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(left to right) Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, director Darren Bousman and writer Leigh Whannell at the 2006 San Diego Comic Convention |
Just in time for Halloween, Lionsgate has released another installment of the Saw gorefest. In Saw III, Jigsaw has disappeared. Now aided by his new apprentice Amanda (Shawnee Smith), the puppet-master behind the cruel, intricate games that have terrified a community and baffled police has once again eluded capture and vanished. While city detectives scramble to locate him, Dr. Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh) is unaware that she is about to become the latest pawn on his vicious chessboard.
One night, after finishing a shift at her hospital, 30-year-old Lynn is kidnapped by the deranged Amanda and taken to an abandoned warehouse where she meets Jigsaw, aka John Kramer (Tobin Bell), who is now bedridden and on the verge of death. When Lynn is told that she must keep the madman alive for one final test, she must race against the clock of Jigsaw’s own ticking heart.
The film’s stars, Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith, along with director Darren Bousman and writer/producer Leigh Whannell, took time out to talk with MediaBlvd Magazine about the huge success of the Saw franchise.
MediaBlvd. Magazine> In what ways does this film look different from Saw II?
Darren Bousman> One of the great things about Saw was that we brought back 85% of the same crew, from Charlie Clouser doing music to David Armstrong doing cinematography. But, Saw III is a much different film than Saw II, in style and the way that it looks. It’s still going to have that dirty, grimy feel to it, but the color scheme is different. I think James Wan so perfectly created this green hue in Saw I for everything that Jigsaw touched, like in the bear trap room, for example. You will see things like that in it, as well.
MB> Did you try to please the fans again with this latest installment of the Saw franchise?
Leigh Whannell> I think what happens with a film is that the fans take a certain ownership of them. There were certain elements of the first Saw film that I liked. If you go back and watch the first Saw, the traps and the games that Jigsaw plays are a very small part of the film. They’re, essentially, flashbacks. They’re really rapid fire. You don’t actually even see them happening. You see the aftermath. I was really surprised that the fans took to such a small element of the film, and so, I guess you have to give the fans what they want. So, in Saw II, we upped that element of the film, a little bit. And then, with Saw III, I can definitely say we’ve gone into a new realm.
Darren> The trap was one of the last things we thought of, and we have more traps in this film then there have been in any of the other films combined.
Shawnee Smith> And, they’re so sick you can’t even imagine.
Leigh> I don’t think killing a barrel full of puppies with a coat hanger was necessary. When the puppy screams while it’s eyeball’s gauged out with this coat hanger, it’s lit so well that you kind of forgive Darren.
MB> This is the third Saw film in three years. Are you really crossing your figures that you can have success a third time?
Leigh> It would certainly have to be the first horror part three in history that we’re hoping is actually well received. There’s a lot of gifts to the fans of the first two films.
Darren> And, they’re not in your face. A lot of the time, it’s just very small things that might be in the background of Jigsaw’s lair, or something that Amanda brushes past that was a prop used in Saw I. This definitely is a movie for the fans, I can say.
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Tobin Bell & Shawnee Smith at the 2006 San Diego Comic Convention |
MB> Do you consider Saw a trilogy, or do you have plans for a Saw IV?
Darren> It’s a trilogy with an eye to Saw IV.
Leigh> It’s a trilogy with an eye to a quadrilogy.
MB> Is it ever difficult to come up with sick ways to kill people?
Darren> Never.
MB> Are any of them ever too gruesome?
Leigh> It does get hard because, for me, it’s not about coming up with something sick. I think it’s actually pretty easy to come up with something sick, if that’s its only requirement. But, what we like to do with the Saw films is to come up with traps and games that reflect Jigsaw’s philosophy in a slightly artful way. There’s something more to it than just straight up gore, which is easy to do, essentially. I think it’s really easy to gross someone out.
Darren> I would say one of the other things that David Hackl, the production designer, and David Armstrong did was make the traps a lot more elegant. I don’t know if you’d ever use the word elegant when you’re killing somebody, but I think that a lot of the traps you’re going to see this time are elegant, which we haven’t seen in the past.
MB> The thing about Jigsaw is that he doesn’t lie. Does that still hold true?
Shawnee> Tobin Bell doesn’t lie. If it takes you 48 hours to answer one question that then leaves you with 20 more questions. You walk into his hotel room and the walls are covered with pages and notes and diagrams.
Darren> Tobin came up to me one day, during one of the big, complex scenes. We were running late, and he said, “I can’t say this,” and I was like, “No, just say the line.” He said, “I can’t say this. Jigsaw wouldn’t say this. It’s a definite lie.” So, I think I can say that Jigsaw doesn’t lie. He doesn’t cuss either. I think there were 150 f-bombs dropped in Saw II, but I don’t think Jigsaw has ever cussed in any of the Saw films. He’s the only character. I think Shawnee drops 150 in the last five minutes of this film.
