WHAT WENT WRONG - Saw

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Just two guys and we're having a good time! This week, Chris and Lizzie chain themselves to James Wan and Leigh Whannell's breakout horror hit, SAW. What began as a simple exercise to try to escape their tiny home country of Australia led to a franchise beyond either of their expectations and, perhaps, desires. From work VISAs to unpaid profits and Cary Elwes' self-discovery of latent claustrophobia, this terrifyingly crunched production proves that just because you don't make the movie you wanted, doesn't mean you can't make the movie the audience did. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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so you're scratching your head. What went wrong and what can you do? Listen out free with just a click or two. Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone one that says, what if you took seven and dipped it in a little hot topic? I'm one of your hosts, Lizzie Bassett, here as always, with Chris Winterbauer,

Chris, what are you saw on your leg off for today? Do you want to play a game? Do you want to play a game? I'm sorry. What if seven was made by Dwight Shrewt? When jigsaw skittered out on the tricycle. David was like, that's creepy. And I didn't say anything because I was about to howl laughing.

That's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Anyway, what are we doing? We're talking saw, which Lizzie, I'm not sure how. well you remember adaptation, but this is literally the movie that Donald Kaufman writes an adaptation that his mother called Psychologically Taught. It's like the same thing, basically, including a puzzle piece as the clue. But Donald Kaufman was obviously onto something because we were talking about an extremely successful movie, an extremely successful franchise, and a movie that honestly very nearly didn't exist. It's kind of shocking that it got made and that it survived

in the way that it did. And it's a perfect example of why I love this podcast, because as we'll get into with our thoughts, I have a lot of thoughts on this movie. And yet researching it, I just found myself cheering for everybody involved and cheering for this movie. And it's such an accomplishment. And so let's go to your thoughts, Lizzie, on Saw. Had you seen the movie before? What were your thoughts upon watching or rewatching it for the podcast? Okay. So I had only seen this movie one time. Sure. And it was on a laptop, circa about 2003. Would that have been right?

Came out in 2004. Okay, so it was 2004 then. It was a bootleg copy of Saw. I didn't buy it. I didn't do the illegal pirating. You wouldn't steal a car. But a friend of mine did. But you would steal Saw.

I would steal Saw. A friend of mine did. And we were on a trip to New York City with the acting troop that I was in. And one night when we were unsupervised, we decided to watch the worst quality rip of Saw possible, which didn't do any favors to Carrie Elvis's makeup, which is inexplicably bad, even in normal quality, which I hope we get to at some point. But I remember watching this and I was so scared to watch it. And I didn't want to say that because I wanted to like seem cool enough to want to watch Saw. But all I remembered hearing was like, this is the scariest, most fucked up movie you're ever going to see. was so scared and I remember like covering my eyes during so many parts of it and like barely being

able to watch it. And so when we turned it on this time, I was excited because I was like, man, I haven't seen this in, you know, 20 plus years. And we turned it on. And I was expecting to have the same. I thought I was like, this is going to be really scary. Like I'm so excited. This is going to be crazy. Nope. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it. I actually did really enjoy it. But there is something so, I don't know if heightened is the right word. It's so stylized about this. Yes. It's very 2004.

It's very 2004. It's an amazing time capsule of that moment visually. If only for Carrie Elwis's hair, which is very much like your aunt has had a roommate for 25 years and is obviously in a relationship with. Like, I don't know why they cut men's hair like this in the 2000s. He's a very handsome man. He does not look good in this movie. But, I mean, all to say, did it scare me? No, it did not.

Was it a super fun ride because I completely forgot the twist? Yes, which was great. That was really fun. I very much enjoyed it. It doesn't make a lot of sense at all. There's major leaps that you have to make, especially as you get into the back half of the movie with Danny Glover's character and what is going on there. So is it a good movie? I don't know. Is it a fun movie? Yeah, absolutely. The one part of it that I actually did find quite hard to watch this time, was the sequences with Monica Potter and the daughter. I actually really, those were very upsetting. You know, obviously, it's like someone holding a gun to a kid's head. And I thought that the daughter and the mother both gave very believable performances in that. And that was upsetting. Also, what happened to Monica Potter? That's a different path we could go down, I guess. But I always really liked her. The second they show Ben from Lost, drifting through the doorway, being saying something creepy, it's like, well. Michael Emerson.

He's obviously involved. Yeah. But yeah, I was both pleasantly surprised and a little let down in certain ways by this. I guess because I associate James Wan so closely with The Conjuring. And The Conjuring is, I think, a big leap forward in terms of both storytelling and also the way that the scares are constructed. But this was fun. I'm glad it exists. You know, I wanted to walk back into a hot topic.

and think about what wristbands I might like and what T-shirts would look really good with them. And maybe I want to get gauges in my ears. I don't know. Maybe I do. Last thing, when Adam is complaining about his girlfriend, it's so funny because he says something along the lines of like, my girlfriend is like a vegan punk, like bisexual or something.

And he's like, and she said I was the angry one. It's like, yeah. In watching this in 2026 sounds like she. She was right, but I'm sure that got a big laugh at the time. Chris, what did you think? I had only seen this all the way through once. I watched it probably in 2005, realistically, because I saw it at home with my dad. I don't know why.

It's one of those covers, if you guys are as old as we are, in Blockbuster or Hollywood video, it's a hand and a leg, and it's a saw. And there were a lot of films like this, as we'll discuss, that we're coming out around this time. And it's looked so grisly and so controversial. And so we rented it. And candidly, it's actually. relatively tame by especially modern standards. Yes. That's, I think, what I was most surprised by, which I didn't mind. I agree. And James Wan has been adamant that he never set out to make a

torture porn film, that this is not a tortured porn film. I agree. I don't think it is, certainly not by the standards that would be set by that genre later on with something like hostile, for example. Yeah. I remember even at 15 or 16 thinking, okay, this, you know, this definitely isn't seven. It's definitely not Fight Club or, you know, the sort of perhaps some of the touchstones that it's aspiring to, even it takes obvious visual cues from the ring with the way that everything's green in this movie, for example. But everything was green in the early-offs. Yeah. Like, starting with the Matrix in 99, and then you continue with J-Hore with the ring, and then with this. Twilight. Twilight. Oh, my God, Twilight. Twilight. Just dip it in the greenest. Turquoise. But I do

remember thinking, and I didn't think it was particularly scary, but I do remember thinking I thought it was very interestingly constructed. I really liked the twist. I thought it was like very punk rock in a fun way and rewatching it. The way I kind of felt was that, oh, this is definitely a movie made by two young guys in their 20s. And I could totally see myself coming up with some of these plot machinations and horror turns, et cetera, in my 20s. What if the doctor is having an affair? What if this is the guy that's following him? And he sticks the gun in his wife's face. You know what I mean? It's like real like, ah, yeah, yeah. Sort of. Saw is, it's really a yes and just all the way through. There's no, no butts. Nobody said no.

Yeah. And so, like you said, what I love about this movie is that I just love that it exists because James Wan and Lee Winnell have become two of the biggest names in horror. Yes. And this is where they started. Not exactly where they started, as we'll learn, but it basically is where they started in terms of Hollywood. And when I tell you this story, I think you're going to appreciate this movie so much more because while some of the details and storytelling techniques, I think both these directors and Onell, the writer, would admit, feel perhaps a little sophomore. morric now that they're older and they've matured, it was such an accomplishment. Yeah. And such a difficult process. And when you say, like, why was this inexplicably that way? Well, as we'll learn, it was probably explicably that way. And we'll talk about why. But yes, it's very silly. As soon as the bug-eyed orderly shows up, you're like, well, he's probably coming back. You know, Michael Emerson. He did it. Yeah. And it's like, does it make a ton of sense? No. No. But it's fun. It's a good ride.

