Wes Craven

Frequently Asked Questions

About Wes Craven

Question: : Do you recommend film school?

Wes Craven:: I recommend any way you can get around people who know how to make movies. It seems to me film school is a good way, or if you can get yourself a job on a movie or in an editing room or some way you can observe people doing it firsthand, that's good too. The good thing about film school is that it gives you the history of filmmaking which, since I didn't go to film school, I'm still piecing that together. But the nice thing about going into the field as a worker is that you learn everything for real, I mean there's nothing theoretical about anything you learn. My advice is, and it's not necessarily what the directors are following these days which, quite honestly, a few of them seem to be raised on video games and MTV but, I always advise kids to get a really good foundation of storytelling which comes as much out of literature as it does out of filmmaking. So really read deeply and read the old classics. Read the great storytellers: Dickens and The Odyssey and don't ignore that aspect of filmmaking because a lot of it has to do with just telling a story and structure. I think it's probably the weakest point of a lot of young directors that they haven't immersed themselves so much in storytelling and have been influenced by razzle dazzle and special effects.

Question: : I'm a young actor who wants to aspire to becoming a director someday. I guess what I'm trying to ask is what did you do to become a director? I would really like to know is, what you did as for schooling and other important tasks you had to overcome to make it as a successful director?

Wes Craven:: As long as the impulse is there, you should keep writing but you should also study it seriously, don't just sit in your room and think you can be an artist all by yourself. You have to get yourself surrounded by other people who are doing it so you get the feedback of other minds. You have to immerse yourself in the craft of filmmaking by watching the best movies you can find and taking courses in it if you can.

Question: : How did you get involved in the film industry? Is it true you started in the film industry basically as a runner and a gofer?

Wes Craven:: Yeah, the first summer I went down I didn't get a job. I had to come back to Potsdam and I had already quit my college teaching job so I took a job as a high school teacher in a local, very rural high school which was like, you know, my family concluded that I had gone insane and blown the family fortune. And at the end of that year I went down again to New York and towards the end of the summer when I still didn't have a job I heard someone was looking for a messenger so I took that job. That was my first job in film, was as a messenger.

Question: : Where did you teach college?

Wes Craven:: I taught one year in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania at a college called Westminster. Then I taught three or four years at a college called Clarkson College in Potsdam, New York which is way upstate above the Adirondack State Park. I taught Humanities there at a big, technical college.

Question: : I'm a sophomore at Wheaton College and I've heard rumors that you graduated from here.

Wes Craven:: I did go there. I started there in 1959 or 1960. I went there for a year and then I got a very serious illness called transpolar myelitis, which is a viral infection of the spine and I was paralyzed from the chest down for about three months and then I went home to recuperate for the rest of the year and then I went back to Wheaton from '61-'64 and then graduated-or '63 rather-I graduated in the summer of '63. I was very active in writing, wrote for the literary magazine there and I think in my senior year I was the editor-no, it was my junior year, I was the editor of the literary magazine: a thing called "Coda". After publishing two issues it was shut down by the president of the college and I was denounced from the pulpit for publishing stories about-one story about a young woman who had a black lover, and another story about an unwed mother who was dealing with being pregnant and single.

Question: : What are your interests and hobbies?

Wes Craven:: Gee, I play classical guitar, I listen to tons of music of all kinds. Racquetball. I like fooling around on my computer. I like genealogy, I read a great deal in all fields: science; history; novels and short stories. I'm an avid birdwatcher, I like anything having to do with animals or biology. I hardly have time to do any of my hobbies! But when I do have time, that's what I do.

Wes Craven movies

Question: : Are you planning to do more horror films, or are you going to give it up for romance and action movies?

Wes Craven:: No, I will continue to keep my hand in that. Just being able to do other pictures will give me the freedom to not do just any horror, and not only horror. But certainly if I find an idea or a story or script that I think is really scary, I'll be glad to do it. It's obviously a lot of fun. You know, present day with the problem in Colorado and everything, it's getting increasingly chancy to do it, you know. None of us want to cause anything to happen, and none of us want to get sued for everything we've earned over twenty years because somebody thinks we're responsible for some other maniac's actions. So I suspect there'll be a kind of a chill in the horror field in the near future as a reaction to those events and the whole Congressional witch hunt that will almost invariably begin now.

Question: : After "Scream 3" are there any plans for a "Scream 4" or a "Scream" television series?

