Will the guilty be punished?
Last night at the Eyegore 2009 awards, Shock Till You Drop got the chance to chat with Saw VI writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, as well as director Kevin Greutert. Dunstan and Melton have now written the last three entries in the series, not to mention this summer’s The Collector, which Dunstan also directed. Greutert has served as an editor on all the Saw films and is making his directorial debut with Saw VI. Since our topics varied between the new sequel, favorite traps, non-guilty cops getting killed off in Saw sequels and more, we’re presenting you with transcribed excerpts from our conversation. Read on!
Shock Till You Drop’s Robg: With Kevin’s history as an editor on the series, how collaborative was it working together once he became the director for Saw VI?
Marcus Dunstan (Writer): It was completely ridiculous. Weâd be on the green draft, which is deep in the rewrite process and weâd get three notes from the producers, and Kevin would always have nine pages of notes. [Laughs] Like “Can we get to the core of this line?” Working with him was very detail oriented, and Kevinâs been a storyteller for years, so it was nice to have his backbone involved in that too. It was all about projecting a shared idea and this one came through without a scratch.
Patrick Melton (Writer): The meticulous nature that Kevin has worked so well especially on this movie because thereâs no re-shoots on this thing. You have to get it right the first time. I think he was just making sure what he wanted to shoot and made sure it was in the script and it totally paid off, because what VI has that weâre all really proud of is itâs got nuance to it. In the performances, in the traps and itâs really great. Marcus and I are so thrilled with it.
Robg: One of the most important aspects of these recent Saw sequels is incorporating the flashback sequences with Tobin Bell as Jigsaw. How difficult is it when it comes to striking that balance between new material and flashbacks?
Kevin Greutert (Director): Itâs always a tough balancing act because we donât want it to feel like weâre treading the same territory. Weâve never done a flashback unless there was a really good reason for it. Any time we use a flashback, I assure you itâs very important to where the story is going.
Robg.: I’ve been dying to ask this… Ever since you guys took over writing the series, is there any reason you keep just killing cops?! [Laughs]
Marcus: Yes, yes, lots of cops die in our Saw’s but some are guilty!
Robg.: Oh come on! Rigg’s in Saw IV never wouldâve made it through all those tests!
Marcus: Well, thatâs true. The thing we wanted to address this time â OK, weâve been so insular in this world, whatâs the outside world thinking? And that ultimately led to police, police, police for a bit. Now, I think with Kevinâs entry, itâs time to re-visit the other world.
Robg.: So youâre killing guilty people again?
Marcus: Yeah, but without giving too much away â Saw VI took advantage of a very timely issue, which none of the other films have. I mean, they have in that thereâs a device or something that seems cool, but no, thereâs something that makes this movie the only one you can tell this year, right now with this much heat on it. Itâs a topic that has the elderly passionately fighting. Thatâs all weâre saying.
Robg.: Ok, so for all 3 of you, what’s your favorite trap from the series?
Kevin: That’s tough. If itâs from Saw VI, which is might be, I canât give it away. [Laughs]
Patrick: The needle pit from Saw II is the one that really gets me.
Kevin: What about the guy covered in Vaseline with the safe in the first one? I like that one a lot.
Robg.: For me, I love the scalp pull in Saw IV.
Marcus: The scalp pull! Yeah, that one was a good time.
Patrick: That was Darren Lynn Bousmann. He came up with that for the most part. I think he was trying to do it the year before or something like thatâ¦
Marcus: There was one from that screenplay to Saw IV that was deemed too nasty to put in there that weâre really trying to sneak into the next one. [Laughs]
Robg.: Is it that glass box? Because there was a still from Part four going around of a guy in a glass box that never made it into the movie.
Marcus: Well, the glass box disappeared from Saw IV, but you did see it in V. Itâs in the ending of V.
Patrick: That was a tread we were going to use in IV though V that we didnât pick up, so we had to lose it, but we did use the box for the ending of V.
Saw VI is in theaters October 23, 2009!
Source: Robert Galluzzo
