Writer/Director Rian Johnson has made two films, the great Brick and the very-good The Brothers Bloom, finally opening this month after many frustrating delays. Johnson is a fascinating young filmmaker, someone in love with the language of cinema. How many filmmakers start their careers with modern noir and modern con man movies? Johnson takes risks and both of them have paid off. He sat down with us on the eve of the Opening Night celebration for The Brothers Bloom at the Chicago International Film Festival. This humble young man was about to walk a red carpet with his Oscar-winning star (Rachel Weisz) and watch his film open one of the biggest film fests in the country.

- Brian Tallerico

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MovieRetriever: How does a sophomore filmmaker get opening night at the Chicago Film Festival?

RIAN JOHNSON: I don't know. He gets Rachel Weisz to show up. (Laughs.) It's a good question. It's all through the distributor, Summit. We actually made it pretty similarly to Brick. It was financed independently. Brick was financed by friends and family and this was financed by a company. Then we finished it and found a distributor to buy it and that was Summit. They have a whole department with relationships with the festival.

Rachel Weisz

MovieRetriever: Do you have a brother?

JOHNSON: Two and a half. I have a half-brother too.

MovieRetriever: Does that impact the film?

JOHNSON: Well, luckily, my relationship with them isn't directly analogous to Stephen and Bloom. (Laughs.) For me, it's just a matter of knowing how deep and how complicated the ties between family can be. For me, it's the thing where at the beginning Bloom just wants to get away. You get a yo-yo sense that Bloom just wants to break free but once he does he's just lost at sea and he's just waiting for his brother to find him again. Not directly analogous, but I think we all know that thing where if it's unhealthy it's called co-dependency but if it's healthy it's called a loving bond between family members. Also, I have a big family. I have like 20 younger cousins and we all are really close. We all take vacations together. And I'm the oldest. Tonally, I think part of this movie was what I wanted to capture what it's like hanging out with my family. That kind of comfortable chaos. They're very smart and articulate but, at the same time, there's a kind of Marx Brothers insanity. When you're with people you’re that comfortable with, you can flow freely.

MovieRetriever: How do you develop that with Adrien and Mark? How do you make it believable that they're brothers?

JOHNSON: With Brick, for instance, partly because it was so low-budget, we had like three months before the shoot where we could rehearse. With this, where you're hiring stars, you get a WEEK because their schedules are so booked up. You kind of roll the dice and cross your fingers. They show up and you do what you can in terms of letting them hang out and this and that. But, you know what? Mark and Adrien got along really well and did bond on-set, but to a certain degree, I felt like a sneaking suspicion that the whole thing about actors having to have a personal bond themselves in order for it to be on the screen is kind of bullsh*t. If they're great actors, that's kind of what their job is, no matter what they feel about the person. To bring it on the screen. To a certain extent, you have to lean on that – even if they don't get along. In the case of Adrien and Mark, they really did get along, so that probably helped.

Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo.

MovieRetriever: You might be undervaluing or underestimating YOUR role in bringing that chemistry to life. We've all seen brother relationships on-screen that don't feel believable.

JOHNSON: It's always different reasons. A big part of it is also luck. I feel like I got pretty lucky getting this group of people.

MovieRetriever: Was the scope of this film daunting? A lot of people would move more slowly to a project like this after something as relatively small as Brick.

JOHNSON: It was.... Yes, it was terrifying. It was really scary. At the same time, once we actually started working ... it's like when you're a kid, waiting in line for the roller coaster can be the scariest part of it. Once we actually started working on it, the actual process of creating the thing ... everything's bigger around you, but it's the same stuff. At the end of the day, you're still just pointing a camera and telling a story. It's really the same thing, fundamentally. And it's the same thing I was doing in high school with friends. There's another element –  to a certain extent, I kind of realized that the way that I was dealing with the fear of feeling like I was faking it is thematically tied into the movie itself. (Laughs.) I definitely saw ... you wake up in the morning and you have a list of stuff to do that seems absolutely daunting, terrifying, and beyond what you can accomplish and the way that you do it is to fake it. You pretend that you can do it and then you find yourself doing it. That wouldn't work for a surgeon. But as a filmmaker, you can get away with it.

