The old sage and young upstart talk horror
On Wednesday, Jason Zinoman hosted another excellent conversation for The New York Times’ “TimesTalks” series in Manhattan, this time with horror master Wes Craven and new heir to the scare throne, Oren Peli. With a career spanning 40 years, Craven is of course the man who gave us Freddy Kruger and Ghostface, while former video game maker Peli is (more-or-less solely) responsible for last year’s Paranormal Activity, which grossed nearly $200 million dollars on an unheard of $15,000 budget. He produced but did not direct the sequel, Paranormal Activity 2, which scored the biggest all-time opening for a horror film last weekend.
The two gentlemen had quite a spirited discussion where they revealed what makes their scary movies tick and how they perceive the horror genre at relatively opposite stages in their careers. Craven, the old sage, wasn’t shy about sharing his wisdom with the crowd.
Said Craven, “Hereâs one that I try on film students when they ask me, ‘What fear do you think you should instill in the audience to try to push that button?’ I say the biggest monster in film should be you, the filmmaker. I had that experience with ‘Paranormal’: I don’t know who made this, it might be real, for all I know it’s the Charles Manson gang filming spooks or something like that. I felt that with ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ where you feel like the filmmakers themselves are kind of crazy. Even with ‘Exorcist’, Bill Friedkin, whoever he is, is crossing lines no sane, caring human being would ever cross, and it scares the hell out of you and you don’t know what to expect next. Not knowing what to expect next is obviously one of the big huge fears we have, we don’t know what’s around the corner.”
Peli, in his thick Israeli accent, attempted to explain what he believes gave “Paranormal” the huge impact it had, and why fear can hit so close to home.
“You have something horrific happening in your house, which happens a lot in your movies,” Peli told Craven. “When I was watching ‘Jaws’ I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really bad, I’m not going in the ocean again.’ When people watched ‘Blair Watch Project’ they said, ‘I’m not going camping in the woods again.’ But you can’t say, ‘I’m not going to sleep at home again.’ It’s the one place you’re supposed to be safe, you’re supposed to feel comfortable that nothing is going to come in and kill you and torment you. When you strip away the feeling of safety in your own house that’s when you can get to people. Then they get to their home and think, ‘Hmm, maybe I’m not as safe as I thought.'”
With mid-term elections coming up soon, the two were asked what they would do if a candidate came to them to make a scary political ad.
“I know exactly what I would do,” said Craven. “I’d have a giant oversized crib in a giant oversized room, and in the crib, just in a diaper, I would have Karl Rove.”
“I don’t know if I can beat that,” conceded Peli.
Despite his reputation as a “master of horror”, Craven has actually made many films outside the genre, including the comic book movie Swamp Thing, the suspense thriller Red Eye, and the Meryl Streep drama Music of the Heart. He talked about the stigma behind horror movies and how he has overcome it.
“It was beneath pornography,” Craven said of when he first started making horror pictures like The Last House on the Left. “I’ve gone through something in my career, come to recognize it as the wish to not be making horror films, guilt at making horror films. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ The key moment where I got out of that was when a kid came up to me at one of these conventions where you’re signing autographs, he said, ‘Mr. Craven when are you going to make a real kick-ass film again like ‘Last House’?’ You realize in a sense if you’re in this game you have to go to those dark crazy places where you’re pulling demons out of closets and having psychotic men coming out of your dreams. It’s been hard, I find it not an easy place to go ’cause you have to put yourself in the mind of all the characters, but the filming has become kind of a joyfest. People get close, there’s a lot of laughter, the more blood the more laughter. It’s like kids playing with mud or something like that.”
Last House may have featured ugly scenes of brutality, but Jason Zinoman also remarked on the lack of traditional beauty in the stars of Peli’s movies.
Peli remarked on the stars of Paranormal, “Keep in mind we shot it on video, just natural light. I told them no makeup, no nothing. I’m pretty sure if I put a supermodel in the same situation, with just the harsh camera light at 7am with no makeup they would look the same way.”
Peli also refused to discuss his secretive new film project Area 51, even by name. “I am not talking about any other projects, sorry. I can neither confirm nor deny the existence. For now, as long as they’ll let me I’ll try to keep making films, but I believe there’s no point in talking about something until it is done. When I made ‘Paranormal Activity’ none of my friends or neighbors knew I was making a movie, so I thought I should keep on the strategy.”
Craven was a bit more loose in discussing his upcoming Scream 4, saying, “We just finished shooting about two weeks ago. My voice is still hoarse because I was doing press on ‘My Soul To Take’ at the same time I was shooting ‘Scream’. It’s in the editing room, we’ll probably have a first cut in about a month.”
“It’s been ten years since the last ‘Scream’ so it’s a look back at that decade in film. Two of the central character kids are in the film club, and are trying to solve the crime of who’s the killer by seeing how it’s working in the context of genre filmmaking today. It’s in the grand scheme of ‘Scream’ but looking at the culture of kids who like that kind of film.”
“This whole concept of ‘rules’,” he continued, “I’ve always been leery of the whole concept because a rule is essentially a cliché, and the first thing you want to do is not use the cliché, but it’s fun to play with clichés, to have something onscreen that appears to be a cliché, and then of course you have to subvert the cliché. I think the ‘Scream’ franchise has always been about doing the opposite of what we expect.”
In regards to My Soul to Take, which was just recently released to very poor reception, Craven was quite forthright about his disappointment to a fan asking questions from the audience.
“I’ll tell you right now, being blindingly honest,” he said, “I have a film out I poured my heart and soul into for four years and it’s doing poorly. It’s had horrible reviews, I feel lanced and torn apart and scared I’ll never work again. I’ve had things like this happen in my career over a period of time. I’ve made films that didn’t do well, two films in a row that didn’t do well. When I wrote ‘Nightmare On Elm Street’ I’d been out of work for quite a while, I tried three years to get someone to take it seriously. I’ve been out of work, I’ve lost all the money I had at times when I thought I’d be set for life. I think there’s something about it that’s very surreal. I get very nervous when people introduce me as ‘the master of horror’, I don’t feel worthy of that whatsoever. There’s tons of guys out there doing great stuff. I kind of feel like a cat on a hot tin roof, I don’t know how long I can last. I’ve gone 40 years, I was thinking of doing one more decade but maybe I’ll retire, I can’t tell.”
“Here’s to the next 40,” said a fan to cheers from the audience.
Source: Max Evry
