Yesterday I brought you my interview with Leigh Whannell (check it out here) and I thoroughly enjoyed it and was extremely excited to speak with James Wan over the phone only a couple of hours later. Wan and Whannell are like one mind and you are going to see that as I duplicated a few of the questions to see if there were any differences and you will see, when it comes to movies, there really aren’t. Whannell served as the writer and even a cast member on the first Saw feature the two unleashed on the world, and Whannell also wrote Wan’s latest effort Dead Silence which hits theaters this Friday, March 16.
The film tells the story of a creepy ventriloquist named Mary Shaw and what happens to a little town called Ravens Fair after she dies. I asked James about the film, about the Saw franchise, about his upcoming film with Fox Death Sentence and about horror in general. He laughed a ton during the interview and was a lot of fun to speak with, I hope you enjoy or conversation as much as I did!
I talked with Leigh this morning and he seems really excited about the film.
James Wan (JW): Oh, okay, good. Then I don’t need to say anything else. [laughing]
I haven’t had the chance to see Dead Silence yet, but looking at the trailer I would say it looks like old school horror meets the modern age. Would that be accurate?
JW: That’s exactly what it is, it truly is an old school tribute to the old school ghost stories that Leigh and I love and to me, and the way I have been selling it, it is a feature film episode of the “Twilight Zone.â€
When I spoke with Leigh we joked about the fact that you guys seem to have an affinity for using puppets, what with the doll in Saw and now a film filled with ventriloquist dummies. Is there anything to that for you? Leigh said the clown doll in Poltergeist scarred you.
He also mentioned the town in the movie is a shout out to Edgar Allen Poe.
JW: Yeah, Ravens Fair, it really is. I am not sure if the kids today will care about our loving tribute, but it really is a loving tribute to Edgar Allen Poe, the “Twilight Zone†and the old British Hammer Horror films which was a big inspiration as well. Leigh and I always joke that the only thing missing from the film are Christopher Lee and Vincent Price.
I asked Leigh this but I thought I would see if you had a difference of opinion. Are there and should there be any comparisons to Chucky from Child’s Play with Dead Silence?
JW: I can tell you now, our puppets are not funny. It is not a killer doll film, it’s a creepy doll film. Out puppets don’t walk around with knives and try to kill you. The entity that tries to kill you is the ghost that lives inside the puppets. That’s what gets you, that’s what you should be afraid of is the ghost of Mary Shaw as opposed to the dolls.
What kind of differences did you experience working with a major studio as opposed to your experiences on Saw?
JW: Like always it has its ups and downs. The big difference was having money to play with, like with Saw I was banging my head every day. The studio would let me do what I want, but what was the point of having freedom if you can’t do what you want to do anyway because you don’t have the right budget it to do it with? So that is kind of the trade off.
What type of ending should audiences expect with Dead Silence? Is this going to be another twist ending like with Saw?
JW: Well, Leigh and I are not very straight forward people, we have our fun endings. For lack of a better term I will call it “fun endings,†not necessarily twist endings, but we definitely love our fun endings that are either quirky or make you go, ‘Oh, that was cool.’
You have also been working on Death Sentence, is that one finished yet?
JW: I’m in editing right now, post-production, just finishing it up.
Can you talk a bit about that film and what it is about?
Is that expected to get released this year or is that still up in the air?
JW: I think, most likely, it will get released during the fall.
Another thing I asked Leigh and I wanted to ask you the same thing is what are those movies that absolutely scare the shit out of you and inspired you to make these movies? Outside of Poltergeist of course…
JW: Oh yeah, because Poltergeist is definitely in my top five, but outside of Poltergeist… I loved Jaws. I think that is not really a horror film but it made me afraid of the ocean for a very long time. I fin David Lynch, when he does his stuff, his Lynch thing, it is really creepy. The other director’s work that I love is Dario Argento, the Italian director and his strange Italian horror films.
Yeah, I just watched Pelts, his “Masters of Horror” film, talk about gory.
