Flanery, Sean Patrick (Saw 3D)

Heather Buckley |

Oct 19, 2010

It’s that time of year again for a new Saw film. Whether you love or hate this torture porn franchise, it has been a staple in the multiplexes for the last six years. Dread Central had the opportunity to talk to Sean Patrick Flanery (The Boondock Saints), who plays Bobby Dagen, a self-help guru and Jigsaw survivor with a few deadly secrets of his own.

Flanery was careful not to reveal any spoilers during the interview. He couldn’t even talk about Tobin Bell and if he’d make his final appearance in this 3D opus (which he totally does).

Flanery’s casting process was not (ahem) torturous at all. They had him audition on tape and said ‘Come on up to Toronto, and let’s make a scary movie.’ Nailing the role was a pretty big deal for him because it was the first time he’d been in anything this “big,” let alone anything that had averaged 62 million dollars in six films. He added, “Let’s be honest, I don’t do a lot of movies that come out, much less make a lot of money.”

Shooting in 3D offered its own unique challenges. When asked about the experience of shooting in 3D (as opposed to a conversion done in post), Flanery noted, “You had to recalibrate the camera after every setup, so you know, it’s good and bad. It makes you pre-think a lot of things. There’s not a lot of time to just shoot it – as in, what the hell, it’s just video, it doesn’t matter – that’s not the case at all. The preparation took so long, you really had to direct it on the day and not in the editing room.”

As for acting technique, Flanery pretty much reads what’s present in the script. “All of my research starts on page one and ends on the fade out. That’s it. I think everything necessary is in your imagination or what you can believe.”

When asked about projecting the raw emotional states that the genre requires (specifically in such a graphic movie), he replied, “If a writer is good, they put on the page a scenario that is easy to believe, it’s easy to put yourself in that situation. It’s like saying that, you know, these method actors, saying ‘Well, I’ve never done this, so to play it, I need to live it.’ Well, you know, I’ve never had a loved one, very close to me, pass away, but I can tell you I would know what that would feel like. I don’t need to go out and take my dog’s life to go ‘Ok, now I’m in touch with the raw emotion’. No, I could pretty much tell you that that would fuck me up pretty good.”

Look for Saw 3D in theatres nationwide this October 29th.