Jason Guerrasio interviews Brick writer-director Rian Johnson.

Armed with a love for Dashiell Hammett novels and film noir, aspiring writer-director Rian Johnson began work on his own hard-boiled detective film six years ago. With Hammett’s style as his muse, Johnson used the staples of any good detective novel (fast-talking characters, tough-as-nails hero, sultry femme fatale) and placed them in the most unpredictable of settings: high school.

Brick begins like most noirs, with the main protagonist suddenly thrown into a situation he wants no part of but can’t escape. For Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) it’s solving the death of an old flame, Emily (Emilie de Ravin). After getting an alarming phone call from her, Brendan finds her body a few days later and starts looking for answers. With the help of the Brain (Matt O’Leary) — unpopular yet tapped into all the school’s gossip — he helps Brendan weave through an array of colorful characters like the not-too-sharp Dode (Noah Segan), Brad (Brian White) the jock, and the seductive Laura (Nora Zehetner) to find the guys who hold the answers: the Pin (Lukas Haas) and his intimidating henchman Tugger (Noah Fleiss).

Even with a stable of talented actors on board, having never made a feature film, Johnson, 32, couldn’t find any traditional means of financing. So he rose close to $500,000 from friends and family and began shooting in his hometown of San Clemente, Calif., in the winter of 2003. The rags-to-riches story hit its zenith at Sundance two years later, when the film walked away with a Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision and a distribution deal with Focus Features.

Johnson has a very objective view of his film. “There’s a segment of the audience that watches it and really gets on board, and then there’s people who react on the opposite side of the scale, who almost have a visceral reaction against it,” he says. “I love that that exists on both sides, because all my favorite movies are somebody else’s least favorite.” But if you buy into it, it’s one hell of a ride, with Gordon-Levitt (who’s practically in every scene) following up his powerful performance in Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin to shine in another unconventional role for a twentysomething actor. Brick opens March 31.

Filmmaker: When did you discover the works of Dashiell Hammett?

Rian Johnson: Originally [when I saw] the Coens’ movie Miller’s Crossing. That was one of my favorite films in film school. I was learning everything I could about it, and I read an interview with the Coens, where they cited Dashiell Hammett as the major influence. So that’s what originally led me to his books, and at that point I kind of became obsessed with Hammett.

Filmmaker: Was it the characters, the language?

Johnson: I think it was just generally the world that he created. It’s a combination of the incredibly colorful characters and the cloistered little worlds that he creates, which I think was part of what also helped me take the leap to doing the movie in a high school. The nature of the worlds that Hammett creates, they’re very hermetically sealed little worlds unto themselves; it’s all where you fit in, and in my mind that’s exactly what high school is.

Filmmaker: Did the inspiration to do this come instantly?

Johnson: All my life I’d been watching film noir, and a lot of my favorite movies are` noirs, but I think what appealed to me about it was the idea that it almost felt like I was getting something new by going back to the source material and capturing something that personally struck me in a very unique way. As much as I love noir, I don’t think I would have been inspired to make this movie just based on my love of those movies. It was something much deeper than that, and the books kind of struck me and made me want to put something out there.

Filmmaker: Was it difficult to write the dialogue?

Johnson: Not really. I had been so absorbed in those books, and in that world I was just really in that head space. The other thing I did to help with the writing process was I wrote it first as a novella. It was a 100-page-long prose story, and I did it imitating Hammett’s writing style, which is very distinct, very concise; it’s all about saying the most with the fewest amount of words possible. It’s a lot of like Hemingway. So copying his very particular way of writing I think really helped shape not just the language of the dialogue but also the story and how the events unfolded.

Filmmaker: You’ve said high school was a perfect setting because it took away from the noir world of fedoras and trench coats.

Johnson: And saying that, I don’t mean to put down the noir; I think it has a lot more to do with just our cultural perception of noir at this point. Just the fact that those movies are so deeply ingrained in our collective imaginations and our consciousness — it’s just difficult to see the visual cues from them and not automatically turn a part of your brain off because you know what it is. That was initially the entire reason for setting it in high school. It was no deeper than setting it in the least likely place you would expect this detective story to happen and play it straight so that the audience can’t lean on their preconceptions of detective movies. Now, once we started working with it, the whole high school thing obviously took on a life of its own and ended up being something a little deeper.

Filmmaker: That high school is like a detective movie in some ways?

