INT: Bousman & Whannell

Last Updated on July 27, 2021

You’d
think of all people, the director and screenwriter of a SAW movie
would be the most careful about spoilers.
But Darren Lynn Bousman and Leigh Whannell dropped the most plot
details of any interviews from the whole SAW
III press junket. With 4500 words here, it might not seem
like we cut out anything, but we didn’t want to ruin it for you
guys. Even here they drop a lot of hints.

Whannell
has looked like Adam from SAW I since he shot that movie but now
he’s finally shed his clean cut Aussie boy image. With a shaved
head and goatee for his new movie role, he looks more like a punk
that would help Jigsaw set up the next trap. Bousman looks like the
tired director who had to rush his second SAW sequel in a row,
unshaven, ungroomed, just running on adrenaline. 

The
plot of SAW III should be seen with as blank a slate as possible.
You know Amanda is out of the closet as Jigsaw’s henchwoman now,
and Jigsaw obviously isn’t in very good shape with his brain
tumor. He’s got two new players in his latest game plus several
other victims that play a part.

Darren Bousman	Leigh Whannell

Since
you give so many answers in Saw III, have you left any openings for
the inevitable Saw IV?

DLB
(Darren Lynn Bousman):
Let’s be honest. There’s going to be a SAW 16. Leigh and I have
already talked about where we want SAW IV, V, VI, VII to go.
What’s the next one? CITIZENS ON PATROL?

LW
(Leigh Whannell):
CITIZENS ON PATROL, MISSION TO
MOSCOW
and ASSIGNMENT
MIAMI BEACH
.

How
about prequels?

DLB:
I think it’s a little too early to tell. I think as long as the
SAW films are successful, that guy right there [Oren Koules] is
going to continue to make them. I think what’s so cool about the
SAW universe, which I love about it, is there’s so many stories
still left to tell in it. I think what Leigh did which was so
amazing in SAW I is he made a nonlinear story. It jumped around all
over the place. You look at SAW III, half of it is a prequel. Half
of it is pre-SAW I and pre-SAW II. So SAW IV, SAW V and SAW VI,
there’s no telling where we can go: future, past, back in the old
west maybe. 

How
do you top what you’ve already done?

DLB:
I think what we did in SAW III which I’m most proud of, we
continue to do more of it. While on the surface it looks like a gore
film, there’s violence, there’s blood, there’s carnage, it’s
a much more emotional film. We took the emotion this time and went
up a little bit on it. The heart of the story, and these are not the
words to use when describing a horror film, but it’s a love story.

LW:
It is a love story. It’s a love story between Jigsaw and Amanda.
Essentially they’re like father and daughter. Here’s this guy
who’s passing on his life’s work and he’s on the brink of
death. For him that’s a huge thing. He’s put all this faith in
Amanda and what she’s going to do, how she’s going to carry on
his legacy. I think the film is also about faith and about what
happens when we die and that feeling of letting go. I really think
those issues really are explored in this film thanks in large part
to the actors who are so great.

I
can’t believe, all Jigsaw had to do in SAW I was lie on the floor.
We could have cast Michael Winslow from the

POLICE

ACADEMY

movies. I just think it’s one of those cosmic accidents that they
just happened to get Tobin Bell, this great character actor, to lie
on the floor for the entire film. Imagine if they’d cast a lesser
actor, it wouldn’t have really made that much of a difference to
SAW I because you don’t really see him. It sure would have made an
impact on these films. I thank the heavens every day that Tobin is
the guy playing Jigsaw because he puts so much into the character.
You walk into his hotel room when we’re up there in

Toronto

with Saw III, it’s just plastered with notes and what was Jigsaw
eating for breakfast on Tuesday, the 12^th of November in
1983?

DLB:
He’s got books like this. I can ask him a question, “Well,
Tobin, what about your sexual life, your relationship?” And he
turns to page 84 and is like, “Well, as you can see…” It’s
like the book of a serial killer. It really is. Like you see in
SE7EN, he’s got these books. I think in large part, that’s why
the SAW films continue in my mind to hold up, is the fact that
it’s not just horror films blood and guts. There’s substance,
there’s great acting, there’s great performances. Tobin
continues to be just a presence. Even Donnie Wahlberg in II, it’s
a notch above the slasher films. Again, at the heart of this movie,
yes, it’s a gore film and yes there is violence, but it crosses
genres to this love story, to a tragedy, to this emotional thing
which again, it’s easy to go into the theater and see the blood,
see the violence and say, “Oh, another one of these movies
that’s just whatever.” But look at it. At the heart of this
movie it’s such a tragedy.

