Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
The first time James Wan and Leigh Whannell teamed up as a director-writer team, they made a little horror film called SAW, the film that reinvigorated a certain type of scare film and launched about 50 sequels, copycats, and wannabes. Whannell also had a hand in writing the SAW II and SAW III, and eventually re-teamed with Wan to make DEAD SILENCE, a film that a whole lot of people have admitted to me quietly over the years "is pretty good." Well, who says it isn't? And while we're at it, let me admit quite openly that I'm a big fan of Wan's DEATH SENTENCE, with Kevin Bacon in a very disturbing performance.
Thankfully, Wan and Whannell, who is also an actor, have paired again to make the quite scary INSIDIOUS, starring Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne. It's kind of a ghost story, possession story, paranormal psychic story, and a full-on tribute to a style of filmmaking that I remember growing up loving as a kid--part THE HAUNTING, part schlocky Hammer Films, and almost all really creepy.
I got this chance to sit down for a good half hour with Wan and Whannell (who has a great role in INSIDIOUS as one of two ghost-hunting researchers) in Chicago, just prior to them taking the film to play to packed midnight shows at the SXSW Film Festival. I met these two briefly back in 2004, when they were out promoting SAW. I didn't get a shot to interview them at the time, but I'm really glad we were able to sit down. They interact with each other like a great comedy team, finishing each others thoughts and laughing quite a bit. Hope you enjoy my conversation with James Wan and Leigh Whannell…
James Wan: Hey, it’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.
Leigh Whannell: It’s nice to meet you.
Capone: Good to meet you too. So, without ruining the ending of the film, I want to start by discussing the highly divisive ending. I don't mean the very end, but I think you know what I’m talking about. I think if you’ve been reading some of the discussions of the film out of Toronto--even people that love the movie are getting hung up on that astral projection sequence in the film, about how it looks… The film, I know, didn’t cost that much to make, but it feels like it did. It has a classic feel to it, where it doesn’t look expensive, but it doesn’t look cheap either. But that ending looks really bizarre; you can almost see the dry ice machines behind the props. To me, I feel like that’s such a great throwback to the Hammer films.
JW: I think it’s charming.
Capone: It is, but it also made me laugh a little bit. At the same time, I clearly remember thinking, “Nope, it doesn't bother me. Still scary. Still works.” It reminded me of the films as a kid that made me scared. Talk about like what you were going for in that sequence.
JW: I’ll talk about it from a visual standpoint and then Leigh can talk talk about it from a more writer-y standpoint. [Laughs] I mean like you I grew up on a lot of classic old-fashioned ghost stories, and for me, it’s the really cheap low budget ones that are creepiest, because they don’t have enough money do the makeup perfectly. Do you know what I mean? They don’t have enough money to do the hair or to do the ghost really scary. To me, one of the creepiest movies ever made is the movie CARNIVAL OF SOULS. If you think about it, how weird is that? Here’s this story about this girl, and she’s being followed by this guy in a pretty crappily painted white face, which is supposed to represent death or whatever, right? So she ends up at this carnival, this abandoned carnival location and she starts just seeing all of these ghosts just dancing around in slow motion, and you're like “What the hell is this?” But it adds to the erieness.
But it’s that sort of stuff that I really kind myself really attracted to. The end of INSIDIOUS could have been the same as the first part of the movie, right? Then, it would not be polarizing at all, but then what’s the point? Then I’m making like another haunted house movie that we have all seen before. Why don’t we take the chance to do something that’s a bit more unique and different? Sure, you do then run the risk of people going “That was a bit wacky and a bit out there,” but at least we're doing something different and taking a chance to try something more unique.
LW: Yeah, we don’t make films that often, so you almost need to throw everything you have at the wall. I think it’s a foolish move to play it safe, especially in our lives and in filmmaking, it’s really hard to do. Fewer and fewer people are leaving their houses to get in their car, drive to a cinema, park, and go through the ritual of sitting in a theater. People can build home theaters. If you want to drag people out of their houses and sit them down in this dark room with a bunch of strangers, you want to take them on a ride, and I don’t want it to be middling. For me, the astral plane sequence, without giving anything away for the readers was the only reason to do it. In terms of the production design and how it looks, I can’t speak for that because James directed it, but in terms of the writing and why I wanted to collaborate with James on this, I think the astral sequence was the reason to do it, because we've never seen that before. We're seeing the film from the ghost’s perspective, and I really wanted to drag it out of the confines of what it was. In the marketing for the film and in the advertising it looks like a duck, it walks and talks like a duck, but it’s when you go and see the movie that you actually find out it’s a zebra.
