Inside the house where we shot my scene, it was dark
and smoky, smoke machines, not cigarettes.
Finally, a diminutive guy came up and said, "Hi. I'm
James Wan."
He was a calm, easygoing man who addressed me as
"Sir." He had me sit on the screen left side of the couch with the
girl playing one of my daughters to my left. He stationed my wife behind an
ironing board off to my right.
Mr. Wan asked me to pretend to be whistling at the
beginning of the scene. "Don't worry. We've hired a professional whistler
to do it on the soundtrack."
The whistling is what gets Patrick's attention.
That's why my character stops whistling when I see the light from his
lantern.
We were not dead according to Mr. Wan, but we are
stuck in The Further, a dark place where souls like me, my wife, and my
twin daughters are to remain forever.
Unfortunately, my wife blinks when Patrick looks
at her, thus giving us away. (This was in the script. It was Patrick’s
clue that something was wrong.)
When he looks at me again, my newspaper is quivering.
Patrick hears a gun being cocked and hears three
gunshots. When he returns to the living room, one daughter, my wife, and I
are all dead with small red holes on our chests thanks to the makeup
guys. He realizes that the other daughter shot us.
For a split second, Patrick thinks we are smiling
at him.
Insidious ended up with a worldwide gross of $97,009,150. That gives the indie horror pic, made for under $1.5 million, the best cost-to-gross ratio of 2011.
I was thrilled when I saw it in a theater to find
that my entire two-minute scene with Patrick Wilson made
the final cut of the film.
For years, viewers have told me about how scary my 2-minute
scene is. On YouTube, they call the 2-minute scene “The Smiling
Family.”
https://tinyurl.com/CrewsInsidiousClip
