[originally published 10/12/2012]
In 2005, he gave us Brick, the story of a fringe teenager trying to solve the murder of his one-time girlfriend, maneuvering through the bizarre social strata of his high school in a shadowy plot reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett. In 2009, he took The Sting, tossed it in the blender, and poured out a twisted tale of confidence men, heavy on the twists and the confidence, and called it The Brothers Bloom. Now, in 2012, hither comes Looper, a clever time-travel narrative that breaks new ground without really trying to, asking us to contemplate the malleable nature of ourselves.
Writer/director Rian Johnson is Fonzie cool. We're not talking leather jackets, helmet hair, and "Ayyyy!" but The Fonz is there all the same. The Fonz was cool because he was one of a kind. We were asked to accept that his mystical powers, like his ability to start a jukebox with his fist, were a byproduct of his coolness. Nobody else could do what The Fonz did, probably because nobody had the conviction for it, and throughout the run of Happy Days and its various off-shoots, we were treated to people who made cursory stabs at being cool and always fell flat on their faces.
The Fonz kept it simple--motorcycle, mechanic shop, jeans and t-shirt. The same could be said for Rian Johnson. This is not to say that Johnson's films are dressed down in any way, but no matter what the story, no matter how clever the idea (and so far, the ideas have been very clever), when it comes to filmmaking Rian doesn't try to re-invent the wheel. Rather, Johnson's films have a quality that makes them almost old school, despite the innovative ideas he uses as a starting point. Rian seems to eschew pretentiousness, even when not making films. No moment seems more evident of this than when he was a guest host on the /Film podcast and started playing his banjo loudly over his Skype mic when the regular hosts tried to wax like stuffy, bearded, balding film scholars.
But rather than ramble like a Star Wars fanboy meeting a Stormtrooper at Disneyworld, let me dress my own argument down to the bare bones. Here for your perusal are the five reasons I love Rian Johnson, the five reasons his films are cool, and ultimately the five reasons Rian Johnson, in my estimation, is the Hollywood's new equivalent of The Fonz.
1. Rian's films don't "make you think."
This statement may seem like an indictment, but hear me out. One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to film discussion, especially in the case of Internet bloggers, is when they fall back on the tired old cliche that a movie "makes you think." When I hear that a film "makes you think," that's usually a clear indicator that it has not yet grown into its big boy pants. Often, Make You Think (MYT) films are marked by a filmmaker trying to be clever while neglecting what makes a good film in the first place (see: Donnie Darko). Most of the films that Fanboy Nation deem as MYT are obtuse, overly complex, often leaving unanswered questions in an attempt to appear ambiguous and therefore "cool." But like the poseurs in Arnold's Malt Shot, these films aren't cool; rather, they exist largely to breast-feed the filmmaker's ego.
Rian's films don't play in that sandbox.
Not to suggest that Rian makes mindless actioners like The Expendables. If that was the genre Rian worked in, the idea of "making one think" wouldn't even enter into the conversation. Of course those films don't "make you think"; if anything, they ask you to stop thinking and hold on for the ride lest you remember how mundane your life is outside the darkened theater.
What Rian has found is a happy medium. Like the MYT filmmakers, he enters his narrative with a clever idea or, dare I say, "gimmick." With Brick (2005), the "gimmick" was to take the story of a contemporary high school kid trying to solve the murder of his girlfriend and tell it in the style of Dashiell Hammett (Roger Ebert queried who the audience for this was, since high school kids don't normally follow film noir, and film noir fans don't flock to see teen dramas). With The Brothers Bloom (2009), the "gimmick" was to horn in on David Mamet's pick-up confidence game, let the audience in on the con, and then "sting" it more times than a swarm of killer bees. And in Looper (2012), the "gimmick" is to turn the time-travel genre on end by following a hitman hired to assassinate an older version of himself.