[Everyone Laughs]
LW: The reason they can’t give away any of the more outlandish stuff in the marketing is because that would be giving away secrets, but believe me, this movie is not a standard haunted house movie. It starts off that way, but it morphs into something else.
JW: Yeah, that was the conceit. The conceit was to let you think that you are watching a traditional haunted house film, and it kind of like takes a detour.
LW: James and I have established this pattern with our films. We seem to be polarizing people. People either passionately love our stuff or passionately hate it, but at least either side is passionate. At the very least, I would rather that that have people in the middle ground where people make that god-awful noise. The most dreaded sound in the English language: “Eh...” “Was it good?” “Yeah.” “Was it bad?” “No.” I want to put it all out there and risk it.
JW: Yeah, you look back at SAW, and people are kind of used to it by now, but when SAW first came out it was a pretty bizarre flick with quirky elements as well.
LW: We had a puppet on a tricycle.
JW: [Laughs] Right!
LW: There was a guy running around in a pig mask after people. Now, as James said, because of the sequels, the iconography has become so ubiquitous that people take it for granted, but if you cast your mind back to that first film, it’s bizarre.
JW: And people laugh. Like Leigh and I always say that we made a great comedy, so it’s time to go make a horror film.
LW: And with this movie, I don’t think we'll ever stop from doing that. We are kind of talking about doing a sci-fi film now, and you know it’s going to be the same thing. We are going to throw it all out there.
JW: It’s going to be so different and weird.
LW: It’s going to be weird and different and strange.
Capone: And with science fiction now, there are a few people doing what you are talking about. They know the formula--we all know the formula--and then they're turning it upside down. It sounds like that’s what J.J. Abrams might be doing with his next film. It’s kind of what they did with CLOVERFEILD. It’s like taking something familiar--like a monster movie--and I’m kind of curious how you guys are going to flip it over, turn it inside out.
LW: It’s in the details a lot of the time. Take CLOVERFIELD as your example, there’s a monster film. It’s a monster on the rampage in the city movie, right? The actual storyline on paper is not what’s original; what’s original is the approach; it’s in the details. It’s like “Let’s shoot a monster film from the perspective of a home video camera.” So, I feel like that’s going to be our approach. I think the story might, on paper, sound like a good, traditional, solid story, but it’s the details that will be different, that will make you say, “Oh wow, I haven’t seen that before.” Hopefully.
Capone: Yeah, “Hopefully.” You brought up the SAW films and I’m wondering, are they done as far as you know, and how do you think the run went?
LW: They are “done.” The producers have told us that they're finished with them.
JW: The SAW films are kind of strange for me. It’s so weird. I refer to it as my experimental student film. It’s like my first movie, and usually you use your first movie to learn the craft and get used to the environment you're in. You don’t expect your first film to kind of… This kind of low-budget, clunky little film to break out there and become like the thing that you are best known for. So in a lot of ways for me as a director, I’m always trying to play catch up to this movie that I feel like doesn’t necessarily showcase me as a director in some ways.
LW: In some ways…
JW: In some ways, yeah, but in other ways, Leigh and I are super proud of it. We didn’t expect that this little thing that we made would go on to create the biggest horror franchise. For better or worse, it is what it is now.
LW: It’s also strange for us, because James only directed the first film.
JW: Yeah, and I only directed the one film. I’m so removed from it.
LW: And I wrote the first three. I went up until Part 3, killed off Jigsaw, which I was surprised they let me do, but we still get credited for it, whereas the sequels beyond Part 3 are really the producers’ films. So, it’s kind of like we were the ones that created this thing and now we've watched it go off, and it’s living it’s own life and it’s interesting. I view it with nothing but affection simply because this character that was created in the suburbs of Melbourne is like the new Freddy, and I’ve been dreaming my entire life, since I was three years old to make it in the film business. That’s all I ever wanted.
