Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Now this is one of those odd situations. I set up an interview with Tobin Bell early in the day during the Con. I left from the Con floor to the Omni hotel where I was to have this interview. Turned out I had it up in Bell’s hotel room… right after he had just gotten his lunch. So, the interview was done as he was eating his salad. It was Kraken and myself in the room, with Kraken trying to get pictures during the conversation, not when Bell had a gob full of food. Keep in mind this was before the panel, so it was a bit tricky talking about anything SAW IV… which was the whole point of sitting down with Bell in the first place. So, an odd circumstance, but not a bad interview. Enjoy!!!
Tobin Bell: Have we met before?
Quint: I was at ShoWest and they threw us together for like four minutes or so.
Tobin Bell: Are you guys horror fans? Do you like horror films?
[Kraken explains the site to Tobin]
Tobin Bell: Oh, well I have to check it out.
Quint: We love all movies. Of course genre plays into it, but we’ll cover fantasy and drama and… We’re doing a series this year celebrating 1982, which is a big year in geek movies, where you had movies like TRON and POLTERGIEST and E.T… FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH… you know, everything, so we’ll cover anything. We just love movies…
Kraken: Yeah, Quint’s definitely the big horror guy…
Quint: Well one of the others actually writes horror projects. He writes for John Carpenter now, so it’s a little hard to claim the mantle fully, but I am the one keeping it alive, that’s for sure.
Tobin Bell: Is this your first year at COMIC-CON or what?
Quint: This is my eighth year at COMIC-CON. I love the CON and it’s getting so hard now, because I’m the only one here covering for the site, so I’m having to run from the interviews to panels to screenings and all that stuff, so it’s a little overwhelming, but hopefully next year we’ll bring the troops.
Tobin Bell: Where are you offices?
Quint: Austin, Texas.
Tobin Bell: My assistant comes from Buda.
Kraken: Oh really? I live in South Austin, which is pretty much north Buda.
Quint: Small town.
Tobin Bell: She’s just a wiz, you know, she’s really great.
Quint: It’s weird, because I was trying to write some questions here, but it’s really hard to talk about anything SAW related, especially before the panel…
Tobin Bell: Yeah.
Quint: …it’s like we’re here to talk about SAW IV, but there’s not… In the last one you were killed off, so we have to talk without forcing you to give away the whole plot for the movie.
Tobin Bell: Well, I haven’t seen the movie, so until I do it’s really hard to tell what, because the SAW films… it’s sort of one way on the page and then with Darren Bousman as a director and the input of people as the thing evolves, unlike many other films like you name it… most of the films I’ve ever done I just show up there and I have the script, I read the lines… I do it the way it’s written. SAW is a real collaborative sort of effort as we move forward and things evolve… Up until the point in time where we roll… things are changing all the time.
Quint: Yeah.
Tobin Bell: So, I can confirm that I’m dead. I can comment that death is like the final chapter in most western civilization, but in fact in many cultures in the world it’s just another point in the journey and I kind of view it that way in the SAW situation, because SAW and the way it’s taken place is it’s like a puzzle. And so you learn different things about the puzzle. It doesn’t happen in a linear way, so even though you might say “SAW I is here and SAW II is here and SAW III is here and there’s this big open space over here and SAW IV is over here…” So you saw in SAW III, you found out how I die, but does that mean that you understand the rest of the story of my life? You know, you don’t, so all I can tell you is I find it kind of fascinating that the writers and producers have created an opportunity where most people would be like, “well, wake me up, the guy’s dead…” But there are all of these open spaces in the story that haven’t been filled and you know, we filled some of them in SAW IV.
Quint: I remember at ShoWest… you hadn’t even read the script at that point and we were talking about how they pretty much set up the third one to say that the next puzzle is going to be finding out about Jigsaw’s life and how he’s making himself part of the puzzle. You were like “that sounds great to me. I don’t know if it’s true, but…”
Tobin Bell: Well, but you notice it… it’s like the first question that people ask, which is really is a comment on the way we view death as being the final chapter, but it’s just a moment in an entire journey and do we know… is death somehow more interesting than other aspects of the journey? I don’t think so. And then you can ask yourself “when does death begin?” “Does it begin the moment you’re born?” “Does it begin when you get out of bed the day you die?” “Does it begin when you take your final breath?” I remember sitting at the Actor’s Studio in New York one day and Al Pacino was talking about that. I think he was talking about preparation for this process and preparation of an actor… some actors do before a scene and he said “well, when does preparation begin… does it begin as you’re standing outside the door here waiting to come in? Did it begin down in the lobby? Did it begin when you got out of bed this morning? When does your preparation begin?” So when does death begin? I don’t know.
