Saw IV – Toronto Press Conference

Director Darren Lynn Bousman, who brought us Saws II and III, had sworn off of doing any more Saw movies last year, but he was lured back with a great script (written by the Project Greenlight winners Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, who penned John Gulager’s Feast). “I’m excited again and honored to be a part of such an amazing franchise that just keeps on ticking thanks, in part, I think to amazing casting from finding new people such as Scott [Patterson] and Betsy [Russell], and returning old people such as Tobin [Bell] and Lyriq [Bent]. I think that’s why the franchise continually succeeds, because of the great casting.”

I got a sneak peek at the movie before the press conference, and producer Oren Koules actually said, “You’re the first people out here to see it. You know, we keep doing them because we keep coming up with fresh ideas. With someone like Lyriq who was in some of II and some of III to be able to have IV be about, in some ways, his journey is really exciting for us. It’s really exciting to find story lines that keep us going. It’s a lot of fun and it’s challenging, but I have to say we had a ride doing it.”

Of course there will be blood, and of course there will be a Saw V. Producer Mark Berg said, “Our job right now is to figure out how to keep the story moving forward having killed Jigsaw [in part 3], but yet, not want to make a movie without Tobin Bell. So, that becomes our challenge, how to keep it going forward and get Tobin still in there.”

Saw V will be written by Dunstan and Patterson again, with longtime Saw production designer David Hackl taking the director’s chair from Bausman (judging from the torture chamber of chairs in the Saw films, I don’t think I’d want to sit down there!). But for now, it’s all about Saw IV.

Q: Scott, is it overwhelming to jump into a series like this, that’s so well-established and has so many diehard fans?

SP: A little, but again Kudos to Darren, because the first thing Darren would do when he would approach you in a rehearsal of a scene on the set would be to give you the framework and what was going on.  And since you saw 5 and 6 reels, you know there are story lines running concurrently, flashbacks, I mean, it’s a lot to take in, especially with my limited brain capacity. And he really made it very clear what needed to happen, what had happened, what was going to happen, and maybe even into future scripts, maybe into V a little bit. So that was crucial, crucial information to have otherwise you couldn’t play the scene.

Q: Who do you play?

SP: I play a character named Peter Strahm, he’s an FBI agent, special agent, he’s called in to help try to find the accomplice and that’s about all I can tell you. And it was an extraordinary experience working with Darren. I know you’ve heard it from the Repo cast, but it’s—you know, I’ve worked with a lot of directors over the years and I don’t ever recall having this much fun on a film or a TV project. And I think we made a pretty darn good film, and you saw some of it. I haven’t seen any of it and I’m really looking forward to it. So, I’m just glad to be a part of it.

Q: Darren, what’s the difficulty in coming up with new contraptions to put your victims into?

DB: I think the hardest contraption this time was not even a trap it was the final real quest. And I’m sorry to tantalize you guys who didn’t see it, but it seriously is.  The traps have become easier and easier because with David Hackl—I can’t say enough great things about him—his productions out of these traps, I mean, he can take a simple microphone and turn it into a trap, something will happen to it. But I think the Saw films have become kind of known for their twists and did we get you.  And this entire movie is a lead up to did we get you. We obviously didn’t get you because you guys didn’t see the last reel, but I think that was the hardest thing this year, because this is my last Saw film and knowing that I had to do a big did we get you. And the whole movie was kind of conceived around what we were going to do in the last 20 minutes.

I think that was the hardest thing because we had to backtrack, almost like Scott said, we had to backtrack in the very first frame. The very first frame of the movie we had to think what the last frame of the movie was going to be and just figure out if everything would work out. As well as thinking about future, what the future leaves. In Saw III, I thought it was my final one and I said, ‘Kill everybody! Kill them all!’ and I went in and I killed Tobin and I did everything, and now I’m like, alright I’m back, everyone’s dead, what am I gonna do? And so, we had to think ahead this time. Kind of turning the franchise over to David Hackl, he had to go somewhere with it.  So we had to think about these characters we’re introducing, where will they be, where will they go to. So not only thinking about the future, but thinking about the past as well.  I think that was the hardest thing about doing Saw IV.

Q: You said this one the best one so far, combining gore of II and III with plot of I.  Is there any tongue and cheek humor?

OK: It wasn’t tongue and cheek at all. What we tried to do was do certain elements—I mean, look at each one as an individual movie, but we also look at them as kind of the theme of them. And we kind of thought that there were certain parts of each one that we absolutely loved and we kind of, I thought in IV, we cautiously talked about the twists of I maybe with some of the most amazing visuals.  You know, in I we didn’t have any money so to be able to do some of the visuals that Darren got to do in, say, III, we could never have done in I. So what we tried to do was do some of the amazing visuals in III maybe with a couple of twists that are more indigenous to I.  But I was absolutely dead serious.