Wes Craven:: Not that I know of, honestly. When we all talked about doing sequels, myself, Bob Weinstein and Kevin Williamson and Mary Anne, we all agreed that it would be a trilogy and that we wouldn't continue making sequels. But Bob did say maybe after two or three years we'd start again but we'll start with all new characters and a whole new story. So insofar as the "Screams" that Kevin and I and our teams will do, this is it. And I've never heard mention of a television series but it wouldn't surprise me. It hasn't been talked about in my presence.

Question: : What was your favorite film as a kid?

Wes Craven:: Hmmmm.well, my most favorite recent film would have to see a film that I just saw last night which was "This is My Father", which is Aidan Quinn's newest film that was shot by his brother and directed by his other brother. I just think it's a terrific film. A very small, romantic film about two lovers who are doomed from the beginning, but really beautifully done and I just love it. I think the earliest film you know, I was raised in a family that in general didn't allow us to see films, so I didn't see that many. But we were allowed to see Disney films. So I think early films were like "Fantasia" and films of that sort which I enjoyed immensely.

Question: : What actors have you enjoyed working with the most?

Wes Craven:: It's been a very, very pleasurable experience in general all around. I like working with actors. Certainly it's easy to say Meryl Streep because she was so wonderful both to work with and to watch. It's just so much talent. Not only does she do the things you direct her to do but she invents things on her own and comes to the set with such depth of feeling and interpretation that you're constantly, the movie is constantly expanding in a good direction rather than you know, if you're working with actors that are limited-I'm not saying which films I have-but from time to time, certainly I've had-especially when I was first working with actors who had hardly worked before-simply didn't have the chops to do what I had written quite as well as I would hope. But I've had a lot of fun with a lot of actors. You know, working with Johnny Depp his first time out was fun because he was so shy and unsure of himself. And working with Peter Berg and Mitch Pileggi on "Shocker" was a hell of a lot of fun. They were both a couple of goof-offs and they threw themselves into their acting but had a lot of fun off the takes, too. And many, many different actors I've worked with I've had a great amount of fun with.

Question: : What are two of the most common technical problems that you face when you film on location?

Wes Craven:: Probably the most overwhelming problem you face in our civilization right now is that there's just an incredible amount of noise from leaf blowers to airplanes so you can no longer simply wait for it to go away because it won't. In quite a few communities the gardeners are smart enough to hold out their hand for $500 dollar bills before they stop using their leaf blowers. A lot of times you just have to live with it and dub, which no one likes to do but that's part of the reality. And just the lack of control, I mean I love shooting on location because you get a look you just can't get any other way, but the lack of control of light and having the sun go behind clouds and then you have to make a decision an hour into the day whether you're going to go with sunlight or clouds. Then you sit around half the time waiting for one or the other to turn up. That sort of thing can be very worrisome because it eats up time you don't have anyway.

Question: : Mr. Craven, if you ever had a chance of changing anything in any of your movies, what would it be?

Wes Craven:: Oh God. I would change hundreds and hundreds of things! Probably change the ending of "Nightmare" 1, to the way I intended it to be rather than having the ending that Bob Shea wanted me to put on it. He got me to have all of Matthew's friends come back and then Freddy's car sort of captured them. He actually wanted Freddy to be driving when they got into the car. It was originally written that her school bus would pull up and all her friends would be in it and she'd get in and they'd drive off into the mist and her mother would wave goodbye. The compromise was that her friends drove up in the car but as soon as she got in the top came down with Freddy's stripe colors on it and they were taken away against their will. And her mother was yanked through the door. So that was just something that was tacked onto the end. I think the endings of my early films " Deadly Blessing" had an added ending. "Serpent and the Rainbow" had an ending that was shot after the film was done to you know it was the time of the vogue for surprise "Carrie"-sort of ending so everyone had to have that even though the audience was completely expecting it. So anyway, that sort of thing. I guess things that I didn't want to put in myself but that someone for one reason or another had to hammer over me and wanted me to put in. There was a pressure to make it so there was always a sequel possible. It was a huge thing-the hook for the sequel which, I guess, came out of "Carrie" and then "Friday the 13th". At the last second the killer comes back and therefore, there can be a sequel. I always tried to make the argument that if the picture is good you can always invent reason why you can do a sequel you don't have to have. Don't insult the audience's intelligence by having a hand jump out of nowhere in the very last frame. But they still do it! "I Know What You Did Last Summer" did it.

