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On the occasion of KNIVES OUT opening:
@RianJohnson describes himself as a "genre junkie" and the @NYTimes just called him a "genre savant," so here are a few outtakes from our recent conversation on the uses and abuses of genre — a subject very close to my heart (1/8)
@RianJohnson describes himself as a "genre junkie" and the @NYTimes just called him a "genre savant," so here are a few outtakes from our recent conversation on the uses and abuses of genre — a subject very close to my heart (1/8)
(relevant backstory interjection) (1.5/8): https://www.vulture.com/2014/01/writers-lev-grossman-adam-sternbergh-discuss-genre-books-nerds.html
First, on the whodunit, which Johnson smartly identifies as a kind of time-travel genre:
"The genre’s always had a meta element. There's a meta layer narratively — it takes place on two simultaneous timelines. You’re doing the Rashomon thing of reexamining the past..." (2/8)
"The genre’s always had a meta element. There's a meta layer narratively — it takes place on two simultaneous timelines. You’re doing the Rashomon thing of reexamining the past..." (2/8)
"...for a timeline junkie like me, and a genre junkie like me, the idea of prying into that was too seductive to pass up."
A particularly fun element in KNIVES OUT is how the story of the past, as told in flashbacks, keeps changing, depending on who's doing the telling. (3/8)
A particularly fun element in KNIVES OUT is how the story of the past, as told in flashbacks, keeps changing, depending on who's doing the telling. (3/8)
(plus this suggests that BRICK, LOOPER, and KNIVES OUT — which all deal with storylines taking place on multiple timelines and their interconnections and repercussions — are more thematically linked than they might first appear) (3.5/8)
Genre overall gets a bad rap, treated as synonymous w/ tropes or cliche — but the shared language of genre is a potentially powerful tool.
Johnson: "What’s exciting to me right now is how supersaturated we are as viewers with the conventions of these different genres..." (4/8)
Johnson: "What’s exciting to me right now is how supersaturated we are as viewers with the conventions of these different genres..." (4/8)
"...because the more solid [an audience's] knowledge of the rules of the game are, the more fun you can have sharing that language with them."
I love this idea: that genre as a shared vocabulary—an artistic starting point—speaks to creative possibility, not stagnation. (5/8)
I love this idea: that genre as a shared vocabulary—an artistic starting point—speaks to creative possibility, not stagnation. (5/8)
(the idea of acknowledging a pre-existing shared vocabulary among the audience and playing with those genre expectations also speaks to how one might approach, say, creating a chapter in, say, an ongoing iconic space-opera movie franchise) (5.5/8)
Finally, this notion about how creators can best relate to the genres they love.
When genre just repeats itself, it feels dead. So don't simply imitate — instead, as Johnson says, "You have to tap in the purest way you can into what you love about the stuff you love." (6/8)
When genre just repeats itself, it feels dead. So don't simply imitate — instead, as Johnson says, "You have to tap in the purest way you can into what you love about the stuff you love." (6/8)
Thinking about "what you love about the stuff you love" is a handy starting point for working within any genre, as well as a pretty good overall artistic manifesto. (7/8)
some genre elements persist to reinforce pernicious ideas (see @alicebolin's great essay collection DEAD GIRLS) and some persist because they reliably hit a particular pleasure button — so identifying and interrogating those pleasures is crucial to any genre undertaking (7.5/8)
Here's the original interview, which hopefully contains lots of interesting stuff but didn't contain much about genre, because not everyone is a genre junkie, and also word counts (8/8): https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/rian-johnson-knives-out.html