MovieRetriever: And I don't think it's coincidental that it's a film about people making up stories, which is what you do.

JOHNSON: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's what we all do in life. There's the connection between them and, obviously, between directors, writers, actors, but, for me, it's much more interesting – the connection between what they do and what everybody does in their life. Life is a process of taking in the world around you and telling it back to yourself. It's like what she says with the pinhole camera – part of what makes it beautiful is that the watermelon is like a head and we all take in the information. It's the particular way we work the image that is the storytelling of our lives.

Mark Ruffalo, Adrien Brody, and Rinko Kikuchi.

MovieRetriever: Did you worry at all about making con men, people who are essentially ripping people off, likable?

JOHNSON: No. In the same way that with Brick I didn't worry about making high schoolers criminals. It was the way it was disconnected enough from reality to where I think what real con men do is seedy and email scams. I felt like this pushed it enough into a fairy tale world that there was enough of a disconnect to buy the romanticism of it without getting in trouble.

MovieRetriever: What films or works inspired the look of the film?

JOHNSON: I was watching the same films that everyone claims they were watching. (Laughs.) 8 1/2 and The Conformist. I was watching 8 1/2 for the combination of insanity and formalism. And The Conformist I was watching largely for the way he shoots environments and the way you really feel the room in so many of the shots. It's one of the most gorgeous movies ever made. Visually, those were the two things I kept going back to for references. As to how much of that is actually reflected in the film, I don't know, but that's what I was filling my head with while we were shooting. In terms of lighting, my cinematographer, Steve Yedlin ... I'm really proud of his work. I've known him since freshman year of film school.

MovieRetriever: It's amazing how often young directors work with an old friend cinematographer. Maybe there's an unspoken language?

JOHNSON: You form the Vulcan mind-meld. Yeah. Exactly. It helps on-set to have a short-hand. To find someone you trust and have the same visual grammar with – it just kind of helps.

The Brothers Bloom

MovieRetriever: How detailed do you prepare visually? Are you a writer who writes in every visual cue to the screenplay?

JOHNSON: No. I don't write them into the screenplay. I really want the screenplays to read-able and to themselves but I know while I'm writing it and I'll do storyboards and I will, in very detailed terms, storyboard everything. Of course, you get on set, and things are adjusted, but I can't imagine showing up to set and not having a plan visually. And not just [as] to how the scene is going to be shot but to how it's going to be cut together. I don't shoot masters and coverage and find it in editing. I usually have a conception while shooting it.

MovieRetriever: On the way out of the screening room, someone said "I love the way he uses language." Where do you think that comes from?

JOHNSON: Just a love of words. I was pretty unskilled socially as a kid, so I did a lot of reading. I've been a big reader. I always had my nose in a book and that fed that quite a bit. I just love ... I take active joy in playing with language. Sometimes, I worry that I may be indulging in it too much but it's something I take too much joy in that it's hard not to have fun with.

Mark Ruffalo, Rian Johnson, Rachel Weisz, and Adrien Brody on the set of The Brothers Bloom.

MovieRetriever: I loved it but you know there were some critics hard on Brick and this film has already provoked some heated opinions, why do you think your films are divisive?

JOHNSON: I take it as a good thing. Coming into Toronto, when we were first showing the movie, you're holding your breath seeing what the first wave of reactions are going to be. Seeing how similar it was to Brick in terms of the range – there were some people who seemed practically allergic to it while others embraced it – that was really encouraging to me. Not that you're making movies to piss people off, but to me, and maybe this is just justification, it means that it has a strong personality. Just like a person with a strong personality, you're going to go with it or you're going to be repelled. The style of it; because it definitely does pick its horse and let it run – if the style isn't something that you click with, I can see being deflected. The style is very candy-coated. I feel like there's quite a bit underneath but can see that if you absolutely can't stand the taste of sugar not breaking through. But I don't want to guess. I'm not going to question anyone as to whether they liked it or didn't. Part of the fun is hearing other people's reactions and how they bounce off – good or bad.

Also, check out our interview with Rachel Weisz (star of The Brothers Bloom)!