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.
footnotes:
“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 RossThe post Key Change: Rian Johnson appeared first on Song Exploder.
![Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://nuzfy.com/key-change-rian-johnson/&media=https://nuzfy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/KeyChange10-RianJohnson.jpg&description=Rian Johnson on the impact the overture to "Das Rheingold" by Wagner had on his life.){kind=link}