How filmmaker Leigh Whannell created one of the year’s most memorable movie moments.
Here, writer-director Leigh Whannell reveals how he cooked up the shocking restaurant scene inThe Invisible Man.
“I start any screenplay with a notepad, thats my tradition,” says Whannell.
Credit: Mark Rogers/Universal Pictures
I still have them sitting in my office, this pile Ill sometimes leaf through.
It has to be a brand new notepad for each new film.
Sometimes Ill cut pictures out of magazines that are inspirational.
I just give a shot to fill the notepad with a collage of inspirational stuff.
The restaurant scene inThe Invisible Manwas born out of that process.
I was sitting down with my notepad thinking, Okay, how do you exploit invisibility?
With each villain you have to think, what are the best ways to exploit this villain?
What can this villain do that others cant?
What is the most frightening thing about this villain?
I started thinking, where would be the most surprising place for somebody to sneak up behind you?
If youre in a darkened scary house, the audience almost expects that somethings bad going to happen.
I decided to put the scene in a crowded restaurant.
The director shot the scene at est., a restaurant in Sydney.
“They graciously let us take it over,” says Whannell.
“It was a functioning, working restaurant and we changed it into a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco.
It never ceases to tickle me and makes me happy.”
Knowing that, I thought I could exploit that.
I wanted everything to feel safe and then for that to be suddenly interrupted."
Dyers graphic neck wound was a prosthetic appliance.
“A lot of it is practical,” says the director.
“Theres some CG involved because youve got a man in a green suit holding a knife.
Its really a combination of everything, but I like to do as much as I can practically.
The actors are cracking up continuously.
The throat cut was all done practically.
So, there were all these factors that were quite funny.
I mean, they were just losing it, crying laughing.”
No one was laughing, however, when a test audience watched the scene for the first time.
“I always knew that scene was going to be a gasper, you know?”
“When we first test-screened I was waiting around for that scene.
Im not a big fan of watching a test audience.
Its just too nerve-wracking for me, its like open-heart surgery.
But there are certain moments where I do like to be there.
Sure enough, thats what I did and it was exactly the reaction you would hope for.
It was funny how it would go in a ripple.
It happens so quickly that some people dont even know that its happened.
So, you get the first bunch of people saying, Oh my god!
And then slowly everyone catches on and it kind of ripples throughout the audience.
Its very fun to see that kind of audience participation.”
The last film!That’snot a mantle I want to carry.
I want movie theaters to open again once we get a handle on this virus.
I miss movie theaters.
It is not a scene thats built for someone whose watching at home.
Not that I dislike people watching it at home.
I watch plenty of films at home myself.
But its such a movie theater scene.
Its not intimate, its designed for a few hundred people to scream in unison.
Thats what I was thinking of when I wrote it."
A version of this story appears in the January issue ofEntertainment Weekly, on newsstands Friday oravailable here.