It is fun. Also, I have to say, I really enjoy Lee Wannell's performance in this. Yeah, he's actually. I think he's better than Carrie Elwis. I agree. At first, I didn't agree, and I thought it was the opposite. But as the movie went on and I settled into the tone of it and what they were trying to do, Carrie Elis felt pretty incongruous with it. I agree. Also, God bless him.

You're so British, sir. I know. Just let him be British. Yeah. What are you doing here? What are you doing here? I think part of that is One L obviously wrote the dialogue, although one else Australian, and he's hiding his accent, I think, just fine.

Decently well. Yes. And also, is he not a proto Ezra Miller? Yes, he looks so much like them. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. Okay, well, Lizzie, let's get into it because I think this one is really fun. We're diving into spooky season with this one.

This is another entry into what I would call our sort of indie horror remains a viable path for outsiders, and you could include The Evil Dead in that. You could include the Blair Witch Project in that. So let's get into it. But first, the details. Saw as a 2004 psychological crime thriller horror film directed by James Wan,

written by Lee Wanel from a source. Story by OneL and James Wan. It stars Carrie Elis as Dr. Lawrence Gordon. Lee Wannell as Adam, Tobin Bell, as Jigsaw, Danny Glover as Detective David Tap, Michael Emerson as Zepp Hindle, Shani Smith, as Amanda, Ken Leung, and many, many more, as you mentioned, Monica Potter. Really, honestly, a really good cast considering the budget that they had, and we'll talk about that. I love Ken Leung. I love Ken Leong, too. It was distributed by Lionsgate. It was released in the United States. on October 29th, 2004, Halloween weekend. And as always, the IMDB logline reads,

two men awaken to find themselves on the opposite sides of a dead body, each with specific instructions to kill the other, escape or face the consequences. These two are the latest contestants in Jigsaw's games. Can I just ask, did you ever see, this was a long time ago, there was a YouTube video where a guy did a sketch where he was Jigsaw's roommate.

Have you ever seen this? Yeah, and the tricycle keeps coming into the room. Yes. Is this the one? Yeah, I think I saw this. It's where he's like playing games with him, but they're like relatively innocuous games because it's just his roommate.

And it's still one of the funniest things I've ever seen. If you all haven't watched this, just look up Jigsaw's roommate on YouTube. It's a classic. Or Josh Rubin on the Dropout Show Game Changer. One of the prompts he gets is Jigsaw hasn't fully thought the plan through. And he does a very funny improvisation of it. Great.

Maybe we can put it on the Patreon. Okay. Sources for today's episode include, but are not limited to, Fangoria number 236 from September 2004, the AV Club's October 2004 interview with SAW creators, Lee Wan-L and James Wan. Saw 10 years, the 10th anniversary panel Q&A at Arklight Cinema's Hollywood, rest in peace. Yeah. The film's audio commentary with Juan L and Juan, and of course many, many more articles, retrospectives, and interviews with those involved in the film.

Now, Lizzie, since we're talking Saw, our story begins. Two men trapped in a small room. Okay, maybe not a small room, but instead an enormous country. That's also an island and about as far from Hollywood as you can get. What am I talking about? Australia? Australia. Australia.

And the only way out, there's going to be a lot of offensive Australian accents. I'm so sorry. I am so sorry. The only way out of this room or continent or country is if they shoot each other with a video camera. James Wan and Lee Wannell met when they were 17. they were both attending the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and they were both studying media arts. And Lizzie, neither of them quite fit in.

One L came from the suburbs. He was raised on a diet of horror movies, and he didn't relate to the, quote, guys in black nail polish and berets making Super 8 films about sand, end quote. Kind of want to see those. I'm with him on that one. I'll pass. He did relate to the stop motion short film

about fighting robots that screened in class one day, and he definitely related to the classmate who made it. it was the schlocky and awesome work of one, James Wan. Onell grabbed him in the hallway and said, let's be best friends. It was a bond that was built on the, quote, feeling that this stuff that the rest of the school felt was beneath them was stuff that they loved.

It helped that Wynnell had a sense of humor. One of the films that he made was apparently about, quote, an angst-ridden suburban teenager who wants to be punk. I love that they're basically like Ben Folds 5, but in Australia at this point in time. It's great. Juan realized Winell had a gift for writing, and he needed somebody to help him flesh out his ideas.

and he had a lot of ideas, like the debt collector about a killer tax man. Sure. Which should have been called death in taxes. It's sitting right there. Unlike OneL, Juan didn't come from the suburbs, exactly. James Wan was born in Malaysia. And from a young age, he loved watching movies, especially scary movies. Now, like Juan L, he did not feel like he fit in in school.

He was one of the youngest students in his class, and he reportedly told some of his classmates during orientation, I want to be the next James Cameron. But it was a Stephen Spielberg film that truly inspired him. He saw poltergeist at age seven, and while it, quote, scarred him, it also cemented his interest in horror. He loved, quote, that excitement I had when I was a teenager watching a horror movie that I shouldn't be watching.

But when he was 12, real horror struck when his dad died from cancer. No. His dad was only in his early 40s, and that number stuck with one. He felt that if he wanted to accomplish anything, he'd have to do it before he hit that age. the clock was ticking. Now, unfortunately, Lizzie, Juan and Juan L didn't drop out of film school to make some breakthrough feature. They didn't graduate with a bunch of heat and sign with a big agency. They, like a lot of people, left school, realized they were broke and got real jobs. But the fire never died, and they never stopped talking about making a movie together, maybe to distract themselves

from their current reality, which was a bit worse for Juan. As he later said, quote, the thing about film school is, it's such a nurturing environment. You've got all this equipment at your disposal, all this encouragement from the students and the teachers, you really start to believe, wow, I am going to be the next Steven Spielberg. Then, of course, you finish school and two months later, you're working for some guy who edits wedding videos. And you're like, oh my God, this is reality. This is what life's really like. I can say, like, that feeling of, we're going to do it into the cold reality of maybe this industry is not interested in my spec idea for a $200 million sci-fi film coming out of film school. It's a cold plunge into the frozen tundra. That's a terrible matter.

You know, this is where I really appreciate the semi-at-time abusive acting teachers because they really make sure you know that you're probably not going to succeed unless you're one of the three, like, very hot youngs that are in the class. And everybody else, they're like, best of luck, you'll break through in your 40s, maybe. Yeah. They say, have you considered podcasting? The thing is, and I can say this from experience, without film school, you no longer have the gear. You don't have the free labor and you don't have the time to make a movie. So unless you have money, it can feel like you're trapped. And they definitely didn't have money. But something seemed to be changing over in the United States. There were some bootstrapping young filmmakers who had escaped this trap. So in 1998, Darren Aronofsky broke out his debut feature film, Pye, which I quite liked. And then Daniel Mirrick and Eduardo Sanchez upended the industry with what film, Lizzie? The Blair Witch Project. If I'm

Chris, you put the emphasis on the last first. The Blair Witch Project. I am Tucker Carlson. The Blair Witch Project. What are we doing here? As Walnell later put it, it was Aronofsky, I think, who really stood out to them. Quote, he'd made pie with his own money. He was someone like us.

He had no connections. He hadn't been directing commercials or music videos. He didn't have any famous relatives. He was just a regular guy who decided to make a film with whatever funds he could scrape together. Someone actually who was doing the same thing around this time that we just discussed is Christopher Nolan, who shot his film following while working, I believe, for an industrial film company. He was also not shooting commercials or music videos. So if Aeronovsky could do it,

why couldn't they? But here's the interesting thing. James Wan had technically already shot a feature film. He co-directed it with Shannon Young, another Australian filmmaker, and it was called Stygian. He played at film festivals in Australia sometime in 1998 or 1998. The dates are fuzzy, but it has been completely lost to time. There have been many dogged attempts by fans to dig it up. My sister found a brief set of clips from the film online. We'll put it on our Patreon. Visually, there are a lot of touch points similar to Saw.

