Rian Johnson on ‘Wake Up Dead Man,’ Josh O’Connor’s neck tattoo, and AI slop

With Wake up dead manwriter/director Rian Johnson brings moviegoers a third fascinating murder-mystery from Benoit Blanc. But what inspired this intoxicating mix of faith, fear and stubborn logic?

Johnson spoke with Mashable Entertainment Editor-in-Chief Kristy Puchko in an interview with Say More. Their conversation began on Broadway, drawing on Johnson’s longtime love of theater – including his hopes that Miss Piggy would make O Mary! From there, he spoke about his love of the genre, mixing intellectual and modest elements. They dug into Josh O’Connor’s ‘hot priest’ neck tattoo – and how the internet craves it.

Fun fact for fans: O’Connor created the design himself. Johnson wrote the neck tattoo into the script and apologized to O’Connor, saying, “I know it’s going to be a lot of work. We’ll barely glimpse it, and no one might even notice, but I feel like it says a lot. It’s like the key to this guy.”

A piece of trash bucket AI will never be able to have that connection with an audience because it never lived.

He continued: “It was something that Josh designed. Because it was something else, all I wanted to see was a tiny glimpse of it. [I told him]’I want you to choose what it is and I want you to design it.’ And I don’t remember exactly what it was about. It was some kind of symbol or something. It wasn’t like a word or anything like that, but it was something that Josh had sort of made up with a story that implied what that thing actually meant. »

Aside from being “happy” that fans spotted the tattoo, Johnson is also optimistic about the future of cinema. While the possible Netflix/Warner Bros. merger. worries some about the fate of movie theaters and the rise of AI puts Hollywood in turmoil, this announced filmmaker expressed his calm certainty that man-made art in movie theaters would survive.

“I’m not afraid,” Johnson began, “Because I go to the movies, and what I see in the movies are young people. And I see young people showing up to the movies. I see them excited to go with friends and have this experience. And I mean, AI is a bunch of bullshit… I don’t care how good the movie is. I think there’s an element of the process of making a movie where it’s a little bit like theater, where the audience is aware that they are engaging with another person, even if that person is the filmmaker, when they are watching something.”

He continued: “And I think that’s why you see directors like Guillermo [del Toro] and directors like director Bong [Joon Ho] and directors like PTA [Paul Thomas Anderson]. And I see fan bases growing around them because they are voices, and audiences have a connection with them when they watch their films. A piece of trash bucket AI will never be able to have that connection with an audience because it never lived. So no, I think we’re living in crazy times, and I think there are some really difficult things about this time. But at the end of the day, I’m sure people will continue to want to come together and watch stories.”

For more from our Say More interview with Johnson, check out the full interview on YouTube.

Wake up dead man now playing on Netflix.