MB: So, in other words that was a budgetary thing. But there were reviews at the time that said that I was better because of that, that it didn’t succumb to the sort of Hostel-ization.

OK: I think each one stands on its own individually. There are certain twists in each one, certain logic points in each one that work amazingly. It’s just that—what we tried to do was kind of do a throwback to I in certain parts and take the—we just tried to take the best of all three films.

DB: Every film has its own message and theme. I think, where I kind of approached III a, it sounds screwed up, but as a love story between Jake Saw and Amanda, and a lot of people kind of looked down on III saying it was the most violent and whatever, and that you just did gore for gore’s sake, where, like with III, we really approached the whole thing as it’s a story between Jigsaw and Amanda in this kind of protégé-mentor love relationship they had. I think we go into each of the Saw films with a theme saying okay this is what this one’s going to be about…, and this is what this one’s going to be about…

OK: Yeah, I think with IV we went in trying to combine all the best themes of the movies, the gore of this one with the twist of this one with the message of this one, going into it.

Q: Tobin, is it hard to shed this character at the end of the day? Does he creep into your nightmares?

TB: No. I approach him from a very technical point of view. He is a technician, so it’s appropriate.  I think he thinks that way, he’s very detail-oriented, he reads a great deal. And I don’t think about him once I leave.  Well, I think about him all the time once I’m on the set. But I think about him in terms of the script and what he means by the things that he says, what the details involved are, and what his relationships are like and I think of him—people refer to him as a dog, and he is obviously, because he doesn’t have the kind of moral restraints that most of us have regarding the actions that he takes. But he feels differently about himself and I try to bring as much humanity to him, as extreme as he is, as much humanity as I can, because I think that provides counterpoint to the mayhem that goes on around him.

Q: Is there a moment when you’re constructing these gory scenes and the horrific becomes the humorous and you just start laughing because you know where all the pulleys and strings are? Or is it very serious?

DB: Saw is not serious on set. It’s funny. I can’t remember a somber moment on any of the Saw films where we’re actually on set being very somber. It’s not like that at all. I mean, the pranks, the practical jokes, the fart humor, the everything, I mean, it’s a family, it’s become a family and so, you know, when I yell action to cut, there’s your serious moment, but after that it’s not. It’s a family.

Q: Will there be a gag reel?

DB: There should be.

DB: I always wanted to release the Franky G gag reel from Saw II of everything he did off camera. But I don’t think he did one.

BR: Lyriq got the giggles last time. There were three or four takes where they could not ???. It was starting to piss him off.

DB: Oh yeah, you and Justin Louis and Costas, every single time. It was impossible. I actually got angry, the only time I got angry on set, because you guys wouldn’t stop laughing.

Q: Tobin, how has this affected your social life? Do people come up to you, and ask weird questions?

TB: Well, it only happens occasionally.  Generally people, you know, I think they’re gonna say something about him and they’ll say something like, ‘You’re the guy from ...’

OK: Kids always stop him though. I mean he told us recently about kids in a skate-park.

TB: Well, I coach flag football and they’re 13 and 12 and they say to me all the time, ‘Alright, we’ll do this drill, but just do the voice for us.’  So, I’ll do something like stuff I do on the scene. But Oren’s talking about kids on skateboards like 6 or 8 and they come to talk to me and they say ‘Are you the man?’ and I say, ‘I guess so’ because I know what man they’re talking about and ‘When’s the next Saw?’ and I say ‘Halloween’ and he said ‘Great’ I said ‘What do you like about the movies?’ he said ‘They’re so crazy and they’re so real.’ And one of them will say ‘Like when you said to the detective, ‘What if you knew the exact moment of your death. How would that change how you’d live your life, detective?’ And the fact that this kid’s like 13 and they’re talking about something that was said in Saw II…

And then another one will say, ‘think about the blessings, appreciating your blessings.’ And I think that Darren creates such an amazing flow when these films are put together and it’s not just when he puts them together, while he’s shooting he knows the rhythm that the music is going to have and somehow I think amidst all of the intense scenes of violence that’s there that, somehow some of these ideas that get thrown out whether they’re leads or Darren’s or whomevers, for example survival of the fittest, things like small things, there must be 50 of them, every once in a while that come popping out that, I think, provides a delicacy and an intelligence to the films that they wouldn’t ordinarily have without those things. And the fact that 13 year olds are talking to me about them means that they hear them.

Q: You guys consider the Saw movies morality tale. So when these movies come under fire as so-called torture-porn, does it ruffle your feathers?

DB: These movies, like any horror film, I mean, obviously it would look like they’re glorifying violence and like I said, we always get badgered for gore for the sake of gore and that’s not at all.  It’s easy to look at that and see it on the surface, yeah there’s red stuff all over the place, but if you go beneath the surface there are—you know, these aren’t movies we make for the critics, this is not like a critic darling, a one million dollar movie that we would win an Academy Award for this moral message, but at the same time this has a bigger moral message than a lot of the films that do win. 

