The Big Picture - ‘Scream’: The Oral History

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

Alan Siegel interviews the cast and crew of ‘Scream’ and uncovers what it took to get the iconic horror film made.You can read the written version of this piece at theringer.com. Host: Alan Siegel Producer: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Head into the Ringerverse to stay up to date with all things superheroes and nerd culture entertainment. Hosted by a rotating lineup of superfans at the Ringer, including Mallory Rubin and Van Lathan, shows will provide instant reactions to blockbuster releases, insightful backstories on canon, and mind-bending theories, as well as fresh takes on the latest news and rumors. Check out the Ringerverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. pulling these gargantuan things together, wrangling key voices, and telling the story of a major work of art. In the past, he's done the definitive histories of Terminator 2, Judgment Day, Donnie Darko, The Town,

Prince's iconic Super Bowl halftime show, and Nirvana's Unplugged. For his latest oral history, Alan tackled Scream. It's one of our favorite movies at the big picture, and we've converted his written oral history into a true oral history in podcast form. Take it away, Alan.

Like the movie itself, the story of Scream begins with a terrifying phone call. While house-sitting one night in the mid-90s, Kevin Williamson watched a television special about a Florida serial killer. It scared the hell out of him. Then, during a commercial break, he noticed that a window was open. Except he hadn't remembered opening it. At that moment, he felt like he was in a horror movie. For all he knew, someone was stalking him.

So he went to the kitchen and grabbed a butcher knife. Then he rang an old friend. Hello? As they talked, Williamson canvassed his house searching for an intruder. Their conversation eventually drifted to the kind of boogeyman that used to give them nightmares, like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. There was no killer lurking inside, but the incident inspired Williamson

to start writing a scary movie. His script combined everything that he loved about slasher films, gore, mystery, humor, and especially teen angst. But he also added something new, a host of characters who are all too aware of scary movie tropes. Here's Kevin Williamson. Horror movies were in a big slump back then. We had had sort of the slasher films of the late 70s and 80s,

and they had sort of petered out, and no one was really making the great horror films that I wanted to see. The horror movie that he wanted to see was both an homage and a satire, something that stayed true to the genre and also sent it up. And when Scream hit theaters 25 years ago this month, audiences truly had seen nothing like it. Through word of mouth, the low-budget flick became a surprise hit that not only jolted horror films back to life like Michael Myers, but also set off an explosion of teen movies and TV shows that lasted well into the next decade. The Scream franchise has now been spilling gallons of fake blood for a quarter century.

Paramount Home Entertainment recently released a remastered anniversary edition of the movie on 4K Ultra HD, and the fifth installment of the franchise will hit theaters in January. It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when no one wanted to direct Scream. At first, even Wes Craven passed. Several times. The man behind horror classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Last House on the Left, was tired of being confined to the genre that he'd mastered already. Yet the pull of Williamson's script eventually turned out to be too much to resist. And with its elements at his fingertips, Craven reinvented big screen horror. Here's Nev Campbell, the star of the film.

It felt very alive when we were making it and very exciting. My name is Alan Siegel, staff writer at The Ringer. Over the last month, I spoke to the cast and crew of Scream about what it was like to make one of the scariest movies of the 90s. I'll let Roger Jackson, also known as the voice of Ghostface, do the honors. This is the oral history of Scream. Part One. Williamson sold his first horror movie script called Killing Mrs. Tingle in 1995. He wrote his second in just three days while holed up in a friend's Palm Springs condo. He titled it Scary Movie.

Williamson designed the brutal opening scene to hook both the audience and Hollywood execs. It starts with a teenage girl picking up a ringing phone. Hello? I'm sorry, I guess I dialed the wrong number. So why'd you dial it again? To apologize. The voice on the other end of the line toys with her, testing her knowledge of slasher flicks.

Then, a costumed stalker chases her through the house with a knife and brutally kills her. The screenplay set off a bidding war. Ultimately, the studio most interested was Dimension Films, a division of Miramax, the company headed at the time by disgraced executive Harvey Weinstein. But somehow, Williamson's killer script

wasn't enough to attract a prominent filmmaker. That search took longer than anyone expected. Here's Kevin Williamson. One of the greatest movies in this genre of psycho where Janet Leigh lived a really long time. I mean, the entire first act was her. And then she gets killed and you're like, whoa, where's this movie going?