Does
that mean the twist ending is less important? At some point, even
the audience will figure out Jigsaw’s methods and tricks.

DLB:
We didn’t even think of a twist ending to this. I think most
people will figure it out in the first 15 minutes of the film.
That’s really not a twist to me. From dialogue one of the movie,
it gives it away. It tells you what it’s about. If an audience
member can pick up those clues, and again, the elaborate thing that
Jigsaw went to to create this basically domino effect… again,
Jigsaw’s playing the puppet master. He didn’t do anything. He
lay in the bed the whole time. Jigsaw never pulled a gun, never
pulled a knife but knowing the carnage that would ensue if these two
people were placed in this situation. But I think we hopefully
surpassed just the gimmicks of SAW.

LW:
Yeah, in some ways, it’s easy to do a rug pull twist where you
just at the last second pull the rug out from under the audience’s
feet and say, “Ta da!” the SCOOBY-DOO ending. Someone pulls off
a mask and it’s like, “It turns out I’m your mother.” What
Darren and I struck for SAW III was to have an emotionally impactful
ending. We wanted something that would almost make someone who was
really invested in the story cry. We have Jigsaw, this character
who’s been so cold and clinical, he’s been presented throughout
the previous two films as someone who’s very much in control.
He’s more like a reptile than a human being. In SAW III he becomes
a human being. You see him crack. His veneer cracks and that was
what was most important to us far and above any sort of gimmick or
twist.

DLB:
Some of my favorite scenes aren’t the violent scenes at all.

What’s
with the teeth on the poster? None of the traps involve teeth.

DLB:
Well, SAW I there was no hand.

LW:
I guess at this stage, I think Tim Palin, the marketing genius over
at Lionsgate, he’s just going for body parts that can represent
roman numerals. I don’t know what he’s going to do for the V in
SAW IV. 

DLB:
Two legs out of a trash can?

LW:
Maybe a tongue cut right down the middle. One of the great things
about working on SAW is we don’t have a combative relationship
with the studio. Darren has had these experiences as have I where
you’re dealing with a studio where things aren’t as much fun.
James and I, our film that we made after SAW was a film that
you’ll be seeing soon called DEAD SILENCE, a ventriloquist doll
horror film. We did that with Universal and those guys are great but
as we were making the film there was a changing of the guard.

At
times it was a really combative relationship with the studio. It
didn’t feel like they were on our side. With the SAW films, we
always feel like they’re on our side. Peter and Jason, the two
guys we deal with at Lionsgate, Peter Block and Jason Constantine,
they love the SAW films. They’re fans of the SAW films. Tim Palin,
the marketing guy, we love Tim. We joke around with him and he comes
up with these insane ideas. The first time you hear them you’re
like, “An amputee beauty contest on Howard Stern?” Then you
think about it for a day and you realize it’s genius.

DLB:
Yeah, we’re going to draw Tobin’s blood and pour it in the
posters. What? You’re going to do what?

LW:
The blood drive as well. The fact that they do this blood drive. But
what we love is it really is a family. People who work on films can
say a lot of things but not many can say that. The team, the guys at
Twisted, the people at Lionsgate.

DLB:
Even at

Toronto

, one of the big things about us coming back was I wanted the entire
crew. The entire crew came back, including the soundstage staff, the
security guards, the PAs. We had the exact same PAs that were on SAW
II.

LW:
Yes, the same DP from SAW I shot II and III.

DLB:
The same editor, same composer and SAW II and III is the same second
camera assistant. It was insane. The same people, same security
guard watching the set. We hired him back from another bigger movie
to come back.

LW:
All the transport guys as well. At this stage, it’s great because
watching Darren direct up in

Toronto

, there’s a shorthand you can have with people once you know them
so well. And the marketing guys are a big part of that. I love, even
look at the cover of that [new SAW II DVD]. That’s hilarious. The
packaging they do for the DVDs, it’s the type of stuff that if
Darren and I were like 16 again, just horror fans living in the
suburbs, we know that we would love the SAW films.