I mean, you just gotta look beneath the surface. Take any of the Saw films, there’s a moral message underneath them.  I watch horror films all day long and most of them are just blood and violence and, you know, you got hot teenagers and get them naked and having some sex and doing some killing. Whereas, that’s not what the Saw films are, so I would just challenge them to look beneath the surface.  Take away the scenes of blood and you still have the movie, where a lot of the horror films you take away the scenes of blood and there’s nothing left.  And I think that’s what the Saw films have done so well.

Remove every trap in the movie, and you’ll still have the movie there.

OK: And we do them without the trap. Basically when we do the stories we will insert a trap later. It’s not like in the conception of the movie we’re like okay someone is going to hang, we basically say that someone will get into a trap and then we’ll keep going with the logic and the flow of the story, so it’s not like the traps drive the story, the story drives itself and people get into situations. It’s really then less to the writers, but more of Darren and David Hackl our production designer that come up with the traps. I mean, they’re always indigenous to Tobin’s character of being an engineer and trying to look at things that he’d easily be able to access, to realize what his character would put together.  But the story is a story without the traps, we literally say ‘insert trap.’

SP: One of the things that I think is key for any film is it’s got to be a love story.  The thing that’s different about the script from I think the other Saw films is there’s a love story here. We get to find out about Tobin’s love story and my favorite horror films are, well obviously, The Exorcist that film doesn’t work unless that mother and that daughter have that incredible relationship, movie just doesn’t work. Manhunter, same thing, you’ve got Thomas Noonan’s character falling in love with Joan Allen. It is some of the most poignant moments I have ever seen in film.  This has those moments and I think that’s what makes this movie special and different from all the other Saw films. You’re taking a man that is capable of doing this and you’re seeing another side of him.

Q: Scott, what’s it like going from TV’s sweet Gilmore Girls, to Saw IV?

MB: It’s funny. That was kind of a horror film while we were shooting it and happiness off of it… this was the opposite.  Look, seven years on that thing and then coming on this set was a whole different experience, I gotta tell you.  Darren let me improvise a lot of stuff. I didn’t really cut into the text, I did preambles and I tried to put buttons on scenes. I didn’t want to get in the way. If they didn’t want to use it, I didn’t want to muck up a scene. But it was just, it was like an athlete stretching their muscles and just really doing things that I wasn’t able to do for a long, long time.

DB: There are some outtakes.  The gag reel! I forgot about Scott Patterson and his gag reel.  I couldn’t put a lot of it in the movie, because it was just so outrageous, like I would break down laughing.  He would go into these interrogation room things and he would say some of the most obnoxious things to Jill Tuck [Jigsaw’s wife in the movie].  Like, I’m gonna do one of them right now.  Like, Betsey wouldn’t say anything to him and he goes, ‘Listen here, bitch. I’ve got an entire case of Fresca outside and all fucking night.’ Or my other favorite one is, ‘we’re taking you to prison and they will make you their bitch, and you will have woman love that you’ve never experienced’.  Like, they were some of the greatest fucking outtakes that I have ever heard.

OK: Scott was basically, we can’t say you were in prison for seven years, but he was in a place where the inmates ran the asylum [re: Gilmore Girls]. Am I allowed to say that?

SP: Yes, you can say anything you want.

OK: He actually came in and we were so happy to have him and the freedom I think that we gave him kind of was, he didn’t know what to do with it, he was just exploding. I mean, I’m being honest as a friend.

SP: I had never been happier to be on set. Because I felt there was this energy on this set, Darren and Tobin and Lyriq and these fellow actors, they’re just so energized to be in a film like this. You got to understand it’s pretty exciting to be involved in a franchise like this.  This is the most successful horror franchise in history of film and we’re a part of it and it’s pretty exciting.

OK: I said it last night and I really meant it, it wasn’t some cheesy thank you--We started as two guys, and Darren obviously came on very early, but we started as two guys that thought something was really cool and we did something that no one in Hollywood would, we actually put our money where our mouth was and we decided to do it ourselves. But Tim Kaylyn and everyone at Lionsgate, what they did was make sure that you guys have raised us. We found that the sites and the publications that would embrace us and that we could embrace and make part of it.  And one thing we’ve tried to do with all the Saws is never forget where we came from. We always make sure that the different sites get the material first.  We’ve tried never to sell out. We’ve tried always to stay true to our core no matter how big or how small we ever will get or have gone but we always use the same sites and publications that supported us since we were this little dumb film coming at midnight at Sundance and no one cared and Lionsgate was talking about sending us straight to video, and then when people started getting on the bandwagon for us.  It was the [genre websites]. It wasn’t Time magazine [supporting us] so thank you.

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Staci Layne Wilson reporting