I have no idea. And I wanted that same feeling. At the time, Richard Potter was the director of development at Dimension. He was pleasantly surprised by the script. I'm looking at the cover, which has this sort of dripping Halloween-style font, and it says scary movie, and I'm thinking, this is going to be a stupid spoof. And we're not looking for that right now, but I'm here. It's late at night. I might as well just start reading it. I'll know within a couple of pages whether it's a spoof or

not. So I start reading it. And the opening sequence is the Casey Becker sequence, which is Drew Barrymore in the movie. And I was sucked in. There was just a lot of different companies bidding for it. And the price started going up and they would call me and There was just a lot of different companies bidding for it. And the price started going up. And they would call me. And I was just sitting on the floor of my closet with my phone. And they were calling me, going, OK, well, it's this and this. And someone's going to make another offer after lunch.

We just have to hang on. And I'm at that point where I'm like, this is all going to fall apart. This is all going to go the wrong way soon. This can't be happening. They're not really talking about real money like this. And then studios started falling out. And I got nervous because the price went up to a degree where one of the studios was like, well, we don't pay this kind of money for a hard movie. We're

out. And I'm like, okay, well, this is over. I picked up the phone and I called Bob Weinstein at home. This is 10, 15, 10, 20, something like that at night. And I always remember he had said to me, if you ever read something that blows you away, call me immediately. And this is the only time in my entire time at that company that I ever did that. I call Bob, he picks up the phone. I'm very happy to hear initially that he's not angry at me for calling him so late. And he says, what's up? And I said, Bob, I just read a script. If you don't want to buy this, then I don't know what you're looking for. And he laughed and he said, okay, I better read it then. And he said to me that he spoke to his lawyer, to Patty Felker. And later, as I got to know Patty, she told me the same story. So I know that this is what happened. Kevin asked Patty,

she thought he should go for her advice and she said to him, other places will pay you more money, Dimension will make your movie, you have to decide which is more important to you. And Kevin decided that making the movie was more important to him and I have to say I think he made the right decision for thousands and millions of reasons. Every name you can imagine came up. Wes's name came up really early. Robert Rodriguez's name came up. Tarantino's name came up.

You know, all of the dimensions stayed at that point. Marianne Maddalena was Wes Craven's producing partner. At the time, she was sure that he was done making horror movies. Wes, at that point, really didn't want to do anything that was considered kind of a slasher movie. Here's Julie Plec, Wes Craven's assistant at the time. Vampire in Brooklyn came out and was kind of a disaster. Never sit on my coffin, okay?

Two, I want to find the girl tonight. Sounds good. Yeah. Is it three? I don't like mirrors. And that made him sad. He wasn't in any hurry to jump back into it, into his own genre. And he had just done Nightmare 7, you know, which is pretty similar as far as killing people with knives.

In those days, Plek was just starting out in Hollywood. But she had a sharp eye. Williamson's script stood out to her those days, Plek was just starting out in Hollywood, but she had a sharp eye. Williamson's script stood out to her. Here's Plek. I didn't particularly love horror movies when I went into work for Wes. I had, of course, been an adolescent in the 80s, and so I had seen them all and Slumber Parties was always, you know, My Bloody Valentine and, you know, Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. So I'd seen them all, but like as a kid, I was like, I'm always a little bit scared of them. And when I read this, it just tapped into everything that I appreciated about the genre.

She kept pushing. Eventually, Craven read the script. When he did read the script, which he did pretty quickly, he appreciated it. He liked it. And then we all got on with our lives. And so I remember having lunch with him, and it was just very casual. And we were just chatting about it.

And I could never tell if he had read it or not. I mean, he seemed to have read it, but we didn't really talk about it. So clearly, I think it was like he had already passed on it. So he had just put it behind him, and he didn't want to focus on that during lunch. And we just had a really nice lunch. Meanwhile, Craven's director of development, Lisa Harrison, told Plek that Dimension was still searching for someone to direct the movie. And I remember Lisa saying to me, you know,

they're having a really hard time finding a director for a scary movie. And I thought, hmm. And at the time, I was working at Wes's house, and so I'd have lunch with him every day. And he and I would just sit and chat. And so I said, you know, they really remember that great script. Like he met Kevin.

It was so great. And like, they're having a hard time finding a director and they really want you to do it. And I was his assistant. So I was just kind of like making like innocent quote unquote, innocent small talk. And he said, ah, well,

they should just make me an offer. I can't refuse that. And I think he was joking. But I went back to Lisa and I said, he said, make him an offer. He can't refuse then. And I think he was joking. But I went back to Lisa and I said, he said, make him an offer he can't refuse. So she went back to Dimension, from Miramax at the time, and said, make him an offer he can't refuse.

