INT: James Wan

Last Updated on July 28, 2021

JoBlo.com/AITH interviews
James Wan

I got to visit the DEAD SILENCE set for JoBlo.com/AITH
and got to talk shop (along with
other journalists) with the film’s young Aussie Director/Co-Writer James Wan. As
you know, James was the lad behind the excellent SAW and Silence is
his second feature (A bigger budgeted for Universal second feature).
So will Silence be anything like SAW? What kind of genre animal are we talking about
here? READ ON and get the juice!

What’s so creepy about dolls?

Well, just take a look! I think the obvious
really is the reason why they’re creepy. This is not, despite all the dolls
you see around us here, it’s not a killer doll film. My dolls never get up
and walk around and you know. It’s not a Chucky movie. That’s the first
thing I want to say.

What do they do?

That’s for you to find out! [laughs]

Do you have sort on an obsession with dolls?
I mean, in Saw we had the one doll and now in Silence it looks like there’ll
be hundreds.

Well, this one is actually about
ventriloquism. You know, with Saw it was just me scratching the
surface. I find the act of ventriloquism really macabre and creepy. Think
about it: It’s a grown man playing with a doll and pretending to give life
to this inanimate object. I don’t know, I guess I just find that split
personality thing pretty fucked up. [laughs]. So I guess I’m taking that to
a supernatural level, essentially, with this film.

Is this a story you’ve been wanting to tell
for a long time?

Leigh [Whannell] and I always wanted to make
a film that sort touched on ventriloquism, and also a ghost story about an
old woman’s spirit. So it’s really a combination of those two ideas.

How did you come up with your casting? Was
it a group decision, or did you have a lot of free rein?

The casting process was pretty scary to
begin with, because we were getting pretty deep into the film and you know,
I was still searching [for our lead]. I had to fly and back forth to L.A. to
look for my actors. But seriously, it wasn’t until the last three weeks
before we started shooting that all my actors started to come together. And
when it all came together, it just really fell into place perfectly. I think
I got a really good cast here. It’s really strong.

What’s it like working on studio film now,
with a lot more money?

[laughs] Ask Lucky McKee. That’s all I’ll
say. [pauses] Look, I mean, there’s no doubt there’s an upside and there’s a
downside to it. The upside is, you do get a bit more money and a bit more
time to play with, and you’ve got this huge infrastructure behind you. If
they like your film, they’ll support it all the way. But on the flipside of
that coin is, you know, you are quite limited by what you can do. Universal
has been pretty cool at this stage, so. we’ll see. [laughs] I haven’t
finished the film yet, so come back later and I’ll report the rest.

Do you have a favorite scene in this movie?

I this scene [in the set in which we’re
standing], the one in the doll room will be one of the big set pieces in the
film. What I’m trying to go for here is a much more subtle feel, especially
compared to Saw. But I guess it’s about as subtle as I will possibly go
[laughs], because my filmmaking is not very subtle. But Silence is very old
school. I mean, people ask me, why did I shoot and cut Saw the way I did;
one of the big factors in going in that direction was because, when you
don’t get a lot of things you want to go for and you don’t have to shoot it
and do it right and all that, one of the things you try to do is basically
try and hide a lot of the flaws in post-production.

That’s just the kind of stuff that you have
to do when you have no money, and the stuff that you shot didn’t come out
the way you wanted it to. You need to make up for it somehow, so you kind
of. So, I didn’t really want to go down that way. I wanted to make Saw more
like a Hitchcock film, but that wasn’t going to happen. [shrugs, laughs]
When you shoot a lot of handheld stuff, things go in and out of focus and I
think it was at one stage during filming that I just thought: Fuck this
shit. I can’t go for that film [I wanted], so I’m going to have to rethink
my approach and just embrace the down and dirty guerilla style of
filmmaking. That’s what I did. But with this movie, I’ve got a great
production team behind me. I’ve got a great production designer [Julie
Berghoff], and my DP, John [Leonetti], has done a lot of things.

