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" 'Nightmare on Elm Street' wasn't that big. Over a long period of time it did very well, but this was different. 'Scream' didn't have a strong first weekend, and it went down the second, but then it kept going up. "

Wes Craven

Weekend

Time

Long

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" Everybody's making horror films and, to me, not especially well. "

" It's great to be thought of as the master of anything. Even idiocy. Master of idiocy, Wes Craven. But if it's master of horror or fear or whatever, that's great. "

" I think everybody goes off and does their own vision. And I don't take responsibility for other people's work, frankly. It's bad enough taking responsibility for my own. "

" Basically, I've found that if you have two films that don't perform well, it doesn't matter that you've had a bunch of successful ones. The phone stops ringing, and after 'Deadly Blessing' and 'Swamp Thing,' that's what happened. "

" The whole business is changing dramatically, and the way fans follow and participate in movies, and make their own movies to emulate those movies, is profoundly different. "

" I was always told that films were evil and such, but I started to realise what a load of crap it was that something this good should be forbidden. I had been allowed to read as much as I wanted when I was younger, so I recognised great art when I saw it; I just didn't realise it would be at the cinema as well. "

" When you do a film like 'My Soul to Take,' and people think it sucks, that hurts. We put a lot of work into it, and it's a good film, but you go on. "

" I like to think I'm making films in the film business where movies are making enough numbers for the studios to let me keep working, but you also want those films to have content that makes you proud you made the film. That's not easy, but it's a fun puzzle to figure out. "

Wes Craven

Business

Fun

" You just find the best actors that you can. There's an inherent drama within the framework of scares and killings and all that. In 'Scream,' there is very real drama that would be in almost any drama. "

" I came from a very strict background. "

" My goal is to die in my 90s on the set, say, 'That's a wrap,' after the last shot, fall over dead, and have the grips go out and raise a beer to me. "

" That's what's great about the horror genre is that you're getting a load of people together in the cinema at the same place and the same time, having them all experience extreme fear and come out alive at the end. It's an uplifting experience, and there's a sense of elation. "

" How can you have 'Scream' without Ghostface? It's like 'Friday the 13th' without Jason. "

" The 'Scream' series is unique in that it's an ongoing murder mystery, even though it's a different killer, so if you know who that killer is, then half of the fun of the movie is gone. "

" I did many things in my life - I painted, and I'd play guitar, and wrote and did many things. But it all seemed to come together in making movies, and almost accidentally. "

" You don't enter the theater and pay your money to be afraid. You enter the theater and pay your money to have the fears that are already in you when you go into a theater dealt with and put into a narrative. "

" In high school, we would give away rulers to our friends that said, 'Jesus loves you.' I couldn't put together the concept that Jesus loves you, but if you don't love him back, you'll burn in hell forever. I worried, 'I'm rejecting the Holy Spirit, so I'm definitely going to burn in hell.' "

" If something comes along that is totally outside of horror, fine, but I find there's an immense amount of freedom within the genre. "

" I've done a few interviews where I realized that 9/11 was the ultimate home invasion, not to be glib about it. You know, where the place that you think is safe and the people that you think are safe and far from evil are suddenly just slaughtered by it, and you have no control over it. "

" I think I wrote the first draft of 'Nightmare on Elm Street' in '79. No one wanted to buy it. Nobody. I felt very strongly about it, so I stayed with it and kept paying my assistant and everything. At a certain point, I was literally flat broke. "

" There was a period around Columbine when horror films were being kind of assailed by the government. The studios got very afraid that they were going to be sued, and studios at about that time were all being taken over by corporations. "

" 'Last House' offended a lot of people. The results in the theaters, even in Boston, reminded me a bit of things from when I was studying Theater of the Absurd, and the rise and the appearance of Ionesco plays, and things like that. "

Wes Craven

Boston

Appearance

" I never went to film school, so I never had the chance to be rejected. "

" I didn't see many films until I was in college teaching. "

" You have to be aware of what the audience's expectations are, and then you have to pervert them, basically, and hit them upside the head from a direction they weren't looking. "

" A big part of directing is being strong in certain circumstances and taking the gamble and hope you don't get fired. "

" When you have a name that means scares, you have to live with that. "

" I remember going to a funeral at a very fundamentalist church, and I just had to get out of there. I went out in the parking lot and just sobbed. I think there was a sense of loss of that little boy not knowing if he was right or wrong. Everything I grew up with I had to walk away from. "

" It's not an easy place to be - to write a horror film. You go down the stairs to the dark to find these characters. It's not a place anyone can go, and sometimes it's not a place that you want to go. "

" The first monster you have to scare the audience with is yourself. "