Interview: Rian Johnson (Brick)

Brick takes a fresh look at the noir genre. There’s a murder, a
detective, a femme fatal, a shady back story that slowly unfolds,
corruption, betrayal, and no adults anywhere. The whole film revolves
around teenagers: high school students who are actors, drug dealers,
bookworms, football players, addicts and partygoers. The setting is in
the high school itself, the basements of the characters and backlots of
the deli’s where they hang out. Brick is not only a fresh look at the
noir genre but it is fresh in terms of any movie.

Another interesting note is that Brick brings you into a world where
language rules. The kids speak with a slang only understood by them.
Here’s a few words and their proper translations:

Bulls – cops – “What first, tip the bulls?”
Gum – to mess things up – “Bulls would only gum it up.”
Hop – drugs – “Give me the hop”
Heel – to walk away from – “I’m not heeling you to hook you.”
Pick – a ride in a car – “Did she get a pick?”
Yeg – a guy – “They’d probably find some yeg to pin it on.”

The list goes on and on. It’s entertaining. By the end you are immersed
in their world, albeit a fake world, but for some reason you believe it.

For around nine years, give or take, Rian Johnson, the director, wrote
the script, shopped it around to everybody and anybody he knew, and
raised the money (mostly from family and friends) to shoot Brick the way
he wanted to. He shot the film in his hometown (San Clemente, CA), his
old high school and many other surroundings he was familiar with. He
wound up cutting the film himself in his bedroom after the production
was over. So this highly stlyzed genre film also has the feeling of a
personal film as well. One can tell by watching Brick that this comes
from Rian’s mind. He created the world depicted in the film from its
language to its plot from his imagination and it is believable because
he believes in it.

I interviewed Rian Johnson while he was in New York.

Justin Ambrosino: How long did it take you from script to screen?

Rian Johnson: Well I wrote this right out of film school back in 1997.
So overall it’s been a 9 year process. It took six or seven years to
find the funding. You probably hear from anyone who has made a movie in
this budget level that it’s just a long process of trying to get the money.

JA: How long did it take you to write it?

RJ: I spent about a year putting it together in my head thinking about
it. It was very much influenced by Dashell Hammett novels. So the first
step I took was I wrote this as a novella, in prose, copying Dashell
Hammett writing style which is very particular, very abrupt and that for
me helped to shape the story and the dialogue and to capture the feel of
some of those books. Then I just transcribed that into screenplay form.
The entire writing process took about four months or so. But that was
all a year after percolation.

JA: Was it a frustrating process to get the story out?

RJ: Well the frustrating part was when we weren’t able to tell the story
– getting the money. The whole writing process and movie making process
was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. I’m knocking on wood that
the next movie doesn’t take six years to make.

JA: Do you think it’s important to focus on the story you want to tell
instead of the audience you want to reach?

RJ: I think it’s absolutely vital. With Brick, making the decision to
make a movie that is going to appeal to a certain type of person, also
lead to the decision that we were going to make it on a very low budget.
You have to be practical to that extent but at the same time its
creatively poison to start thinking with those terms.

JA: You managed to create characterization with the dialogue, explain
how you were able to accomplish that?

RJ: I give 99 percent of the credit to the actors. I was very conscious
that we were doing a very established form – the Detective movie- and
that these were “types” that everyone was very familiar with, but it was
really important to me to isolate the creative team from that as much as
possible and to have them bring there own creative choices to these
roles. So we were constantly being honest about our creation of this
world. Obviously it’s a very elevated world, style wise, but it was
important to me that we were being honest with ourselves in creating
something in that context that was real.

JA: When writing a screenplay, most “authorities” say to use minimal
dialogue, where did you get the idea to shape your script around dialogue?

RJ: Part of it was making the decision early on that this wasn’t be a
film for everybody, that this is going to be a film that a certain type
of moviegoer is going to be into and we are going to make the movie
small enough where that is ok. Where we can do something interesting
and we don’t have to worry about it appealing to everybody in the world.
Once I was able to free myself of that, I was able to dive 100% in the
language. That being said, there are also big sections that are
completely nonverbal; that are almost visceral comic book sequences.

JA: Do you consider yourself a Director first and a writer second?

RJ: Well I’ve been making movies since I was a kid, so when I first
starting doing that there wasn’t any distinction. It wasn’t like writing
is this art form and directing is this art form. It was just making
movies; telling stories. I really try to carry that over to this, from
the writing to the direction even to the editing. It’s just one
continuous process.

JA: Can you talk a bit about the visual language of Brick; it’s one of
the only storytelling elements that don’t appear to be influenced by the
noir genre?

RJ: Well we didn’t want to be specifically drawing from noir but at the
same time we didn’t want to be making choice to spite noir. We wanted to
imagine it wasn’t there and make our own choices. Visually, Sergio Leone
was probably the biggest influence on this film. Just because I was
watching a bunch of his films while I was planning it out. And if you
watch the finished product it’s probably more like a Leone western than
a noir. I also fully expect the Coen brothers to take legal action
because I stole so much from them.

JA: Nearly the whole film was strategically scored, how did you come to
find the composer Nathan Johnson?

RJ: Well we’ve been making movies together since we were twelve. I told
Nathan to look at the Third Man soundtrack. I told him to listen to John
Bryan and Ennio Morricone. I told him to listen to movies in which the
music is a character; in which the music put it’s hands in the narrative
and helps it along.

JA: Did you approach him before or after you shoot the film?

RJ: I wish I had him there in production. I approached him after I had a
cut of it together and then we started working on it.

JA: Did Focus Features want to make any changes when they bought it?

RJ: Well when we sold it to Focus at Sundance we were able to get Final
Cut in the contract so I actually did some recutting after Sundance
because after watching it with an audience there were things I wanting
to speed up and tweek. Focus had suggestions but we were in the nice
place to not have to listen.

JA: How far along are you on your next project now?

RJ: Well I’ve written it and we are working with Focus Features to do
it. It’s a “con man” movie. It’s stylized but it’s still definitely its
own world. It’s not as insular as Brick. It’s a little more open; a
little more assessable.

JA: Coming from a film school, what steps lead you to finally making Brick?

RJ: I wrote this right out of film school. Then I got it to anyone who
would read it. I had no connection in the industry at all and I’m very
bad at putting myself out there and selling myself. That what was part
of it being such a long process. My friend Steve Yedlin who shot the
movie, he was working as a grip on film sets, so he would pass it to the
producer when he could. That’s how we found one of our producers
actually. It snowballs. Me I got a series of day-jobs. I worked at the
Disney Channel for a few years producing children’s promos and I worked
at a preschool for deaf children in LA. I was basically their video guy,
making instructional videos for the kids. They were jobs that kept me
fed but that didn’t suck up all my time. It was tough not to second
guess yourself the whole time. But it was important to stick to your guns.

JA: What’s the most important thing you learned in film school?

RJ: I learned that you can’t learn to make movies in a class room. The
only way to learn is by watching them and making them. That been said,
film school was a really nice four year break from the world where you
could watch lots of movies and make your own movies.

Focus Features
releases Brick on March 31st in New York and Los Angeles with a wider release to occur in the weeks to come.