DLB:
And SAW also does have a familiarity. When you see that poster, you
can be a mile away, when you see that white poster with those jagged
teeth, you’re like “SAW.” It’s one of those things. I think
there’s also a similarity. While the visual styles might change a
little bit from SAW I, SAW II and SAW III, you see 30 seconds of a
SAW film, you’re like, “That’s SAW.” You know you’re back
there.

Leigh,
I know you’ve been playfully frustrated with some of the nit picky
questions about the traps and twists. Were the flashbacks a chance
to answer those?

LW:
Yeah, definitely. The fans just go —

DLB:
“Put the bathroom scene in there! Just answer this!”

LW:
I mean, the message boards are just filled with these guys,
they’re crazy. I remember reading an article where Leonard Nimoy
would attend these STAR TREK fan conventions and guys would get up
and be like, “In episode 12, you were wearing a wristband that’s
clearly from the planet Taktar and Taktar wasn’t discovered until
series 3. Now how could you have that wristband?” Here, this poor
actor who’s just gotten off doing HAMLET on Broadway is like,
“You know what? I don’t know. I don’t know what Taktar is. I
didn’t write it.” For us, the thing is, I did. So we get on the
message board and there’s some kid going, “Now hang on, if he
was lying in a pool of his own blood…” And sometimes they get
you. You’re like, “Oh, geez, we didn’t have an answer for that
one.” 

DLB:
The big one that we tried to answer on this one was everyone says,
“Why didn’t Leigh drown? He was in the bathtub, why didn’t he
drown?” So that’s why that whole scene came around. Like I think
it would be cool to see Jigsaw setting it up, answer that f*cking
question, why didn’t he drown?

LW:
All the flashback scenes, as you say, it’s a playful way of giving
back to the fans. And it wasn’t so much born out of the
frustration of like “Here, here’s the answer.” It was more
like if you were a fan of SAW, this would be like a little gift. I
mean, Jason Constantine from Lionsgate, during the writing of SAW
III, we were talking about he’s a huge STAR WARS fan and we were
talking about the prequels.

Which
I have to go on record, for fear of being struck down or hit by a
sniper’s bullet, I didn’t like the three STAR WARS prequels,
even REVENGE OF THE SITH. Sorry, George. And I was talking to Jason
Constantine about it and he’s like, “You know what? I’m such a
massive STAR WARS fan that I got a kick out of them just through
seeing things like oh my God, that’s how Boba Fett became Boba
Fett.” He called them General Antiles moments. There’s a General
Antiles from like EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. You see him in one of the
prequels and only the most hardcore fan would pick it up but he got
a kick out of it. So we called all these little flashback scenes
throughout SAW, we called them General Antiles moments. Jason, when
he was reading the script, he’s like, “Ah, you’ve got a cool
little General Antiles moment here where we find out how…”

DLB:
There’s the big stuff that’s very easily seeable like the
setting up the bathroom, the Leigh stuff. Then there’s really
small stuff where actors make the appearances, like the fire guy,
Avi, burned in the fire, he’s in the movie.

LW:
The guy from SAW II with the shaved head.

DLB:
He’s in the movie for like half a second. You see him there if you
know where to look for him. There are files on the desk that relate
back to

SAW

I.

The camera pans over them and you can see them. There’s tons of
little things like that. We answer a lot of questions. It’s not
readily in your face, that for the die hard fans, and believe me
they will find it. They will freeze frame and we set up a bunch of
new ones too. People say, “Where do you go now?” But purposely
there are a lot of threads that we decided in the editing, let’s
not put this in there. All of these were answered but we’re like,
“You know what? It’s part of the fun of the SAW series is these
questions. What is this thing?” Everyone will have a different
idea and they’ll argue about it. Wait ‘til SAW 16 and we’ll
answer it.

Leigh,
when you wrote SAW II, did you set things up for SAW III?

LW:
Not really. The twists in SAW II that sort of Darren and I were so
happy with was that Amanda was taking over at the end of SAW II.
Sorry if you haven’t seen it. But how we find out that Amanda is
basically being groomed to be his successor. That was something that
we thought could be explored later on. But beyond that, not really.
It was Darren’s first film as a director, first feature, so he had
that to worry about.

DLB:
It was my first film as a feature and he had that to worry about as
well.

LW:
Yeah, I had that to worry about as well so there was no real time to
even —

[Darren’s
phone rings]

DLB:
Sorry guys, it’s my mom.

LW:
Talk to your mom.

DLB:
Mom, I’ve gotta call you back.

