gigantic string slide.
1:47:17
The slide takes us into this unsettling craziness that begins
1:47:20
to happen. The whale is the shift in the
1:47:21
movie. We break open the doors and we
1:47:23
go for the throat. Nice.
1:47:26
So a great combination of scoring soundtrack on Knives
1:47:28
Out, a rarity in modern cinema I think.
1:47:31
Yes, definitely. Finally, Steve Yedlin Adlin a
1:47:36
touch of class to proceedings with his beautiful
1:47:38
cinematography over the USD. I'm sure you've both visited the
1:47:43
Steve Edlin website, as I have and see that it's it's splitting
1:47:50
the two parts 1 is cinematography and the other is
1:47:52
colour science, which is very, very important, which is wow,
1:47:54
basically comparing film stocks to digital.
1:47:57
And I'm Steve Edlin's really, really underrated as being one
1:48:00
of them DPS who can shoot a film.
1:48:02
And you don't know if this is shot on 35 Miller, whether this
1:48:04
is shot on digital. I'm sure this is the first Ryan
1:48:08
Johnson film that was actually shot on digital using the mini.
1:48:12
What he brings to this is it's timeless.
1:48:15
This isn't going to age. You can watch any other film
1:48:18
from that period and they're all got the orange and teal or the
1:48:20
ball got this kind of backlight, but this just sits and it won't
1:48:25
age. And I think that's just down to
1:48:27
its distinctive look. Like 7 has a look, but this
1:48:30
necessarily doesn't. And that's what I mean by that
1:48:32
timeless nature. I think everything has a warmth
1:48:35
and a softness, but he's using soft light, using hard light,
1:48:37
but it's nothing that's really definitive.
1:48:40
It just works in each sequence and it just balances each
1:48:43
sequence and the skin tones are just perfect.
1:48:45
It's just so in the middle where it doesn't push up all the
1:48:48
audience anywhere. And that's where it reminds me
1:48:50
of the music because that's it. And it's not distracting in any
1:48:53
way. It just tells the story, but he
1:48:55
tells it so beautifully and just has this real kind of look to
1:48:58
the green, this real authentic feel that the camera movements.
1:49:03
It just feels like everything is just so well thought through and
1:49:06
you can see it's all so well planned.
1:49:08
And the technique and the camera work in this film is just as
1:49:11
important as the dialogue because it helps the dialogue
1:49:14
and it helps the music and it helps the plot by just sweeping
1:49:17
1 camera to the next. There's not one move in this
1:49:19
film where you think that's necessary.
1:49:21
Yeah, You know, just that slow push on Ransom when they're
1:49:24
talking about the will. Just so necessary.
1:49:28
It's not like, Oh well, you're just going to sit on them and
1:49:30
just stay there. It's just, and he's smiling.
1:49:32
It's just when you watch it again, you go, that makes
1:49:34
perfect sense. There's so many complicated
1:49:37
moves, complicated light and setups.
1:49:39
You know, there's reflections in the glasses.
1:49:41
They're taking that away so they can actually have the crew where
1:49:43
they need them to be in certain points.
1:49:45
There's just so many things that are just so important.
1:49:48
And it's just, it's so reflective in his work in that
1:49:50
it looks so simple. It looks so straightforward.
1:49:54
But even that opening shot at like 200 frames a second, but
1:49:57
two dogs running past and you don't really know it's two dogs
1:49:59
until just at the right moment. And then they come past the
1:50:01
frame and the framing of the house, and they get that right.
1:50:04
That takes a lot of time. And they didn't really have a
1:50:06
lot of time to do that. And this looks like it took
1:50:08
about four years to shoot. That's how good it is.
1:50:12
Yeah, six weeks. And it looks like it took four
1:50:14
years. Yeah.
1:50:15
Really excellent, really accomplished film making and I
1:50:18
think you hadn't had a lot to do with the look, the style, and
1:50:20
it's a film that definitely won't age.
1:50:22
No I agree 20 years time it'll still look brand.
1:50:25
New still look really fresh, yeah.
1:50:27
Yeah, I think it's really impressive.
1:50:29
I think it ties in to what I was saying about Johnson's use of
1:50:31
depth. That Thrombie mansion is the
1:50:34
star of the show visually, and I think yet that makes it feel
1:50:37
both inviting and depressive at the same time because he uses
1:50:40
those wide lenses so you can feel the space around the
1:50:43
characters. And I think that's crucial in a
1:50:44
film like this because the house itself is telling you so much
1:50:48
about these people. Yeah.
1:50:49
And the way he lights the interiors is great, using the
1:50:52
natural light coming through those big windows. 2 great uses
1:50:55
of light. First one is when Meg is on the
1:50:57
phone to Martyr. In that scene that we've just
1:50:59
been talking about, there's a strip of light over her eyes.
1:51:02
Yeah. Yeah, everything around her face
1:51:04
is dark. Apart from that, don't listen to
1:51:05
the words coming out of her mouth.
1:51:07
She's lying in the eyes tell you everything.
1:51:10
And the second is when Walt comes to see Martyr at home in a
1:51:13
scene we're going to be talking about in a bit.
1:51:15
There's a slither of light that comes through the window behind
1:51:17
him when he's offering Martyrs family help, but he quickly
1:51:21
covers over that. When things turn sinister, the
1:51:23
light goes. Great use of light, and there's
1:51:27
an exuberance to the visuals. When the family are together,
1:51:29
everything is bright and cluttered and alive.
1:51:31
But as the mystery deepens and the mood shifts, the light and
1:51:34
pulls back and the shadows creep in a little bit.
1:51:36
It mirrors the narrative without ever being heavy-handed With
1:51:39
this, the cameras always finding something new to look at, always
1:51:43
repositioning to reveal a detail or reaction, and I think it
1:51:47
keeps you engaged in a film that's essentially set in one
1:51:49
location for most of its runtime.
1:51:52
I think that's really impressive.
1:51:54
Yeah, great. Set in one location, but shot in
1:51:55
three? I forget that.
1:51:57
Yeah, but they look like one location as well.
1:51:59
Yeah. Matt, your thoughts on Stevie
1:52:02
Edelen's work? I mean, he's Ryan Johnson's
1:52:03
right hand man, isn't he? Has to say, worked with him on
1:52:06
all of his films. And I think this is just such a
1:52:08
great partnership because I would never describe Ryan
1:52:11
Johnson as a purely visual film maker.
1:52:13
You never go. That's a typical Ryan Johnson
1:52:16
shot. Yeah.
