Spoiler alert: Tobin Bell’s character in the Saw franchise, the malevolent life coach known to the world as Jigsaw, succumbed to brain cancer at the end of Saw III.rssbreak]
But the series has soldiered on, employing a complex flashback structure to keep Bell’s husky-voiced antagonist in the mix… and guarantee the veteran character actor a lucrative gig for as long as the movies draw Halloween crowds.
I sat down with Bell – who was just as happy to talk politics and baseball as he was to unpack the message of the Saw films – on a Toronto media stop earlier this summer, when Saw VI was still in post-production.
This series is going to go on forever, isn’t it?
It depends on the fans’ response to the film. There’s always talk, you know, that there’s gonna be a seventh or an eighth. You can talk all you want until we’re actually in front of the camera and it’s rolling. I don’t think there’s any specific plan at this point in time, in terms of…. We’re gonna wait and see how VI does.
What can you tell me about the new movie?
Saw VI has a really interesting theme about the ripple effect. Everything you do affects the guy next to you, which affects the guy next to him, which affects her over here. And you might think that what you’re doing is not that significant, but just the way you respond to other people makes the world the way it is.
Jigsaw died at the end of Saw III, and much of the subsequent films are devoted to figuring out ways to stitch him back into the action through flashbacks and voice-overs. How do you keep yourself oriented?
It’s one of the things that fans like about it a lot. It’s a puzzle. And it doesn’t play out in a linear way. So it doesn’t much matter in my mind whether I died in Saw III or II or IV. The thing jumps around so much that what we’re trying to do is fill in the pieces of the puzzle. You know, you do the upper left hand corner, and then you do the middle, but there are all these missing pieces. Hopefully, as we continue to tell the story, we’ll fill in the pieces, and fans will find it rewarding.
The continuity is sort of insane I think we’re now supposed to believe that the second, third and fourth movies all took place simultaneously, but Jigsaw’s henchmen weren’t aware of each other’s existence.
The films are fairly intricate, but fans seem to like that. They say, “Oh, no, no no! I remember what happened in II!” And they connect it somehow to V. Horror fans are very passionate people, and they are very much into the Saw thing. So they watch sometimes as carefully as the writers and producers do, in terms of the way the story plays out. For me, I just do the same thing all the time, which is to continue to inform myself as best as I can – where the character is coming from and what it is he’s after at that particular moment in time.
Someone just asked you what scares you personally, and you said “Bad art.” Can you expand on that?
An actor puts himself in the hands of a director. And the director’s first responsibility, obviously, is to tell the story, but the smallest thing that’s not true reads on the screen. So if a director sees that an actor is not believable, he needs to help him become believable. So you put your trust in him. That’s a scary thing, because unlike the stage, whatever of you goes up on the screen gets run again and again and again. When you’re a musician or a painter, you have some control over it. You put yourself in the hands of other people, you have no control over what the result is going to be. You can’t watch yourself. I’ve seen that happen.
The Saw movies shoot in Toronto every winter, and you do the full promotional blitz the following fall. How do you keep busy when you’re not on Jigsaw time?
I’m working on some ideas for a television show. I’m also a writer and guitar player and a Little League baseball and flag football coach. Well, now I’m a Pony League baseball coach, because my son is 13. I keep my time pretty busy. Generally, in September and October I’m out promoting the Saw films, so that keeps me busy also.
Interview Clips
Tobin Bell on the ideas at the heart of the Saw series:
Bell on what scares him (about baseball):
Bell on something else that scares him:
normw@nowtoronto.com
