Wake Up Dead Man, the latest film in the Knives Out franchise poses plenty of questions: How could a man be stabbed in an enclosed stone box? How did the same man rise from the dead and break out of his tomb? How did Josh O’Connor manage to make priests hot again?
But the question of what is on Benoit Blanc’s go-to murder mystery road trip playlist is one that I hadn’t even thought I might want the answer to—that is, until that answer was given. Because it’s a real gem: Apparently, in his spare time, detective Benoit Blanc hypes himself up by listening to Cats. Yes, Cats the much-derided 1981 musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Cats, the musical that sees grown adults springing around the stage in leotards and whiskers and calling themselves things like Rum Tum Tugger and Bustopher Jones.
This spectacular little detail is revealed when Daniel Craig’s Benoit pulls O’Connor’s (hot) priest Jud Duplenticy into his car for a quiet tête-a-tête—and out of the speakers blasts “Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat,” a particularly unserious, jazz hands-coded number from the show.
It’s ridiculous and very funny, especially considering the solemnity of the circumstances. Benoit has been called in to solve the murder of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a fire and brimstone preacher with a small but devoted flock of misfits. O’Connor’s Jud is the new assistant priest who has seemingly been framed for the crime.
Benoit shows his love of Webber’s canon once again towards the end of the film when, in a tense moment in the church, right before he reveals the true killer, in fact, he blasts out the rather obnoxious opening chords of Phantom of the Opera. After all, what musical theater fan presented with an organ could resist?
These moments are, of course, a bit of camp fun. But then again, it also just makes sense: Of course, Benoit Blanc is an Andrew Lloyd Webber fanboy.
This is not even the first hint we’ve had of Benoit’s taste for musical theater. In the first Knives Out film, you can catch Benoit singing a snippet of “Losing My Mind” from Stephen Sondheim’s 1971 Follies. Then, in the second Knives Out outing, we found him taking a leisurely bath while playing the online mystery game Among Us with musical theater legends that included the aforementioned Sondheim and actress Angela Lansbury.
Now, it’s one thing to be a Sondheim fan. He was, after all, the master of witty lyricism, intelligent musicality, and complex themes. But being an unironic fan of Webber is another matter entirely.
I’ll put this delicately, but for those in the know about the world of musical theater, Webber is considered to be—well—rather obvious, even a touch embarrassing. While Sondheim is synonymous with intellectual, elevated shows, Webber offers musicals for the masses—think melodramatic plots and beautiful, sweeping showstoppers that plant themselves squarely in your brain.
It is refreshing to think that Benoit doesn’t consider himself to be above Webber’s oeuvre. While he is certainly smart enough and discerning enough to appreciate Sondheim, I think his taste for Webber makes perfect sense.
For one thing, Benoit himself could be compared to an ALW musical. He, too, has a flair for the dramatic. He also doesn’t mind a wholesome touch of melodrama. He’s impeccably well-presented. Even his melodic southern drawl has a sort of pleasing musicality. And, when it comes to breaking down a mystery and presenting the facts to his suspects, he never fails to rise to the occasion and deliver a West End-worthy Performance, with a capital “P.”
And guess who else is an unapologetic Webber fanboy? Knives Out creator Rian Johnson. In 2020, he tweeted asking Universal for the “butthole” cut of Cats. Another time, he tweeted, “Also you can be 100% certain I don’t actually possess a burner account because I would have definitely accidentally forgotten to switch to it and posted Cats erotic fanfic to my main account by now." On another occasion, he wrote, “Let me make this clear: I will see Phantom of the Opera anytime anywhere. If someone knocked on my door right now I would drop this phone and go see Phantom of the Opera." Iconic stuff.
It’s hardly surprising that Webber wound its way into Johnson’s latest film. And, considering Johnson’s love of musical theater, it’s also unsurprising that he has found himself at the helm of one of the great modern murder mystery franchises. After all, are musical theater and murder mysteries really all that different? Both thrive on showmanship, high camp, exaggerated caricatures, and big showstopping performances.
In Wake Up Dead Man, Benoit’s “performance” is more evident than ever, with Benoit even citing famous fictional detectives from murder mystery novels as part of his case. He is all too aware he is a cog within an established, rather camp genre—and he’s more than willing to take his place on the stage. After all, he had already warmed up with Cats on the ride there.