Quint: I know that there’s some worry that they’re going to start making Jigsaw like a Freddy or a Jason that can just keep dying, but you know that doesn’t seem… Well, one it wouldn’t fit the movies like it would in those slashers, but it’s good to see that they’re not trying to make it go down that road.
Tobin Bell: Well, yeah I think it was kind of… I have to feel that there must have been someone who had that point of view, that there was more story to be told and so what? So what if we kill him? I thought it was kind of a ballsy thing to do, you know?
Quint: Well definitely, because Jigsaw’s so much the face of these movies now.
Tobin Bell: Yeah, but as far as I’m concerned good stories are made of character and relationship and plot’s important, but character and relationship are important, so you can say Jigsaw is the face of it, but as far as I’m concerned Shawnee Smith and his relationship with Amanda, then you start to feel like “now, there’s a guy who has a relationship…” you know, I’m always looking to develop the delicate aspects of… You know, the script is going to lead me inexorably toward wherever the script leads me. I’m always looking to dance in-between that and to flush out the humanity, because if you don’t do that, who cares?
Quint: Then he’s just a cartoon.
Tobin Bell: Yeah or just one dimensional on a certain level, so I’m always looking to find that and it isn’t always going to be there in the script, so it sometimes has to be done with a touch… with a look… you know, with a moment, but sometimes those moments, especially with film, they’re like “boom!” It’s like “Whoa,” like “Oh, I get that relationship now,” and then it’s gone, but at least the viewer… you’ve got to let the viewer in to “what do these people do with their time?” “How do they spend their time?” John Kramer was a kid once too, so where’s the person in all… it’s not all just plot. Jigsaw may be the face of the SAW thing, but from my way of thinking it’s his relationship with the other characters and the fullness that can be brought to those relationships that really matter and not that he doesn’t matter, but… by himself… off by himself without… since his character’s introduced in SAW IV, some people are brought back from other SAWs, they’re a part of his world and the more we can flush those out and flush out interesting moments… Have you seen all of the SAW’s?
Quint: Yes, I have.
Tobin Bell: Like in SAW III, they wanted to go back and they wanted to do the moments just before I laid down on the floor in SAW I. People like seeing that kind of stuff. It fills in some of the gaps and so I like doing it. I particularly am eager for us to keep the level up. You know, I was in London recently and people came from Scotland and Ireland and Wales, just to talk about SAW. They talked for two days in this kind of situation. People would come in and they would go out, then somebody else would come in… they’d go out… and they were all very aware and very tuned in and so as far as I’m concerned, the eyes of the world are on this material for whatever reason and I feel an obligation and a responsibility, as I know that the producers of the films do, to try to keep the level… to try to grow it. I’m reaching to make it better, not to keep it at the level even, because if you reach for more, you might keep it even, but you’ve got to reach hard and SAW fans, you know, they want a lot, so… I’m just grateful to have the opportunity to participate with such a… with a team that… like Darren Bousman and Mark Berg and people from Twisted Pictures, who really have the same objective to bring something to the fans… Yeah, you want it to be successful. You want it to be financially rewarding and you know, it’s a part of business. It’s a business, but that’s not my job. My job is, as an artist, “does this make sense to me?” “Do I think it’s really interesting? The character and relationship thing, is it there?” So we fight and struggle all the time when we’re making these things to keep that level going and saying “we can do more.” There’s a scene in SAW III where Shawnee… this scene was dreamed up the night before… where somebody said “this is how these things happen with SAW… don’t happen with most films…” We kept batting around why doesn’t Bahar Soomekh’s character, the doctor… she’s walking around here looking at stuff and there’s all of these mechanical things and Shawnees has told her “go find something to operate on his head. There’s all kinds of shit around here, get some stuff… find something…” Why don’t you just grab something and hit her with it or shoot her or hit her… So this kind of logic… basic logic… that the viewer, most viewers might not think of that, but the ones who do think of it, those are the ones that you want to serve. You want to think, because somewhere subliminally the viewer knows that there’s something awry, there’s something missing… there’s something that doesn’t quite jibe with this situation, so they came up with this scene where Shawnee turns around to Bahar’s looking for stuff… Shawnee comes up “well, did you find it yet?” She says “no,” she turns her back on her and she reaches down and she goes something like… she gives her an axe. She hands her an axe and she says, “go ahead, you want to do me? Go ahead… do it…” she turns her back on her and the logic of it being that if she did that she would not operate on my head. I would die. That thing would blow up much sooner than it eventually did in III, so we addressed and it was done the night before and they grabbed this scene out of the schedule and Shawnee almost improvised what she was going to say. I thought the scene played really well in the film, where she invited her to kill her…
Quint: And took away her power to do so.
