You wouldn’t think that murder mysteries would be exactly Christian. Just the word “murder” implies that at least one big commandment is broken during the story—and likely a whole bunch of others as well.
And yet, writers such as G.K. Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers wrote both murder mysteries and books on Christianity. In an interview with The Washington Post, legendary mystery writer (and longtime Anglican) P.D. James said that detective fiction is “based on the fundamental belief that life is sacred and murder is unique and uncommon. … In a sense, detective novels are like 20th-century morality plays; the values are basic and unambiguous.”
And that brings us to Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, a whodunit where both the victim and the main suspect are priests—and where faith itself falls under a magnifying glass.
Director Rian Johnson was raised in an evangelical home, and he embraced Christianity into early adulthood. He walked away from faith in his 20s. But to make Wake Up Dead Man, he felt he needed to rediscover the kid who loved God all those years ago. And when it came to portraying religion onscreen, he was helped along the way by Father Scott Bailey, a Catholic priest from Johnson’s home state of Colorado.
I talked with both Johnson and Bailey about Wake Up Dead Man—a movie that, as a mystery lover myself, I liked quite a little bit. We asked Johnson about why it was important to portray faith fairly, and we talked to Bailey about the process of getting those religious elements just right. Oh, and we talk about butterflies, too. Really.
Hope you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
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