LW:
It’s true, if I had gone up to Darren on the set of SAW II and
said, “Hey, we should start thinking about III” he would have
just- –

DLB:
Cried.

LW:
Cried, fallen down.

DLB:
I spent most of the nights on SAW II in the fetal position.

LW:
In the fetal position because there’s so much pressure, so we
didn’t have really any time. The one thing I knew could be
explored was this notion that someone else was taking over. In my
mind, Jigsaw would have great difficulty with that, seeing somebody
else or passing off the bat is the expression I should use, to
someone else. So when it came time to finally start thinking about
SAW III, that was the first thing that we put down. Darren and I sat
down in a meeting with Mark and Oren, the producers. The only thing
out of our mouths was, “This has to be about Amanda taking over
from Jigsaw and what that means. Is she carrying out his tests the
way he would like to see it? Is she fulfilling the promise?” 

DLB:
One thing that I want to bring up… it was crucial to us that we
don’t want to become a parody of ourselves. We don’t want to
become a happy meal of horror films. I saw that now and there’s a
little Jigsaw toy coming out. We don’t want to become a happy meal
of ourselves and we took some major risks in SAW III that I think we
could have gone a much safer route. We could have gotten more
violent, we could have made it just more about the traps, we could
have come up with a much bigger twist I’m sure.

But
it wasn’t about that this time around. I think for SAW to stay
fresh, it has to evolve. And what made SAW I so unique to me was the
fact that it was something I hadn’t seen before. It was not a
cookie cutter perfect little horror film in a box. There were
questions you had no idea the answers to. Like what happened to Dr.
Gordon, what happened to Adam? The good guys lose, the bad guys win.
When was the last time you saw that in a horror film, or a
Hollywood
massive commercial film which people took to? I think going into SAW
III, that’s what we all decided is like God, please don’t let
this become like another one of these horrifically bad sequels that
start dropping people off. So Leigh took a lot and I think the whole
crew did, a lot of risks in some of the choices that we made.

Speaking
of parody, wasn’t Dr. Phil and Shaq in the bathroom brilliant?

DLB:
That was great. That’s actually our bathroom. That’s the
bathroom we used.

LW:
I’ve always said that parody is the highest form of flattery. The
biggest kick I’ve gotten out of the whole SAW experience —

DLB:
SOPRANOS?

LW:
Yeah, this year in particular has been the SAW films’ infiltration
of pop culture. First of all, THE SOPRANOS is my favorite TV series
ever, so my jaw hit the floor when I think it was Chris said,
“We’re gonna make a horror movie, like that f*ckin’ SAW
movie.” I was like, “Did he just say that?” 

DLB:
“We’ll get a director like James Wan.”

LW:
And it kept coming back. I was on the phone to my agent going, “I
want to guest, I’ll do it for nothing, I want to be in the show, I
want a guest appearance, all I want to do is get whacked by Tony.”

DLB:
And

SOUTH

PARK

? When you get mocked on

SOUTH

PARK

. Cartman chained a guy up and made him saw his leg off.

LW:
He’s in the principal’s office and the principal’s like,
“Say sorry Cartman.” He’s like, [in Cartman voice], “I’m
sorry.” “Sorry for what?” “I’m sorry I chained you to the
flagpole.” “Aaand?” “I’m sorry I chained you to the flag
pole and then told you that I poisoned your lunch and the antidote
was six feet away and the only way to get it was to saw your foot
off.” And then there was SCARY MOVIE. Going to the movies and
seeing that this doll that James created in his bedroom, he made
that thing out of ping pong balls and ice cream sticks.

It’s
now being parodied on a poster for this huge comedy franchise. It is
the most gratifying stuff. It really means, just the other night, on
CSI, there was just a mention to it. One of the guys in CSI: NEW
YORK was hitting a fake dummy head full of blood with a high heeled
show, and he’s wearing this kind of mask and the blood’s
spurting on it and he’s like, “Oh, I look like something out of
one of those SAW movies.”

Did
you hear Stephen Colbert’s?

LW:
Did he? What was it. I love that show.

He’d
gone to the dentist and said every time he spit it looked like a
scene from SAW III.

[Darren
claps]

LW:
See, that sort of stuff is what Darren and I get the biggest kick
out of. It truly means you are part of pop culture. If you think of
pop culture —

DLB:
Oh, have you seen Youtube? On Youtube, if you type in SAW, you get
hundreds of people have made their own inversions of SAW things with
traps. I’m talking like nine and 10-year-old kids. I was like,
“You’re not old enough to see it.” There was a nine-year-old
kid chained to his bathroom.