And they did. And he took it. After he signed on, I was summoned to his house for lunch. And I was like, oh, I'm going to go to his house. This is super cool. I'm going to see how a big, hot shot movie director lives. Because I'm still in my rent control department in West Hollywood. his house this is super cool i'm gonna see how a big hot shot movie director lives because i'm

still in my rent control department in west hollywood and so i get my my um car and i get lost driving up into the hills and so i'm already late i show up because all these pages of notes for my script i just see them sitting there on the table i'm like oh no this is going to be horrible he's going to want to change everything i've've heard these horror stories. I know what happens now. This is the moment I get kicked to the curb and he takes over or they bring in a new writer. I mean, I always lived in fear of that because that's all you hear about.

That's all they tell you when you're a young writer trying to break in. Well, they're just going to rewrite you. They're just going to fire you. What's the whole term? A writer doesn't write, a writer rewrites. So I just knew that was going to happen to me. And then it turned out that he was like, well, most of these are typos. I just, what? It was a really great meeting because it was my first time

I sat down with a director who really was clearly taking the written word and starting to visualize it. He was starting to turn it into pictures and he was starting to paint a canvas. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Part 2. Like many of Craven's movies, Scream had a cast of up-and-coming actors.

But there were a few A-listers in the mix as well. One was Friends star Courtney Cox, who plays tabloid reporter Gail Weathers. Another was Drew Barrymore. At first, she was in talks to play the lead, Sidney Prescott. But she changed her mind and decided she wanted to be Casey Becker, who gets killed in the first scene. It was a moment of fate. Williamson, too, had always pictured a big name filling that role. Here's screenwriter Kevin Williamson. I wanted to do this big, huge Janet Leigh moment, and then when she dies, you're like, wait a second, wasn't she on the poster? Wait, what's going to happen next?

Here's Julie Plec. You know, I remember Drew calling Wes and saying she didn't want to be Sidney, that she wanted to be Casey. Drew Barrymore was not available for an interview, but here's what she told Entertainment Weekly in 2011. I just read the script one night at my house and I just said, oh my God, there hasn't been anything like this for so long. I love that it actually got tongue in cheeky, but it was still scary. And it was this great game that sort of described genres and revived them at the same time and redefine them all in one script. I went bananas.

And the studio was really into that too. And they were very good about, you know, keeping that all a big secret. And they were really billing this as a Drew Barrymore movie. Here's Richard Potter of Dimension. Everyone who sees the trailer, everyone who sees the poster is going to think Drew Barrymore is the star of the movie.

And, you know, 15, 20 minutes in, she's going to be dead. And the audience is going to be looking at that going, well, if she could die, anyone could die. At the time, Courtney Cox was one of the stars of Friends. OK, so I'm responsible. I'm organized. But hey, I can be a kook. Woo-hoo. Williamson's script hooked her, too. One of the main characters was gonna die in the first 13 minutes of the film.

You knew it was gonna be bold. Actors Jamie Kennedy, David Arquette, Matthew Lillard, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan, and Nev Campbell were all in their 20s and looking for their big Hollywood break. Here's Jamie Kennedy. Remember the elliptical when it came out, how big that was? I would try to read on the elliptical, and I read, I would do 40 minutes, and I'll never forget, I read the whole thing on the elliptical,

which is crazy to read a script in 40 minutes. Here's David Arquette. You know, I have dyslexia, so whenever I can kind of read a script fast, I could typically know that it works really well, like there's not a lot of clunky stuff in it. I just knew it was funny and scary, and to bring those two emotions together was something that I definitely wanted to be a part of. They wanted me to audition for one of the other roles, one of the teenagers in high

school. I felt I was a little older and I also loved the role of Dewey when I read it. And then the idea of acting opposite Courtney was really fun. So I was a huge fan of hers. I met with Wes and I was like, well, I really liked this role of Dewey.

And he was like, wow, I didn't even consider that because he was written as more of like this big, the dumb jock sort of character. Just the idea of a character that's in a position of authority getting no respect. To land the role, Cox had to convince Craven that she could play someone who was a little harsher than Monica on Friends. It's really hard to express. You don't want to say that you're just not that nice of a person, but I definitely can be a bitch. Arquette and Cox eventually started dating and ended up getting married.

