Saw veteran Darren Lynn Bousman returns to the director’s seat for Saw IV which will probably be the last Saw film he’ll helm. After Bousman turns in his director’s cut of Saw IV he’s off to make Repo, a seriously twisted horror rock opera he promises will be even more violent than any of the Saw movies. But for now Saw IV is where he’s focusing his energy.
Do you have a conclusion in terms of Saw IV or Saw V?
“There definitely is and we figured it out, believe it or not, when we were writing 2. When Leigh [Whannell] and I got together on 2, we were saying, ‘Where do we want to see this thing go to? Where is the end?’ Did I think I was going to come back on IV? No, I do not think so. I thought III would have been the end for me, and definitely III was the end of that story. But there was always envisioned to be separate stories going on in Saw and this…I just happened to take part in the beginning of the next story.”
I thought you came back to Saw III almost grudgingly so I was wondering what brought you to Saw IV?
“It was the heap loads of cash that Mark [Burg, producer] brought over in a dump truck. No, that had nothing to do with it. What it really boiled down to was two things. Unlike starting from scratch and having no idea where to go, I’d been with this for two years now. I knew the people involved. I knew the producers and I knew the cast. I knew everyone involved, the production designer, the costumer designer, so I wasn’t starting at square one. It was picking up where we left off and that’s exactly when we came into it. From the day that I left Toronto until when I came back was months, we’re talking a couple of months. So the production offices were the same, the hotel was the same, sound stage, everything was the same.
We came back for our first meeting and it was like, ‘All right, where did we leave off in Saw III? Let’s begin.’ Unlike a lot of films, you look at a lot of sequels, they try to take a different road. They try to put new characters in. Everyone is the same. A little known fact about Saw which not a lot of people know is that we used the same extras and they played the same extras year to year. We have the same S.W.A.T. team. Have you looked at my four badass S.W.A.T. guys that I was allocating by the budget to have in Saw 2? It’s the same S.W.A.T. guys in Saw III and in Saw IV. If you look at the nurses in all the hospital scenes, everyone is the same. So it completely is a family.
I know the film brings back the exact same extras, the same S.W.A.T. guys, the same… My favorite is there is a police detective in Saw III that has like half a line. He doesn’t really say s**t but he’s back in IV saying half a line, and doesn’t really say s**t. It’s the same guy.”
Does that tie into the continuity as well?
“It [does]. We never said where Saw IV is being filmed. There’s no place being filmed. It’s anywhere. But one thing we tried to do is create a community. The diehard fans will pick it up. They will see that we are in the same locations, that we have in the same actors, that we have the same… There is this continuity that brings credibility to the project. We’re not changing over every year, so definitely there is a continuity to it.
I think that’s why if you look at the successful franchises like look at Lethal Weapon. The Lethal Weapon films continue to succeed because they had the same people every single Lethal Weapon. And if you liked or hated them, they did well. I mean the Lethal Weapons did do well because it was the exact same people every year. The movies that fail are the ones that have completely new people come in every single time and try to reinvent it.”
So what new blood have these new writers brought?
“A lot. Patrick [Melton] and Marcus [Dunstan] are great. You know what’s a crazy story about Patrick and Marcus? I was working in between Saw II and Saw III helping edit a movie and I was working out of this building. Patrick and Marcus were working a floor beneath me on one of their movies called The Midnight Man or something. I was going to my car one night and the two guys – and Feast had not come out yet - they go, ‘Oh, you’re Darren. We’re huge fans of Saw. We’re huge fans of Saw.’ And they gave me their phone numbers like, ‘Dude, we love Saw.’ And then now two years later, here they are the writers of it which is strange fate, but they did a great job.
The thing that’s hard about coming into a Saw film is there are rules. Not a lot of people realize this but we try to stay true to them. Jigsaw doesn’t lie, number one. The traps have to be things – anything that can be bought at Home Depot or found in the environment which we’re saying it is. There are all these rules, so we gave the writers the rules sheet and the rules sheet was a thick book. We’re like, ‘Here. Just don’t f**k it up.’ And they did a good job. They really did.”
Did you already know that the 4th part would pick up right after the 3rd? I recall at the junket you told me the 4th part could be something about the past.
“I can tell you this with pretty much certainty that nobody knows anything about IV. I was just joking around that all of these rumors going around about IV, no one has any clue what IV is.”
Is it about Angus Macfadyen’s character and his daughter?
“Sure. That’s what it’s about. It’s about Angus and his daughter and they’re trapped in the same… and the dog. Yeah. (Laughing) One of the greatest things about the Saw film is everyone is speculating. ‘What’s going to happen? Is Shawnee back? Is it this?’ And they start pushing the things and we lead them there and say, ‘Sure. That’s what it’s about. Shawnee’s back. It’s about Angus and his daughter and this lovely relationship.’ But I can say with much certainly that no one has any idea at this point what Saw IV is about.”