1:52:17
He's not that type of director. He's more of a storyteller, I'd
1:52:21
say. So that's why I need someone
1:52:22
like Yedlin, Who? Whatever Johnson gives him, he
1:52:25
knows how to make it work. I mean, to go from a high school
1:52:28
noir like Brick to Star Wars and then these films, I mean, that's
1:52:32
some range like Yedlin has. Yeah.
1:52:34
Understands the genre. And this film is so dialogue
1:52:38
heavy that his challenge is to suffer being stagey, which it
1:52:41
easily could be. So, I mean, you've mentioned the
1:52:44
deep focus, Luke, the brilliant production design, but to me,
1:52:47
it's about the framing. It's about moving that camera
1:52:49
very deliberately, very fluidly to accentuate the drama.
1:52:52
So like when the family overheard the argument between
1:52:55
Harlan and Ransom and he sums up the way the camera just pans
1:52:59
around to catch Ransom storming out.
1:53:01
Yeah, Yeah. That's great.
1:53:02
The way the camera pushes in or zooms out during those opening
1:53:06
interviews. In times it cuts to emit,
1:53:08
sometimes it cuts to close up. Just keeping it snappy visually.
1:53:11
When Harlem confronts Journey, it starts off with him holding
1:53:14
the baseball in the foreground, then just pulls around the desk
1:53:17
to reveal him. I mean, this is all very simple
1:53:20
stuff, but sometimes the simple stuff is still the best.
1:53:22
Yeah, because this is what stops it.
1:53:24
As I say, it being stagey, it brings it to life.
1:53:27
And there's a very strong visual identity to this film.
1:53:30
Yedlin is behind that and I honestly think he's the unsung
1:53:32
hero of the film. Yeah, absolutely.
1:53:35
A. Number of characters in the film
1:53:36
wear glasses, which started to create a problem.
1:53:39
You mentioned at Westie in the interview scenes where the
1:53:42
reflection of the crew could easily be seen in the likes of
1:53:44
Linda's glasses. Yeah, well to combine this, if
1:53:47
you've seen the behind the scenes shots, the key grip Matt
1:53:49
Mania, which is our Matt's new nickname by the.
1:53:51
Yeah, it's the great. With the idea to create, yeah,
1:53:53
to create Matt's, which is great because a Matt is basically
1:53:56
something that you shine a light through.
1:53:58
It can like call the call the global, go over the front of the
1:54:01
lighting rigs. So they're just like squares cut
1:54:02
out and look like a window. So these were opaque shapes that
1:54:05
went over the lights, as we've said, create the illusion of the
1:54:08
reflection in the glasses. So there's windows are the
1:54:11
shapes in the room to having all these mats on the stands and
1:54:13
it's moving them around to hide the crew just so they can get
1:54:15
the shots that they need is amazing.
1:54:17
That is great, it means that Yeatling could keep in real
1:54:19
reflections in the glasses, maintaining the realism and
1:54:22
obviously didn't need to do VFX post production.
1:54:26
Yeah, it looks great because it would just be the crew in Yeah.
1:54:31
Glasses, yeah. And this is the first film that
1:54:34
Rian Johnson shot entirely digitally and this allowed him
1:54:37
to use minimal lighting as digital needs less lighting rigs
1:54:40
than the Chewton on film and this was essential considering
1:54:43
the majority of the film was shot inside.
1:54:45
Yeah, tight spaces. Yeah.
1:54:48
Despite being shot digitally, Johnson wanted a film look, and
1:54:51
Steve Yedlin was able to achieve this with some jiggery.
1:54:53
Pokery imposed, Johnson said. Steve did all this crazy colour
1:54:57
science, obviously. That's why there's a dedication
1:55:00
to it on his website. Westie yeah, yeah.
1:55:02
And he said he added grain and gate weave and all the stuff you
1:55:05
need to make this look like film.
1:55:07
And it comes across like that. It really.
1:55:09
Does. There's a texture to it.
1:55:11
Yeah, and like we said, you hadn't shot on the Alexa Mini
1:55:14
using Zeiss Master Primes. And he also used Panavision
1:55:17
Primos, the PCZ and the PCW, which are compact zooms, which
1:55:21
obviously gives you a little bit more space when the wide angles
1:55:23
are being used. So you can closer shots of the
1:55:25
actual characters individually, which really just ramps up the
1:55:28
tension as well. So you cut the characters, the
1:55:31
action in the background, the depth that we've already talked
1:55:33
about, but also using these compact zooms to really punch in
1:55:35
and accentuate the details. Fantastic stuff.
1:55:38
So stunning work from those behind the camera, Adnan, Knives
1:55:40
Out, Prestige and identity. Special mention should also go
1:55:44
to Bob Dux's editing and the incredible production design by
1:55:48
David Crank. Yes, definitely.
1:55:54
The end. The walls are closing in on
1:55:58
Marta as the Thrombie family attempt to tighten their grip,
1:56:01
but a shot and revelation at the laundromat sets blanks.
1:56:03
Mind racing about doughnuts? Yeah.
1:56:07
First up, Marta, under pressure from the thrombies, from the
1:56:10
media, from lawyers, slips out of her house the back way and is
1:56:13
startled by Walt, who comes lumbering to water, backlit with
1:56:17
that incredible lightning that I mentioned earlier.
1:56:19
Who knows what he was up to, considering Marta shocks him and
1:56:22
he makes a feeble attempt at covering his tracks.
1:56:24
Hey, how are you doing it? But he was going to say
1:56:26
something else, so who knows what he was up to.
1:56:30
I really like the performance from Michael Shannon here.
1:56:32
We've talked about him because Shannon is an actor.
1:56:35
He's got his reputation playing strange, unhinged, weird
1:56:39
characters. Yeah, but up to now Walt has
1:56:42
been this trampled upon whipping boy in the Thrombie family.
1:56:46
He's Fredo Corleone, isn't he? Yes, but he really leans into
1:56:51
the Michael Shannon that we know and love in this scene.
1:56:53
Creepy, unpredictable, probably a bit of a sleaze as well.
1:56:57
Yeah, yeah. When he's putting the squeeze on
1:56:58
Martyr about the inheritance and reveals that he knows about her
1:57:01
mother's illegal residential status.
1:57:04
So the stakes are raised. But Marta gets out of it
1:57:07
beautifully, she says. So you're saying that with the
1:57:09
family's resources, you could help me fix this so my mother
1:57:12
wouldn't need to go away? And Walt thinks he's cracked it.
1:57:16
Yeah, yeah, Yeah. But then Marta ties him up a
1:57:18
knot. All right.
1:57:19
OK. So, Harland, give me all of your
1:57:21
resources. So with my resources, I'll be
1:57:23
able to fix it. So I guess I'll be able to find
1:57:25
the right lawyers. Amazing, Amazing writing.
