Friday,
April 29: Greetings
and thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings and musings
about the production of SAW II. JoBlo.com
and Arrow in the Head were some of the first guys out there to jump
on the SAW bandwagon and help turn the original movie into a hit, so
I figure at the very least, I owe them a few hours a week keeping
them and their army of readers up to speed as much as I can.
By
way of introduction, I’m Gregg Hoffman, one of three partners who
own Twisted Pictures. We
started Twisted with SAW and shot our second film, CATACOMBS,
earlier this year in Bucharest, Romania.
The film stars Shannyn Sossamon and Alecia Moore aka Pink and
is another demented horror/thriller that we hope will satisfy you
maniacs early next year! SAW
II is the third picture to come out of the label, and we’re also
producing SILENCE, James Wan’s follow-up to the original SAW for
Universal later this Summer.
I’m
writing from 38,000 feet above the Midwestern United States on the
second of six round trips to and from Toronto — where we’re
shooting the sequel — and Los Angeles, where my family lives.
My two boys don’t do very well when dad’s away for long
stretches, so I’m going to commute home to spend the weekends with
them. Lot’s of
frequent flyer miles to be sure, but someone needs to tell Air
Canada that the Airbus A320 is the most uncomfortable plane in the
sky! Especially when you
threw a kick-off party for your cast and key crew, then somehow
wound up doing tequila shots in a karaoke booth until 4:00 am with
two female cast members, Leigh Whannell, the Director of
Photography, Unit Production Manager and Production Designer.
For the record, Leigh Whannell does the best karaoke
rendition of Wonderwall by Oasis that I’ve ever heard.
Photography
officially starts on Monday, May 2nd, but the first shot
actually took place today when we snuck off and shot a few police
cars and a SWAT van driving around the industrial docklands that
surround our soundstage. It’s
always a rush the first time you hear a director yell ‘Action!’
and today was no exception. Darren
Bousman, the young director who’s heading SAW II was grinning from
ear-to-ear after he yelled ‘Cut’!
The smile may have actually been because he got the phone
numbers of two Hungarian strippers the night before, but I can’t
be certain. Nonetheless
I am confident that upon my return Monday, no Hungarian strippers
will have wound up in his hotel suite.
Most
people think the making of a movie starts with the camera rolling,
but a lot has gone on since Lion’s Gate asked us to have a sequel
ready a year to the day from the release of the first SAW.
The biggest problem we had was that we didn’t have a script
or an idea. James Wan
and Leigh Whannell were being flown all over the world in support of
the original, so locking Whannell in the Twisted offices, then
putting him through sensory deprivation and nipple torture until he
came up with an idea wasn’t an option.
We had to go in a different direction.
After SAW, our offices started getting bombarded with horror
and thriller scripts. One
of them was a sick, claustrophobic game of death being played out in
a house that really got under my skin.
It was written by one Darren Bousman.
I called my partner Oren Koules and pitched him the idea.
He was silent for a moment and said “Gregg, that could be
SAW 2!” That’s the way Oren works.
He goes about his business and then – BAM! – the monster
idea. We made the deal
with Darren and were off to the races.
While
adapting an existing script into a sequel is a tried and true
Hollywood formula, and one that I had a lot of experience with from
my days as an executive at Disney, laying the world of SAW into
Darren’s script proved to be much much harder than just changing
the character names and writing a few Jigsaw speeches. However, we
had to press ahead and start constructing sets and hiring a crew.
You have to start preparing a film the size of SAW II a minimum of
about 6 weeks before the camera rolls, and you need an absolute
minimum of about 12 weeks after you finish shooting to edit, write
music, mix the sound, etc. So
the beginning of May was our absolute drop-dead start date.
As a production company, it’s a scary time when you start
pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a project without a
finished script. It
definitely makes the sphincter tighten.
And tighten it did!
In fact, it wasn’t until Leigh Whannell jacked himself up
on junk food and coffee, didn’t shower or have sex with his
girlfriend, and rewrote the script 24/7 for two straight weeks did
we finally get the draft that made us go “HELL YEAHHH!!!”
We’ve given Leigh several young boys as pets to express our
thanks, and he’s quite content now.
So
that’s where we stand as of this evening.
The actors are set, the sets are built, Jigsaw’s nasty new
torture devices have been built and tested, Darren Bousman will
strike out with the strippers, and
we’re ready to rock and roll at 7 AM Monday morning.
The official cast announcement will be out next week, but I
think you guys are going to like who we’ve set.
More
to come on the next flight home…
I’ll
end this entry with one of my favorites lines
from the script, just to tease you all a little bit…
JIGSAW
Oh yes…there will be blood…