Guns, axes, masks, a creepy clown, a woman chained to what appears to be a sink or a fixture in a basement. Look, it does look extremely low budget. It does look very fun. It looks very schlocky, very hot topic, Lizzie. But for whatever reason, this feature did not find its audience. Juan has never released it. So perhaps because the first one, I don't know, didn't go anywhere, didn't go great, they decided not to dive head first into another feature. Instead, they said,

let's shoot a short film to use as a calling card. And Wannell described it as a ghost story about a group of kids who play that stand in front of the mirror with a candle game. It's called negative. We weren't able to find it online. Wynel says it wasn't some big success, but it proved that Juan and Wunel could work well together. So they just needed an idea for a movie, and Juan had a lot of ideas. But Wanel was pretty harsh with his feedback and turned a lot of them down because Lizzie, unlike Juan, Wanel had landed a pretty good gig coming out of film school. He was reviewing movies for an Australian TV show called Recovery. He described it as David Letterman meets TRL and said it was the best job ever because it gave him the opportunity to interview

directors including Tim Burton, Peter Jackson, and West Craven. Would you like to see a clip of young Lee Wunel on Australian TV. Yes. He's really charming. Okay, let's talk. Horror is a lot like heavy metal. I say this. It is.

Heavy metal, sorry, is always there. It never goes away. It's always just sitting there. And every once in a while, a heavy metal album crosses over and becomes a mainstream hit. Everyone goes, medals back. And the heavy metal fans are like, it was always there, man.

I was always into it. The other reason heavy metal is like horror because only a true metal fan knows all the little subdivisions, black metal, blah, blah, blah. And the other reason it's like horror is because society generally views hardcore horror fans and hardcore heavy metal fans as a little nutty cow.

that are disturbed. And that's a problem with Halloween 7. It comes along after Scream, which was a huge hit. Now the money makers are like, okay, let's do one of those Halloween films. It'll be a hit like scream. But all the horror fans who've been sticking through six films were not part three, because that was had nothing to do with Michael Myers. That was about a master of thing. But anyway, so five Michael Myers films. And all of a sudden, this movie comes along catering for people who are just walking in there for the first time. A little nutsy cow, is that what he said? A little nutsy cow, yeah. I'm going to use that. I like that. Yeah, he's great. He's very, like, if he had been born later, he would have a very successful career as a commentator on YouTube, as a video

essayist, I think, for sure. Or a gamer. Very fast talking, very animated, very excitable. Spiky hair. Very spiky hair, yeah. Well, I mean, you had to. It was a legal requirement at that time. Lots of jail. Yeah. Yeah. What I like about him, he's extremely animated. He reminds me so much of an Australian version of Jamie Kennedy's character in Scream. Yeah. Yeah. Where he's excitedly telling us all the rules of horror films. And the thing about horror at this time is that the genre was really in a state of flux. So in the 90s, Lizzie, as I'm sure you remember, scream had kind of revitalized and upended the slasher genre. But I think that was getting tired pretty quickly. I mean, you obviously had I know what she did last summer. You had Urban Legend. You had the Scream sequels. And then you

had, of course, the J-horror leap into Hollywood with something like the ring. You had the grudge. Of course, we have zombies coming back to life with 28 days later and Resident Evil, which we just discussed. And there were even hints of another movement over in France of more extreme films. This was called the New French Extremity Movement, which would eventually branch into horror. At this time, it was more psychological thrillers with extreme sexual content. Did you ever see Irreversible, Lizzie? I'm not sure if you've seen that. It's a really good movie.

I think you should watch it at some point. But the point is, it's a time with a lot of change. And what's nice about a time with a lot of change within the genre is that what's working is kind of anybody's guess. And this is also a point in time where Lionsgate, for example, and other film studios and production companies. We talked about the asylum on the very low budget realm, were putting a lot of genre films direct to DVD.

So there was kind of a really robust horror pipeline, not just into theaters, but also into DVD. And so more and more of these films were getting made. And James Wan needed to make a move fast. He was trapped in a video room for a vegetarian cooking show, pressing record and stop track on the tape deck over and over again. So he starts pitching Juan L ideas. First idea. A movie about astral projection. One L turns him down, but I'm just going to say it. Could have been Dr. Sleep.

I mean, it became behind her eyes, basically, yeah, which was fun. That's right, yeah. He then pitched an idea about a guy who goes to sleep at night and wakes up in the morning with scratches on himself. He notices that something weird is happening to him at night, so he sets up video cameras while he sleeps. OneL turned him down. What does that sound like, Lizzie? Paranormal activity. That's right. So Juan finally gives One L an extremely simple concept. Two guys in a room with a dead body lying between them. There's a gun, there's a tape recorder, and there's a twist ending.

And Wonell said, there may be something here. He then opened up his sketchbook where he had, for whatever reason, written the word saw. Quote, I wrote it in sort of 80s heavy metal font with blood dripping off it. I called James back and said, if we can call it saw, then fine. Which I always assumed that came from the fact that they're given hacksaws, but apparently it was just V1L writing weird. A little bit of reverse engineering. Okay.

Yeah. Just like that weird little S diamond thing we used to do in our notebooks when we were in middle school. It is a great title. It's a great title. And to your point, the imagery with it was also very effective. Well, Lizzie, they had a title. They had a beginning. They knew there was going to be a twist ending.

All Wunell had to do was come up with everything else. And he just needed it to be good, really good, because the script was going to be literally the only thing they had. So Lee Wynnell hunkers down. He says, okay, two people are stuck in a room. They've been put there by somebody. Who put them there and why? And then his head started to hurt. In fact, he'd been getting migraines almost daily for a while, and it was starting to freak him out.

So he went to the hospital to get an MRI. He started to wonder, what if you were given the news that you had a tumor and you were going to die soon? How would you react to that? And suddenly, a character was born. He'd been given a year, maybe two, to live, and Wannell attached to the idea of somebody who put people in a literal version of that. Instead of a doctor telling you, you have a year to live, make the best of it, this guy would put people in a situation. and say, you have 10 minutes to live. How are you going to spend those 10 minutes? Are you going to get out of it? Or are you going to climb to razor wire?

Raise or wire? Did you do it on purpose or did you want the attention? Either way, leave the man alone. He gives them more than 10 minutes. In fairness to jigsaw, he's giving them like an hour or two. Words that I never thought I'd hear. In fairness to jigsaw. Yeah. Now, this could be the reason why two people would find themselves trapped in a room with a ticking clock. And it's a good thing that one Ellen one didn't have a ticking clock over their heads because it apparently took them nearly two years to write the script. Now, they were inspired a lot by Italian horror maestro, Dario Argento. I think that's most felt in malignant, which you and I have talked about before in the Z. I love malignant. For the backwards police station chair throw alone, it is. It's so good. This character, who you'd later learn,

is doing everything backwards. It's crazy. Hurls a chair 40 feet across a police station and headshots a police officer with it. It's so good. Also, justice for Annabelle Wallace. She needs more jobs. She was great. She does. Put her on the back of somebody else's head. All right. Yeah, strap her on. The problem was the script kept getting bigger. So, Lizzie, you've seen the finished film. What starts as a movie about two men in a room quickly metastasizes beyond that quite a bit. Yes, which to be honest, I think, is probably the movie's biggest weakness. I understand that they had to do it or maybe felt like they had to do it in order. to have enough to fill the space.

But then it does seem like it gets away from them when you get into Ken Leung and Danny Glover's portion of this. They decided they weren't going to pull back and simplify. Instead, they went out to independent producers and private financiers across Australia. In later interviews, one else said that it was actually their manager, Stacey Testro, who advised them to try to raise money to shoot the film on their own.

A year passes and they don't really have any progress to show for it. People would like the script, but they just wouldn't fund it or they weren't able to fund it. According to one source, a Sydney-based producer actually optioned the film for a year but couldn't get it off the ground. So they spent two years writing the script. They spent a year trying to get it made in Australia. They're back to square one. One else described that year as, quote, a nightmare.