But in those days, he was just trying to get her attention. When we first all got cast and Wes had at his house and it was really wonderful to meet everyone. And we immediately all clicked and it was really fun and I saw Courtney and I was like hey I'm I'm David I'm playing Dewey and she's like yeah I heard about you or something like that like she gave me some real attitude and uh I think I tried to follow her home in her car but she had a Porsche and I had a like a hot rod but it wasn't fast enough to take the turns. I wasn't going to follow her to her house, but I was going to try to roll up to her next to a red light and be like, hey, I don't know what I was thinking. I was so creepy. Before Scream, Neve Campbell had only been in a handful of movies. Back then, she was coming off the first season of the Fox drama Party of Five.

Think of the 80 and dying test. When you're 80 and dying, what are you going to look back on and regret not doing? I swear to you, getting the right answer on number seven is not going to be on the list. For me, I mean, I was still very new. I was a dancer. I'd had some experience. And I was doing Party of Five, and I'd done some film in Canada. Here's casting director Lisa Beach. We basically auditioned every girl in town,

whether she was known or unknown or who now is known because she was not that known then. But there are so many women I remember having come in for that audition. And as far as the final three, Alicia Witt. You know what?

I feel really good about this. So I'm all set. I'll just see you tomorrow. Brittany Murphy. Topanga's my best friend. She's always my partner. You know, there are so few people who get me. And Nev were the three. And there was just that certain je ne sais quoi that Nev had. Here's Marianne Madalena, Craven's producing partner.

I think with Nev, you know, she's very self-contained. It definitely looks like she has a large inner world going on all the time. She had that perfect combination of, you know, strength and vulnerability. She's extremely graceful. You know, she was a professional ballet dancer. And she moves like that. More emotional. Scary stuff. You know, it's not about the scares, it's about what happens after the scare and I really think that Neve Campbell delivered such a beautiful

performance that she brought you into her Sydney universe. So I read for the casting director and then she's like, she's like, that was really good. And you hear that and you're not sure, it's like they're being sweet to you or whatever. And she's like, can you come back on Thursday and meet Wes Craven? And I'm like, I think my schedule's open. Here's Skeet Ulrich, who plays Billy Loomis. My first impression was, you know, how gentle he was, how present he was and how interested he was in other people, including me, obviously, when it came time to audition. Here's Matthew Lillard, who plays Stu Mocker. I went in and auditioned for Billy Loomis,

and the casting director said to me, you know, would you mind coming back and reading for Stu in like three hours? Wes Craven's going to be here. And so I went off and memorized all the words and came back and auditioned for Wes for the character of Stu. And he actually gave it to me in the room, which was never really happened before. Of all the thousands of auditions that we have done over the past 26 years, I so distinctly and vividly remember Jamie Kennedy, Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich's audition.

And that's three in one movie, and that was 26 years ago. And there were probably another 10 over the, you know, ensuing 25 years that I would say, oh my God, that blew me away. But that was pretty amazing that you'd have three in one go. The movie still needed its secret weapon, uniquely sinister, disembodied voice of the killer. One man proved to be up to the task, Roger Jackson. I was working as a voice actor, living in San Francisco Bay Area. Read the audition script, which was the first scene from the first film, you know, the opener.

I heard some of the other people in the waiting room saying, my agent says they're looking for a new Freddy Krueger. And in reading over the scene, I said, I thought this is not Freddy Krueger. This is very subtle. This guy's got to be kind of interesting. He's got to keep her on the phone, keep playing with her. And there's got to be

something about him that draws her in like that kind of, like a warm kind of, you know, kind of a sexy tone or so. Oh, you're making popcorn. I only make popcorn when I'm going to watch a movie. Oh, you like scary movies. What's your favorite scary movie? But it had to be able to, you know, once you turn the dial, go from being very kind of playful and sexy to much more sinister. Why, what did you think I said? Can you handle that, Belondee? Part 3

Before shooting started, the producers still had to determine what the killer would look like. Finding what became one of horror's most iconic masks was pure luck. It looked like a boy's bedroom. It had the feeling that no one had been in it for a while, like whoever maybe had moved out. And I saw the mask sitting on a chair. At the time, it had a white shroud. I thought, oh my God, this mask, this is it. This is it. Here's Craven's assistant, Julie Plek. The studio wanted to own the mask, and so they had K&B, which was Greg Nicotero and Bob Kurtzman's company, and Howard Berger, three VFX guys. They'd had them kind of create a stunt version of the mask, a more shootable version of the mask. We shot it like on day one, coming up in the window, and everyone hated it. And the renderings we got were kind of gargoyle-ish, and it just wasn't happening. Wes wasn't happy.