Tobin Bell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that was really a good choice to address that situation rather than go “well, most people aren’t going to think of that…” So they just took a bang at it you know and it probably took them two and a half hours to shoot the scene, but they were committed to it and they did it and I like the scene. I thought it made a lot of sense. It also played into Shawnee’s character, it made her smarter. So I liked that too.
Quint: Now have you seen the poster? I just got an email that has the one that it’s your head…
Tobin Bell: Yeah, I’ve seen it. I’ve just signed some.
Quint: Oh yeah?
Tobin Bell: Yeah, my head in a scale?
Quint: Yeah.
Tobin Bell: Yeah, I’ve seen it. Took my breath away when I saw it. I was like “wow.”
Quint: Yeah, because it’s not as overtly disturbing as the previous SAW posters, but there’s just something about the scenario that I…
Tobin Bell: It’d be overtly disturbing to you if it were your head…
[Both laugh]
Tobin Bell: I looked at it and was speechless. I was like “oh my God… my career is… looked what it’s reached…I’m a rutabaga at a farmer’s market.” I liked it. I thought it was really pretty intense.
Quint: Did I read that you have a production company?
Tobin Bell: I’ve had a production company for awhile.
Quint: What’s…
Tobin Bell: I just produced a film called HIGHWAY 61. It’s called Lay in the Road Productions and HIGHWAY 61 is a rock and roll road comedy about a down and out L.A. band who has no career and they just… their manager tells them how Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in ‘52 or whatever year it was. So they said “that’s fucking great, we’ve got to do that… maybe it’ll work for us,” so they gave up their day job and they take a trip across the country to the exact location on Highway 61 at 49 in Clarksdale Mississippi, where Robert Johnson did that to offer their own soul and that’s basically the setup and we shot it in Utah.
Quint: Who made it?
Tobin Bell: Luke and Jeremy Jackson, two brothers… good writers… great script and I also have two TV shows that I’m trying to get off the ground in LA.
Quint: That’s cool.
Tobin Bell: Yeah.
Quint: Do you like the producing? Do you like doing that?
Tobin Bell: Well, yeah. You know, I’m not exactly sitting there counting numbers, you know there’s different kinds of producers…
Quint: Creative producing…
Tobin Bell: Yeah, I’m more like “Hey Bob, this is Joe…here’s the script and you didn’t know him, but I know him and I know you…” just bring people together and you hope that we can get enough money to make these things, you know? And that they’re good. So yeah, I’m happy to be functioning on that level, because being an actor and I’ve been an actor for many years, you’re in a relatively powerless position and you wait for people to nod your way then hopefully you will make a paycheck that week. When you function as a producer, you’re still doing the same thing, but you’re taking a little bit more control of your destiny. You’re not waiting for someone to choose you, you’re doing something about it, you know? So I’m grateful for the many opportunities I’ve had and I’ve had so many… I’ve worked with some great directors and before the SAW thing I did THE SOPRANOS, I did 24, I did SEINFELD, I had done… I worked with Allan Parker, I did four movies with Gene Hackman, I’ve worked with Holly Hunter, I’ve worked with Sydney Pollock, Tom Cruise, I had a wonderful scene with Clint Eastwood in IN THE LINE OF FIRE... So I’ve just been really… it took me twenty years before I began to work. The first film of any consequence that I did was MISSISSIPPI BURNING and it was not a big role, but it helped me get started to build and then to be able to participate in SAW … I’ve done a lot of projects, but now I’m a main guy in this very successful thing, which is another kind of success… which is a pleasure to do, so I don’t take it lightly… just took too long to get here. (laughs)
There you go. Hope you guys liked it. More on the way! -Quint quint@aintitcool.com