They're stuck in this tiny, tiny little, tiny little enormous country without any way to reach Hollywood. Except there was somebody on the outside looking out for them. Unbeknownst to the boys, Stacey Testrow had shared the script with a literary agent in L.A. named Ken Greenblatt, and he loved it. So Greenblatt and Testro said, boys, pack your bags. We're heading for Milan. We're heading for L.A. There was only one problem.

They didn't want to go. Lizzie, this was way out of their comfort zone. And they were broke and they were going to have to pay for it themselves. As Wannell later put it, why would we want to go all the way over to L.A. to say, hey, glad you liked our script. See ya. That's $2,000 to say hi to someone. And Wynel wasn't even the actually broke one.

Apparently that was Wahn. He had escaped the video room at the cooking show and landed in unemployment. quote, I think I was out of work for five, six months, had no income nothing. Lee was the only one working at that time. Fortunately, he actually had some money saved up. So whenever I say we used our own money, I really mean to say, I used Lee's money. Yeah. He also apparently used his mom's money and his aunt's money.

But they were out of options. Flying to L.A. is their last best chance to get this movie made, so they decided to go for it. When I'll change the script to an, quote, American draft of the script, which I guess really was just the dialogue, the locations were always so generic and contained that it could have taken place anywhere. And then he has just changed the cops' dialogue from, Don't bloody move, mate, to freeze asshole. I do like that that's the only distinction. But something told Juan and Wynnell that the script alone wasn't going to be enough because Lizzie, they didn't want to just sell this script. What did they want to do with it? What did they

always want to do it? They wanted to make it themselves. They wanted to make it themselves. Juan wanted to direct and Wanel wanted to act. The script proved they could write, but they needed to prove that they could actually make the thing. So they made another. short film. Now, when you're only 50% employed, spending a lot of money on a short film is a massive risk. But they scraped together every last penny they had and they shot what they thought was, quote, the most memorable part of the script. Lizzie, which trap of jigsaws do you think is the most memorable of the film? There's no right or wrong answer. I'm actually just curious what you think. Oh. Man, they, I will say they are all pretty memorable. They're all very good. Yeah. I mean, I'm inclined to say

the razor wire, but close behind it would be the guy covered in flammable stuff. Oh, interesting. But then there's also the jaw exploder. I don't know. Tell me. The jaw exploder. The reverse baritra. That's the one they wanted to do. I think because they wanted to show the visual of that device.

That was honestly my first response, but then it wasn't the most exciting to me. But visually, yes, I can tell why. Yeah. It's so medieval. I think it's very cinematic. So the scene in the final film features Amanda in flashback, waking up to find herself with the device around her head, a bear track. in reverse that will explode her jaw.

It's really awful. And they shoot a seven-minute version of it with Lee Wan-L in Amanda's role. So you can find this online on YouTube guys if you're interested in. You've got the bear trap, hospital flashbacks. You've got jigsaw. The doll riding in on his tricycle at the end.

It's the same doll. They shot it in two days. I think it's a great concept piece for the film. They shot it for $7,000, which was a lot of money for them, but it's not that much money. And it looks, I mean, it looks a little less polished

than the finish film, but it is very much the same aesthetic. I think it's a great proof of concept. All in, I'm estimating that between airfare, hotel, and the short, they've spent, who know, somewhere between $12,000 and $15,000 on top of the three years they've spent developing this thing, trying to get this project made. It's the summer of 2003. They've got the script, the proof of concept, the agency, Ken Greenblatt's agency, loves the project, and they start sending it around as Juan and Wunel hop on a plane. And they're hoping that they land in L.A. with a bunch of meetings, and they're hoping that somebody will say, here's the money, you can act in and direct this movie.

Now, everybody wants a bidding war, Lizzie, but as we've learned, the truth is, when you're pitching something, the knows don't really matter as long as you get one yes. And from the beginning, Saw had a fan. The earliest and biggest fan in Hollywood was a man named Greg Hoffman.

Now, Hoffman's really interesting. He got his start as an assistant at an independent production company called PRO Filmworks. He worked in development at the Universal-based day job films, And in the late 80s and early 90s, he worked on some psychological and erotic thrillers like Apartment Zero, Bad Influence, and Only You. I've never seen any of these movies.

James Bader is in one of them. And he has some eclectic credits. He was credited as music supervisor on Only You, which for all I know, it just means he, you know, cleared the rights and recommended some songs. Right. He reportedly wrote at least one screenplay of his own that was never produced. And in 1994, he joined Disney as a creative executive. He developed live action kids films, Operation Dumbo.

drop, 101 Dalmatians, Georgia the jungle, the parent trap, Inspector Gadget. He moves up to Senior Vice President of Production at Disney in 1997. His goal, quote, work on films for my son that in later years won't cause him to be beat up in school. End quote. He'd just become a dad. And that's

why he made Saw. Exactly. I dare you to beat up my son. So fast fast forward to 2003. He makes his hard turn away from family entertainment and he leaves Disney to join his friends, Orrin Kuhls and Mark Berg at their management company and production company, Evolution Entertainment. He's six months into the job when he

finds himself at Ken Greenblatt's office on other business. He's about to get into the elevator and leave for the day. Ken calls him back into his office and says, watch this. He puts in a DVD. It's the saw short and Hoffman is hooked. He says, oh my God, what is this? It's one of the best things I've seen in years, just in terms of its impact and how visceral it was. And again, this genre hadn't really been established yet. No one had seen a trap like this before. It was very unique. I know it's been kind of parodied to death at this point. There are obviously nine further saw films, but this was pretty new. No, this was the first in this sort of genre. Hoffman also saw a business opportunity. He said that he felt horror fans were being underserved. He saw Saw as, quote, a thinking man's horror movie, to which I say,

perhaps the bar was a bit low in the early 2000s. But his instincts were spot on. He brought the short and the script to his partners at Evolution and then set it up in the creepiest possible way. Cool said that Hoffman came into his office and said, close the door, turn your computer off, you've got to watch something. We watched it, then we picked it up, walked into Mark's office, and he watched it. We read the script that night. And according to Hoffman, all three agreed. We're going to meet them, meaning OneL and Wan, and Juan, and Juan, and One And If they're sane, we're going to offer to finance the movie completely with no conditions. So a couple of days later, Juan and One L touched down in L.A. for a week of meetings. Evolution Entertainment is the first meeting. They sit down,

Hoffman, Kulesenberg, apparently decide they're sane, so they say, if you can make it for a million It's yours. Juan could direct and Wannell could star. They'd been in the United States for like three hours, and they were getting everything they wanted. That's insane. It was perfect. In fact, Lizzie, it was too perfect.

Juan and One L thought it was a trap. Juan says we stepped out of the meeting going, are these guys fucking with us? No way it's that easy. Wunel went even further. He said they walked out calling them dickheads behind their backs. Dickheads. I mean, did you hear that one dickhead?

Do you want to make this movie? What a wanker. They're shitting on the people that are willing to finance their dreams. Plus, they were about to go to a bunch of other meetings with bigger production companies and even a couple of studios. Now, the problem was, Lizzie, the short was what had gotten them the meetings, not necessarily the script. One else said, as you quickly find out in Los Angeles, everybody's got severe ADD. Reading a script is fairly boring. It's a nightmarish task, whereas people love to be able to put a DVD in.

But the meetings still went well. By the end of the week, they had solid offers from Dreamworks and Gold Circle films. We talked about them on my Big Fat Creek wedding. For budgets bigger than a million dollars. But Lizzie, there was a catch. What do you think the catch was? No Lee starring in it. No Juan directing.

Juan couldn't direct and Wynnell couldn't star. Yeah. So they said, we got to go back to the dickheads and the Wankas. So they decided to bet on themselves and they accepted the smaller offer from Evolution Entertainment. Nice.