Screenwriter Kevin Williamson. They hired all these artists to do all of these different masks. They must have gone through, you know, hundreds of faces. And Wes stepped to his guns. He wanted Ghostface. And finally the studio rolled over and allowed him to have it. Because we couldn't beat what we had, they had to use something that they did not own and could never capitalize on.

So I remember that. And I remember that being sort of scandalous. Scream was shot in and around Santa Rosa, California in the spring of 1996. The idyllic wine country locale provided the perfect backdrop for the movie's mayhem. For the cast of 20-somethings and the crew, filming was like summer camp. And Craven was the wise head counselor. Here's Nev Campbell. He felt like a father figure, you know what I mean?

And he had this really long, lean stature. He was like a father figure, you know what I mean? And he had this really long, lean stature. He was like a gazelle. He did. He floated when he walked. It was very strange. He was very paced and slow. And yeah, and not what you would expect of someone with as twisted a mind as his. Here's Courtney Cox.

He would make me laugh and I would ask him direction on certain things and he'd be like, Courtney, what do you think? I've been there. I don't know what it feels like to be chased by a knife. Here's David Arquette. He was a bird watcher. He would sit in his chair and he would be doing a crossword puzzle and reading about birds. And then he would just go action and then be killing somebody. It was so bizarre. Jamie Kennedy. He's like a tenured Berkeley professor, but not super, you know, like he's just like a chill guy

who would be probably teaching like film theory, you know, a master's in psychology and human psyche. Like he's, he's like a total dude. Wes created a very family environment. You know, you felt like you were safe and that you were with, you know, your uncle or your father or somebody. It was a really great experience and we had a really great time.

And then there were a lot of, you know, parking lot parties. I mean, I still to this day don't like shooting in L.A. because I feel like when you shoot in L.A., it's a job and when you shoot on location, it's camp. Here's Matthew Lillard.

The camaraderie was established all the way through. Like, you know, Ski and I would go play golf. We'd hang out. We, you know, every weekend we were together. And we stayed at this double tree inn in the middle of the countryside. So we were all alone, really. Basically a motel. It had cookies on your bed every night.

Like every day they give you a fresh cookie. And it was like, I know it sounds stupid, but it was just so good. Like every day I felt like I had a little treat. If I did a good scene, I'd like eat my cookie. We had basically blacked out all our windows because we were shooting nights every night. So we would get home covered in blood at like 6 a.m. And we'd want to have a drink and we'd want to have unwind. Here's Skeet Ulrich.

Wind up in David Arquette's room where the bar was. I went to like, you know, the local head shop and bought all these like black light posters and like lava lamps and like got it all funky feeling. I just love that whole vibe. David is nuts, so he bought every toy possible that you can buy in Santa Rosa, and they were hanging from his ceiling. I think it was called David's Bar or David's Club or something. I love David. The most important scene in Scream is the first. Casey Becker's slaying and the introduction of the killer set the tone for the rest of the movie. Getting all of the details right

took an extraordinary amount of effort. The opening scene was Northern California in one of these houses out in the middle of nowhere. And what was interesting is there was two houses in these huge fields. It was just, nothing was there. And our base camp was at the other house. And the other house is where they shot Cujo. That was our first five days of shooting. Yeah, nothing was there. And our base camp was at the other house. And the other house is where they shot Cujo.

That was our first five days of shooting. Yeah, it was magical. That was, it was in the rain and we had the, you know, the killer, Roger, was in another tent talking on the phone outside because Drew didn't want to see him. She just wanted to hear the voice. And which I thought was very super smart. Here's Roger Jackson. You know, it's like old radio theater. The scariest monsters are the monsters you don't see, but the monsters you make in your mind. So just having the voice to react to made it larger in their minds.

You know, you always get people who walk on the set from another reality and they're like laughing and giggling you know best andrea would yell at them like you know read the set you know don't laugh don't giggle we've got an actress here who really has to perform and she's so good she was so prepared the night before filming barry moore told craven about an article that she'd read about animal abuse. When it came time to shoot, Craven brought up the horrifying article. That helped trigger Barrymore's emotions. Here's how Wes Craven remembered shooting the scene. Well, it was a matter of Drew putting an enormous amount of trust in me. And we had a couple of key sentences or key situations that we would refer to.

The night before we started shooting, she told me a horrible story of a newspaper article of a dog being burned by its owner instead of fire. And she started crying as she was telling me this. So every time that I needed her to get over that edge and to complete tears, I would just say, Drew, I'm lighting the lighter. And she would just burst into tears. So not every pretty will tell you a story like that. Drew and lighting the lighter. And she would just burst into tears. So, you know, not every pretty will tell you a story like that.