JW: Oh cool, that’s right; he did an episode of that. Yeah, he does like his blood and guts, that’s for sure.
One thing you said is that Death Sentence is kind of a throwback. Now would you ever consider doing a remake and what are your thoughts on all these horror remakes that are out there right now?
JW: I don’t know, naturally Leigh and I get offered to do remakes a lot and even though we love the films that inspired us and we love playing homage and stuff like that, but we love coming up with original ideas as well. We have so many original stories that we want to tell before we start going the remake route, which we probably won’t.
That is exactly what he said, but I had to ask.
JW: [laughing] So you are saying when Leigh and I had our phone conference before hand it’s actually paying off huh?
You also mention the exact same movies and influences he mentioned, Jaws and David Lynch… It makes me wonder just how important to you is your relationship with Leigh? Are you guys like one mind?
JW: Leigh and I have different tastes in a lot of things, but when it comes to films we’re pretty much one. We love the same kind of films, we’re inspired by the same people and I really think that helps with the relationship we have. We’re great friends, we’ve been friends for over ten years now and I am amazed that I can work with him, because usually friends are very hard to work with. I think Leigh and I have a mutual respect for each other and that really helps.
How big of a role are you going to be playing in Saw IV?
JW: My biggest role is to make sure they stay true to the universe that we have created. So that is definitely our biggest input for Leigh and myself and with Leigh writing the screenplays for II and III that definitely helped. I think most of my contribution at this point is story ideas and just making sure that it doesn’t get too silly and it doesn’t suffer the kind of fate all the other horror franchises suffer.
A quick curiosity, why didn’t you direct Saw II?
JW: I felt like I had already told that story and I didn’t want to repeat myself and that was not for the lack of the money being dangled in front of me. [laughing] Leigh and I were joking, this whole pride thing, you know pride is not going to put food on the table is it? Pride and integrity is not going to buy us lunch or anything like that. No, I felt like I had already told the story in the first film and I didn’t want to be typecast and even though we are making another film in the same genre, Dead Silence, is different than Saw in terms of tonality, the atmosphere, it’s not out to shock you for the sake of shocking you.
Does this mean you aren’t interested in doing sequels?
JW: Well, if there is a possibility for a Dead Silence 2 who knows. I would definitely make sure that the sequel is staying in line with the first film, which is about creepiness. It’s about fun, I want it to be a fun film as well, but it’s about creepiness.
With Saw moving along and now your second major film under your belt in what ways would you say you have grown as a filmmaker?
JW: I am my own worst critic and I look at Death Sentence now and I go, ‘Oh wow, I have really come a long way.’ In terms of a filmmaker I feel like my filmmaking language has really matured. I feel like the stories I want to tell have matured as well, working with dramas and working with actors and all that. Saw really was like a student film for me, we expected it to go straight to video. I never expected anyone to see that film and then it becomes one of the most successful horror franchises. That was like a bonus, I was just glad to be given a chance to make this. Saw in many ways was like my student film. The first crappy student film you don’t really want people to see. [laughing]
I love my genre films, but I think when I get older the way I tell it will be very different to how I told it when I was in my mid-twenties, which is how old I was when I made the first Saw.
Leigh told me the two of you were working on some sort of a thriller…
JW: Yeah, Leigh and I are working on another film together; it is a film noir thriller. We love our film noir films and we wanted to get back to a film that was very much like Saw in that it was about staying one step ahead of the audience and you don’t see the twists and turns coming. We just want to make one of these smart thrillers again and it has been a few years since we came up with the first Saw and we’ve come up with another idea that we are very excited about and it kind of took us back to our early Saw days when we had no money and we just had to rely on our ingenuity, but it is a bit too early to talk about it at this point.
Big question, are there any puppets in it?
JW: Are there any puppets? We’ll see! [laughing]
Dead Silence hits theaters Friday, March 16. For more info and our galley of pics click here and for my interview with Leigh Whannell click here.