They would have complete control. And what's interesting is they weren't the only ones taking a massive risk. Hoffman, Cools, and Burr's. were going to finance the film entirely themselves for the first time ever. They were putting actual skin in the game. Some sources claim the producers took a second mortgage on their headquarters to finance the movie. Others say that Berg and Cools dipped into their savings while Hoffman agreed to supervise

day-to-day production because he didn't have the cash. So these three men, three broke by Hollywood standards, American producers, are financing the first feature film from two broke Australian creatives. And they've got eight weeks to prep this movie before shooting begins. Tick-Tock. Tick-Tock. Now, step one was not casting, Lizzie, nor was it crewing up. It was getting work visas for Juan and Wynnell.

So in order to do this, the boys had to leave the country and come back. God bless America. Now, instead of flying them all the way to Australia, they sent them to Ottawa, Canada, much closer. Yeah. You could have just gone to Mexico maybe. But okay. So, Wynnell gets his visa and he flies back to L.A. And James Wan sits in Ottawa waiting for his visa to come through.

Oh, my God. So they start casting without him, the director. So they bring in Amy Lippins as casting director, but the boys already had a few folks in mind. When Lippins asked James Wan, who he wanted for the role of Amanda, he jokingly said Shawnee Smith, who years earlier had played cheerleader Meg Penny in the 1988, Chuck Russell version of the blob.

Juan had a crush. Well, turns out Shawnee Smith actually really liked the script. She actually initially turned the roll down. She said it was too scary. The scene that she's in is so horrifying. I don't do things halfway. I knew what I'd have to put myself through to do it. But in the end, she changed her mind and Juan couldn't believe it. Of course, he couldn't see her because he was still stuck in Ottawa. Now, another big get was Tobin Bell as Jigsaw, whose agent apparently called the producers. Berg later said they don't know how Bell got the script, but they got a call and his agent said, Tobin Bell will do the part. And we were like, thank you. Yes.

Now, according to Bell, there was a little more to the story. He says he told the producers that if he was going to do the movie, they would have to let him say more than what was scripted for when he finally gets up off the floor. I said, why sit through an hour and a half of that kind of horror if you don't get more of a window into what was in the man's mind who created it? And so they said, well, like what? And I said, well, how about this? So Lizzie, he actually wrote out some dialogue.

He read it to Juan, and Juan liked it so much that he asked Bell to email it to him so he could put it in the script. But of course, Lizzie, who are the two biggest stars in this movie? Carrie Elvis and I think Monica. Oh, Danny Glover, duh. Carrie Elwis and Danny Glover, who I think are kind of interestingly in somewhat similar positions in their careers at this point in time. So, Carrie Elwis' career had, I think, kind of in arguably crescendoed in the mid to late 1980s.

Yes. So you have Lady Jane, the Princess Bride, Glory. I think those remain three of his best roles, probably, or at least most known. Robin Hood Men in Tites, yeah. Yes. So then in the 90s, he still had some. lead and many supporting roles, Robin Hood Men of Tites, as you mentioned, Brom Stoker's Dracula. Yeah.

Twister, liar, liar. Yes. But his filmography thins out a bit in the late 90s and early 2000s, and Gloverhead had a somewhat similar trajectory. He came to acting later in his life, and he broke out in the mid to late 80s, the color purple, witness, Silverado. And then, of course, what franchise Lizzie was he synonymous with? I'm getting too old for this shit.

Lethal weapon. That's right. Lethal weapon. Now, he had more notable roles in the years leading. up to Saw, like, of course, lethal weapon for beloved royal tannin bombs. But I think if you look at his career, he was maybe in a bit of a trough. But still, how did the boys snag these two stars? Now, Danny Glover has said in subsequent interviews that something about the detective role drew him in. I also wonder if the reported 2% of the film's gross profits may have helped. Good for you, Danny Glover.

Good. So he got his bag. Potentially. Now, Carrie Elwis was actually being managed by Cooles, one of Evolution's partners at that time. So a little bit of an incestuous relationship, but it wasn't just a favor to his manager. Elvis was sold on the script alone, and then he loved the short film. And it also helped that because the budget was so low, it was just a two-week commitment.

And he was also extremely impressed with how prepared James Wan was. And I'd like to play a clip of Carrie Elwis discussing James Wan's vision for the movie. James' unique vision for the film was just, it just blew me away. It just blew me away how detailed his vision was. The man designed every part of the film.

I mean, all the costumes, every set he worked on personally. He already designed them all when I first met him and showed me all the drawings. They were unbelievable. And he brought the puppet. He had the puppet made in Melbourne, Australia, and he flew over to LA with the puppet on the plane. And I remember him saying to me, yeah, I had to get him his own seat on the plane.

So the stewardesses were a bit unarmed. were a bit unnerved by that. So, yeah, the puppet came first class. I'm like, why didn't they just style Carrie Ellis' hair like that? He looks great in this interview. I know. I know. I love Carrie Elis.

He's so charming. He's so charming. And honestly, the way that he looks in this movie is so bizarre because he has always been unbelievably handsome and remains so. Like, whenever he's shown up in anything else, he looks great. And then he shows up and saw, and it's just like, what happened here? It feels like they used a saw in his sense. hair. They used a saw on his hair. They did the twilight makeup where it's like they didn't blend

below the jawline. I don't know why. But, you know, whatever. Don't care. I'm glad he had a good time. Well, you're about to learn. So I think what's saving the movie at this point and what's clearly, I believe Carrie Elis, he speaks very fondly of James Wan. It's actually, it's very charming. But the problem was, despite how much Juan had prepped, he was still stuck in Ottawa. He was trapped. So casting in pre-production forges ahead as Juan pre-produces. from Canada. And Lizzie, this is before FaceTime existed. Yeah, that's a nightmare. In fact, Skype wouldn't be released until August 29, 2003, less than a month before production was set to begin. And if you remember early Skype, it was about as useful as a potato. Yeah, very cubist.

Yeah. They would send Juan QuickTime files, videos, and photos, and then talk on the phone a lot. So, like, Juan and their cinematographer, prolific indie cinematographer, David A. Armstrong would prep shots over the phone. Then he would get on the phone with production designer Julie Berghoff, and they would review visuals over the phone. Quick note, Julie Berghoff, you mentioned The Conjuring. She would go on to do The Conjuring. She has an incredible filmography. So they have less than a week of prep left,

and Juan's visa finally arrives. He apparently landed in L.A. three days before production began. That is insane. And he met much of the cast and crew in person for the very first time. So production begins in late September of 2003. I think, Lizzie, they have either the tightest or tied for the tightest production schedule we've covered so far. How many shooting days do you think they have?

Well, you said that Carrie Elis was two weeks, so. And he's not in every scene. He's not in every scene, but he's in most of it. That would be 10 shooting days for him, roughly. Right. Uh, 21? 18. Damn. Yeah. I had 21 on my first feature, and that felt insane. I couldn't imagine losing three, and I think they're also shooting more locations than I was. Despite that, they shot almost the entire thing inside one old warehouse in downtown L.A., which is kind of why a lot of locations look like they're in one old warehouse in downtown L.A. Yes. I do think they did a great job of tricking the audience in certain ways.

This makes a lot of sense because there was one scene where I did start laughing out loud, and it's when Carrie Elvis is leaving his quote-unquote hospital job to go to his car. Yeah. I was like, sir, whatever hospital you're at, you need to leave. Like, that is not. That old asbestos hospital with the wooden arched. And like one light bulb dangling from the ceiling. Yeah.

That and also when Danny Glover is, quote, dropping Carrie Elwis off at his house, but it's like a brick alley somewhere. And he makes the comment about how the sewer runs under this part of town too. And I go, what part of town good sir? Skid Row? Where are we? I was so confused by that.

I had to ask David. I was like, what does that mean? And David was like, I think he's implying this is a rich part of town. And I was like, I don't want to see the other part of town. Yeah. No, look, we're teasing. they were having to get extremely creative, and ultimately it doesn't matter. No, I don't care.