We talked a lot about the look of the film,
the three of us, about the approach. I have a bit more money this time, you
know, I can have the set designed closer to what I want to see. This is a
very old school film. I think my producer puts it best when he describes it
as a ‘contemporary horror Hammer Film.’ There are scenes in the film where
you see this, like, mansion in the background and it’s all shrouded in fog.
[laughs] Seriously. I’ve got so much dry ice machine going on in this film,
and I go: Gee, I wonder what the studio’s going to think? If they’re
expecting The Ring, this ain’t it! [laughs] If they’re looking for more like
a House of Wax sort of look, that Ring sort of look, that really
contemporary horror film that comes out of studio. this is not it.

Did you use the term horror Hammer Film in
your pitch to Universal?

[laughs] It’s like [innocently] ‘Hey, guys.
How did this film turn out looking like that?’ I shouldn’t say that, because
Universal [people] are right behind me.

What’s the approach going to be with the
score?

I’m trying really hard to bring back Charlie
Clouser who I worked with on Saw. I do want to go for a much more. not
conventional or traditional, but much more of a classical score. When you do
a classical score through someone like Charlie, it’s not going to be
traditional at all. So I’m hoping to build to that through someone like him
and I’ve already heard some of his ideas. He wants to do a lot of the score
with voices on the soundtrack and all that. The soundtrack for this film,
overall. the sound design and acoustics in this is very important for it. I
mean, the title is a reflection of what the film is going to sound like. So
there’s going to be a lot of Silence and then sort of like, you know, big
hits and stuff like that. Basically, the whole film is about the
characteristic of the villain – it’s someone who has the ability to throw
voices. There will be a lot of fun stuff to play with in terms of sound
design. So. we’ll see.

This being a big studio film, how much
control do you think you’ll have in the editing room?

I do have an editor on this film who’s been
cutting for a long time. [Michael N. Knue] Actually, I chose him because I
love his record. He just finished The Ring 2, but I actually picked him more
for the films he did earlier on. He cut Night of the Creeps, and he cut The
Hidden. He’s done a lot of really cool genre films. He did A Nightmare on
Elm Street: The Dream Master as well. He’s been around for a long time. I
really love his credits. I think I’ll have the choice between him, and maybe
one of the guys who cut Fight Club – [laughs] I really like Michael. He’s a
really cool guy.

What are you shooting today?

Today I’m shooting. Um, which scenes am I
not shooting today? I mean, that’s something I want to point out: Even
though I have many more days comparatively, compared to Saw, I’m still
trying to cram a lot in it. It’s a very ambitious shoot. I’ve got a lot of
night stuff, a lot of set pieces, and all that. So it’s still a really tight
shoot. It’s still the same. I’ve been joking that this is kind of like
working on Saw except now I’ve got bigger toys to play with. I’ve got really
cool toys to play with – that’s the biggest difference here.

The stuff I’m shooting today is with Ryan’s
[Kwanten] character, Jamie, he’s just arrived back to the town he grew up
in, called Ravensfair. He’s just checking into this motel and he’s looking
around. It’s a very quiet scene, with him just about to go to bed. And he
thinks that maybe the dummy he’s brought back with him has moved out of its
chair. But you never quite know. [laughs] I still want to play on that
psychological aspect of it. That’s what I’m aiming for, but who knows. I
mean, that’s the kind of stuff that one could be forced into playing up
more. Making it more maybe Chucky-like, but that’s the kind of stuff I’ll
fight against. So far, it’s pretty cool.

So far the studio’s been agreeing with you
vision?

Yes. Definitely on the shoot. Pre-production
was pretty tricky for me to adjust to, you know, the studio system. Oh my
god. It was a pretty complicated process for me, it was really frustrating.
You have to answer to so many people and you can’t just [be free with] your
ideas. But now that I’m starting to shoot the film and they’re seeing the
dailies, they’re really happy with it. They’re letting me make the film I
want to at this stage.

Saw was your first movie and it was a hit,
but you’re still a relatively new filmmaker; when you decided to go ahead
with this project, was there any pressure to follow up on that success?

