In working with Rian Johnson on his critically acclaimed box-office smash Knives Out and its recent Netflix sequel Glass Onion, editor Bob Ducsay has gotten his first major opportunities to dissect the whodunit, coming to understand the unique challenges of the genre, and the ways in which it magnifies those prevalent on films of all kinds.
“When you’re cutting a movie…we have to pretend we don’t know anything about the movie as we’re putting it together. Because you’re always trying to put yourself in the point of view of the audience,” Ducsay explains. “That’s always hard on every movie because you’ve seen the movie over and over again, and you know everything about the movie from the script stage.”
The murder mystery, he continues, “adds a whole new level” of complexity to storytelling — presenting a more complicated puzzle, as far as the managing and subverting of audience expectations. “Because there are certain things that we have to dole out to the audience at certain times. So…that level of concentration and discipline that’s required, and the knowledge that you have to bring about where the audience is looking and what they’re thinking about…is extremely important.”
A key corollary for Johnson and Ducsay, in the shaping of the whodunit, that makes the endeavor all the more challenging, is that in the fabrication and resolution of their murder mysteries, no cheating is permissible, as the pair discuss in the latest edition of Deadline’s video series, The Process. “You and I have talked about this a lot in both films, but especially in Glass Onion, how we’ve tried to be as honest as possible with the audience, and to make sure that if you watch it again, you don’t feel you’ve been duped,” Ducsay tells Johnson. “You’re delighted by the things that you missed that were in plain sight.”
Of the unique features baked into the murder mystery story, one of the most challenging to grapple with for Johnson has been the sprawling ensemble that comes with this kind of narrative — something that’s been constantly on his mind, when it’s come not only to the writing, casting and blocking processes, but in post-production, as well. “I feel like we’re very conscious in the edit of trying to represent everybody and trying to keep everybody alive in the scene, which is quite a task when you have eight or nine characters in any given scene,” says the filmmaker. “And there were a lot of those scenes in Glass Onion.”
Johnson’s second in a line of whodunits, following Knives Out‘s massive global success, is connected to that original story only by a single character: the famed Southern detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig). While Blanc in Knives Out investigated the murder of a mystery novelist at his Massachusetts estate, he in Glass Onion makes his way to Greece, where a murder-mystery game played by tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton) and a group of his most wealthy and influential friends becomes a real matter of life and death.
Ducsay came to the Knives Out franchise after collaborating with Johnson on his films Looper and Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi — becoming on the former project the person Johnson credits with teaching him how to collaborate with an editor. Johnson famously began making films on tape at a young age, editing them in-camera, and later went on to cut his feature directorial debut, Brick, as well. He admits in his chat with Ducsay that he was frustrated as he pressed on in his career by the notion of having to cede control of the editing process to someone else, after having for so many years had his own hands on the material.
He says that this scenario, to him, felt more “organic,” and that collaborating with an editor initially felt awkward — “like playing the piano by telling somebody what keys to press.” It’s for this reason, he says, that to this day, he tends to keep his hands busy during the post process. by building “elaborate” Lego sets. “If I don’t keep my hands busy, I will go insane while we’re editing,” he deadpans. “So, there’s actually been a method to my Lego madness.”
But as much of a learning curve as it’s been for Johnson to give up on of editing all of his works himself, he’s of course ultimately seen great rewards in doing so. “Once I learned the collaborative nature of it and how to work with you, as opposed to through you, it became something where it was additive… just like my relationship with Steve [Yedlin], who’s my cinematographer, or any of the other HODs,” Johnson tells Ducsay. “It becomes something where the added voice, the added perspective, the time it takes to talk through it was something that added to the finished product, as opposed to being an obstruction.”
Bowing on Netflix on December 23rd after opening in 600 theaters the month prior, Glass Onion sees Craig joined on screen by Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Kate Hudson and Dave Bautista. Johnson and Ram Bergman produced the TIFF-premiering title, which has been recognized so far this awards season with six Critics’ Choice Award nominations and two at the Golden Globes, among other accolades.
In conversation with Johnson on The Process, Ducsay discusses discovering editing and experimenting with George Lucas’ fabled EditDroid while at USC, the huge difference in cutting an effects-heavy film like The Last Jedi vs. a smaller, more character-driven title, his approach to diagnosing story issues and his notes process with Johnson, the challenge of distilling down many hours of footage for Glass Onion‘s ensemble-driven scenes and capturing all the best moments, his approach to working with music and sound, and more.
Johnson speaks with his editor — who has most recently teamed with him for the upcoming Peacock series Poker Face — about the trust that enables a successful collaboration between film creatives, editing as a form of writing, his own time at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, his studies of Spielberg and Citizen Kane, his approach to blocking Glass Onion’s ensemble scenes, and why that part of crafting the Knives Out films has been “the hardest” for him, among other topics.
View the full conversation by clicking above.