MB> With Amanda taking over, will there be any difference to the madness of the film?Shawnee> Expect the unexpected.
Darren> That’s one thing I really love about the Saw films. The second you think you know what it’s about, you really have no clue. I think people thought Saw II was going to be a specific movie and answer specific questions. I think people think they know what Saw III is. Like Shawnee said, expected the unexpected because I don’t think anyone really has any idea what it’s about.
Leigh> It’s also cool to get the female perspective on this sort of stuff. It’s certainly rare to see a female stepping up and kicking ass, so I like it. She kicks ass in style too. The fall line of serial killer gear will be seen in all the stores.
Shawnee> Amanda is quite the fashionista. If you’re going to kick ass, you may as well look good, right?
MB> For Tobin and Shawnee, do we get to see a lot more of your characters’ relationship in this film, now that audiences know that you’re working together?
Tobin Bell> Yeah, you do, though it’s not always spoken. Sometimes you can tell more about the way people look at one another than you can by what they say.
Darren> One of the things I’m most proud of with Saw III is the relationships. For example, like with Saw II, when you have 15 characters running around, it’s sometimes hard to get a connection with them. This time, I think the connection within the characters is probably one of the greatest things about the film. Shawnee and Tobin’s relationship is very defined. I think one of the main strong points of the film is their relationship.
MB> How much does a film like Hostel raise the bar for these kinds of films?
Leigh> Darren and I have this game with (Hostel writer/director) Eli Roth where he will call us and go, “See, I got you with that.”
Darren> We called Eli in the middle of the night, one night. We were like, “Eli, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
Leigh> We’re playing this game of one-upmanship, where we came out with Saw II, and then he did Hostel. But, trust me, Saw III is going to blow it out of the water. Are you listening Eli? Saw III is going to blow Hostel away.
MB> Can you talk about how producer Gregg Hoffman’s passing affected the project? Darren> Originally, I had no intentions of coming back to do Saw III. I had moved on. We were working on another project with the same producers that produced Saw II and Saw III. When Gregg passed, it was a huge awakening, and Leigh and I, and James Wan, all got together and said, “It’s inevitable that Saw III is going to come about. To honor his memory, we want to stay with it.” This was something that Gregg Hoffman found. He found the Saw films and brought it into his producers, and they made these amazing films. We all decided to come back because we wanted to see it through.
Leigh> His fingerprints are all over Saw III, even if he wasn’t physically there with us. Gregg was always there, with Saw I and Saw II. He was the mastermind. He was the go-to guy when something was going wrong, he was the high-five guy when something was going right, and he was definitely there with us, helping to make this film. When Darren and I decided to go back and do Saw III for Gregg, he and I sat down and were like, “Where can we go with this?” The toughest thing for all of us -- for Darren and all the actors -- was “How do you come up with a Saw III and have it not just be one of those sequels that just takes the formula and amps it up a bit where, if you killed 10 people in the last one, you just kill 20 in this one and it’s fine.” We tried to make it so that you could watch all three films, back to back, and it would play like one film, and I think we’ve achieved that.
MB> Tobin, now that you’re an icon as a villain, what are you going to do next?
Tobin> Well, I just finished a film called Buried Alive, and I play a guy who is a caretaker at a lodge. He’s a Vietnam veteran, and is a very self-sufficient and interesting guy with very bad teeth.
MB> Shawnee, do you want to be in the remake of the remake of The Blob?
Shawnee> I’m not sure why you’d remake a movie that didn’t make any money at the box office in the first place. I’m not any force behind that brainstorm. I had fun making the last one.
MB> Leigh, what is Universal doing with the horror thriller Dead Silence that you wrote?
Leigh> Silence is going really well, actually. It’s the complete opposite to something like Saw. It comes from a completely different place. Dead Silence is much more of a throwback to an old Twilight Zone episode, or an old Hammer horror film. It’s that classic horror film of yesteryear that we’re referencing with this one. It’s really fun and it’s really creepy.
MB> Was the first Saw movie done as kind of a showcase for your acting?Leigh> Well, unfortunately, I killed myself at the end. I just want to reiterate, for any of you guys who are writing screenplays at home that you plan to act in, that you should make sure you don’t die ‘cause they may just do a sequel and you won’t be coming back, unless you can clone yourself, like in Alien: Resurrection, which I suggested to these guys and they said no.
MB> Any chance you’ll make a video game based on the Saw films?
Leigh> It would be fun, just as a video game fan, but we know how much work goes into that. It’s a couple of years of work. So, maybe.
MB> If the success continues, would you go right into Saw IV, or give it a little bit of rest this time?
Darren> We’d go right into Saw IV.
