SAW

Ahh, Saw. I owe this little film a lot. My whole life basically. When James Wan and I finished film school in Melbourne, we were both desperate to make a feature. Eventually, after years of kicking around in various crappy jobs, we realized that no one was going to give us money to make a film - we would have to pay for it ourselves. This realization led to a long, torturous process of trying to come up with a contained idea that we felt we could achieve with our meager collective funds. We were both aiming very high - whatever the idea was, we wanted it to grab the WORLD’S attention. We weren’t looking to win a couple of awards at a local underground film festival - we wanted to announce ourselves. After cycling through every possible version of a “two people in one room” movie, James called me one day and pitched an idea about two men who wake up at opposite ends of a dirty, industrial bathroom, chained by the ankles to pipes. Lying between them was the corpse of a man who had recently been shot. Both men wondered who put them in this room. At the end of the movie, we find out exactly who did it. Immediately after James pitched me this, I knew it was the one. Whatever supernatural forces float through the atmosphere and occasionally shock some of us with the lightning rod of the zeitgeist, I knew that we had just been hit. I paced around like a madman and then called James back in a euphoric state of excitement. “This is the one!”, I yelled. “The only way the two men can get out of the bathroom is if they cut off their own foot with a hacksaw. And it’s going to be called Saw.” 

I didn’t know how to write a screenplay and didn’t even own any screenwriting software. Therefore, the writing process was long. It took me about a year to write the first draft (much to James’ chagrin). When I read it now, I can hear the voice of a 23 year old novice. Some of the dialogue makes me cringe a little. What I also see though, is the fervor of someone who knows they have a great idea. Sometimes your gut can read the future before it arrives. My gut had already been to the first screening of the film at Sundance. It had already been there on opening night, with lines stretching around the block in the last few gasps of the monoculture. It had already seen my Twitter account filled up with obsessed Saw maniacs who invented their own language. And so I listened to that voice and wrote with confidence, knowing that it was going somewhere. Before the future arrived though, all I had was this script. Presented for the first time without page 32 & 33 missing.