Acclaimed Hollywood director Rian Johnson, who’s behind movies like “Knives Out” and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” said Monday he is a former “youth group kid.”
Someone’s interest was piqued after seeing the murder mystery “Knives Out” (starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Christopher Plummer, Toni Collette, and others), in which the faith-based rock song “Righteous Rocker” is featured.
The curious viewer, Scott Reynolds, tweeted Johnson about the song by Larry Norman, who was a pioneer for Christian rock in the 1970s. The director replied, pleasantly revealing he grew up listening to that kind of music.
Reynolds pressed just a bit further, asking Johnson exactly what kind of music he was into as a teenager. He played along, telling the fan he listened to Christian artists Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith, before turning to lesser known regional California bands like The Prayer Chain and Black and White World.
While Johnson was raised a Christian in California, he has since wandered away from the strictures of his upbringing. He explained during an interview published in late November that, though his faith still informs his understanding of the world, he no longer sees God as a “cosmic entity” outside himself.
Instead, he said, God could be “a structure that’s within my own psyche.” He continued, “All of that stuff is as real as anything. It’s just interior as opposed to exterior.”
The Tinseltown director went on to say there is “a raw power” in reckoning with one’s own understanding of faith and religion, which he said was once “a true source of power in my life.”
“You have to reconcile that in some way,” he said. “I guess I’m still trying to.”