Tobin Bell (Pt. 2)
The man behind Jigsaw explains how the Saw films changed him and changed the audience.
“One of the tools that actors have is concentration and focus….You have to be able to focus entirely on what it is you’re doing. And that’s the beauty of creating the illusion, is being able to develop that as a skill. “
Interview by Kurt Sayenga
KS: What kind of fan response do you get when people recognize you?
TB: Generally very friendly. I mean I’ve had experiences from people… I went into a bar late at night in Toronto to get some food to go, and the place was empty, and there was a barmaid behind the bar and I had run from the hotel over there, it was cold, it was winter, I had thrown on a hoodie, and I went into the bar and I said, “I’ll have a Caesar salad” and she ran to the other end of the bar. And she was just terrified. And I said, “Wait, wait, wait it’s, it’s just a movie! Come here!” I was in the neighborhood for the next three weeks and we became friends, but that moment when there was no one else in the place, just me and her, and she was just cleaning up and ready to close and she came over and she looked up and she saw me behind the hood and just that moment, that 60-foot screen just exploded in her face. And I had to calm her down. And then I’ve done a lot of coaching, I’m a baseball coach, and I’ve been on the field with the team and had skateboarders, 12-year-olds, come up to me and say, “We love those movies” – these are kids – and I say yeah really why, why do you love them? And they said, “Because they teach you stuff.” I said, “Like what?” They said, “Well, that you need to appreciate your life.” And they’re not talking about the traps, they’re not talking about the blood, they’re not talking about the scares, they’re talking about concepts that resonate in the film, because they’re surrounded by what they’re surrounded by. So when you get this little germ of an idea, when it’s surrounded by that kind of intensity, it makes the germ resonate in a certain way. And I’m always impressed when those kids want to talk about that. I said, “Did they scare you? The films, did they scare you?” And they go, “Nah.” So they just kind of dismiss that and they talk about some of the ideas in the films which to me is like, wow, that’s, that’s okay. We doing something right.
KS: You’ve mentioned you’ve heard from addicts as well.
TB: I’ve been told by people whose life was hanging in the balance, that they took the whole idea of cherishing your life very much to heart and it turned their life around because they were at the bottom, and somehow hearing it in that situation was different than hearing it in a group therapy situation. Somehow it meant something to them. If I had to guess I’d say a hundred times at different personal appearances and events where there’s lots of people around, people will come and say, “Listen, the Saw films changed my life, I was suicidal…”
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