My dad still tells stories about the agony he went through after I saw JAWS, making him drive me to the library everyday so I could borrow shark books. I was obsessed. I was the definition of an obsessed film person at four or five years old. So, to finally make a film that not only came out, but was embraced by all of these people, it was such a great time in my life. So, I view it with affection, however, I’m glad the series ended when it did. I think those guys were smart enough not to try and completely hammer it into the dust. I think it’s good to finish it there.
Capone: I've spoken with Darren Lynn Bousman, [who directed Saw Ii, III, and IV). He’s usually a little bit more vocal about where it went after he left. (Laughs)
LW: It’s hard, because I don’t want to bit the hand that grants wishes you know, like literally if it wasn’t for Mark [Burg] and Oren [Koules] and Greg Hoffman, who produced the SAW series, we wouldn’t be living in L.A. making films like this, so I’m very thankful to them and always respectful of what they are doing. If we were to go out and have a few beers, and you said “Give me your opinion of SAW VI,” I might not tell you it’s the greatest film ever, but having said that, we're proud of the franchise.
JW: The fans love SAW 6 by the way, they really do.
LW: That’s the great thing about film, it’s subjective.
Capone: Back to what we were talking about, that ending sequence in INSIDIOUS, I think with lesser actors, it would have worked as well. You've got two of my favorite actors to play that couple and--without knocking the writing--those two sold it. Those two made me believe that these were real people and scared out of their minds. I can’t remember a film in recent memory that scared me as much as this film did.
JW: This is traditional, conventional filmmaking.
Capone: Conventional filmmaking that could scare me this much, I don’t remember the last time that happened to me to be honest.
JW: Oh, well that’s cool. That’s great. I agree with you. I think that was a big part, like when Leigh handed me this really well-written script, I said “I don’t want to fuck this up by making the wrong casting decision here,” and that was part of the reason why we were very conscious when we said, “We do not want to make this movie through the studio system,” like we had done with DEAD SILENCE, where creative control was taken away from us. So, part of that is so that I can retain control and say, “I don’t necessarily want to cast the biggest movie start in the film; I want to cast great actors and people that you would believe in.”
Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson are people that you can believe. You can believe these guys in this situation, because they are so great and they ground the film in reality. Coming back to what you said at the very start about coming out of Torontom and even as you pointed out, people that liked the movie would even touch on how they think the ending as a bit out there. After Toronto, we actually came back and I actually went back and did a few edits that brought the film down [to reality] a little bit, if that makes sense.
LW: Did you see the Toronto version?
Capone: No.
[James goes off the record, to sidestep any spoilers about Patrick Wilson entering the astral plane world known as The Further. The change is slight, but significant.]
LW: This version of the film that you saw is the best version.
JW: Yeah, it’s what the final film should have been in the first place. Before it was very stylized; it felt like you were watching LABYRINTH or something like that. And Leigh said to me, "If we get a chance to go back and tweak the film, we should take all that stuff out, keep it simple. And by keeping it simple, it helped the film all the more.
Capone: And James, you did edit this film, which you don’t usually do in your features. The key to both comedies and horror is timing, and the editing here is so good. I didn’t even realize until I saw the end credits that it’s your editing. Horror films were my gateway drug into writing about movies to begin with as a kid, so I really have analyzed “Why do I get scared by some things and not others?” And a lot of times, it’s just that extra second or two.
JW: It's timing. Right, it’s that extra beat. If a sound comes in before or after that beat, the way it’s supposed to be, it throws you off and it doesn’t work. Or if the editorial choices that you make is just a few beats off, it throws everything completely off. So, I went to this movie and very clearly stating to the producer that I would only direct this film if I could edit the film myself, because I feel like for me to construct the scare sequences and for them to work, I needed to be in there and put my fingerprints all over it and cut the film and make sure all of the music was right ,and so on. So yeah, the version that got to Toronto was the version I cut.
LW: It’s sort of an exact science, it’s a fraction of a fraction of a fraction, in every regard with the sound, the shots.
JW: And I love editing. The problem is, once you get to Hollywood, the studio doesn’t want you to cut your own stuff, because they want to control it. They want to be able to whisper to the editor and go “You know what? Let’s try it this way…” They can’t do it if the director is the editor as well. [Laughs] Unless you work outside of the studio system like Robert Rodriguez does where he cuts all of his own stuff.
Capone: Where did the idea of a haunted person come form as opposed to having the house be haunted? It is sort of a bait-and-switch, but it’s also similar to what [producer] Oren [Peli] did with PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, it turns out that it’s a person and not a house. Where did you come up with the idea come from?