It makes it of one, you know, of one look and of one feel for the entire movie, so it's fine. In retrospect, it is funny, but who cares? Yeah. Elvis later said, we all showed up, no trailers, no fancy catering, four-star nothing. It was just getting down to it, no frills, just the work. And it sounds like Carrie Alas actually brought a really good sense of humor to set, according to one of the boom operators. He was really funny and made everybody laugh.

There was one part where he couldn't get out of his shackles for lunch, so we had to stay in them while eating. And even though they were made of rubber, one else said they were still really painful to wear all day. And Elis has said that he discovered he had some latent claustrophobia during the shoot, which is kind of brutal to figure out after being shackled to a bar for 12 hours a day

while you're filming these scenes. Yeah. He'd finish the scenes, and then he said he'd go for runs, take long baths, get massages, which must have been nice because Lizzie, Tobin Bell, didn't use a body double. Oh, my God.

The producers apparently offer to use a double and make a mold of his face, but he turned them down and insisted on being there the entire time. That is Tobin Bell lying on the floor the entire movie. That's crazy. Which I think is actually why they kind of frame him out, I think, as much as possible. Yeah. Because it's just, that's brutal. I mean, it's an incredible commitment, but that sounds miserable to lie there the whole time. But I think the person who had it hardest was James Wan. So he gave a long quote later on about the experience, and I think it's worth reading in its entirety. I can certainly relate to this. So here I was thinking, ah, I finally get the chance to make a big Hollywood film. It's going to have bigger financing

behind it, and it wouldn't be such a struggle. But boy, it was no different than all the other student films Lee and I had made in the past. You fight, you scrape together everything to try to make your days and get your shots in. It was a really tough struggle for me. Every day, it was me fighting to get the shots I did not get. I had high aspirations, but there's only so much you can do. I wanted to make it in a very hitchcockian style of filmmaking, but that style of filmmaking takes time to set up." quote. I have to say the rudest realization awakening that I had moving from, you know, student films to making a movie for the first time. I could not believe that it felt like I had less time and money than I've ever had before when I first made a feature film because when you make a

student film or a short with your friends and you only have $7,000, you still have two days because everybody's working for free. And time is the one resource that you actually need more of in every instance. And so, you know, shooting seven minutes across two days is actually a lot easier than shooting 110 across 18. Everything takes a long time. And it's nobody's fault, but it's just incredible. No matter how you scale up, I don't think there's ever a filmmaker who says, well, I really felt like I had enough time to make this thing, you know, every step of the way, more money, more problems, less time, et cetera. And James Wan was really hard on himself. Cariel was tried to reassure him. You know, he'd tell him, hey, what you think is sucky, is.

better than most of the other crap getting made, but it didn't help. By the time filming rapped, James Wan said that he knew he'd blown it. He hadn't made the movie he promised himself he was going to make. He had failed at his last best shot to be a Hollywood filmmaker. The 10 minutes that Jigsaw gave him to live, he didn't escape the trap. But Lizzie, lucky for one. The game wasn't quite over yet. Now, this is usually the part of the movie where the savvy detective saves the day or the veteran editor comes in with a late in the game saved. But There was no veteran editor in the wings. There was Kevin Groydirt.

And I mean no disrespect to Kevin Groydert, who is obviously a very good editor. My point is, he just didn't have a lot of credits. He only had one solo editor-feature film credit for a 1996 movie called The Shack. He'd been in the editorial department for a bunch of films, including the straight video sequels, George of the Jungle, George of the Jungle, too, which happened to have been produced by Greg Hoffman. Now, did Hoffman love the editing that Groydard did on the actual George of the Jungle, too? I have no idea.

What I do know is that he absolutely loved the gag reel that Groyder cut for George of the Jungle 2. For reasons, we cannot explain the gag reel for the direct-to-video George of the Jungle 2, which replaced Brennan Fraser with Dutch actor George Showerman, convinced Hoffman to hire Groider for Saur. Great. Now, not even Groydard's own wife, Elizabeth, could wrap her head around it. When Saw premiered, she went up to Hoffman and asked him, Why did you hire my husband?

He said, did you see that gag reaper? It was incredible. Also, Groydard's temperament. And I think that temperament went a long way with Saw because he and Juan had to get very creative with the edit. So as Juan later said, the film was rough around the edges. Now, what's actually on screen is rough. It's very gritty.

It's an aesthetic choice, I think, in part to hide low budget. And Lizzie, it was editorially rough because they didn't have enough footage to work with. Juan didn't get enough takes. Yeah, you can kind of tell. I mean, not really. And that's not a diss on any of them. I think what they've done here is amazing, but like, it is a bit of a mess.

As Juan put it, they, quote, were shooting rehearsals and in some instances they didn't have enough coverage. So, quote, I had a lot of gaps in the final product, end quote. Once again, two men in a room trying to make something happen before they run out of time. So they get creative. They start grunging up shots to look like surveillance footage so they can reuse it. They're using faux still photography shot by Juan L's character. newspaper clippings to fill in gaps.

Do you do-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. But one portion of the film actually did get cut down. During production, they'd shot the dialogue that Tobin Bell had written all in one take. So Lizzie, when Tobin Bell sits up at the end of the film, pulls off his makeup, goes to the door, says his lines, and shuts it. That's the only take they got of the entire twist ending.

The AD said you have time for one of these, and that's the take. When Bell showed up for ADR, he learned to his dismay that the dialogue that he had written and recorded had been cut. Turns to Juan and he says, where's my dialogue? And James Wan says, yeah, it's too neat. They didn't want to wrap up the story in a typical Hollywood fashion. And the end, they compromised two of the six lines that he wrote, made it.

And a few weeks into the editing process, there were glimmers of hope because the boys found out that Saw had been accepted into the Sundance Film Festival's Midnight Screening Program. Now, Lizzie, their rough cut had been accepted. So keep in mind, festivals in January. to finish the film by the end of the year, and they wrapped production in October. Jesus. The race was on, and they needed music. Now, Charlie Klauser was perhaps best known in the early 2000s for being a former member

of 9-inch Nails, and his lawyer of 15 years calls him up one day. And Klauser says that he knew that something was up, because this lawyer apparently only called on his birthday, and his birthday was six months away. So his lawyer says, write down this phone number. Turns out this lawyer had been working in some capacity with Juan and the producers of SAW. They were trying to find a distribution deal. they needed music for the film. They told Klauser's lawyer, we're looking for a composer that isn't your normal film composer, but maybe has a background in industrial music and can give us

some of those textures. Klauser definitely wasn't your normal film composer, because Lizzie, he wasn't a film composer. He'd never scored a film before. He'd done a little bit of TV at this point in time, and his lawyer told him, you need to call these guys and go watch their movie. That was a Wednesday morning. Klauser later said, quote, by lunchtime, I'd seen the movie and was choking on my Egg McMuffin watching the violence in the first Saw movie, and it was a go. Apparently, Juan had tempt the movie with industrial music. I think Klausor really was the perfect fit. And according to Klausor, Juan was getting really wacky and experimental.

He was, like, playing one track out of the left speaker while he's playing another track out of the right speaker. So Klauser starts working on the score. He has five weeks to complete it. And at the same time, he's actually co-producing the new helmet album Size Matters. So he's got two jobs at once and five weeks. And apparently the most famous cue from the film, the cue that would define the franchise Hello Zap, the da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da that they'd use in trailers and everything forever.

Yeah. He wrote that in one afternoon. Wow. I arranged the string parts that night, recorded a live string quartet the next day, edited the string performances that night and mixed on day three. So on January 11, 2004, just eight days before their scheduled Sundance premiere, variety announced that Lionsgate made a preemptive distribution deal for the worldwide rights to the movie. President Peter Block said, quote, we haven't even seen the finished film yet, but we liked the concept and it's so rare to find a genre film where the world rights are available. We didn't want to miss out on that again. I couldn't figure out which film he might have been talking about missing out on prior.

