Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
Last July at Comic-Con, I stepped into an interview with Wes Craven that struck me as a unique opportunity. I'd never met the man before, so as far as he was concerned I was just another douche-bag prepared to ask him a bunch of questions about how much it hurt to have NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET made without any input or consult from him. He'd just come from enduring a couple of roundtable interviews that were both essentially just that, and by the time he met me for our one-on-one talk, he seemed a bit weary of hearing the same old questions. So I took the time, instead, to talk about other things, such as his new film as a writer-director, 25/8, which he is nearly finished with, as well as the remake of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, which he did have a hand in getting made. He helped select the director, Dennis Iliadis, a man from Greece who made a tremendous drama about teen prostitutes called HARDCORE, which I highly recommend. So essentially Wes was working on two films at once--not bad for a man turning 70 later this year.
At the end of our Comic-Con interview, Craven turned to his handler and said, "This was fun. Capone can come back." And so I did, to talk about LAST HOUSE, opening this weekend, a bit more about 25/8, the possibility of a new entry in the SCREAM franchise, and other chunks of the Craven-verse. I've got a couple more interviews coming soon with actors in LAST HOUSE, but the maestro comes first. One last thing: there are some pretty major spoilers concerning some changes made from the original screenplay to the screenplay for the remake. Consider the entire interview cloaked in a giant spoiler warning. Enjoy...
Capone: Hi Wes. How have you been? Busy, it sounds like.
Wes Craven: Yes, and I do remember you from San Diego. It was actually a refreshing interview, frankly.
Capone: I really did like this LAST HOUSE. I liked that the screenwriters [Adam Alleca and Carl Ellsworth] managed to make a few changes but still maintain the brutality of the original. When you'd mentioned to me at Comic-Con, that you go to these directors from Europe partly for financial reasons, but there has to be stylistic reasons for that as well. What was it about Dennis Iliadis' work that you particularly liked?
WC: It's all about the films that these people make that we see. It could be an American as any place else, but it was Dennis' film HARDCORE that I thought was extraordinary; it was a great combination of a dark subject matter and fantastic performances. I found out the rehearsed for a month, which explains part of that. Plus, the film shows a great sense of humanity, so that nothing about it was exploitational, and you totally believed those two girls. So that's what we were looking for. We wanted to take it and raise it almost to the level of an art film, but still have that impact and audacity of the first film. But treat it seriously in a way. The first film sometimes laughed at itself a bit; we had the goofy little comic interludes that were completely out of place [laughs]. What did I know?
Capone: I'm glad you're saying it. In rewatching the original recently, I'd forgotten how much those two cops bothered me.
WC: Oh, yeah, yeah. Look, it was a first film, and I didn't know anything. We were kind of experimenting. But Dennis came in as a mature artist and kept the focus on reality and people and didn't hold back on the violence, but gave it moments of stark beauty and so much else that is so important to it.
Capone: Did the screenwriters clear any major changes with you? There's one major change in particular--I don't want to ruin it--but it has to do with a character living or dying.
WC: There was some debate about that. I actually wanted, in the first film, for her to live. She did live long enough for her parents to find her, and then died when they found her. But Dennis thought it was powerful to have the parents defending her, that she was alive and that they managed to pull her back from the brink while these people were in the house. And I think he was absolutely right, by the way. There are scenes very similar between the two, when the girl is on the couch, the mother seduces Weasel. It's not like it's terribly far from the original, other than the fact that she lives. But that gives such motivation to the parents, other than just pure revenge. Now there's survival, it has to do with truly defending your child and not just revenge.
Capone: I wrote that in my notes, that there's a shift from revenge to survival, and there's a bit of more suspense as well. They need to get their daughter to a hospital.
WC: I think the scene of the father operating on her and sealing her wound, Carl Ellsworth wrote that and really researched it. It lends a credulity to the whole thing, because it's actually a process if a lung has collapsed to go through that, puncturing the thoracic cavity and all that stuff. It made him competent, but it also meant that the girl was alive but on the brink. They had to deal with these people, and that is very powerful. The first film was a learning experience, and we learned a lot about plot and so forth over the years. And Dennis had great ideas. The writers had great ideas. We went through a pretty long process of getting the script right before we even approached a director, and Dennis had his own stuff that he brought to it too. It was very collaborative. But for myself, that was probably the most hands on part of the film, doing that early work with the script and offering guidance.
Capone: It was my understanding you were not one set for this, but you were looking at all of the dailies. Is that accurate?
WC: Right, I was first writing and then doing pre-production on 25/8, the film that I just did.
Capone: Do you think audiences are more or less fortified to handle the level of film brutality, compared to audiences in the 1970s, especially when you consider what they were being shown on the new every night from Vietnam?
WC: I don't think so. I mean, we've had six years of torture porn [laughs]. So as far as brutality goes, there's been plenty. What usually is not around in the genre when it's just chopping off this and that is the reality factor, where you really believe these are real people. And that always intensifies it a great deal and makes it more susceptible to censorship. We had the MPAA tell us on this one that the problem with the rape isn't so much that it's rape but that it's so real, which just tells you everything. That's one step short of saying it should be entertaining, or it shouldn't upset you. But the whole point of it is that it's deeply, deeply unsettling and upsetting. To that extent, I think the MPAA wasn't ready for it because it was "real." But it's not a matter of gore for audiences. Somebody asked Dennis this morning, "How many gallons of blood did you use?" I bet you could put the blood in the film into a teacup; there's not really that much. But the intensity and interpersonal reality of it that makes it frightening.