LW: Well James and I, back when we were trying to cook up an idea for a film to make that would eventually become SAW, we were sort of pacing around in James’ apartment overnight trying to come up with an idea that we could shoot cheaply for $5,000, and eventually we narrowed it down to three ideas, one of which was the core idea of the haunted boy at the center of this.
JW: The boy with the talent to do what he does.
LW: Yeah, and then we hand another idea, and then we had an idea about two guys stuck in a toilet. [laughs] I’m glad we went with the toilet idea, because that went on and became what it became, but years later, in late 2009, when the guys who produced PARANORMAL came to us and said “We’ve got money to make a slate of horror films,” they were doing their little victory lap around town post PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. They had calluses on their hands from high-fiving people and counting money. So, they had this fund to make five horror films, and they had a meeting with us and they said, “We want you guys to be the first. We would love to make a film with you and team up.” The first thing James and I thought is, “We should pull that idea out the little mental filing cabinet that we had all of those years ago about the boy, that central idea.”
JW: And Leigh and I have always loved the haunted house genre, and so we thought “Let’s see if we can merge the two together,” and the two came together very organically and that’s how we came up with this.
LW: We felt like we still hadn’t made our definitive horror film, because we felt like DEAD SILENCE wasn’t quite the film we wanted it to be.
JW: And SAW to us is a dark thriller, so we wanted to make a really scary supernatural film.
Capone: Is there a difference between writing a horror film with an actual visible threat versus an invisible, spiritual one?
LW: I think so, yeah. It’s a lot more ethereal and mysterious. When you're dealing with something that’s supernatural, you can bend the rules. Suddenly, you're dealing with something that can disappear and reappear, and it is creatively freeing in some ways, because you can just delve into this macabre stuff. [Laughs] You can get all Lynch-ian, and if anyone calls you one, you can just say, “But it’s supernatural. Of course the guy was walking around with the head of Abraham Lincoln, he’s a ghost.” Whereas, I think when you are dealing with something that is a human, you're bound by the laws of our world and you get called on a lot more stuff. That noise in the theater, the dreaded noise “Ugh…” That rings out a lot more in a thriller about somebody…
JW: There’s definitely different approaches to the two styles of filmmaking.
Capone: With SAW, you’ve got these big, elaborate, loud, puzzle traps; here, you're counting on a few books falling to the floor to scare somebody. It really is your writing on a different scale on a weird way, too.
LW: Yeah, it’s very subtle hints that build and build.
JW: My favorite moment in the film that not a lot of people pick up is when Rose Byrne is cleaning the kids bedroom, and she’s walking, and the camera is tracking with her and she goes past the laundry. And very fleetingly…
[James goes off the record to avoid spoilers.]
Capone: When you bring in scientists to a story like this, as opposed to like a priest or something spiritual, often it does sort of add that comic element. But in my mind, it makes it a little more real, because these guys are sort of the hardened cynics who are fully expecting to capture absolutely nothing. And it also brings to mind POLTERGEIST or THE HAUNTING , where you bring experts in. ENTITY did it too.
LW: Yeah, it’s sort of a staple of the haunted house genre, the family turning to the experts. So in a way, it’s a pretty rigid form the haunted house movie. I remember Tarantino talking about DEATH PROOF, and he was saying it’s his “slasher movie,” and he was talking about how the slasher film is such a rigid genre that you don’t have much room to move, and the best thing he could think of was to make the car the knife. I feel like with this, in certain aspects of INSIDIOUS, we have stuck to the form and with the family calling in the experts.
JW: Because the form is fun if you do it right.
LW: Yeah, it’s the room you have to wiggle around in within the form that makes it fun. I knew that my friend Angus [Sampson], who plays the other ghost hunter, I knew he and I would have a good rapport, and we actually met up with some ghost hobbyist in L.A. They took us to an abandoned mental hospital in east Los Angeles, and these guys were pretty much like the guys in the film. They took it very seriously.
JW: They even look like them, just about.
LW: Yeah, so it is interesting to bring in that stuff. Hopefully they bring some levity to the film.
Capone: I will say that Lin Shaye is one of my favorite character actors, and I’m not used to seeing it her be in any film for as long as she's in this one. Was that a tough character to cast?
