Darren Lynn Bousman On His New Venture Attic Acquisitions And His Love Of Occult Oddities
Shannon McGrew
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Recently, horror director Darren Lynn Bousman (SAW II-IV, Spiral, Repo! The Genetic Opera) surprised fans when he started a new Instagram account, Attic Acquisitions. Described as “procurers of the bizarre, forgotten, and arcane,” Attic Acquisitions morphed into a sort of personal auction house as Bousman and his wife Laura began going through their massive collection of oddities to sell, which ranged from movie props to books on the occult. These auctions, live-streamed on Instagram, allowed fans from all over Bousman’s career to secure their own piece of history without worrying about going through a third-person seller.
As a fan of SAW and a friend of Bousman, I was immediately captivated by his strategy of connecting with his fans by relinquishing his private curios. I met with Bousman last month to discuss his new venture for Dread Central. Attic Acquisitions’ home base is in a room off the main house. Playing softly in the background is a rare Vincent Prince record, and the smell of incense wafts through the space, giving it a welcoming feel. Strewn about haphazardly are piles of papers, books, and other items. It was like walking into the office of a mad scientist at the height of his creation, and I was all in.
Bousman began the interview by discussing how Attic Acquisitions came to be. Bousman said:
“My room used to be filled with macabre movie posters and props. But then my daughter started having nightmares, and her teacher called and said, ‘Listen, we’re worried about your daughter. She keeps talking about this doll that’s chasing her.’ I keep thinking it’s Chucky or something, and they’re like, ‘The doll has spirals on its eyes or cheeks.’ I knew immediately it was Billy. Then I removed all of the scary posters and hid Billy.
I spent $600/month on a storage unit I never went to. My wife and I decided, fuck it, let’s start going through the storage unit, make our way to the back, and get rid of everything. I have my personal things I want to keep, and all the other stuff is just sitting there collecting dust. That’s how it all started.
Originally, I looked at maybe selling stuff at an auction house, but I would much rather have it go to fans. We said, let’s not set prices on anything related to screen-used stuff; let the fans decide what it’s worth, and we’ll put it out there. There is nothing that has not sold. There’s a fan for everything, even the bad shit, even the stuff that I’m like, no one would want that in a million years.”
Over the years, Bousman has gone to estate sales and utilized eBay and Etsy to find unique trinkets. He also visits used bookstores, which typically have more obscure and hard-to-find books. It can be difficult to decipher what’s worth keeping when you’ve amassed a large collection of oddities, props, and mementos from movies.
However, Bousman had a strategy in place.
“I wanted one iconic thing from each movie that embodied the film or what it took to get there, such as the needles from SAW II, The Desperate script which became SAW II, things that I can’t reproduce. But my most prized possession is a letter from my dad telling me that my parents were giving me a year to sell a script, and then after that, I needed to support myself. The Desperate script sold then, and I was on a plane to Toronto 11 months and three weeks from that date. It was the kick in the ass I needed to stop playing victim and do what needed to be done.
[Pointing to an old document] This is how The Tension Experience began (an ARG immersive experience created by Bousman). It’s a real document from 1928, and it became the complete basis of the mythology of The Tension Experience. From a movie prop standpoint, The Repo Mask and Scalpel, since Repo! The Genetic Opera was such a defining moment in my life.”
For the next few hours, Bousman took me through some items that would go up for auction in the coming weeks, from x-rated board games and books about tractors and relationships to paraphernalia about magic and the occult.
Bousman said:
“I used to keep stacks of X-rated board games in display cases. I’m socially awkward, and I wanted when people came over to the house to be like, ‘What the fuck is wrong with you? Why do you have this?’ But, then my kids started to be able to read, and my son would be like, why do you have a game called adultery? We figured it was time to put some of this away, so it went under our bed and up in the attic. They’re not allowed to go through my books, but they don’t spend much time in the office. However, the older they get, the more I shift stuff around.”
One of the most fascinating items, which is saying something since every item Bousman owns is peculiar and noteworthy, was a vast collection of work from magician Tony Andruzzi. Bousman, an armchair magician, has worked with some of the biggest names in magic, including Teller, Michael Carbanaro, Zebreky, and Todd Robbins. He has also amassed an impressive collection of books on the subject. When it comes to selling items, Bousman always has a story to go with it, and in the case of Andruzzii, he had a zinger.
Bousman said:
“Tony Andruzzi started out as a failed kids magician. After his partner became famous, Tony knew he needed to do something different and came out with his first book, which was magic presented as witchcraft. Next thing you know, he’s become friends with Anton LaVey, author of the famed “The Satanic Bible.” So, now you got a magician playing an occultist palling around with real occultists. His magician friends started worrying about him because he was going down this dark rabbit hole.
In the meantime, he’s putting out these four books he made in his apartment. Cut to the middle of the night, his wife catches fire in her bed; he wakes up and rushes her into the shower while he himself is burning. She, unfortunately, dies. Come to find out, Tony makes his own flash paper, and his wife is a smoker. He had chemicals lying around; she put her cigarette out, and she caught fire. He died shortly thereafter. I knew I had to find his books when I heard this story. He only made 5000 copies of each of these things, all handmade. It sent me on this journey during COVID-19 to find them all. It took me three years, and I have found every one.”
Whether it’s a collection of books on extraterrestrial encounters or concept drawings of SAW traps, Bousman isn’t lying when he has something for everyone. However, his biggest concern was the perception that this would be a cash grab from fans. Bousman said:
“I was really scared [to start Attic Aquisitions] because I didn’t want people to see this as a desperate cash grab. When it relates to expensive things such as books I have, such as old occult books, that’s different to me than the props. I’ll never put a price on the props, even if things cost a lot of money. I’m just putting it out there, and it could be worth nothing, and that’s what you’ll get for it, but you decide what it’s worth.”
Luckily, Darren knows his fanbase and that with each item sold, someone would give it a second life. Bousman said:
“I love it because people have started sending me pictures, and this thing that has existed in my attic for 12 years is now prominently displayed in their living room. So now what happens is when their friends come over, they see something like [points at memorabilia] and are like, oh my god, I haven’t seen that movie. What is that? I haven’t heard of that game. What is it? I feel like this is furthering the life of these items.
I have a big problem attending conventions and signing autographs for $20. I’ve done it several times and always feel dirty after the fact. I appreciate the fans, and I don’t want them to have to pay for an autograph or something. But, to own something that was in their favorite movie, it’s fucking cool. The person who recently bid and won a Repo! poster containing the knife used by Bill Moseley’s character, Luigi Largo, is a cosplayer whose favorite movie is Repo! The Genetic Opera. Now he owns that, and it’s better than it just sitting in a storage unit that is fucking chaos.”
What does Bousman hope to achieve at the end of the day through the purging of these items? Well, it’s a legacy. Bousman said:
“I had this realization when I had kids about legacy and what I will leave behind when I die. The legacy is my kids, but before that, I was like, the legacy is this poster, this original thing, it’s the needles from the needle pit. But that’s not it. The movie itself is the legacy.
Originally, I wanted to hoard all this stuff because I thought it proved I did something—that these needles proved I did something. But really, the movie itself proved it. When my dad died, he left me behind, and I am his memory. Now, my kids will become my legacy.”
Categorized:Interviews