Johnson: Absolutely, that was the thing that kind of grew on all of us: the idea that the purpose of high school is to be a detective and figure out how you navigate through life in this little microcosm before you’re kicked out into the real world. So that was the big surprise when I started working, even from the writing stage. It was incredible how easily the two worlds — detective fiction and high school — slide on top of each other.

Filmmaker: It took you six years to get the project off the ground. Are there any moments of frustration in that time that stick in your mind?

Johnson: Like any indie movie at this budget level, there are similar stories. We had some actor and we had the money and then they drop out and then you’re back at square one. The toughest feeling is when you’re three, four years into the process and you thought you were going to be shooting in a month and you wake up that next morning and you’re literally back to where you started. All you can do is to keep pushing on with it. It’s been really fun taking Brick around to festivals and at colleges and talking to younger people who are exactly in the same spot that I was in very recently. The only advice that I feel I can really give, the only thing I can really credit myself with doing right in that whole period was sticking around. Get something that you believe in and that you want to make and then just don’t go away.

Filmmaker: The one silver lining through this period is that you made the short “The Psychology of Dream Analysis” and that got you some writer-for-hire jobs.

Johnson: That really taught me a big lesson. That particular moment in time was when the big parody-short craze was going on; everyone was making parody shorts and hoping to get deals off of them. Obviously during those six years it was such a temptation to think this is what’s selling, this is what’s getting people work, let me ignore the type of story I want to do and do that in order to get my foot in the door, and the “Dream” short is just an example where it wasn’t something I expected anyone to see; I just wanted to tell that story and it ended up doing more for me than any of my other conniving attempts to work in the industry ever did. It got me my first writing gig; I sold a pitch to Disney and got in on a bunch of other meetings. It also was a big part of the reason that my producer on Brick, Ram Bergman, decided to sign on to the project. Also, Joseph Gordon-Levitt told me for the first time the other day that when we first got together to talk about the role, that short was one of the things that gave him the confidence to get into Brick. So it was really a little beautiful validation of, If you make stuff that comes from your heart, people will take notice.

Filmmaker: When you were pitching Brick, what was the feedback?

Johnson: The two biggest questions we kept getting were “Do they have to talk like that?” and “Does it have to be set in high school?” It was weird: during that six-year period Columbine happened, and that obviously had an effect on our story just because Brick has high schoolers and it has guns in it, and the other thing that happened was the big teen-movie craze with the American Pie movies. That probably didn’t have a big net effect on us, but it did get us in the doors of a lot of places that expected Brick to be something else. Then they would blink and realize this isn’t going to make them a lot of money.

Filmmaker: You could have easily shot this on any type of format, but you decided 35mm. Why?

Johnson: The biggest reason was a creative one. Brick is such an odd film and it asks so much from an audience to buy into this world and go along for the ride that I felt it was very important to create as rich a visual world as possible to kind of help people ease into it. And for me as a filmmaker, I want to shoot 35mm as much as possible because I’m starting to realize it might not be around for that much longer.

Filmmaker: How important was creating a score that would match what was onscreen?

Johnson: It was really essential. Especially watching the first cuts that didn’t have the score in it, I was like, “Oh my God, we need music to tie this all together.” That’s when I approached Nathan Johnson, who’s my cousin and we’ve been making movies together since we were kids. Basically I gave him references where the music took a very active hand in the storytelling and became a character in the film in a very overt way, and I think it really helps with the narrative. The way he created the score is amazing. Usually when you’re dealing at this budget level you end up using a lot of keyboards to fake a lot of stuff and he did none of that; it’s all organic instruments. He used wineglasses, he used broken pianos, ballpoint pens on guitars, and played cheese graters and filing cabinets and really went to town.

Filmmaker: Have there been any pinch-me moments since Sundance?

Johnson: It’s been a yearlong pinch-me moment. I’ve had alligator clips attached to me at all times — wow, that sounds really kinky. There have been a couple of moments. At Sundance John C. Reilly was on the jury, and after the whole thing he came up and said some really kind words. Having someone you’ve always been a fan of give you that validation is a really cool feeling. The biggest thing for me is right now we’re doing a bunch of screenings and talking to people afterwards, and seeing they really dug the movie is an out-of-body experience.

Filmmaker: What are you working on next?

Johnson: A con-man movie. I’ve written it and we’re trying to get it going this year.