JW: Nope. Right from the very start when Leigh was writing I knew from the very start that that role was written strictly for Lin Shaye. And when we sent the script out to a lot of agencies, people were throwing us big names like Kathy Bates and this and that, and of course as a director you are like “I could get the chick from MISERY,” but I told Lin that I really wanted her to play this part and I knew she would bring something really unique to it. As someone who comes from a comedic background, I knew she would bring out a kind of quirkiness to her, but I really wanted her to play it straight, and she really trusted me and she kept turning to me to really guide her though her role, and I think she’s fantastic in the movie.
Capone: My favorite scene with her is where she's looking up and describing what she is seeing in that dark ceiling. That’s just a great scene. That’s her Oscar clip right there. (Everyone laughs)
LW: It’s her Scream Awards clip.
Capone: That’s exactly right. I noticed that there are parts of this film that are so washed out that they look like they're black and white. In that scene with Lin, in particular, it’s black and then she’s kind of in the light. And you also have a really incredible soundscape going on here. I love those noises, because that gets me more than anything. That’s reality and that’s what scares everybody in real life.
JW: I agree. To answer those two questions, I think I can try and hit those two with one stroke here. I may not, but I’m going to try. A big part of INSIDIOUS, and Leigh and I wore it on our sleeves here, is we really wanted to make a throwback to the classic old-fashioned haunted house or ghost movies that we grew up with, those black-and-white films. So, it’s funny that you say that some of the moments have a desaturated look, because I wanted to make a film that started off with color, because it’s normal and it’s everyday.
But at the film progresses, as the family spirals into trouble, I wanted to slowly suck the color away and psychologically add to an audience’s experience when you are watching the movie that you don’t quite know what’s wrong, but there’s something obviously very wrong now, because by the midpoint you're like, “Where did all of the color go? Where did all of the cheeriness go?” Then the only color that pops it he color red, and the red symbolizes a very bad thing. The score part of it, the soundscape of it, to me is really me harkening back to a lot of the classical movies that back then used pianos, just like clanky piano bits or shrieking violins, where they were very nonmusical and very atonal and experimental. I think that is the kind of sensibility that really added to the anxiety that INSIDIOUS has as the film gets going.
Capone: Can you talk about the look of the primary demon in this, because he has a slightly Darth Maul look to him.
JW: [Laughs] Everyone brings that up.
Capone: But it’s kind of there, and I wondered where his look atually did it come from? What was the idea?
JW: It came from the original concept that Leigh and I cooked up, and he’s actually credited as this: “The Lipstick Faced Demon,” because he puts lipstick on his face, and that’s what the red is. His whole body is black, and there’s that one final shot--and we're not giving anything away--where you see his full body, and he looks nothing like Darth Maul, but it’s only because the face is all painted red. I don’t know why Darth Maul’s face is red, but in our context, he actually paints his face with lipstick, and once again without giving this away, there’s that moment where people think that the handprint on the bed sheet next to the boy is a bloody handprint. It’s not; it’s a lipstick handprint. We actually had a scene earlier in the film where you saw him applying makeup to his face, but we cut it out.
Capone: I would kind of like to see that shot.
[Everyone Laughs]
JW: It’s really cool.
Capone: I was impressed that this was PG-13. I’m not of that belief that it has to be R rated to be scary or good, and that’s been proven time and time again. I was impressed that you were able to dial it back a little and make it scary with just the essentials.
JW: I think INSIDIOUS is a more mature film for Leigh and myself, so we wanted to make a movie that was more controlled and restrained.
LW: There’s nothing required of this particular genre that needs blood, you know?
Capone: Not at all.
JW: It’s scarier without it, I think.
Capone: I agree. So are you looking forward to SXSW?
JW: Oh, hell yeah.
LW: I’ve never been before, but I hear it’s incredible.
Capone: You’ve been to Austin before, right?
LW: I’ve been to Austin.
JW: Leigh has been to Austin, but we’ve been through like Houston or Dallas.
Capone: Austin is a different animal. And that crowd will love this movie, I think.
LW: You’re going to be down there? Fantastic, man.
Capone: That’s the audience that you want to watch this movie.
LW: You think it’s going to play well? I hope so.
JW: Cheers. Thanks.
LW: Take it easy, man. thank you.
-- Capone capone@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter
