You’ll Never Believe This Cameo in ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’

By now you’ve either seen Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery in theaters or mistakes were made. It’s okay, I get it, but your chance to see writer/director Rian Johnson’s latest masterpiece in theaters has passed. So you might not understand what I’m about to tell you, but just know that it is important and glorious, and learning about it has now added years onto my life.

There are plenty of little moments within Glass Onion that will have you screaming. Right out of the gate, when Benoit Blanc is trying to make it through the pandemic boredom, there is a sea of cameos that both made me cry and cheer in the theater. But there is one other cameo that is so secret that it took an interview for me to even realize it was someone’s voice in particular. I’m obviously talking about the hourly “dong” that happens throughout the movie.

In the film, Edward Norton’s Miles Bron has his own private island where he has built the “glass onion” in honor of the bar where he met his group of friends (also called the Glass Onion). There, there is a “dong” that goes off every hour just to tell you that it is at the hour. Think of those annoying grandfather clocks that your grandparents probably had or loved. It’s that, but all over the island.

Now you might be thinking that it is simply just a “dong,” but Kevin McCarthy sat down with Rian Johnson in preparation for Glass Onion and, in doing so, got Johnson to talk a bit about how he got Joseph Gordon-Levitt to record the “dong” for the movie. Yes, you read that right. Miles’ “dong” is Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

“So Joe plays the ‘hourly dong’ which is the dong that goes off every hour on Miles’ island,” Johnson said. “And I just made my first TV show called Poker Face with Natasha Lyonne and Joe is a guest star in one of the episodes. And so while we were on set I was like ‘This is going to be weird but there’s an hourly dong in the new movie and would you record it?’ and he was like ‘yeah sure’ and so I just had him say the word ‘dong’ over and over again and we picked one and just made it into a song.”

The Rian Johnson/Joseph Gordon-Levitt dream team

From Brick to Looper and beyond, Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt clearly like working with each other, and in the interview that Johnson did with McCarthy, he attributes Brick and JGL to his love of working with actors. But the two as a duo is something that just seems to click. Sure, I’d love if Gordon-Levitt were actually in a Knives Out story, but for now, this little bit of information is delightful.

I can’t wait to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt guest star on Poker Face, and I hope that Johnson and Gordon-Levitt continue to team up with each other. Maybe next time he could be, like, Benoit Blanc’s ringtone?

(featured image: Netflix)