GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY

NETFLIX

In crafting Rian Johnson’s whodunit, editor Bob Ducsay took a bold approach to this intricate story, placing key information in plain sight. To be sure, just watch the Netflix movie a second or third time and see how many clues were right there all along (such as a nod to one character’s true identity and the source of a crucial cocktail). The meticulously crafted story follows a group of self-proclaimed disrupters who are invited to a weekend on the private island of their wealthy friend Miles (Edward Norton). Daniel Craig reprises his Knives Out character, detective Benoit Blanc, who is also at the island getaway when a murder takes place on the first night. “It was important to us to make sure that the audience didn’t feel cheated,” Ducsay explains, noting that they decided to be “as honest as we could be with the audience. We wanted to leave as many things in plain sight as possible without tipping our hand too much. And that really is a tremendous challenge. You really have to understand where people [in the audience] are looking [and] what they are thinking about. And if you know these things or if you have a really good idea of these things, it becomes easier to understand just what you can give away and what you have to withhold. We started getting bolder as we went on, because we were getting away with a lot of things. And when I say ‘getting away,’ it’s not trying to dupe the audience — it’s just putting the information out there and having a good idea that they can’t see it.”

Ducsay