| Legendary Horror Director Wes Craven Still Has Eyes |
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 Legendary director Wes Craven at the 2007 NY Comic Con   Jonathan and Wes Craven pose at the NY Comic Con  Wes and Jonathan confer on set  Daniella Alonso and Jessica Stroup  Alonso and Stroup in less appealing circumstances in "The Hills Have Eyes 2"  Craven and Drew Barrymore on the set of "Scream" (1996) A driving force in many of his films is the blurring of fantasy and reality--through nightmares or the conventions of horror--witness his genre-busting 1996 blockbuster "Scream." Most recently, Craven has taken to reimagining his own film series, this time by producing and co-writing a new, updated and politically charged version of "The Hills Have Eyes" and now, "The Hills Have Eyes II." At the recent New York Comic-con, Craven hosted a little press preview for the latest "Hills" with his son and co-writer Jonathan and several members of the cast including Daniella Alonso and Jessica Stroup. thehillshaveeyes2.co.uk Q: What's your sense of the political timing of this film? This film is pretty political for a horror film. Wes Craven: Well, yes and no. Certainly, when we were writing it, we felt like, okay, what's it like for American troops going into Iraq? Where you think you're going to be facing one thing, but it's like something that's so totally different and has a different order of values and beliefs and everything else and it's almost like they're an alien being. So it's like, let's follow that feeling with this picture, that the government has stuff they're not telling you about, there's rages, or there's mutations of humanity or ways of thinking, not in the sense of monsters but in the sense of that things are so different and want to kill you for reasons you don't even know. That's kind of an interesting, horrific position to be in as a kid. Q: How is it to be having this deja vu with these lovely mutants again? WC: It's fun! It's interesting, ["Hills Have Eyes" director] Alexandre Aja sort of took it in a different direction by the atomic thing. So, that was kind of funny, putting it on a test range and speaking very specifically about that with last year's picture. This is also very specifically set at a military base, and obviously the first one was just a very veiled reference to the fact that they were on some kind of military base. This is a little bit more specific. Q: How much fun do you get just in the pure sense of the gore and perverse? WC: We're all bodies, if you boil it down to the simplest thing we're just bodies and we all have our physical vulnerabilities, our bodies and the subconscious parts of our minds are so aware of our vulnerability, to being attacked, to being killed. I like reminding people of that, cause everything gets so urbanized and abstracted in American cinema, it's nice just to remember that we're animals, and it's good to remember that. It's really interesting, and again I'm not trying to be political but just going into Iraq with these incredibly complicated machines and airplanes and everything else, and then there's these people throwing rocks at you or blowing up munitions and they're giving you a really hard time. So it's like that sort of twist where you have this highly advanced technical thing that's kind of grinding to a halt because there are people out there loading up their car full of munitions and driving into your thing, so it's pretty mind boggling. You can't say "How could they do that? Where do they find all these people willing to blow themselves up?" for instance. Americans can't think that way. But here's an enemy that does think that way, and that to me is fascinating. Q: Do you feel a responsibility to keep the horror genre vibrant? WC: No, I feel a responsibility to keep films I'm associated with vibrant. And that's not a messianic thing at all, I mean, everybody that makes films, I think that's one thing you need to do is try not to repeat yourself and make every one the best you can do and as original as you can make it. Q: But don't you feel a little messianic going out into a crowd of horror fans? WC: No, but it's exciting that there's an audience out there that's excited. It's really unusual, it's stating the obvious but there's not that many kinds of films made in the United States where a director or somebody is followed by the audience very closely as a filmmaker and they get excited about it. It means that the genre is very vital and it speaks very specifically to the audience. I think that's good and healthy. Q: Should the Oscars have a separate horror category? WC: I think if horror was at the Oscars then I would have died. It is an animal that should not be put in the cage. Q: What is your sense of the cage right now in terms of horror's popularity? WC: I think there's a tremendous amount of it being done and most of it is pretty good and pretty intense. What I've noticed is that there's much more of a fanbase in the studios now than there used to be. Studios used to be, "Oh, we want to make one of these films, we don't know much about it but you go ahead and go do it." Now it's like a studio head saying, "I was a fan of yours when I was a kid and I'm so excited to be working with you," so you know they're not put off by the kind of film that you make and they're enthusiastic about it, they'll promote it well, they'll give you decent money to make it, so better films are made. Q: Do you think the resurgence of the hard R-rated horror film is coming to an end? WC: I hope not. No, I think that was a studio thing and it was based on a kind of a fluke that there were a lot of good Japanese ghost stories being made that studios were just buying the rights to. A ghost story isn't necessarily very bloody, so they tend to be able to get a PG-13. But I've been in a lot of studio meetings where a studio exec will say with complete conviction, "It's another ten million in the box office to have a PG-13." So as soon as that clicks in, it's like okay, it's gotta be a PG-13. But I think everybody wants to have at least an R, where you feel like it's not all being censored. Q: What recent horror movies have you been watching? WC: I haven't been out of the mixing studio in a week. I haven't seen any, I've been watching movies late at night after I get back from the mixing studio. Watching all of the Academy screeners. I think "Pan's Labyrinth" is about the closest to a genre piece, and of course that's nearly an art film. It's made by someone who's done genre like "Mimic." [Guillermo del Toro] came out of the genre and uses elements of the genre to make a statement that is very powerful and available to a very wide audience. |