SAW the Blog: October 2006

http://www.officialshawneesmith.com/interview.html

Here's some of the parts about Saw III...but definitely check out the whole thing.

DC: Well, I know you can’t get into too many details, and I wouldn’t ask you for them, but what can you say about Saw III?

SS: It’s a love story and a tragedy.

DC: Not the response I was expecting!

SS: It’s different than either Saw or Saw II .

DC: One of the things that I think is interesting about these movies is that, as opposed to the average Jason Voorhees kill-fest, the Saw series is driven by the philosophy behind the killing as much as the revealing of the elaborate traps. Whether that philosophy is a warped one or not, it is still a philosophy that creates believable motivation in the set-ups to the killings, rather than just setting the table for mindless, unfathomable bloodletting.

SS: There’s a genuine sort of search for truth that goes on in every department, from writing to directing, to acting, to props, to costumes, painting, set design, all of it.

DC: And it translates, certainly in Saw II, into a more interesting beast. This philosophy, if you will, can be refigured through a host of different characters and set-ups, so each new movie has the potential to set itself apart from a narrative standpoint. The most shocking things in that second movie were the discoveries the audience made about your character. We were witness, from the first movie, to how you were transformed-- in a way that’s not acceptable in standardized storytelling—not into angel of mercy in the typical sense, but a damaged angel, one who is just forming her own warped take on the mind-set of the most influential person in her life.

SS: Absolutely.

DC: Yet, in reading people who have written about the first two movies, particularly those who don’t seem to think much of them, there sometimes seems to be a set of preconceptions working there. Those who disdain the genre, or the specific subset of horror that has come to be known as “torture porn,” are often lumping the Saw movies into categories that don’t indicate just how transgressive the Saw movies, particularly II, actually are. Not just in terms of gore, either, but in terms of violating some of the basic tenets of the genre, like being so up front about imploring or otherwise insisting that the audience examines why it wants to see some of what it has come to see, or why it’s so easy to understand, and perhaps even, to some degree, empathize with the Jigsaw philosophy on a basic level. This is a disturbing route for the series to take, but a meaty one, and one that doesn’t let the audience off the hook in terms of its level of enjoyment. And it bodes well, I think, for Saw III.

SS: The movie is serving something bigger than any one individual part of it, whether that’s the director’s vision or the storytelling of the writer or the talents of the actors. So the series has to change its shape and form to grow, which is a bizarre and unlikely occurrence, especially in this marketplace.

DC: It’s the antithesis of what usually happens with a sequel-driven franchise which is, “Let’s make another one, and let’s make it as close to the last one as we possibly can.”

SS: Right. Keep the formula, and just make it “more”—bigger, gorier.

DC: I remember a couple of reviewers writing about Saw II who were pissed that the movie didn’t travel exactly the same road as the first one.

SS: Well, they should get ready to get pissed again!

DC: What was it like for you to find out what direction this character, Amanda, was going to go? And what kind of reaction did you get from people who either liked, or didn’t like, the second movie, based on the trajectory of your character?

SS: I haven’t yet encountered anyone who had a negative reaction personally. And Saw III evolves Amanda in ways that, as an actor, you just dream of. It’s like the character arc that never ends. I went from being an actress who typically had one scene or two scenes in big movies—the joke was, my characters never had an arc—and now the half-a-day’s work I do on the independent, low-budget horror movie turns into the arc that keeps on giving. In Saw III you really get to know Amanda, and there actually is a person here to get to know.

DC: To my eye, that was clear from the first movie, and so for me the way your role keeps expanding, in size and importance, in each movie feels like a kind of vindication of what I saw in that first wonderful performance you gave in Saw.

SS: It’s weird. It’s like there’s some kind of fairy dust on it, as if I’d mapped the whole thing out, starting with part one. Everything is connected, and it’s beyond me. There’s some bigger something at play—luck, or whatever.

DC: In that first movie, just in that two minutes you were on screen, there was a concentration of some kind of acting energy or essence that I don’t think the movie exploited. If it had, you would have had a much bigger part.

SS: And it’s interesting, too, how Saw II, of all the things it could have been—I happened to get pregnant. It wasn’t planned. So I had a four-month-old pregnant body, and I decided to chop my hair in a crazy manner. As an actor I could have just gone for the gold in that part. I could have spruced up my physical appearance, given myself more lines. But instead I took half my lines away from myself—“Do I really have to say this here, or can I just--” You know, I purposefully was very subdued. Well, the hairstyle wasn’t so subdued, but it wasn’t like—Like, her sexuality was totally repressed. And I had no idea that there would be any kind of pay-off for any of that in Saw III. Maybe it was because I was four months pregnant that I just wasn’t concerned, I had bigger things on my mind, I don’t know. But it’s been an actor’s dream to be able to connect it all in a meaningful way.

DC: There’s integrity in your performance in the second movie, too. You did some great things in Saw, and looking at the second movie you might think, “Okay, she’s dialing it down here. The performance isn’t as distinct as it was in the previous film.” And it only becomes clear as the movie ends that there’s a rationale for that, and in a way your entire performance in Saw II is still rooted in the very unlikely choices you made in the first film to not wave your arms and call so much attention to yourself, to not chew the scenery. I actually thought it was rather brave to basically give yourself to the concept, and to the other actors.

SS: That’s what we were talking about. And maybe that’s the fairy dust of the Saw franchise—everyone sees to be serving something bigger than the individual.

DC: If you looked back on everything that you’ve been able to do so far with your acting, is there one project that you feel particularly proud of, one that touched you in a singular way that made it more special than the others?

SS: Mmm… probably Saw III. Isn’t that a silly answer?

DC: Not necessarily, because I see it coming from a place that’s clearly not marked “junket promotion sound bite.”

SS: (Laughs) That didn’t even enter my mind! If anything, I’d move against that kind of answer, especially at this stage. But I had the time of my life—personally, professionally. I had both my kids with me. I had a starring role, so I was really involved in the process on many different levels. It was challenging, frightening, no pun intended, and fun.

DC: Tell me a little about working with Darren Bousman again on Saw III.

SS: I think the world will taste many fruits of The Great Darren Bousman’s talents-- he likes to be referred to as The Great Darren Bousman. (Laughs) Darren was a total unknown, a wild card, for Saw II. I remember talking to James Wan (director and co-writer of Saw) and saying, “Oh, my God, do you think this guy can pull it off?” And not only did he pull it off, but he was a first-time director and he put his own stamp on a franchise. Well, I guess it wasn’t a franchise then, but he sure helped make it one. I mean, he stands tall on the shoulders of many talented people, but he knows it, and that’s pretty rare. It was smart on the producers’ part to put the same team behind him for Saw III. But even in Saw III he outdid himself from the previous movie. He put a new stamp on the series. He could have thought, “It’s a fluke. This movie I did was a success and I’m taking a chance doing part three, so I’d better just stick to the same formula.” But instead, he fought every good fight. I mean, there were all-out creative battles, and that happens in a worthy creative endeavor. But, intuitively, he knew what to fight for, and he fought.

DC: Did he collaborate on the script again, with James Wan and Leigh Whannell?

SS: Yeah, they all worked together on the initial concept, and then Darren and Leigh really got in there and reworked it together. Then Tobin and I got up to Toronto and started doing our own rehearsals and research. We had to fill in the life of these characters’ relationship—everything that will never be addressed in the script but has to be there for the movie to work. And so a lot of that ended up influencing the script in different ways—stuff that Darren and Leigh couldn’t have come up with just sitting in a room, talking. It’s stuff that came out of these characters. Darren told me that one of his favorite scenes in the movie is a scene that came out of just that process—a character moment with Amanda. And he said it’s one of his favorite scenes because it has nothing to do with the story. Right, and it’ll probably end up on the editing room floor! (Laughs) But he loved it because it’s purely a character moment.