1:57:29
And great to see Marta sticking up for herself and not being
1:57:32
allowed to be bullied. Yeah, yeah.
1:57:34
Which is always the case when it comes to our mother.
1:57:36
Yeah. Yeah.
1:57:36
Yeah, it is. We've got the chance to get the
1:57:39
evidence that we need, but it's all gone up in flames, it seems.
1:57:43
So what kind of person would burn down a whole building?
1:57:46
Well, you sitting right next to you, I think, and that's the
1:57:51
point. And we're so invested in this,
1:57:52
this moment where ransoms like asking her all the questions.
1:57:55
Did you get an e-mail? Well, there it is.
1:57:57
And it's just clear as day on later viewings what he's doing.
1:58:00
He's such a snake and he's so much there and then you say
1:58:03
blank, it's on this telephoto so it's miles ways.
1:58:06
It was spying on him and he then clock smarter and you think what
1:58:09
blogs coming for it. He's sussed it out now they've
1:58:11
gone too far. There's no CCTV footage that's
1:58:13
great. That didn't really need to be in
1:58:15
there. Great.
1:58:16
And then what ensues is just incredible.
1:58:18
The dumbest car chase of all time is, Ellie says later on.
1:58:21
But it is a car chase at the same pace as the whole
1:58:24
narrative. It goes at 60 miles an hour
1:58:27
because the whole film's going between 30 and 60.
1:58:30
It doesn't break the speed limit is the narrative doesn't break
1:58:33
your intelligence limit. It doesn't take you too far.
1:58:35
It doesn't speed out of control and I love that little moment as
1:58:39
well where you see her phone and it's the screen smashed and
1:58:42
everyone else's phone is pristine and it's all fine, but
1:58:45
she's kind of working through it.
1:58:46
But it just says maybe baby Blanc on it.
1:58:49
Brilliant. So he's in there somewhere and
1:58:52
then it's the way that she takes people on here.
1:58:55
It's Marta out, Fox in them, not out running them.
1:58:57
So it's like she's playing the same game again and getting
1:59:00
through the small like apps using her ability and using a
1:59:03
car, which is an import, by the way, Hyundai, it's obviously not
1:59:06
made there. So again, reflects who she is
1:59:09
and her personality and she's slipping away from the
1:59:11
authorities. And then we'll get to the point
1:59:13
where the do you think the vote ran them and the pull up and
1:59:17
you've got just talking ransom and he then reiterates the
1:59:19
address as if he knows it off by heart and just because obviously
1:59:22
he's involved in all that and then she's apologized.
1:59:25
Sorry, got you into this. It's just that knock on the
1:59:26
window just there. You haven't got time to talk
1:59:30
about this. It's so good because it's
1:59:32
grounded in that realism. It's just there and she's got
1:59:34
her hands up and we think, right, well, she's getting
1:59:37
pulled in now because they found this and just of the know that
1:59:39
somebody climbed at the trust and then they bring Ransom in
1:59:42
and she brings her arms down and just reveals blanks behind us.
1:59:45
If like I've got your back door, worry about it.
1:59:49
It's a great control of the narrative, great control of
1:59:52
motivations for each character, and more importantly, it's a
1:59:54
great control of person. He doesn't lose track of it
1:59:57
here, which he could have very, very easily.
1:59:59
Yeah, it's a. It's a great sequence.
2:00:01
Amazing when Blank pulls up beside Martyr in the car and
2:00:04
gestures towards his four legs picking up.
2:00:08
It's me ringing you. Maybe be blank.
2:00:11
Definitely is. And this scene starts off with
2:00:14
the medical examiners building up in flames.
2:00:17
A scene before this when Marta goes to see Ransom at his house,
2:00:19
there's an array of jugs behind him and there's a space where it
2:00:22
appears one is missing. Right.
2:00:25
That is the jug that Ransom used for the Molotov cocktail to burn
2:00:28
down the medical examiner. Brilliant.
2:00:31
Oh God, I. Know it's great.
2:00:34
I'm getting a headache just thinking about how much genius
2:00:37
this is where I'm nearly finished.
2:00:41
And during this car chase, he can see, you know, to Ryan
2:00:44
Johnson's first film, Brick. The midnight tunnel symbol can
2:00:47
be seen spray painted on the wall when they go down the back
2:00:50
alley, which looks like the letter.
2:00:52
A Oh, that rounded A. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
2:00:55
Yeah, yeah. Nice little touch.
2:00:57
And then finally, about 90 minutes in the film, we get what
2:01:01
is the closest thing to a murder, which, you know, we've
2:01:03
just not had so far. And it's the one expecting
2:01:06
because this is more to find and fun in the basement.
2:01:08
And it's another great example of the film taking you on one
2:01:12
track and then just spinning another way, because up until
2:01:15
now, Fran has been just a peripheral figure, really.
2:01:19
And now we'll find it's just tied up, injected with morphine
2:01:21
in the basement. What's she got to do with this
2:01:23
now? What's happening now?
2:01:25
Like, is she really blackmailing Martyr?
2:01:27
Because that seems to have come out of nowhere.
2:01:28
That doesn't mean to. And of course, you get another
2:01:31
clue he as to who's actually behind all this.
2:01:33
Hugh did it, which is, you know, so easy to miss first time
2:01:37
around. And it's just classic stuff,
2:01:38
really. Creepy basement, dripping water,
2:01:41
dark shadows, sudden spider across the face.
2:01:43
It's all brilliantly done. But it says evident about Marta
2:01:47
as a character that even in this moment, her first reaction is to
2:01:50
try to save Fran with CPR and then get at a hospital.
2:01:53
Even though if Fran is saved, it's going to expose Marta
2:01:57
because God admit, she still thinks she's responsible for
2:02:00
Harlan's death. And someone's going to expose
2:02:02
her even if it's Fran and she's so intent and confessing.
2:02:06
Like even all that means she'll forfeit the inheritance.
2:02:09
Like even in the the hospital waiting room that tells mom
2:02:11
that's what she has to do. So it's very funny when it just
2:02:15
got the Blanc singing along in the car, the ambulance pulling
2:02:19
up. Oh Lord, until he realizes.
2:02:21
It. But it's another brilliant
2:02:23
moment because you just don't know where this is going now.
2:02:25
And increasingly it's getting more and more tense because we
2:02:27
know we're getting to the end. And there's just no sign that
2:02:30
Martyr can get out of this in any way, shape or form.
2:02:33
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we mentioned the film
2:02:36
earlier, The Last of Sheila, when discussing Ryan Johnson's
2:02:39
influences for the film. Massive influence on Glass
2:02:42
Onion. Yeah, the start of it, right?
2:02:45
That film was Co written by Stephen Sondheim, the Broadway
2:02:47
composer. Sondheim also wrote the song
2:02:50
Losing My Mind for the Play of Follies, which Blank sings in
2:02:53
the car when he's waiting for Martyr outside the laundromat.
2:02:55
Yeah, right, right. And Daniel Craig, being a big
2:02:58
Liza Minnelli fan, surprisingly requested that Johnson used the
2:03:01
Minnelli version of Losing My Mind for this scene.
2:03:04
Nice. And to tie it all together,
2:03:05
Laurence Olivier based his character in the film Sleuth on
2:03:08
Stephen Sodeheim himself. Brilliant.
2:03:11
Another layer. Another detail.
2:03:14
It's incredible. They're the biggest lasagna I've
2:03:17
ever seen. 10 foot lasagna. So Ransom is arrested, Fran has
2:03:30
been poisoned, and Martyr is going to spill her guts to the
2:03:33
family. Thankfully, Blank knows more
2:03:35
than he's letting on. Thank God.
2:03:37
Thank God, Yeah. We're bringing it all back home
2:03:41
with Blank Confront and Ransom, Ransom, Confront and Martyr and
2:03:44
the aftermath with the Thrombie family unit in tatters.
2:03:48
And we're starting with the hole at the centre of this doughnut.
2:03:51
A doughnut hole in a doughnut's hole.
2:03:53
But now the doughnut hole has a hole in its centre.
2:03:56
It is a small doughnut with its own hole.
2:03:58
And our doughnut is not Hall at all.
2:04:00
What on earth are you talking about, Benoit?
2:04:03
Great. Metaphor.
2:04:07
Lynch But taking it a step further, as you mentioned that
2:04:12
what is going on? But Johnson was on the verge of
2:04:14
removing Blanc's whole dawn analogy from the film.
2:04:17
Craig convinced him to give him a shot at the speech, and his
2:04:19
delivery encouraged Johnson to keep it in.
2:04:20
I mean, I'm not surprised. It does make sense of it.
2:04:23
I'm thrilled he kept it in because it's just such delicious
2:04:26
dialogue and delivery. Yeah, Benoit unravels an
2:04:29
intriguing combination of factors.
2:04:31
Is it Fran? No, the answer is not so simple.
2:04:34
A great visual of Ben Wild Blanc with a knife mural behind him.
2:04:38
Like you mentioned earlier. USD Hugh Ransom Drysdale is then
2:04:42
brought in and he's completely underestimated Benoit here or
2:04:46
thought he was smarter than him. And then we go right back to the
2:04:50
night of with a fresh perspective.
2:04:52
Your quote at the top, mat. It's my favorite line in the
2:04:56
film because Benoit blog is now revealing his actual
2:05:00
personality. He's not this Mr. Nicey Nicey.
2:05:04
He is quite cynical and he is quite sarcastic.
2:05:07
He's playing his hand now. He's playing his hands.
2:05:09
What were the overheard words by the Nazi child masturbating in
2:05:12
the bathroom? Holy shit that's great.
2:05:19
Yeah, he's not messing about. It turns out Ransom was furious
2:05:21
that he was cut off from Harlan, that Marta was getting it.
2:05:24
And then he forms a plan. He sneaks in, switches the
2:05:26
medications, then steals the antidote.
2:05:28
Turns out that Marta gave a Holland the right medication and
2:05:30
Harlan would have been fine. Yeah, but he goes back the next
2:05:34
day, suicide on his hands. The plot thickens.
2:05:37
I love that shot that pushes past the knife configuration,
2:05:41
zooms into Blanc as he turns around and says enter Benoit
2:05:44
Blanc. Blanc.
2:05:45
Yes, yeah. Yeah, fantastic.
2:05:49
Yeah. And I mentioned to the
2:05:50
conversation that Fran had earlier with Marta about a film
2:05:53
she saw called Deadly by Surprise starring Danica
2:05:56
McCullough. She's basically telling the
2:05:58
details of Harlan's death. She got poisoned unknowingly,
2:06:00
then committed suicide. And that's what mother
2:06:03
references he is. She was telling me what was
2:06:05
happening. Yeah.
2:06:06
Also, Danica McKellar is a real actress.
2:06:08
When she realized she got name dropped in the film, she sent
2:06:11
Johnson a knife in green with Deadly by Surprised as a gift.
2:06:14
Oh wow, nice. Very nice.
2:06:16
So this is just a wonderfully constructed plan and counter
2:06:19
plan. It's airtight, but it's very
2:06:21
difficult to wrap your head around it.
2:06:23
Like I said at the top, just committing to the right like
2:06:26
this, a commitment to the mystery that Ryan Johnson has
2:06:29
and a great example of seeing it through to the third act all the
2:06:33
way through sticking the landing.
2:06:34
But we're not done yet, are we not?
2:06:36
We're not, Because then Marta takes the call from the
2:06:39
hospital. Fran's OK.
2:06:40
Ransom's under arrest. But not before he reveals even
2:06:43
more of his true colors with this ranted martyr.
2:06:46
We took you into our home, we welcomed you and our family, and
2:06:49
now you think you can steal it from us?
2:06:51
It's the voice of unearned privileged speaking.
2:06:54
She's done nothing wrong, apart from being a far better person
2:06:58
to his grandfather than Ransom ever was.
2:07:00
And he just can't see that at all.
2:07:02
And when he called it our birthright, our ancestral
2:07:05
family, it's, it's clear what he means.
2:07:08
She's not American, so therefore she's worthless.
2:07:11
She's inferior because he's white and that's all that
2:07:14
matters. But it doesn't kind of hammer it
2:07:16
home too much. It just moves on.
2:07:17
Because then when Blanc laughs in his face, that.
2:07:20
Is who he? Paula bought it from a Pakistani
2:07:23
real estate billionaire. In the 80s in.
2:07:27
The 80s. Yeah, exactly.
2:07:28
So the whole thing is bullshit. It's all built.
2:07:30
This whole family is built on bullshit and Ransom's reaction
2:07:34
is so funny because he just can't take it anymore.
2:07:37
Oh shut up Blanc, shut up, shut up with that Kentucky fight
2:07:41
Foghorn Leghorn drawl. It's the last Draw fame.
2:07:46
And then it's the small revelations come thick and fast
2:07:49
ransom. He just confesses everything
2:07:51
because he's so smug in his privileged belief that he still
2:07:55
won't get serious jail time because he's got a great lawyer.
2:07:58
He's really in martyrs face. She then spews in his face.
2:08:01
So France actually dead. She's been lying.
2:08:03
So he's screwed. So as he says, in for a penny
2:08:06
and that's slow. More lunge with a knife.
2:08:08
The way the camera follows the pair of them down.
2:08:11
That's an amazing shot. And then we get the pay off.
2:08:13
We mentioned earlier Holland talking about Ransom, saying he
2:08:16
wouldn't even know the difference between a real knife
2:08:18
and a prop knife. Yeah.
2:08:20
And the brilliance is we've all forgotten that line.
2:08:23
So there's about 10 seconds where you think, oh, shit, he's
2:08:25
killed it because it looks like he has until he pulls it out.
2:08:29
And the expression on his face when he just tries it again
2:08:31
twice just to double check it's and it won't go in.
2:08:34
He goes, well, shit. It's.
2:08:37
Such a brilliant way to wrap it up for these two characters
2:08:40
because it sums them up. Ransom can't tell the difference
2:08:42
between a real life and a prop knife, but Marta can tell the
2:08:45
difference between the two vials of medicine.
2:08:48
Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah.
2:08:49
The fake vomit in this scene was made-up of baby food.
2:08:53
The cast were fascinated by the concoction.
2:08:55
Dharma said that they all went outside with the fake vomit to
2:08:58
test the texture and to see how far they could project the
2:09:00
eyelet. Evans said simply about the
2:09:05
whole scene. I didn't love getting the puke
2:09:07
in my face. He wouldn't.
2:09:12
Yeah. And then there's that really
2:09:14
brilliant sit down between Martyr and Blanc and they're
2:09:16
across from each other. There's no bullshit straight
2:09:20
down the line. Everything's on the table now.
2:09:22
And he says you got away with it not by playing their game or
2:09:24
Harlan's game, but by playing your own, just by being a
2:09:27
genuine good person. And I think that's a wonderful
2:09:29
message to anybody watching. It is like, you know, you can't
2:09:32
focus on anything that's meant for you.
2:09:34
So just be genuine and just be nice.
2:09:36
And everything that lands should land for a reason.
2:09:38
And that's the whole point. This feels wide open for me
2:09:41
because I feel like she's going to make them earn their way
2:09:44
back. I don't think she takes
2:09:46
everything and shuts the door. I think because Blank says, I
2:09:50
have a feeling you will feeling you'll follow your heart.
2:09:52
Basically, you're good because you're a good person.
2:09:54
Because you're a kind of person, You're not really going to let
2:09:57
them suffer. But at the same time, she's not
2:10:01
letting them off the hook. I don't think she's slamming the
2:10:03
door in the face. She's now above them tower and
2:10:06
above them. She's now in charge of them.
2:10:08
So she is now at the place where they are.
2:10:11
Her help, really. And they switch places and
2:10:14
they'll be known and they have to now work to get recognition.
2:10:17
They now have to work to be part of that house.
2:10:19
So I think she will welcome them back in between the legs.
2:10:23
Yeah, I think it's her. Her coffee, her rules, her
2:10:25
house. And that's the whole point.
2:10:27
I don't think she slams the door on anybody.
2:10:29
OK. But it's good that it ends in
2:10:31
that shut off and it doesn't go and a yearly in Holland's now
2:10:35
doing this and they're doing this.
2:10:36
That would be absolutely crap. So a wonderful ending to a
2:10:40
wonderful film. That is, it really, really is,
2:10:43
yeah. I mean, one of the very first
2:10:44
shots we see, apart from the establishing shot of the dogs
2:10:47
running out, is the real close up of that mug, which says my
2:10:50
house, my rules, my coffee on it.
2:10:52
And it bookends the film beautifully.
2:10:54
And I think Johnson wanted to put something in.
2:10:56
It's got the first shot of the big imposing house.
2:10:58
He wanted to break the tension with kind of a goofy modern joke
2:11:01
mug. But it's got more to it than
2:11:03
that. There's more subtext than that.
2:11:04
And it really hits all my nature brings it up.
2:11:06
You don't really see all of the words either.
2:11:07
It's on her and she owns that mug now if you think it's even
2:11:11
better. Yeah, during production, Johnson
2:11:13
thought it'd be a good idea to include it in the final shot.
2:11:15
Where might it takes a sip? Johnson said.
2:11:18
Then we were doing that close up.
2:11:19
She was in the balcony. And I yelled up, sip the tea.
2:11:22
And she brought it in the frame. And those words came up
2:11:24
obscured, like you said, Westie, But we know what it means.
2:11:27
Yeah. Yeah.
2:11:28
And he said it was a perfect ending to the film.
2:11:30
And it is. It's great.
2:11:31
It's a great bookend. It is brilliant the way that
2:11:33
just cut. So you must have just known
2:11:34
right there. Just cut that.
2:11:36
Yeah, done. So a glorious ending with
2:11:38
everyone getting exactly what they deserve.
2:11:40
Yes. Yeah.
2:11:41
Or maybe not. Reception and awards.
2:11:50
Names Out premiered at the Toronto International Film
2:11:52
Festival on September 7th, 2019 and was met with a rapturous
2:11:56
reception to safeguard the film until the late November general
2:12:00
released. Johnson said at the festival.
2:12:03
Like Hitchcock said, please don't spoil our ended.
2:12:05
It's the only one we've got. Yes, yeah.
2:12:08
Yeah, the buzz continued to grow as the film played a fantastic
2:12:11
fest in Austin, the Chicago International Film Festival and
2:12:14
the BFI London Film Festival. Yeah, it did a little bit of a
2:12:17
tour, and when it was finally released 27th of November, it
2:12:21
was a massive critical hit. Yeah, yeah, Mark Kermode,
2:12:25
writing in the Observer, gave her four out of five and said as
2:12:28
with the very best who done it's everything is set up and
2:12:30
sneakily signalled in the opening moments of the drama.
2:12:33
But it's only on 2nd viewing that those early clues become
2:12:36
evident. Ryan Johnson's homage to Agatha
2:12:39
Christie delivers laughs, twists and thrills with aplomb.
2:12:42
Kermode knows what time it is. Yep.
2:12:44
Yeah, in Empire, the film also got four out of five, saying
2:12:47
Rian Johnson put his own spin on Dashiell Hammett with 2005's
2:12:51
Brick. Now he's Johnsonized the work of
2:12:54
Agatha Christie with equal enjoyable results.
2:12:57
Knives Out is snappy, meta and yes, shop.
2:13:01
It is that unfortunately, Roger Ebert was no longer with us when
2:13:05
Knives Out was released, but it was reviewed by Brian Talarico
2:13:08
on rogerebert.com. What do you think the Brian man
2:13:11
gave it out of four fellas? 3 1/2.
2:13:14
Yeah, they go. Halves.
2:13:16
Yeah, they go. They went halves. 3 1/2.
2:13:19
And they also went 3 1/2, Wesley.
2:13:20
Well done. 3 1/2 out of four. He said Ryan Johnson's Knives
2:13:24
Out is one of the most purely entertaining films in years.
2:13:27
It is the work of a cinematic magician, one who keeps you so
2:13:30
focused on what the left hand is doing that you miss the right.
2:13:33
Yes, yeah, yeah. And now it has 7.9 out of 10 on
2:13:36
IMDb. And I'm Rotten Tomorrow is 97%
2:13:39
from critics, 92% from audiences.
2:13:43
Big reviews led the way for big box office numbers.
2:13:45
On a $40 million budget, Knives Out returned 312.9 million
2:13:50
worldwide. It was never going to be a big
2:13:54
fish during awards season, but it performed admirably.
2:13:57
It got 1 Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, but
2:14:00
lost out to Can you? Yes, 20/20/2020 He was our
2:14:04
parasite. Boom.
2:14:06
Just like that Matt. Love it.
2:14:08
Matty Mania. The same nomination and winner
2:14:13
at the Baftas as well it. Did get more awarded the Golden
2:14:17
Globes or three in total? Best Actor for Daniel Craig,
2:14:20
Best Actress for Ana de Amas and Best Film in Musical or comedy.
2:14:23
It did get three wins at the Saturn Awards, Best thriller,
2:14:27
best support and Actress for Diamas and best Editing.
2:14:31
So critical and box office success for a film that cinema
2:14:34
goers took to their hearts. A few smatterings of award
2:14:37
nominations didn't go amiss either.
2:14:38
All in all, an incredibly successful venture for a genre
2:14:41
that some thought it had its day.
2:14:43
Yeah. Definitely.
2:14:47
Sequels and influence. In an interview with Variety of
2:14:52
the time of release, Ryan Johnson said that he was
2:14:55
interested in expanding an Ives out world, but besides Benoit
2:14:58
Blanc, he had no interest in bringing any of the characters
2:15:01
back. No, that's very Agatha Christie
2:15:03
that I think. And he also said each Knives Out
2:15:06
film is something I want to make.
2:15:07
If that stops being the case, we won't do another one.
2:15:10
But he was true he's word. Rian Johnson signed A2 picture
2:15:12
deal with Netflix and in 2022 released the sequel glass onion.
2:15:17
Starring Daniel Craig, Janelle Monáe, Ed Norton, Catherine
2:15:20
Hahn, Leslie Odom junior, Kate Hudson, Dave Batista and
2:15:24
Madeline Klein. It has 91% on rods models and
2:15:27
7.1 out of 10 on IMDb. Yes, indeed.
2:15:31
Then Johnson followed that up with Wake Up Dead Man in 2025,
2:15:35
starring Daniel Craig of course, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Jeremy
2:15:38
Renner, Kaley spinney, Mila Kunis, and Josh O'Connor. 92%
2:15:42
around tomorrow 7.3 out of 10 and IMDb similar.
2:15:46
Both glass onion and wake up dead man followed knives outs
2:15:49
path in being named after songs. Glass onion, The Beatles, Wake
2:15:53
Up Dead Man, YouTube Yes. So 2 sequels Westie, what are
2:15:59
your thoughts on them? I mean the brilliant this is a
2:16:01
brilliant trilogy. I do prefer Wake Up Dead Man if
2:16:05
I have to pick one out of the two sequels.
2:16:07
I love Knives Out, but I think Wake Up Dead Man was just
2:16:09
slightly more refined. I think Glassonian felt a bit
2:16:12
rushed, but I think shifting the pace totally for Wake Up Dead
2:16:15
Man works the locations different.
2:16:17
Everything just feels different and it feels like it's had a lot
2:16:20
more thought put into it. But one of the best trilogies of
2:16:23
recent years. Yes, big claim.
2:16:25
I love it. Yeah.
2:16:27
What about you, Matt? Thoughts on the sequels?
2:16:29
Yeah, I think I'm very, very similar here.
2:16:31
I mean, yeah, in general it's an incredibly strong trilogy that
2:16:34
do have pretty much the same level of quality throughout.
2:16:36
But I think if I did have to pick one is the weakest, it
2:16:39
would be Glass Onion. I think it's just a little bit
2:16:41
overstuffed, a little bit too many celeb cameos and they're a
2:16:44
little over long and. Glossy in it.
2:16:47
Bit too glossy in the Murder it. The Harvard just isn't that
2:16:50
interesting compared to Knives Out, and the one thing they've
2:16:53
nailed every time out is casting who the film is really about.
2:16:57
Because Janelle Monáe is brilliant in glass.
2:17:00
She's amazing. That that twist, and you know,
2:17:03
if you've not got under, but that twist where you realize
2:17:06
she's playing twins and she's playing a dead sister, that's
2:17:09
incredible. Yeah.
2:17:11
Yeah, I did think Wake Up Dead Man was much closer to Knives
2:17:14
Out. I love the gothic setting.
2:17:15
Again, impeccable casting. Joshua Connor is so good.
2:17:19
Yeah, he's amazing. Yeah, and it might just have the
2:17:22
best murder of the three so far, OK.
2:17:25
And like Knives Out, it's got a bit more subtext to it.
2:17:28
You know, it is about faith in belief.
2:17:30
So I think just adds a lot to it.
2:17:31
So yeah, that's how I feel about them.
2:17:34
Yeah, I'm not dissimilar in any way to you 2 fellas.
2:17:37
I think they are inferior than Knives Out, but they are great.
2:17:40
I watched them pretty much as often as the original.
2:17:43
They've become a nice Christmas film because of their release
2:17:45
dates as well, which I think. Is quite nice.
2:17:48
Yeah, I think Wake Up Dead Man is probably better than Glass
2:17:50
Onion, but there's not much in it.
2:17:52
No, no. And it would be possibly compete
2:17:54
with Knives. I were enough for some elements
2:17:56
of the third act that didn't sing for me.
2:17:58
OK. Yeah.
2:17:59
I'll say that my favorite performance across the sequels
2:18:01
is like you much, you know, money and Glass Onion, an
2:18:05
impeccable jewel role. She's amazing.
2:18:08
But niggles aside, I love that the settings are different.
2:18:12
I love the ensemble cast, the mysteries and Johnson and Craig
2:18:15
return and is always a joy. Yeah.
2:18:16
Yes, it is a modern film, but there's been a lot that's
2:18:20
coming. It's work.
2:18:21
So in the years since its release, where we've seen Knives
2:18:24
Out influence and legacy. In terms of legacy, I think
2:18:27
Knives Out basically reinvented the murder mystery for the 20
2:18:30
twenties. Before this film came along, the
2:18:32
genre was in a bit of a rut. Kenneth Branner had done Murder
2:18:35
on the Orient Express, which was fine.
2:18:37
It looked nice, but it felt like I've seen it all before.
2:18:40
Stuffy. Stuffy.
2:18:42
No risks with it was there. No risks, no, But Naizag came
2:18:46
along and showed everybody that you could honour the traditions
2:18:48
of Christie in the golden age of The Who don't know while making
2:18:50
something that felt contemporary and vital and funny and had
2:18:53
something to say about the world we live in.
2:18:55
That's a much harder trick to pull off.
2:18:56
Yeah. Yeah.
2:18:57
And the ripple effect has been enormous since.
2:18:59
Now he's out, you've had. See how they run the Thursday
2:19:02
Murder Club murder mystery and its sequel?
2:19:04
Countless Agatha Christie adaptations popping up on
2:19:06
Netflix and other streamers. Yeah, and I wouldn't be
2:19:09
surprised if Death on the Nile and A Haunt in Venice were green
2:19:12
lit because of Knives Out. Sure, yeah.
2:19:15
But my favorite thing to come out of the whole Renaissance is
2:19:18
Ryan Johnson's Poker Face Star in the magnificence.
2:19:21
Natasha Lyonne. It's a different format.
2:19:24
It's episodic. It's TV.
2:19:25
It's a how catch him rather than a who done it.
2:19:28
But it's got that same energy, great writing, great characters.
2:19:31
And Natasha Lyonne is, I mean, you know how I feel about her.
2:19:34
She's a man. Yeah.
2:19:36
Matt, what do you think? In terms of legacy and
2:19:39
influence, I think just heartening, not a completely
2:19:42
original idea in an old established genre.
2:19:44
Can work and hopefully it's legacy will be more directors,
2:19:48
writers, whoever start doing that with their own I DS.
2:19:51
I think legacy wise is obviously made under Armours.
2:19:53
The star that she is today, it's absolutely huge for her career.
2:19:57
But maybe it's biggest legacy is on Daniel Craig himself, because
2:20:00
pretty much every other actors took on the Bond role, probably
2:20:03
The only exception being Connery.
2:20:05
That's the role. I will always define them in the
2:20:07
public eye and the struggle to escape that.
2:20:10
I honestly think you look at Daniel Craig and just as many
2:20:12
people will go Benoit Blanc, that's his best role, not Bond.
2:20:15
Yeah, Yeah. And he's completely escaped the
2:20:18
shackles of Bond now. And he was great as Bond,
2:20:20
certainly not saying. Anything different?
2:20:22
The thing is, there's always going to be another Bond.
2:20:24
I can't imagine anyone else doing the Benoit Blanc role.
2:20:28
No way. Yeah.
2:20:29
I think one of its biggest legacy is where to put Daniel
2:20:31
Craig as an actor. Fantastic.
2:20:33
What about USD influence and legacy?
2:20:36
Yeah, I'll just reiterate what both you guys are saying.
2:20:38
I think it's bringing intelligence cinema back to the
2:20:40
masses. Gracious, huge thank God for
2:20:42
that. That's just shown that cinema is
2:20:45
alive and it is well, but you need an altar and you need
2:20:47
somebody who understands where it came from.
2:20:50
You know, it's sure the casts of big names can get along.
2:20:53
It showed that it's not about that anymore.
2:20:55
The egos are out the window. Everybody knows everything about
2:20:57
everybody's lives. So the, you know, the status of
2:21:00
an actor isn't necessarily on top of everything else.
2:21:03
Anna Diamus came from nothing when she did this.
2:21:05
Really. Yeah.
2:21:06
We're going to really have to test actors and we're going to
2:21:08
have to give them space and freedom to perform and direct.
2:21:11
There's space and freedom to create.
2:21:13
Because if you do that and you put it on the page and you make
2:21:16
sure you do it right and you give them the money, you
2:21:18
perform. You're going to get actors who
2:21:19
are happy. You're going to get crews that
2:21:21
are really inventive. You're going to get directors
2:21:22
who are really excited, and you're going to get 3 films that
2:21:25
are really excellent and are going to make money.
2:21:27
So sit back, pay attention, and look at what can be done when
2:21:30
you give nerds for 30 million. Because we're all good at making
2:21:34
money and we don't need explosions to do it.
2:21:36
And that's its legacy. Great, what a legacy it is.
2:21:39
Yes, absolutely. So a modern film that we can
2:21:42
safely see has made a huge impact on the industry already,
2:21:44
and with two sequels under its belt, are we able to consider
2:21:47
the Knives Out trilogy one of the best there is?
2:21:50
I think so. I think that's been the
2:21:51
conversation now, yeah. All the right movies ranking.
2:21:59
Knives Out Big Bloody for our final segment, where we ranked
2:22:02
the film and scored out of 10. Westie Yeah, when you start.
2:22:06
I've been singing its praises throughout the whole podcast and
2:22:10
understandably why, because the more you watch this film, the
2:22:12
more you appreciate it, the more you understand it.
2:22:14
But it is one that I think when we're talking about every
2:22:16
review, the one star off, the half a star off the reserve and
2:22:20
judgment for something. And I feel exactly the same way.
2:22:22
I feel like I'm not 100% satisfied by it and I don't
2:22:26
quite know why because there's nothing else you can fit into
2:22:28
this fucking film to be honest. It's got everything you need
2:22:32
from a car chase to a murder to commentary.
2:22:34
It's got on social situations, racial situations and it's all
2:22:37
in here. Fantastic performances
2:22:39
throughout, but I do feel like there's just something missing
2:22:42
and it will click with us eventually and I think it will
2:22:44
come in time. I think it's one of them films
2:22:46
that you need to leave to marinate a little bit and come
2:22:49
back to it and realize how special it is.
2:22:51
So I'm not going to give a top marks right now, might do in a
2:22:53
few years time, but it's a definite 9 on 10 for me.
2:22:56
And like I say, I can't quite put your finger on why it's not
2:22:58
top, but it just isn't for some reason.
2:23:01
It's bad. Just means I might have a little
2:23:03
bit more to find. OK, Yeah, I understand that,
2:23:06
Westie. Yeah, we've been unequivocal
2:23:08
here. Knives Out is a joy.
2:23:10
The cast atop of the line, including a larger than life
2:23:13
Daniel Craig, who's been one. Blanc has transcended the film,
2:23:16
I think. Yeah.
2:23:17
Yeah. Ryan Johnson's direction doesn't
2:23:19
get the credit it deserves. For me.
2:23:20
It has a great narrative and really outstanding writing.
2:23:24
Yeah. That screenplay that should be
2:23:26
taught in film school. It should.
2:23:27
I'd say that it's a pitch perfect film for what it sets
2:23:30
out to achieve. Pretty much flawless and cements
2:23:33
it's placed in the lineage of the old time great murder
2:23:35
mystery films. Like you Westie, My natural
2:23:38
reflex would be to go for a nine without even thinking about it.
2:23:42
Knives Out Easy 9 out of 10. But then going through this and
2:23:46
analyzing that score, I need something to bring it down to 9
2:23:50
and I couldn't find anything. I know I'm I'm the same.
2:23:52
That could be time for me. I kind of do it.
2:23:55
I don't need any time, it's a perfect 10.
2:23:58
Oh wow. Amazing.
2:24:00
What about you, Matt? I think films like Knives Out
2:24:02
should just be celebrated from the rafters because the next
2:24:05
time anyone comes home from the cinema and you've been
2:24:08
disappointed by the latest remake, the latest reboot, the
2:24:11
latest 8th sequel to Scream or whatever and you go, Oh no,
2:24:15
originally in Hollywood anymore. Put Knives Out on, you'll feel
2:24:19
1000 times better and you'll realize actually people are
2:24:23
making original films. I mean, granted, yes, Ryan
2:24:25
Johnson had a substantial career before this to fall back on and
2:24:29
get the backing, but all the same, that wasn't a guarantee
2:24:31
for him, for what he wanted to make with no concessions to
2:24:35
anyone. And it was such a massive fit.
2:24:38
And that should give anyone who's got an original idea
2:24:40
motivation, key batter, because you can find your audience.
2:24:44
It's an incredibly entertaining film.
2:24:46
I'm always in the mood for the idea of a Benoit Blanc marathon
2:24:49
across 3 consecutive nights or even A1 night is a wonderful
2:24:52
one. I'm sure we'll do that soon.
2:24:54
Daniel Clear can't get enough for that performance.
2:24:57
The Armas Evans, they're up there with them.
2:25:00
But really it took for me to really analyze it in the way
2:25:02
that we have done in the run up to this, to realize just how
2:25:06
much detail is in this film, how much thinking behind everything,
2:25:09
not just the plot, but the visuals, the soundtrack.
2:25:14
This for me is something that absolutely fulfills the beef of
2:25:16
being a modern classic. So it's a 10 for me as well.
2:25:19
Wow. Boom.
2:25:20
Yeah, very nice. Our 4th and final Scoff and
2:25:23
Knives outcomes from our Patreon community.
2:25:25
Those great guys and gals before the twist ending.
2:25:28
Here are some of their musings on the film.
2:25:31
Derek Horrigan said. Really enjoyed this.
2:25:33
Fun, exciting and a genuine whodunit Daniel create, breaking
2:25:37
free of the Bond shackles and creating a genuinely great new
2:25:40
character and one of the many Hollywood Chris's actually given
2:25:44
a good performance. 9 out of 10. Yep, Yep.
2:25:47
Catherine Price said. I still remember how fun it was
2:25:50
seeing Knives Out in the theatre with my extended family and how
2:25:53
we kept laughing and talking about it for days.
2:25:55
It's just an all around great movie and whoever took Daniel
2:25:58
Craig into becoming a live action Folkhorn Leghorn
2:26:01
detective deserves a Nobel Prize.
2:26:03
It's a ten. Wow, Yep, just like that.
2:26:06
Very nice. Yeah, lovely.
2:26:07
And finally Matt T Overall I've landed on a nine.
2:26:10
I was edging towards 8.5, but I reflected the original idea to
2:26:14
hang together this big cast to introduce James Bond as
2:26:17
something completely new and interesting.
2:26:19
I love how it's shot, I love how it doesn't cheat the audience,
2:26:21
and when compared to the second one, which still a good movie,
2:26:24
it shows it's quality from a filmmaker that clearly loves
2:26:27
this era of detective fiction. Yeah, yeah.
2:26:30
Very much. We're all singing from the same
2:26:32
hymn sheet here. We are, yeah.
2:26:34
A lot of positivity, yeah. What does that mean overall for
2:26:37
the Patreon score out of 10 chaps I'm.
2:26:39
Going to say in it. I'll go 9.
2:26:41
It was a nine brilliant, very solid show and meaning that out
2:26:45
of 40 knives, House scores an incredibly high 38.
2:26:49
Wow. Excellent.
2:26:50
Fully deserved, yeah. Yes, definitely.
2:26:52
All the right movies will be back in two weeks when John West
2:26:55
and Matt will be staying in the 21st century in more ways than
2:26:58
one when they tell the make enough story of Alfonso Quran's
2:27:02
outstanding children of men. Oh boy, that's a total whiplash.
2:27:06
Yeah. That's a change of pace.
2:27:08
Yeah, nice little slice of misery.
2:27:11
This isn't miserable enough so it loses a pint.
2:27:13
Children of Men 11 out of 10. For our studio head and
2:27:19
directors chair patrons, last week we tackled Trey Parker and
2:27:22
Matt Stone on double feature when we talked about South Park,
2:27:25
Bigger, Longer and Uncut, and Team American World Police.
2:27:27
Yep, Yep, we did. We tread carefully and of course
2:27:31
it's all in context. It is all in context, yeah.
2:27:34
Hilarious episodes, so sign up to be an ATR and patron for
2:27:37
that. With a new episode of the Watch
2:27:39
this coming at the start of March.
2:27:41
Yes, yes. If you haven't done it already,
2:27:43
please give us a positive rating on your podcast platform of
2:27:45
choice. It helps us get noticed, so
2:27:48
anything you could do will be much appreciated.
2:27:50
Yes, it will be guys. Thank you.
2:27:52
And as ever, we're on social media around the clock.
2:27:54
We're on X, Blue Sky threads, Instagram, TikTok.
2:27:57
I'll make enough movie threads go up on X and Blue sky.
2:27:59
And just like our podcasts, we go into my new detail on behind
2:28:03
the scenes facts and anecdotes, with all information coming from
2:28:05
at least three sources or from the mouths of the cast and crew.
2:28:09
You can join our Facebook group for another the wonderful movie
2:28:12
community full of great people. Yep, our YouTube channel is
2:28:15
youtube.com/all the Right Movies where you can also listen to our
2:28:19
podcasts and our website is All the Right movies.com.
2:28:22
It is. And that is a wrap, everyone.
2:28:25
We're off to examine a donut hall within a donut hall.
2:28:28
Yes, we are. We are peckish.
2:28:30
We got peckish. Thanks very much for.
2:28:33
Listening. Thanks guys.
2:28:34
Thanks guys. Come back in two weeks for
2:28:35
Children of Men.