felt more than heard: Nathan Johnson on composing his third film “Knives Out,” “Wake Up Dead Man” | Interviews

Nathan Johnson composed the music for all three of Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” mysteries, but for each of them, they start from scratch. While the character of master detective Benoit Blanc, played by Daniel Craig, must solve a murder mystery with a colorful array of interconnected suspects in all three films, each is a distinct genre and music plays an important role in communicating the tone to the audience.

In an interview with RogerEbert.comJohnson talked about setting a gothic tone in the latest “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” feeling like Christmas morning when he receives Rian Johnson’s latest script, and the literal lifelong connection that led him to record the music for Rian Johnson’s directorial debut, “Brick,” in his small apartment.

At the Middleburg Film Festival, you said that the music in this film had to match the gothic look and tone of “Wake Up Dead Man.”

What I like about this movie is that Rian has no interest in making the same movie again. These are technically sequels, but we view each as a standalone thing. And that applies to everything from production design to film structure to writing to characters to music. For the first “Knives Out,” it was this sharp, angular quartet in a claustrophobic New England mansion. For “Glass Onion,” in the Greek Islands, we opted for a lush, romantic orchestra.

For “Wake Up Dead Man”, it’s darker. It’s gothic. It’s Edgar Allan Poe. The first thing you hear in this score is the sound of the entire string section scraping their bows against the strings, almost like nails on a chalkboard. And then this cacophony resolves into a single pure tone. It’s almost like a tug of war between ugliness and beauty, or between light and darkness. In my mind, that’s what this movie is. It is a tug of war between different people who exploit elements of faith and power, transforming them into dark things or shaping them into generous and beautiful things.

Thus, this musical theme becomes a conceptual theme throughout the film: the sound of the strings, like a strumming, resolves into a pure sound. And this represents the gem that the characters in the film are looking for.

I think in our world today, things like money, power, or jewelry, depending on who controls them, can shift into light or darkness. This seemed like a really interesting idea to explore. This thing that everyone wants, that everyone is looking for, can be used for good or evil.

At what stage do you get there?

Very early. Before the script was even finished, Rian presented the idea to me. And then, when he sends the script, it’s a bit like Christmas morning. This is my favorite moment, receiving a new script from Rian in my inbox. But I can also be on set for a large part of the filming. I have a mobile platform so I can write anywhere.

At this point in the production process, music is the last thing on anyone else’s mind. So it allows me to appear on set, be a fly on the wall, and get the vibe of what’s happening, see how the actors develop what was on the page. Then I’ll leave for a few days and explore. I compare it to being in a dark room, blindly searching until I find what looks like a thread, then the next to see where it goes.

Unlike the first two in the series, this one takes place in an environment very closely associated with music, a church. Did this influence your ideas about the score?

It’s something we’ve talked about from the beginning, and we specifically decided not to delve into what would traditionally be considered church music. But we use elements. There’s a lot of harp in this film, but we use it in a pretty strange way, mostly in a rhythmic way. And in one of the key scenes, the harp anchors itself with just the lowest string plucked, and an instrument that usually seems so beautiful and heavenly makes it seem like the fear of hell is bubbling beneath the surface.

Tell me about where you grew up and how you first got involved in music.

I grew up in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. And I was in garage bands. For a while I lived in England and played music there. And that’s where I composed the music for my first film, which was also Rian’s first film, “Brick”.

I recorded the entire score in my apartment with a laptop and a microphone. We had no budget. So instead of a string section, it was tuned wine glasses. And the percussion was like mallets on the filing cabinet in my hallway. This was one of those examples of restriction being the mother of invention.

It’s a pretty weird film that takes place in a high school. And I think in Rian’s ideal high school, everyone listened to Tom Waits, which inspired this broken down, slightly out of tune, rusty feeling.

So, you met Rian when you were playing in Europe?

Rian and I are cousins, actually. He is the oldest of 25 cousins, and I am next in line. He is three years older than me. So we’ve been doing plays and making music and making films since we were very young together.

You also composed the music for “Poker Face”. Are you developing a specialty in offbeat, star-filled mysteries?

I guess I’ve done quite a few now. Rian talked about it; mystery is part of it, but collecting clues will never sustain the audience through a film. What really needs to be there is the heart and emotional stakes for the characters. That’s usually my first point of entry into these films. I appreciate the puzzle nature, but as a composer what really interests me is the motivation of the characters and the emotional tension that runs through the film.

I try as much as possible to come at it with a clean slate and let the characters start to inform me. I’m not the type of composer who thinks, “I want to make this type of film because I want to make this type of music.” » It’s just about showing up and letting the characters start talking to me.

For example, this film, when I watched the rough cut of it, was the first Rian film that made me cry. And I immediately knew I wanted to protect that. There’s a moment at the very end where there’s this generosity and connection, and it struck me. We’re watching a murder mystery, but it has this really generous presenter, I think. And so I came home, and that was the first thing I started working on. If that moment doesn’t work, the whole movie doesn’t work. And then it becomes a fun puzzle-solving exercise. I feel like I’m trying to talk about something ethereal and smoke-filled, but I guess in a way that’s what it feels like.

The specific challenge, especially with these films, is that they are very dense. So in a Knives Out movie, you’ll never have a five-minute scene where the music takes over and you have moody shots of someone thinking. Because of the way they’re constructed, they move at a pretty fast pace and there’s a lot of dialogue going on. The challenge is how to assist the emotion and the motor. It becomes a really interesting needle to thread. In these films, more than in most films, my job is to disappear and be felt rather than heard.