Taking audiences back to Woodsboro
It was the summer 2008 when Wes Craven told me, quite frankly, that if he ever got involved in another Scream film, âThere would have to be a script this time.â Of course, he was referring to his previous outing with Ghost Face, Scream 3, a sequel that notoriously had script woes. Writer Kevin Williamson had obligations that tore him away from the film, Ehren Kruger was brought in and an uncredited Laeta Kalogridis came in to do touch-ups. After that debacle, it was easy to understand why Craven would be hesitant to return a fourth time. Ultimately, however, he committed. Reuniting with the original trilogy’s stars and writers Kevin Williamson and Ehren Kruger (here taking an executive producer credit for his work on the project).
In Scream 4, Craven is taking audiences back to Woodsboro, where it all began, to focus on Emma Roberts’ Jill – Sidney Prescott’s cousin – and her band of friends. Sid (Neve Campbell) is back in town and so is Ghost Face, slaughtering Jill’s friends. It’s definitely business as usual in the Scream universe, but this time Craven and company get to explore a new decade of horror that is rife with remakes, torture and other mayhem.
Craven spoke to Shock by phone last week…
Heads-up – there may be spoilers, but nothing that specific.
Shock Till You Drop: The release of the fourth film arrives the year the first Scream marks its 15th anniversary. And some time has past since part three. How is right now the right time for part four? Do you think it could have been pulled off a few years back?
Wes Craven: That was Bob Weinstein’s decision early on to let the original trilogy be a true trilogy. He said to Kevin and I at one point, if we ever make a part four, it’ll be a long ways off in the future, so don’t hold your breath. But I think it was a smart idea to wait, you have an almost historical epoch begin that’s new. 21st century. First decade of the 21st century, a decade full of Facebook and blogging, smart phones and all. Things that are so important to kids now.
Shock: Well, you also have a decade’s-worth of new horror fare to comment on…
Craven: Things to make fun of.
Shock: …right, which you even contributed to producing The Hills Have Eyes and Last House on the Left. Scream 4 heavily touches on remakes.
Craven: Yeah, there were my remakes and A Nightmare on Elm Street which I had nothing to do with. They were all fair game. [laughs] We made those remakes because we discovered we owned the property. The financial crash affected all of us and we all needed to get back on our feet again, so those remakes helped a lot. At a certain point, I realized I needed to stop doing that. I didn’t want to be that guy that just remakes his own stuff at this point. I made My Soul to Take and when they said they wanted to do Scream 4, I said okay, let’s go. Kevin ran the idea by me and I loved it. Neve and the gang was going to be a part of it and it just sounded like fun.
Shock: There’s been a lot of rumors about Kevin’s involvement and why he left the project. Have you spoken to him recently and has he seen the finished film yet?
Craven: I talked to Kevin last night. I think he was trying to figure out what to say about the film to the press because there are rumors that something horrible has happened. He has not seen the movie. He’s been completely immersed in Vampire Diaries. That was part of the reason he stopped being a writer on the film, but he did have a complete script. He had everything laid out for us. When Ehren Kruger came in, it was because Kevin had to contractually put his efforts into Vampire Diaries. Ehren did some great secondary work and some additional scenes that needed fleshing out. And I did some writing, too, but this was Kevin’s baby.
Shock: You were in better shape script-wise than you were on Scream 3…
Craven: Oh, that was a nightmare. Kevin wasn’t available and Ehren, bless his heart, and I and another writer worked on that script all through production. I went back and watched all three films and I had a lot of fun with all of them. That last one was more towards Scooby-Doo and less Scream.
Shock: Were you re-invigorated with the younger, fresh blood?
Craven: Yes, Kevin was very clever in having Emma Roberts’ character being connected to Sidney, so you have that link to the past. But she’s very much her own character with her own circle of friends. That was a lot of fun, just finding these actors. This is the second film I’ve done with my wife, who produced this and My Soul to Take, and we are just big on casting. We looked at everybody and we had two casting directors who brought in hundreds of kids. One cast member auditioned via Skype because we were already on location. We beat the bushes for a while looking for people, extraordinary young actors. And they’re very much alive, funny and have tons of energy. Sometimes fans of the genre who want to know how it works.
Shock: I think this is a leaner, meaner Scream. You spill more guts. It’s very bloody. Did you have trouble dealing with the MPAA this time around? I know they were more lenient on the previous sequels.
Craven: No, I have to say I was astonished. In my mind, I was so haunted because I thought we had a great film but we still had not run it by the MPAA, but that got pushed to the back of my mind. I was caught up in the scurry of the sound mix and I got a phone call that said we got an R. I asked, what did we have to cut? Nothing. I don’t know, maybe we have Saw to thank for that.
There was always the big scene at Kirby’s house. But what happened there, there were a billion different versions that were in the script. What we actually shot is what’s there in the film, but there are a couple of different scenes with Erik Knudsen wandering around with his camera headset, but they were cut. A hospital sequence was devised late in the process – I had a lot to do with that set piece. We shot a script that was a 138 pages or something like that, so we had a lot of scenes that had to go on the cutting room floor. Some were kind of redundant. Sometimes we were pointing too much at a character as a red herring. There are seven or eight scenes that will be on the DVD. All the really good stuff was in the final film.
Shock: You once told me you were fascinated with doing the original trilogy because you got to see the characters grow. Are you so eager to dive into a new trilogy?
Craven: It’s certainly an intriguing idea. It’s all about quality and I don’t think anyone will do it just to do it. To now be following these characters in their 30s is interesting. You don’t want this series to dominate your life and you want to explore other avenues creatively, but to have participated in it this much is remarkable.
Scream 4 opens in theaters April 15.
Source: Ryan Turek, Managing Editor
