Why Wake Up Dead Man Sounds Nothing Like Previous Knives Out Movies: Interview with Nathan Johnson

Pictures courtesy of Netflix

Nathan Johnson lays all the cards out of the Knives Out mysteries through cues and themes. Never revealing the killer, mind you, but Johnson is always playing at the drama afoot in director Rian Johnson’s films. Good versus evil, light versus darkness, faith versus logic – these are the battles that inspired the composer’s latest score for Wake Up Dead Man.

Johnson, also known for Nightmare Alley and Looper, is similar to detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) in the sense of accepting new (musical) challenges with each case. “It’s the most challenging invitation to let the music dance with characters that I’ve ever experienced,” Johnson told What’s On Netflix. “I don’t exactly know how to do it every single time I sit down to do one of these, which is scary but thrilling.”

The composer also spoke about crafting the thrills and scares for Blanc and his newest partner, Father Jud (Josh O’Connor), in the gothic addition to the page-turner of a film series.

Was church music at all an influence for you?

So we talked about this early on and decided not to lean too much into that. However, one of the key things in the score: I have this broken pump organ, this old harmonium, and what I did was I recorded that and then slowed it way down. You hear this unsettling sound that almost sounds like ropes pulling across creaky timbers.

Rian was talking to me, not about church, but about this idea of Ahab in Moby Dick ranting against the waves, and this sort of nautical theme. I also use a lot of harp in the score, which often has angelic implications, but rather than doing these heavenly solos, I used it more as a rhythm instrument. Specifically in certain themes, just the lowest note incessantly plucking, which doesn’t sound heavenly at all. It kind of sounds like the coming bells of hell.

So it was not necessarily being inspired by church music, but it was using instruments that might be found in a church and really turning them upside down, finding different ways to use and abuse them.

For the battle of good versus evil, how’d you want contrast in the score to tell that story?

The first thing you hear in the whole movie is all the violins scratching their bows against the strings, almost like nails on a chalkboard. Then that resolves into a single pure tone. To me, this was kind of the whole movie, this idea of a tug of war between ugliness and beauty, or between darkness and light, that felt inherent both in the movie and in the score. 

One of the key motifs for Josh Brolin’s character, who plays Monsignor Wicks, is every time he’s in the pulpit, musically what’s happening is I’m getting the orchestra to play in two completely different time signatures and tempos at the same time. They’re related, but it’s like two different grooves fighting with each other.

For me, this felt like it captured the idea of hypocrisy and doublespeak. It’s the feeling when someone in power tells you the world is a certain way, and you look around and realize this is not at all true. Conceptually, this is kind of what’s happening in the music. You can never lock into the groove because there are conflicting grooves playing right on top of each other. It’s an unsettling musical exploration of being lied to.

When do you know if you’re achieving that goal? 

At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is if the music is working with the scene. 

Some of the score was performed in a Church too, right? 

One thing I remember is getting really excited about working with my sound engineers and going into an old church in London. They set up this crazy 11-microphone array to capture spatial audio.

I called in a bunch of musicians. My idea was to have all of the bass clarinets use the keys on the clarinets as a clacking rhythmic machine, almost like a cross between skittering spiders and falling dominoes. 

It became one of the main rhythmic signatures in the movie. It’s a sort of laggy, staggered snare drum made with six different bass clarinets hammering on their keys. I talked to Rian about it, mocked up rough samples. He loved it.

The tone is always different for these Benoit Blanc stories. Here, it’s gothic, slightly in the tone of Edgar Allan Poe. How’d you like the music to support Rian’s atmosphere? 

The main thing we arrived at was to basically get rid of all the melodies. I’m usually a pretty melody-forward composer. Knives Out and Glass Onion are both really different, but both have a strong sense of melody. Knives Out is this cutting quartet in a claustrophobic New England mansion. Glass Onion is more like a seventies orchestral, lush, romantic, Island sound.

For this movie, maybe melody is not our key into this. Instead of melodic motifs, pretty much all motifs are conceptual. For example, the scratch tone into a pure tone is a conceptual motif. It’s about how something feels. There’s no melody for your brain to grab onto. The orchestra playing in two different tempos and rhythms is a conceptual melody. You feel it in your bones, and it feels unsettling.

Key elements like the bass clarinets as a rhythmic machine and the harmonium slowed down create a guttural unease. That really seemed to be what this movie was asking for.

Without spoiling it for anyone, how did you want those motifs to resolve when the case is solved? 

This is always a big challenge for me. In a Knives Out movie, there’s a murderer and a long explanation where we look back at the whole story. The challenge is that this is a 10-minute chunk that has to compel the audience while shifting gears every 10 to 15 seconds.

One minute we’re full throttle, the next we’re slamming on the brakes, and then from a standstill, we’re back up. I landed on this 11-minute violin concerto that dips into all these tonal ideas, but at the end, the last thing you hear is a high, single, pure note on the violin. At the heart of it, it’s about finding resolution and creating a cathartic emotional moment.

This was the first movie Rian made that made me cry at the end. I knew that moment needed protection. At Abbey Road, we were hovering over the soundboard, finessing it so it wasn’t too loud or too quiet. Everyone in the room had been crying the whole time. For Rian, it’s about supporting the onscreen emotion, not overcooking it.

What were some of your earliest ideas for scoring the ensemble? 

With all of these amazing actors operating at this level, it’s a wonderful invitation for me as a composer. Rian never asks me to fix a part of the movie with music. They’re already firing on all cylinders. I get to do a precise dance with what they’ve brought to the table.

One fun example is the idea of revelation. When we first experienced that, it’s linked to Jud, but it’s also experienced through other characters’ eyes. Jud introduces the motif while searching for revelation, then passes it to other characters. I love the idea of theme-stealing. In Glass Onion, Miles Bron (Edward Norton), who’s never had an original thought, steals Andi Brand’s (Janelle Monáe) theme when he has to sell his pain.

Are there ever any other clues or red herrings for the crime in the score?

Rian says no one can mislead the audience better than the audience themselves. We’re not trying to be clever with the music. We’re just underlining the emotion in the current scene. If the actors are being honest and I’m being honest with what they’re doing, that’s all the elements you need to make the metaphorical “cake” come together at the end.