Question: : Do you have a script now for "Scream 3"?

Wes Craven:: No, it's coming in. Kevin is writing it as we speak and struggling to find the time to do it in between all the other things he's doing. You know he directed "Killing Mrs. Tingle" and they're in the final stages of putting that together, he has a new television pilot called "Wasteland" and they just shot that and it's been picked up immediately. He has another series on the air, as you know, "Dawson's Creek", and he's also in early preparation for the next picture he'll direct, which is a romantic comedy. So the trick that we're all trying to pull of right now is just giving Kevin enough spare time on our project that he can deliver the script.

Question: : Can you say if there was a third killer in "Scream"?

Wes Craven:: I think I can definitively say that when we made those movies, there was no knowledge of or intention to imply a third killer. That was just a theory that someone came up with that would've made an interesting variation, but not one that we had invented or pursued.

Question: : Can you tell us about the cast for Scream 3?

Wes Craven:: No, we're just beginning casting now. We'll have Neve and Courtney and David, then we'll have, hopefully, the people that we get that we think we're gonna get for some very surprising and wonderful cameos. Then a cast of new kids and adults and others that we'll find or bring from other films that we've done. There are some people that we worked with on "50 Violins" that we're gonna bring in and we're casting daily now, looking at all the young, best and brightest of Hollywood. We're finding those next Neve Campbells and Matthew Lillards.

Question: : Before I buy the Scream 2 DVD, I would like to know if there will be a Special Edition like you did with Scream when I had to buy 2 versions.

Wes Craven:: I'm sure they will, but I haven't heard of them doing it yet. I wouldn't be surprised if after "3" was out that they'd do a package, but I don't know.

Question: : I heard a rumor that the idea for "Nightmare on Elm Street" might have come from a student movie involving Elm Street in my hometown of Potsdam, New York. True?

Wes Craven:: No, I'm afraid not. You know, when I was teaching, I bought a camera and we shot a film up there called "The Searchers", I think we called it. It was a bunch of students, noticed I had a camera and I didn't know what I was doing, thought I was just fooling around. They asked me to help them start a film club which we did, and then we made a 45-minute-long little action picture. Very crude, we didn't know what we were doing, really. We showed it at the school and all the surrounding schools. We made our budget back about four or five times over. And that was when I got the bug for making movies. At the end of that year I quit my job and went down to New York and started trying to get into the film business.

Question: : I'd to get re-releases, DVDs, a crappy old copy,..anything, of "Last House on the Left". Any plan to re-release that on a twentieth anniversary thing, or is there any chance of a re-release?

Wes Craven:: I'm sure there's a chance of it. Frankly, I don't even know who owns that anymore. I know five or six years ago there was a re-release of a so-called "restored" version that was at least partially restored from what pieces we could find. Since then I haven't heard from those people so I just don't know whether anyone is out there owning it actively and interested in doing that. I'm not in contact with anyone that owns it right now, but I'm sure somebody does. It's just one of those things that, until they emerge, I'm not sure who owns it.

Question: : Here's a bet for a couple of friends: in "Scream 2", during the dress rehearsal scene of the play Sidney is in, she is surrounded by actors in masks and she keeps seeing the killer. My question is, is the killer really supposed to be there, or is he supposed to be in her mind?

Wes Craven:: No, the killer was really supposed to be there. We designed the other masks that looked very much like it and it was possible by ducking and weaving for the killer to remain kind of hidden and just appear when he or she wanted to. That was the concept at least, but you know, at the time that the scene is seen by the audience, and certainly by Sidney herself, it was meant to never be quite sure whether the killer was there or whether she was hallucinating because part of the plot device was that Sidney might be just going crazy.

Question: : Will you be writing and or directing any new "Nightmare On Elms Street" films or the proposed "Freddy Vs Jason" film?

Wes Craven:: If a new "Nightmare on Elm Street" film is made I won't be involved with it. I read an early script of the "Freddy vs.Jason" film and decided to pass. Keep in mind that I only directed the first "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Wes Craven's New Nightmare" (as well as writing Nightmare 3) so my involvement with the series has been limited. Frankly, I've got other projects that are much more interesting to me. I certainly appreciate Freddy's popularity, but I'm more interested in working on new material. [But that doesn't mean you should send me ANY scripts! ;-) ]