Wagner’s ‘Das Rheingold’

My guest today is director Rian Johnson, which is exciting for me, because I’ve been a huge fan of his ever since seeing his first feature film, Brick, in 2006. Since then, he’s made six more feature films, including Looper in 2012; Star Wars: The Last Jedi in 2017; the murder mystery Knives Out in 2019; and his most recent movie, another in the Knives Out series, Wake Up Dead Man, which is already out in theaters, and comes to Netflix on December 12. I talked to Rian about a piece of music that had a profound impact on him, which was the overture to Das Rheingold by Richard Wagner.

“Kill the Wabbit”
“La Traviata”
Focus Features
The Brothers Bloom
Opéra Bastille
Ring Cycle
J. R. R. Tolkien
J. J. Abrams
Terrence Malick
Nathan Johnson
Bayreuth Festival Theatre
Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music by Alex Ross