All three premises open themselves up to convolution, to a filmmaker who might on lesser days become so enamored with his own cleverness that he bogs down the viewer with sloppy narrative pyrotechnique and facile exposition designed to make fanboys feel smart when they actually "get" it. But Rian plays a different game. Rather than churn out the kind of pseudo-intellectual slop that routinely gets labeled as "mind-bending" (see: Inception), he taps into an almost lost art: he tells a story. You know, a story? Those things with three-dimensional characters, complications, developments, perepiteia, and resolutions both false and true?
I'll get more into story later on in this list. Suffice to say, I love story, and so does Rian Johnson. Story is why Rian's films work, why they transcend the MYT film cliche, and why I could watch them repeatedly simply because I enjoy them, not because I need to figure them out.
Oh, and they still make me feel smart as well.
2. Action! Action! Action!
Are you familiar with the Jason Bourne movies, especially the ones directed by Paul Greengrass? Have you noticed how Greengrass (and countless imitators) direct action? If not, let me enlighten you.
You start out with seven cameras. Each camera is attached to a battery-powered paint mixer and then suspended from a giant crib mobile, which is spun around the action. Once the footage is shot, the editing room has strict instructions that no single shot should last over two seconds. The result is a mishmash of images that liquifies the brain and incites migraines.
I remember the first time I saw hyper-editing in an action film. It was 1986, the movie was Top Gun, and the aerial dogfight sequences were so difficult to follow in some instances that I walked out hating the movie (I have since warmed up to it, if only because I’ve trained my eye how to watch the combat scenes and because later hyper-edited action scenes are worse).
The next year it was Lethal Weapon, a film destined to be one of my favorites. Although the action is great, by the time we arrive at the climax, director Richard Donner decides to go all artsy-fartsy on us. Remember that scene, Lethal Weapon fans? It was the moment when Martin Riggs was allowed to go mano a mano with the evil Mr. Joshua. This was the climactic fight we had been waiting for, and what did Donner do? He shot it at night, under helicopter spotlights, with water spraying from a fire hydrant to fragment the light, and it was edited at about 15 different cuts a minute. I remember how that fight almost ruined it for me (plus it isn’t very satisfying--I keep waiting for Riggs to have his Hulk Hogan moment where he pummels Joshua senseless).
The cool thing about Rian Johnson is he doesn’t film action like he’s shooting a music video. Looper is his most action-driven film so far, and the amazing thing about it is that (drum roll, please!) we can actually follow what’s happening on the screen. Unlike the numerous fight sequences in the Bourne films, where we don’t know who has the upper hand until it’s over and Bourne is standing over the body, Looper’s action is kinetic but fluid, with a clear sense of space and character geography. Rian even pays a visual homage to one of my favorite moments from Mad Max, which gives him brownie points.
Now, this is not groundbreaking stuff. The history of cinema is distended with great directors who take a simple, graceful approach to their action sequences (the raid on Scar’s camp in John Ford’s The Searchers, with the rapid tracking shot alongside a warrior on his fiercely galloping horse, is a great example). Rian Johnson is not the Lone Ranger here, and as I have said before, he’s not re-inventing the wheel. Rather, he gives us action in such a way that it supports the narrative and we can follow its contribution to story at the same time. Rather than trying to be a “cool,” he keeps it real and comes out cool anyway.
And in an action film, that sort of stuff makes me giddy.
3. He is ever vigilant for clichés.
I can think of two overwrought conventions in cinema that drive me crazy.
The first is the cliché of the music montage. You’ve seen this before, and if you haven’t, you don’t watch much TV or cinema. In TV, it comes at the end of an episode, one where the writers have no idea how to wrap up the loose ends of this week’s installment, so the director resorts to a montage of each of the key characters, sitting in their quiet little domains, staring off into space and contemplating the meaninglessness of their existence. Usually, this is accompanied by one of the countless covers of Tears For Fears’ “Mad World,” which you can easily find on You Tube if you’re so inclined.
I have yet to see the music montage in a Rian Johnson film, and if I have it was so unassuming that I don’t remember it. Give the man a check-mark in the cool column for that.
