Rian Johnson isn’t attempting to reinvent the wheel.
The Oscar-nominated author and director has playfully injected recent power into beloved genres by his work together with whodunits Knives Out and Glass Onion, sci-fi thriller Looper and neo-noir thriller Brick.
His motion pictures pop, an alchemical mixture of charismatic performances, snappy writing and a way of enjoyable balanced with smarts. They’re in dialog with the second, comparable to Knives Out’s evisceration of previous cash entitlement.
But for all of their modernity, Johnson isn’t trying to up-end conference. He enthusiastically embraces it.
“I don’t come at it thinking this is some old dusty thing that has to be turned on its head, but to come at it thinking this is a machine that works,” Johnson stated. “And if it’s rusty, it’s just a matter of cleaning it up and getting it really running well.
“With any genre, that’s always my approach. Not thinking of it in terms of reinventing it, but thinking in terms of getting back to what works about it in essence and trying to do that as well as I possibly can.”
Johnson’s newest mission is Poker Face, a detective TV collection starring Natasha Lyonne as Charlie, an itinerant human lie detector. It’s not a whodunit however a how will they be caught.
Charlie strikes from place-to-place, coming throughout murderers who would’ve gotten away with it if she wasn’t unofficially on the case.
Before he was a filmmaker, Johnson was a fan. And that love is what led him to attract on the week-by-week format of basic detective procedurals he watched rising up within the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties – Columbo, The Rockford Files, Magnum P.I. and in addition Quantum Leap and The Incredible Hulk.
Poker Face has the thread of an extended arc throughout the season, however every episode works by itself.
“Those shows were hour-long, case of the week, episodic shows that generally had a really charismatic presence at the centre of them, and great guest stars each week. I miss those shows.
“There’s so much great TV now, and so much of it is serialised where if there’s a mystery, it runs over the whole season or sometimes across multiple seasons. I love that but I missed that episodic thing where you knew you could sit down and get a whole meal in one hour-long episode.
“It was about coming back every week to a familiar format with the same character every single week. There’s something very comforting that I love. It was an attempt to get back to that.”
Especially after seeing Lyonne and Leslye Headland’s biting collection Russian Doll, Johnson knew she was somebody who may anchor the present. He developed the present together with her after mulling the thought over dinner collectively.
“I don’t watch Columbo for the mysteries. I watch it to hang out with Peter Falk. And I think that’s the secret of those shows, they’re all kind of stealth hangout shows,” Johnson defined.
“And one of the things that’s nice about Charlie is she essentially likes people. She’s sunny and open to the world and curious about people. When you put that together with the natural hard edge that Natasha has, it creates an interesting combination that to me is really watchable.
“It’s a character that is on the side of the little guy and that you can really root for, but still has that edge to them.”
With Lyonne on the centre, the case of the week format permits for a lot of, many nice visitor stars, a few of them in dastardly roles.
The first season has a murderers’ row of expertise popping in for an episode – Chloe Sevigny, Hong Chau, Adrien Brody, Danielle McDonald, Jameela Jamil, Clea DuVall, Nick Nolte and Judith Light are simply the beginning.
If Poker Face has legs – Columbo ran for 10 seasons – Johnson has a wishlist of visitor stars for future episodes. He doesn’t need to share – “Because I’m afraid that I’ll jinx them” – however he’ll reveal one identify.
“I hope that I can entice my friend Jamie Lee Curtis to come and play in one of these, because her first job was on an episode of Columbo way back in the day, playing a waitress. So this would be coming full circle.”
Poker Face is streaming now on Stan
Originally revealed as Poker Face is the sharp week-to-week TV present you’ve been lacking
Source: www.dailytelegraph.com.au
