LYT's Weblog

-And that, if I’m not mistaken, is one you had to trim for the theatrical cut quite a bit, right?

Yes. The bones jutting out of the arms and legs.

-Because I really didn’t understand it fully when I saw it in the theater, then I watched the first unrated cut – now there’s another director’s cut –

Yeah, that’s exactly it, I mean it was something that had to get edited down so badly that in the theater, it almost didn’t make sense

-My favorite, of course, is the pig-pulper

Yes, the pig-pulper was good, but that was something that also developed over time, I mean it was the sort of thing where it grew and grew and grew from a small machine with pig guts coming out of it to this giant pulley system with huge pigs falling from the ceiling into these huge blades, and then of course the little incinerator that was next to it, and the giant vat our man got strapped to the floor in. What else were your favorite traps?

-That was the main one, because it was so insane, how do you even think of that? Putrid pig corpses, you’re gonna liquefy ‘em, and you’re gonna drown someone in them, so that was awesome. One thing I still don’t get, in Saw IV, there’s the “see no evil, speak no evil” one, and I still don’t know who the bald guy was who had his eyes sewn shut. Is that something we get to in the new one?

Ah, no, we never really explain who he was, but we may in the future.

-Because in the first Saw, there’s a big deal about how these are kind of ironic traps based on people’s sins, and I was wondering when I saw that how that was an ironic punishment of sorts

Well, maybe in the future we’ll have to explain that. Certainly for the lawyer it was important, and there’ve been a few traps like that where the dead guy, or the guy who’s gonna die, is just a victim, who may have done something really bad, or may have been just a corpse.

-So now that you’re in the director’s chair, is someone else figuring out the traps, or are you still doing it?

I’m still doing it quite a bit. I still had a very big hand in it, and Patrick and Marcus, the writers, they had a lot to do with them, certainly there were a few things that they didn’t sort out, but for the most part, y’know, I mean we worked really closely in production, early in the script-writing, to make it all work out well. They pinned down a few of ‘em, but then there were a few that were just left hanging.

-The big box of glass we saw in Jigsaw’s flashback in the last one, does that pay off in this one?

I can’t tell you that

-That’s a positive sign

Whether it does or it doesn’t, it’s definitely an element that we want to hang on to.

-When you’re coming on a part 5, obviously there’s a visual style and an audio style that’s been well established. Did you feel confined by that, or were you able to bring your own thing to it?

Not at all, I mean, I wanted to maintain that style, because I wanted this to still look and feel like a Saw movie, definitely, and it’s a format that’s worked fairly well. There’s a few things I chose not to do, things like there’s a few transitional shots in this, but I didn’t go for any of the giant transitions that we did in the past, and that was a conscious decision, I wanted to make sure that at no point did the transition become self-conscious or conspicuous, but rather would just be an organic flow from one scene to the next. Because often times if it’s too conspicuous, it can be something that ruins the suspension of disbelief, and I felt like that was something I wanted to make sure was maintained, so that at no point in the movie do you fall out of it, which is my ideal.

-One of the things I noticed after watching all four in a row last year at Sawfest is that the first one has a lot of genuine scares that make you jump, whereas 2, 3, and 4 are more sort of disturbing, but not so many jump moments. How does that carry over into 5?

We definitely have a good mix of both. We definitely have some good jump moments. I love the jump moments, myself, so yeah, they’re there.

-Do we see the pig mask again?

Oh yeah. I can tell you that.

-I’ve heard that this particular arc is supposed to end with part 6. Is that something...are you on for part 6?

I’m not on for part 6, but I don’t know if it’s gonna end. It’ll end when the fans want it to end.

-Well, obviously they’ll find ways to continue, but this particular arc, do you know if that’s set to wrap up with 6?

Uh, not at this point, it’s not gonna necessarily wrap up with 6. We’re very much still in the writing stage, but I don’t think there’s any indication that it will or won’t wrap up at this point.

-Is that tough as a director, to know that you can’t wrap it up too much, that you have to leave it open ended?

No not at all, because I think that I tried to make a contained story as much as possible. It was something where I wanted to make sure that – while the story may have an ending that hangs, we’re still working on the ending, choosing which one we want to use – it’s the sort of thing that I’ve always intended to be self-contained. You know, it can’t stand alone, you have that certain history, an assumed knowledge is necessary, but I want it to be an individual story that is strong.

-So it’ll be satisfying to the viewer whether or not there’s a part 6?

Yes. Oh yeah. Absolutely.

-You’re probably sworn to secrecy, right?

Well, here’s what happens...Nahh, I’m not gonna tell you. There’s a trap in it, and then there’s another trap, with a whole bunch of acting in between, and then another trap, seven altogether.

-Can you give us some idea how much Tobin Bell is in the movie?

He’s probably there for, I would say about a quarter. He’s peppered throughout the movie, and he has good presence, but it’s not ridiculous, it certainly makes sense where he is; it’s not something where we’re trying to milk him or anything like that. I think that his presence in the whole franchise is really necessary, and I think because this answers a couple of very big questions about the whole franchise, it has some scenes that are pivotal to the franchise, that are more pivotal than scenes in some of the other movies. And I think that having Tobin’s, Jigsaw’s presence in the entire franchise is necessary because I think you wanna feel that he had a role in all of what’s going on, and certainly you can’t deny his history on this entire story, certainly in this arc. It’s really what Saw’s about.

-Do you think there’s ever a point, like if they got to Saw 10, there’s absolutely nothing more you could possibly learn about Jigsaw?

Yeah, definitely I think that’s a possibility. I think that his legacy will always be there to a certain effect, but yeah, I fear the day that they go to something like what happened with the HANNIBAL RISING movie, it was just unfortunate.

-You don’t wanna see JIGSAW RISING?

I don’t wanna see Jigsaw as a kid, no.

-That’s funny, because my boss at LA Weekly wrote in his review of SAW IV that he’d like to see JIGSAW RISING; I said no, that’s a bad idea!

Not unless he’s rising from the dead

-Well, that’s what we were all afraid of with SAW IV!

Yeah, especially in that first scene where you see his schlong, you don’t want to see that rising, necessarily.

-Was that really his schlong, though, or was it a dummy?

I don’t know. We’ve asked that question a few times, and no-one’s ever given us a straight answer.

-So you weren’t on set for that?

It was definitely a prosthetic, the whole body, but whether that was natural or not, I’m not sure. I’m certain that there was a phone call that went out that said “Cut or uncut?” at a certain point.

-Do you know if there’ll be any new action figures from NECA for this movie?

There might be, we’ve got some good new characters in this one. There may be one or two.

-You’ve got Meagan Good; I’m not sure I’ve seen her in a horror movie before.

She was stupendous.

-One of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in a movie.

Ah, not only that, but she’s a fantastic actor, really really strong, I mean her performances were just amazing. She brought so much to this, I was really pleased.

-Can you tell us anything at all about her character?

I’m not sure what’s out there at this point yet, so I can’t really say.

-I don’t think anything.

All I can say is she’s one of the people who’s in this series of traps, and has to make certain decisions that she is not very happy with.

-Is she connected to Lyriq Bent’s character in the previous films?

No, she’s not. Definitely not. But you never know! In SAW VIII, maybe you find out she was his sister!