The second cliché is that of the cute kid. Yes, yes, I know, Pierce Gagnon, the little boy who plays Cid in Looper, is cute as a button. That’s the thing with children; they can’t help but be cute. Wander through Disneyworld and observe your surroundings. Even the most tired, the most unruly, the most obnoxious children still have an element of cute in them.
The difference here is that Rian doesn’t exploit that cuteness. Cid in Looper is another character who, as it turns out, is integral to the story. He has his cute moments, especially when he is showing his toys to Young Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) at the kitchen table, but these sequences are a derivative of the drama itself. Gagnon is cute enough on his own, and Rian doesn’t shove that cute in our faces like a toddler opening his mouth with chewed food.
Give the man another check mark for cool here.
There are other clichés of course, and it would take a book to list them. In Looper alone, Rian has opportunities for quite a few--the ubiquitous smash-cut; the boy-girl cute dance to the radio in the kitchen; the Roger-Moore-as-007 one-liner right before a kill--and he has passed on all of them. I don’t know if he is actively avoiding clichés, but I choose to believe he writes the way I try to write, with the story’s best interests at heart. Most clichés in film are lazy mile markers for less discerning viewers, a means to familiarize them enough so they don’t forget they’re watching a movie.
Rian doesn’t pander to that. The Fonz wouldn’t pander either. How cool is that?
4. He doesn’t flinch.
About halfway through Looper, Old Joe (Bruce Willis) has to perform an act so appalling that most viewers wonder if he will have the stomach for it. I didn’t question Old Joe’s resolve, but I did question Rian Johnson’s. Thankfully, he didn’t disappoint me. I won’t go into details as I don’t want to spoil one of Looper’s greatest gut punches, but suffice to say in the hands of 99.9% of the writers, producers, and directors out there, it wouldn’t have happened.
I speak from experience. When I first shopped my screenplay Baby’s Breath in Hollywood, the first agent who read it loved it so much that he sent it out to ten different production companies, and within two days I had ten meetings. I'm not trying to brag here, but you don’t get that kind of response unless your script is pretty good.
I took all ten meetings, and I felt like I hit it off well with the producers and young creative executives that I met. Nevertheless, the mantra from each production office was always the same: “Great writing, but we could never make this film because it does this one thing right here. Is there any way you could change this one thing right here so that something else happens?”
I tried to be cool and explained that I felt that “this one thing right here” had to happen in order for my characters to reach some closure. The ten production offices and my one agent agreed and reaffirmed that it was a great story, but “this one thing right here” simply could not happen in a mainstream Hollywood movie. Audiences would hate it, and the film would tank at the box office.
In Looper, Rian Johnson allows “this one thing right here” to happen. As I said earlier, it's a wonderful gut punch. I haven’t felt gut punched that hard since Once Were Warriors, which is sort of a touchstone film for me when talking about films that have the courage of their convictions. When I saw “this one thing right here” in Looper, I almost applauded. It let the world know that Rian Johnson has the balls to do right by his story, and that is a profoundly wonderful thing.
If The Fonz were here, he’d give it his ubiquitous two thumbs up too.
5. Story, Story, Story ...Story.
It's the most important part of filmmaking. Story is supposed to be the chief product of the film industry, and it goes hand in hand with character. Story and character are why we stop focusing on the noirish elements of Brick and start caring about Brendan's investigation, why we don't know which character to root for in The Brothers Bloom because we are interested in all of them, and why we grasp the time-travel elements of Looper so quickly because we want to see how the conflict between Joe and Old Joe carries itself out. Yes, these stories demand your attention, but Rian's not interesting in "making you think." He wants you to use your brain, but in the end he wants you to feel, and that's the ultimate outcome of any good story.
I felt something in every one of Rian's films, and I find myself revisiting them to feel it again. That's the sign of a great storyteller, and it's one of the reasons I can't wait for Rian's next film.
So ... Mr. Johnson, you're hired. Head on down to wardrobe to get fitted for your leather bomber jacket and see props for your custom pre-unit 500 Triumph twin motorcycle. And Mr. Tarantino, you best be looking over your shoulder. There's a new cool in town, and he plays a mean banjo.
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