Capone: I'll take it a step further. I'm not even sure what we're seeing here would qualify as a horror film. It's a very human story. But I was wondering, why is some of the more outrageous stuff from the original film--I'm thinking of the one girl being forced to piss her pants or the way the mom seduces Weasel. Okay for 1972, but not for 2009?
WC: Some people felt uncomfortable with some of it as just gratuitous, and, in a sense, it was. It was kind of an assault on the sensibilities in the '72 version. But also to me that was just a deeply personal thing. I'd never seen anybody be made to do that, but that is something, when you're a child that is such a deeply embarrassing thing that can happen, when you wet your bed or something. And then as you're old, you start to have to worry about that too. That whole element of being made to violate a basic physical pathway to self-respect is deeply unsettling. It's also like it's been done once, and you don't need to do that again. It just felt unnecessary. I think when you raise it to a certain level, you have to eliminate some of that grossness without losing the real human value. You certainly get a complete sense of the violation of the girl in the rape scene.
Capone: To me, the thing that separates this film from a lot of other horror films of late--remake or not--is the caliber of the acting. It's so much better; there are all real actors, and they don't play this like a horror film; they play it like a drama.
WC: Dennis has a good phrase for it--a horrific drama, rather than a dramatic horror film. Yes, that was a goal of ours. The quality of Dennis' film and the quality of the script, where it didn't exploit so much as just depict, was very important. I think the actors got the sense that they were in the presence of a really serious director, that they would be safe, even if they had to go to terrible places. They were being protected by a director who would not allow them to do something that was stupid or awful for the sake of doing it. He brought really, really qualified actors to it, that's one of the key things that separates it from the first one. We had virtually a cast of total amateurs, maybe some of them had done tiny little roles on television, but pretty much with the exceptions of the parents, these were people from very different walks of life. I think they did a remarkable job. But the depth of the skill and gift of the actors on this are just remarkable.
Capone: And it's nice to have the ages of the actors be more or less the ages the characters are supposed to me.
WC: [laughs]
Capone: As much as you see the flaws, though, it's clear that the original film still hold a special place in your heart.
WC: Oh yeah. I have a respect for the first film. I took a lot of changes, and I think it revealed an innate director in there that I certainly was sure I was or not. All the way up though THE HILLS HAVE EYES, I had people telling me "You shouldn't director; you should be an editor." The fact that I pulled that out of thin air in a very short time--I think I wrote the script in a weekend--and came out with something that was powerful and has lasted many, many years, I feel good about that. In some places, it's awkward or silly or whatever, but it was matter of finding my own skill levels and refining my sensitivities. That one was very much about being outrageous, and then by accident, it became deeply human. But there are a lot of things in it where I was just, "Oh, this will really freak people out." [laughs]
Capone: And of course, you could analyze it in terms of the times, talking about the things that happened to these girls in the movie were happening to your girls in Vietnam. It's harder to dismiss or not think about when it's happening in your own backyard. And there's also been discussion about how the film was a reaction to the rising tide of feminism that was coming into its own at the time. Is any of that accurate, or were you just trying to be outrageous?
WC: I wasn't just being outrageous. I'd just come out of being a professor, and there was a very, very strong antiwar element at the school I taught at and certainly among most academic circles. So one thing I felt about with Vietnam, it was the first time the American public on a nightly basis raw footage of an actual war. That had never been seen before. It was shocking. At the same time, you had a government routinely talking about body counts and clearly just lying through its teeth, so you had this destabilization of the trust of government in the United States, and that was very powerful. My feeling was that that was more real than anything I was seeing in cinema. If we were going to do this thing about violence and rape and murder, do it in a style of a documentary where you just…I mean, we were making that film out of building in New York that was all documentary filmmakers--[D.A.] Pennebaker and all those guys--and they would sit around saying, "You never, ever turn the camera off if something is happening. If you see somebody murdered on the side of the road, you keep rolling." We went into out film with that sensibility. Our D.P. Victor Hurwitz was a documentary camera guy, and he shot with his own camera, almost all hand held. So the way we went into it was, we're going to shoot this like newsreel footage. And that made it seem very real. And beyond that, I didn't have any training in film; I kind of taught myself by doing it.
Capone: So where are you with 25/8 right now?
WC: 25/8 is going toward its first test audience screening in the middle of next month. I'm very excited about it; it's very original. And we'll see. I don't think it's like anything an audience has seen yet. It will depend on whether they are willing to go in a very different direction. It's not terribly violent in many parts, and we'll have to see. It's an interesting experiment and I feel is a big stretch for me. I hope the audience likes it.
Capone: I've heard you describe the plot on three different occasions and I think without actually seeing it, it's tough to wrap my head around what you're doing.
WC: Yeah. [laughs]
Capone: And we're hearing that Kevin Williamson has an idea for SCREAM 4, and people are still saying they are remaking NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, as well as THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS and SHOCKER. Is any of that true?
WC: Yes, I think all of that has an element of truth to it. Kevin is sitting down to write something; I'm not attached, although there have been some telephone calls. PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS is a possibility that we'll do a remake of since we have partial control over that. SHOCKER is the same way. NIGHTMARE is being redone, but I'm not a part of it. You probably know 10 times more than I know.
Capone: Do you ever want to say to somebody, hey, go pick on somebody else's horror classics?
WC: Well, most of the stuff I control one way or another. But it is hurtful to see NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET being done without being a part of it. But I'm a big boy, and that was the original deal. I sold it outright, so that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Capone: Wes, thanks for talking again. Hopefully when you've got 25/8 ready to show people, we'll see you again.
WC: I'd love that. Thanks, always a pleasure.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com