I mean, Artisan had gotten Blair Witch, you know, in 99, but then I think Lionsgate actually bought Artisan's library, so unclear. Now, before this, Juan had actually figured that the movie would go straight to DVD, which technically would have been possible with Lionsgate. They released a good amount of horror straight to DVD at this time. But Saul looked like it was getting a theatrical release. And Juan and Wunel, at just 25 years old, had their next studio movie, their first studio movie lined up. They got a deal at Universal to write an original thriller called Sh. They were free, but sometimes Lizzie, success can be a trap of its own. So Juan and his team finished the film two weeks ahead of their Sundance debut. It was the first time

they were screening for a real paying audience and they were, quote, nervous as hell. So nervous that they did not watch the movie. They stood in the lobby of the Egyptian theater pacing, back and forth, and every now and then someone would leave, and they had to, quote, resist the urge to grab them and interrogate them. And apparently at a certain point, they just couldn't resist. Two young women walked out, and Juan L, quote, accosted them and was like, what's going on? Why are you leaving? And they said, like, we just can't handle it. It's too intense. So finally, at the end of the movie, they say, we got to see how the twist ending plays. So they peeked their heads in, twist ending happens, and apparently the audience loved it. The film goes on to do a solid

festival run, Berlin, Toronto, Austin, Finland, though one and one L later said, They only went to a couple of these, and they would find out about the others after the fact, which I think is actually very common. But the reviews were really mixed. So the New York Times called it a gore fest with overtones of Iraq and TV. Quote, it may have been completed long before the horrors of Abu Ghraib came to light, but it bore an uncomfortable resemblance to the infamous Iraqi prison photos. Oh. I know. I've had forgotten about that.

They called it reminiscent of TV competition shows like Fear Factor, but, quote, carry to the nth degree of cruelty, the way television is headed. It's not entirely inconceivable that games like those played in Saw might someday have a future as pay-per-view snuff entertainment, end quote. Okay. Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, summed it up with Saw doesn't quite cut it as a thriller, but he called it efficiently made, cheerfully gruesome, and praised the actors. And he said, it's not quite worth the ordeal it puts us through.

He contrasted the movie with Touching the Void and Open Water, two films where he felt like the audience was made to care for the characters more. Oh, and Lizzie, have you ever seen Touching the Void, the documentary about the two mountain climbers in South America, I think in the Andes, who one of them falls down a crevasse. You should watch it. It's great. But there was a lot of criticism specifically aimed at Carrie Elvis's performance at the time. James Wan said that he really felt this was unfair. Quote, what you're seeing are Carrie's rehearsals. We were shooting rehearsals, but that's stuff you can't put a disclaimer on. Like the poster saying,

hey guys, when it comes to this, keep that in mind, end quote. And I actually think Juan is kind of missing the point here, and I just think Elvis is miscast in this movie. And I love Carrie Alwis. I think he's great actor. I think he is, too. He is a great actor. There's so many roles. I mean, again, we've mentioned this in our newsletter, I think, but if anybody hasn't watched Lady Jane, please go watch it. It's a really good movie, and he is remarkable in it as a total asshole who makes a very believable 180 turn by the end of it. This has to be the explanation for the makeup. Like, I know I was making fun of it, but it is so inconsistent over the course of the movie that it does actually become distracting. There's times where it almost looks like he's wearing skull makeup because

it's so severe the way they've tried to do sunken eyes and the jawline, particularly at the end. And I have to imagine that that was rehearsal, that they were testing lighting and testing makeup and they didn't have it. And just shooting so fast that they could not stop to change things. Yeah. And somebody mentioned a question. Why do you guys sometimes say like, oh, this person's miscasts. And not every actor is going to be right for every role. No. And I think, for example, Carrie Elis is, in my opinion, best deployed, cool and collected against a more ridiculous backdrop, for example. So you could look at something like the Princess Bride. You could look at him in even something like Glory, where he's kind of a manners forward, you know, military personality,

that there's something sort of reserved to him. I think when Carriolus gets a histrionic in this movie, to use a loaded term, it starts to fall apart a little bit more. Whereas Wanel feels more believable in that sort of. So as the tension and the stakes ratchet up, I find myself tipping towards OneL away from Ellis in this movie. I agree. I think Kerry Elwis, to your point, like he thrives when he is restrained in some capacity.

Yes, I agree. He's so, so good at that. Again, go watch Lady Jane. That's the perfect example of this. And he's not what I would describe as like polished at the beginning of that. He's sort of a, like, letch isn't the right word. But because he is upper class, upper crust, there is still that sort of like, structure around him and his performance. But like, God bless him, good for him for going all out

in this. It's not like I didn't enjoy watching him. I did. But yeah, he is miscast. He doesn't quite fit in this world. Yeah, I wonder if as a directorial decision, I wonder if there could have been a choice at some point to just say, hey, don't worry about the accent. You're a British doctor in the United States. I do think that that would have been the smarter decision because it seems like it is quite hard for him. And again, but if you have 10 days, like, how are you going to make that decision. Exactly. Once you've shot one day with him, you would have to reshoot that whole, it's literally, it's undue. It's not possible, yeah. Exactly. So any criticism I have is mitigated completely by that. Now, what was interesting is there were actually a lot of positive comparisons to seven,

David Fincher seven, but James Wan also apparently had a really hard time with those. He would say, you know, I have a hard time when people compare it to seven because I keep saying seven was like a $40 million film. David Fincher could have filmed his actors up to like 30 takes. So I think Juan's relationship to this movie is pretty complicated, even when somebody gives him praise about it. I think he's frustrated because it's still not the movie he ultimately wanted to make. He just didn't have time to make it. But the point is none of this really seemed to bother audiences. Now, I'm guessing that Juan and Wynnell were hoping for something like the performance of Eli Roth's 2002 breakout cabin fever, right? Makes something like $30 million against its eight to $8.5 million

budget. Yeah, great. Yeah. Or even like Rob Zombie's debut, right? House of a Thousand Corpers, which got panned by critics, but did a respectable $16 million against its $7 million budget. I'm sure it was break-even over its DVD sales. No, Saw was a freaking bonafide smash. It grossed $6.7 million on its opening day in the United States, $18.2 million that opening Halloween weekend. It ended its domestic run at $55 million. Good. With another $48 million internationally. It made $103 million at the box office. On a $1 million budget. Actually, less. Juan later found out, he said in one interview, that it had been made for $700,000.

Oh, my God. So what's interesting is it actually wasn't the highest grossing horror film of the year because horror was kind of having a moment. So Van Helsing brought in $300 million. I still think it lost money. Yeah, probably. The Grudge brought in a cool $187 million, and I think it'd only been made for about 10. Looks like it.

Resident Evil Apocalypse brought in about 130. and the Zach Snyder Donna the Dead remake brought in 102. But if you notice a theme amidst those, Lizzie, Saw was by far the highest-grossing original horror film of the year. Yeah, and also probably pretty close to being highest grossing compared to budget. The only one that may have come close is The Grudge. Oh, but not even as a multiple. No.

It's well over 100 to one. Yeah. It's box office to budget. But despite all of this success, it kind of feels like for a lot of the folks involved, everything started to fall apart. So Greg Hoffman passed away unexpectedly at the age of 42 in December of 2005, just a couple months after Saw 2 was released. That same year, Kerry Elwis sued Evolution Entertainment and the producers and his manager for $500,000 in alleged unpaid profits from the film.

He claimed that he was promised a minimum of 1% of the producer's net profits for the film and had only received $53,000 plus his roughly $2,500 salary to date. According to the suit, Danny Glover, on the other hand, had received 2% of the gross profits from the film, and even Monica Potter had earned more than $250,000 thus far from the movie. Again, I couldn't independently verify those numbers. That's what his lawsuit claimed. The case was eventually settled out of court, but Elwood did not appear in any other saw films. Things didn't seem to be going that much better for James Wan and Lee Wynnell. So that thriller at Universal? Yes. Universal didn't really seem like they wanted to make it.