Oh, yeah. Definitely. The hardest thing was
like, your first film straight out of the gate is such a big hit, and
there’s a lot of pressure on your second film. I feel more pressure on
Silence than I did with Saw, because if it went straight to video, who gives
a shit? At least I got that first film under my belt. But man, there’s a lot
riding on this one. It’s kind of nerve-wracking too that, filmmaking-wise,
I’ve got into a different tangent.

I am going for a much more classical feel
now. When you do MTV style of filmmaking to, for lack of a better term. You
have a lot safety net. A lot of people watching your back. When you make
anything that’s so flashy and in-your-face, it’s very visceral. It’s
definitely a lot trickier when you’re doing something that’s more subtle.
We’ll see.

Saw has a lot of gore. Will Silence be that
much more toned down?

You know what’s really funny? For me, this
one is all about mood and atmosphere. It’s all about being really creepy and
macabre. And I just shot this scene where I was thinking: Oh man, this is so
bizarre. I mean, Leigh and I always joke. We always make fun of our own
film. I mean, if you listen to us on the audio commentary of Saw, we’re just
laughing at the whole thing. We don’t take this sort of thing too seriously.
[laughs] But it is pretty twisted. Leigh and I just joke about how kind of
weird, even though it’s a studio film, it smells like a normal studio film,
but it has all these little elements that make it really strange. That’s the
kind of stuff that Leigh and I love.

How about an example?

I guess, for example, one of the big set
pieces in the film is a location. It’s a theater that’s decrepit, rundown,
old place. It’s supposed to be in the middle of nowhere. It’s in this small
country town and we’re in this theater [indicates set] which is literally on
an island, on a lake, in a quarry in the middle of nowhere. So it’s just
little bizarre things like that. There is a scene set there when one of our
main characters finds this room that is filled with 101 dummies, and it’s.
creepy.

Is Ravensfair based on any particular town?

I love the song Scarborough Fair. [laughs].
I love that word, so I just chucked it in. It’s anywhere USA, I guess. Maybe
like New England, or Washington State. via Toronto.

Do you remember your first doll-movie
encounter? What was it that made such a creepy impression?

I think for me it was Poltergeist. Stuff
that sticks with you for a long time is the stuff that you saw when you were
an impressionable little kid. Corrupted. [laughs] I do have a very freaky
clown doll in this one. [laughs] And what happens with that clown doll is
really weird! Like I said, it smells like a normal film, but yet. [laughs] I
have no idea what kind of film I’m making, man! Let’s just leave it at that.
When it’s done, you guys might look at it and go, this is a fucking comedy!
What’s James doing? We’ll see.

Is there room for a sequel to Silence?

Despite what you guys heard yesterday [one
of the actors revealed the ending], this is not a film about. OK, Saw had
the kind of ending that got people talking about whether or not they liked
it. So what, right? But people talked about it and I guess this is
definitely not a film that lives or dies by the ending. That’s not all the
film is about, as far as having a twist ending per se. I think it has a
cool ending and I think it fits the overall aesthetic of the film. In terms
of a sequel, who knows? You know as well I do that you can kill Jason so
many times and he’ll keep coming back.

You don’t seem to rely on the same kind of
jump-at-you scares that one sees in a lot of horror movies now.

Yeah. I’m not a big fan of fake scares. I
actually really hate fake scares. I’ve got a lot of people saying, ‘Put a
boo there!’ But I’m like, ‘It doesn’t fit. It doesn’t work. I’m not going to
force it in there.’ I don’t want somebody to just jump out of the shed. It’s
not like that. A boo scare works best for me if you build it up, when you
know something’s about to happen. You build it up, but you still don’t quite
know. But then when the boo scare comes in, it’s a real one, not a fake one.
That’s what I’ll try to go for, I guess. There’s a couple of boo scare bits
in this one, but hopefully they’re not fake.

How physical does the movie get?

It’s not an action horror film, that’s for
sure. There are a lot of set pieces, but no action set pieces. I do have one
sequence that involves a cat walk. It’s going to be played for suspense,
though. We’ll see if it works or not.

Thanks to the James
Wan for the talk! I personally can’t wait
for DEAD SILENCE to be released!

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