LW:
There’s one where it’s just two guys and they’re really not
trying very hard. They’re just chained up with paper in their
bedroom and it’s crazy. That stuff is actually the best stuff
because I was just going to say, if you think of pop culture as this
big cloud, this collective consciousness just filled with stuff, and
in our day and age just constantly, like this huge coalface that’s
just constantly being fed with more and more stuff. “Here, here,
Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, here’s everything.” To be one of
those little blocks of coal like SAW, it’s just cool.

And
you know you’ve made it when there’s a porno, BONE SAW.

LW:
Really?

[Darren
claps more]

DLB:
I haven’t even heard of that. But you know what’s funny, not
only is it the title.

LW:
That is awesome.

DLB:
The imitations, and I don’t even know if I’m allowed to admit
this, but there’s an adult film that you can tell it’s a
director who borrowed from SAW. I mean, SAW has a visual style, the
360s, the flash frames, the crazy sound effects. There was a porno
shot in the same thing that someone forwarded me. I looked at it —

LW:
Darren does not collect porn.

DLB:
No, but it was 100%, it was a guy in a scary tape recorder voice and
it was doing the 360s with the flash frames and the push ins and the
whip outs. That kind of stuff is great.

LW:
Apparently there’s a film with Elisha Cuthbert called CAPTIVE.

DLB:
There’s another film called ARE YOU SCARED YET which is made like
SAW.

LW:
It is really cool. It’s one of the best things about being
involved in film because it’s still a pop art. It’s still an art
form for the masses. To see it become part of this language is
unbelievable.

This
is the most gruesome yet. How can you top that we’re seeing
everything here?

DLB:
We were talking before about this that I think pushing the envelope,
I think we’ve pushed the envelope as far as gore is going to take
it. I think that it’s now moving on, we were talking, some of the
most disturbed I’ve ever been, there was nothing. It was just a
feeling I had watching the movie. I watched this movie that I
actually really liked called PALINDROMES. Watching it, I was just
kind of disgusted the entire time. There’s really not that much to
it. Another movie where there was violence but not a ton is a movie
called BULLY. It’s just a feeling you get watching it, it’s a
sense of dread.

LW:
Yeah, I think one of the best things about the horror genre is it
allows you to make comments about society that you might not get
away with in a more literally presented film. If you think of
something like DAWN OF THE DEAD, the original DAWN OF THE DEAD is
this huge comment on mindless consumerism. But it’s cloaked in a
horror film so you can take it for the gore and the effects or if
you watch it more closely, you can actually get this political
message underneath.

So
I think horror’s great for getting the messages across, and I
think more prominently, it’s great for breaking taboos. I think
gore is one taboo. I think the violence on screen has reached a
certain point where that taboo has been broken. There’s only a
couple more things you could do. What are you going to do, have
someone castrating themselves for real on screen? At some point,
you’re going to have to put a lid on it and say, ‘We’ve done
all this.’ Breaking taboos doesn’t have to be something that
revolves around gore. It could be presenting a subject that’s
uncomfortable like PALINDROMES looking at abortion or an
uncomfortable subject. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a
horror film, but I think the expression “pushing the envelope”
doesn’t have to be about gore. It could be pushing another
envelope that is just as disturbing. 

DLB:
I think one of the great things in SAW III that we did is also some
of the traps were emotional. They weren’t violent. Emotional
things are far more disturbing I think than the violence in this
movie. Again, like Leigh said, I think there’s a lot more that we
can push that’s not violent-wise.

LW:
Yeah, there’s a lot of subjects out there that haven’t been
touched yet. I hope that upcoming filmmakers get into those
subjects.

Will
you continue doing practical, on set effects?

DLB:
I can’t handle digital effects. They were trying to pitch me to do
digital blood. We do a lot of transitions in this movie, like
there’s a transition where Dina Meyer is looking down at the body
and then the camera goes to the floor and it goes up and she’s in
the bathtub. All those were done practically. She really ran around
the back of the set, tearing clothes off, jumped in the bathtub and
said, ‘Now!’ and the camera would pan up. All the transitions in
the movie were practical. I think there’s just something more
organic about doing practical effects, practical transitions,
practical things like that than try to do them in a computer.