Wynnell, they said that Universal hadn't really been listening during the pitch. Once they read the script, they said, this isn't the movie for us. He later said, now in hindsight, I can see that we probably could have gone in there and said, it's the phone book. And they would have been like, ah, love it, A through Z. I could see it. He said it was a hellish experience. After having complete control on Saw, Wanel said it was soul destroying to have, quote, a guy saying, okay, take your script and change everything, rewrite everything except that first sentence. I like that first sentence. Sh was never made. Of course, Lizzie, Saw birth to France. But Juan and Oneel had kind of viewed it as a demo reel.

They never intended to make a sequel. Lee Wannell did write the second and third movies, but Juan never directed another. Their next film together was the 2007 horror film Dead Silence. I don't think you've ever seen it, Lizzie. It was... No, I haven't. Met with Dead Silence at the box office. Yeah, this might be the only one of theirs that I have not seen.

Turns out their heart wasn't really in it. Wannell later said that he had sold the idea as a pitch on the advice of his agent before Saw was released as kind of a way to hedge against Saw if it didn't perform. And then when Saw did well, he was obligated to write it with the studio's input and Juan was obligated to direct it. He said it was, quote, like learning to swim by leaping off Niagara Falls. End quote. The studio eventually took him off the project, brought in a script doctor, and he wrote on his blog, never again while I enter the arranged marriage of selling a pitch. For one, I think he did it because he wanted to intentionally take a step away from the violence of Saw.

He'd never intended to make a torture porn movie. He always wanted to make ghost stories. Poltergeist was the movie he'd grown up watching. And for a moment, I think it seemed possible that they were going to be one-hit wonders, fairly or not, like Daniel Merrick and Eduardo Sanchez of the Blair Witch Project, only peripherally involved in the very profitable franchise that they birthed. But then they did something interesting. They ditched the studios, and they went back to their roots.

They dusted off that old ghost short film negative, and built a haunted house movie from the ground up. Lizzie, what movie was this? Insidious. Released in 2011, made for a reported $1.5 million. It brought in $100 million at the box office, and another franchise was born. The Saw franchise is now 10 films strong

and has brought in over a billion dollars at the box office. The Insidious series, which just had another installment release at the end of this summer, has brought in 900 million against a Q&U. cumulative $61 million budget. And Lizzie, that's not to mention the conjuring extended universe ushered forth by James Wan, which has made nearly $3 billion at the box office and is the highest grossing horror franchise ever. James Wan is now the 16th highest grossing director of all time.

That's amazing. I also just have to say it's, I think it's pretty unusual that we have come across a duo like this that clearly works so well together and then also works so well independent of each other because, obviously, we're talking about James Wan and what he's created and, you know, gone on to create with Annabelle and The Conjuring and all of that. But Lee Wannell is a great director. Upgrade was awesome. Upgrade is awesome. The Invisible Man is awesome. And that's pretty unusual. I think that they're both able to be the part that the other one needs when they're together. And then independently, they're also excellent. And of course, upgrade.

and Invisible Man are just Lee Wannell written and directed. I don't think he has any co-writers on those. Yeah, I can't even say that they're necessarily better together because, like, The Conjuring is so good and Upgrid and the Invisible Man are so good. They're both remarkable talents. I think what I like about Juan is, like, he has these campier instincts that are really fun,

but what I like about Wannell is, like, he's such a classic storyteller in so many ways. There's such a throwback vibe to the stuff that he does. I love both of them. Upgrade feels like such a one. Now that I know more about Wynnell, it makes so much sense. It's so 80s. It's so punk rock.

Yeah. It's so fun. It's so dynamic. It's great. Great fight choreography. Incredible camera movement. Invisible Man, if anybody didn't see that, I know that was the last movie I saw in theaters before the pandemic shot everything down. But that movie is fantastic, beginning to end.

It is so tight. It is so well directed. The way that they handle the fight sequences with Elizabeth Moss, it's excellent. One of the best midpoint, we won't spoil it, but character does. deaths of all time. Yeah. Truly bold stakes. The opposite of the,

let's bring you and McGregor back to life in the end of Oak Street. This is the opposite of that. I don't even want to talk about that. I believe it is the relative to its budget. I believe it's the most successful Universal Monster movie in the modern era as well. Great.

So, Lizzie, that is Saw, a movie that, as much as I think James Wan viewed it as a movie that, you know, it wasn't the movie he wanted to make and he later proved the type of movie he wanted to make with something like Insidious or The Conjuring, it gave us, as you said, two of the most financially, and I think creatively successful horror voices that Hollywood's had in a long time. Yeah. So I have to ask you, what went right?

I mean, obviously, it is James Wan and Lee Wannell, but I think really what went right here is them betting on themselves. It was choosing the smaller budget and the lesser known company, and that's the thing that, you know, were I ever in a position to sell something of my own to try and get it made, which I probably never will be. But if I were, I don't know that I would be able to do that. It would be so tempting to be like, no, I should go with the safer bed. I should go with the studios. But if we've learned anything on this podcast, it's that the best thing you can possibly do and also the hardest thing is to bet on yourself and to bet on your own control and your own ability to retain that control, that long term, that is what you should do. And I'm so glad they did. It was smart.

I'm sure it wasn't easy, and so good for them. I agree. I would like to give mine, because you gave it to them, I would like to give mine to production designer Julie Berghoff, who has gone on to do some incredible work, but when you really think about this movie almost entirely being shot in one warehouse and them having to create so many locations

with literally no... I mean, they probably barely had enough money for plywood in this movie. And I just think that's an amazing accomplishment. Can you see the seams in certain scenes a little bit? Sure. Like, why is that brick wall there dropping Carrie Ellis off at his house or whatever? But the truth is, she created a world that feels like it's way larger than a warehouse in downtown L.A. And production designers, I think, are, we forget about them when it's not as showy, you know, perhaps as something like practical magic, which is amazing. Don't get me wrong. But I think Julie Berghoff did absolutely phenomenal work with a shoestring budget.

All right, Lizzie. Thank you for. playing at this game with me and indulging my terrible saw metaphors the whole time. If folks are enjoying this podcast, can you tell them how they can help support it? Of course. You can tell a friend or family member about what went wrong. Tell them what it's about. Tell them some of the movies we've covered. Get them to listen to it. You can also always leave us a rating or review on whatever podcaster you are listening to this on. You can, if you would like to go a step further. You can either subscribe on Spotify, Apple, or Patreon. And with that, you get an ad-free feed and you also get at least two bonus episodes every month, usually two a

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for $50, you can get a shout out from Jigsaw just like one of these. Would you like to play a game? Come on, let's play a game. When I'll lose, you want to have yourself to blame. There's a key inside your heart. The key is in your heart. That's not a metaphor. You've only got ten minutes. I suggest you start. And I'll just lie here.

When you're free, you'll learn to love your life like me. And you know, how can you know your life is good if you've never sought off your own foot? So right off now. There's no need for you to thank me. I'd do it for free.

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guess I didn't think this through and if you're hearing this, I'm a tune by simple song and live your life like you only have tonight, because you never

know you might kidnap your entire family and there's no need for you to Thank me. All right, thank you so much, guys, for tuning in. Come back next week. We are diving into sense and sensibility. And until then, live like you've only got 10 minutes left.

Live like you just sawed off one of your legs. All right. We'll see you next week for the torture that is... I'm going to get help. It's going to be all right. It's going to be... I'm a hundred years old. Poor Carrie Alwis.

He really should have been in sense and sensibility. Actually, he would have been great in some of the parts in sense and sensibility. I can't wait to talk about it. Very excited. I'll see you next week. Bye. What went wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Jesse Winterbauer and edited by Karen Krupsaw.