That's so close to their heart. Drew is very much of an animal lover. So that allowed us to just get to that place of sort of ultimate horror where people are doing things you can't comprehend why they would ever do such a thing. Like you just hear Drew like screaming and howling and I'd be like, what the fuck is going on in there? And it was Wes like, you know, Drew, like, screaming and howling, and I'd be like, what the fuck is going on in there?

And it was Wes, like, you know, amping her up. The studio just got the dailies, and we're watching them, and that's when we had to sort of give an education to the studio and had to hold their hand through it and sort of walk them through it and explain to them what they're watching. Because they're like, is this a horror movie? Is this a comedy? What is it? What's the tone? It's both. Here's Dimension's Richard Potter.

Everyone's heard stories about the studio not liking the opening sequence. That's not true. That's not what happened. What happened was we were shooting the opening sequence with Drew in Santa Rosa. The dailies were being sent overnight to New York where Bob Weinstein and some other people were watching them. I've been asked a bunch of times what the reaction was when they watched them. And I have to tell you, I don't know what the reaction was in the room because I was in Santa Rosa shooting the movie. But I know that Bob was not happy with what he was seeing.

The issue was not that Bob wasn't happy with the opening sequence, that he didn't like the opening sequence or that he didn't get it. The issue was he thought Bob wasn't happy with the opening sequence, that he didn't like the opening sequence or that he didn't get it. The issue was he thought what he was watching felt flat. They just had a whole picture of what they thought it would be, and they weren't seeing that in the dailies, and they were just being such assholes about it and, like, really making Wes feel bad. That's not what a director needs to hear in his first...

when he's shooting a movie, it just broke him. Here's Craven's editor, Patrick Lucier. He was very despondent, you know, a few days in, when he was just like, you know, the studio called up, they're very upset, they don't think it's any good, they're sending me dailies from Nightwatch and telling me it needs to look like this. Freedom, if I lose, oh, Marie, Marie,

you lose, you marry a kid. What? Why? It's fun. Said they told him he was a TV journeyman and a hack. Wes had his own style and his way of doing things and shooting things. And his editor, Patrick Lussier, knew

what Wes wanted out of the scenes and out of the shots and shooting things. And his editor, Patrick Lussier, knew what Wes wanted out of the scenes and out of the shots and out of the takes. So you might see a take that's a minute and a half long, built around, let's say, Drew in the kitchen and the popcorn popping. And you watch that,

and it's flat and boring for a minute and a half. But Wes and Patrick know they only want 10 or 15 seconds of that particular take. So I think by Tuesday or Wednesday the next week, I had it all cut together. And I sent it up to Wes on a VHS tape, because that's what you did back then. And he watched it. He had one music note and then we conformed it on film and sent the work print and a piece of mag track to New York.

I set up the screening. Bob flew out. It was himself, Cary Granite and Andrew Rona. I remember all of them being there. We had a little meeting in a conference room and then we screened

the opening sequence cut together not complete missing inserts missing a bunch of stuff popcorn pretty much what was in the movie cut together right there i'm getting ready to watch a video really it ended bob turned to wes and said what do I know about dailies? They saw it and they shut up. They were like, oh, this is great. You're right. We're sorry. I don't think they said we're sorry,

but they shut up. Jesus Christ, you don't know the rules? I have an aneurysm, why don't you? There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie. You didn't need to be a scary movie superfan to enjoy Scream, but it paid tribute to the genre like nothing else ever had. The film is stuffed with references to horror classics. Kennedy's character Randy, a video store clerk, is obsessed with horror. Halloween plays on VHS at a high school party. Linda Blair of The Exorcist appears as a TV reporter. And even Craven himself makes

a cameo as a janitor named Fred, as in Kruger. The movie, however, is more than just a pastiche. It's an intricate whodunit that manages to balance comedy and ultra-violence. Rose McGowan's character, Tatum Riley, dies when a garage door crushes her neck. Henry Winkler, the high school principal, gets stabbed and strung up on a football goalpost. Almost the entire third act takes place at a house party. In the end, the audience learns that there are two killers, Stu and Billy. Both are a little too into horror. Are you sick for the fucks you've seen one too many movies? Now, Sid, don't you blame the movies!

Movies don't create psychos! Movies make psychos more creative! Here's Nev Campbell. Literally, they wouldn't wash my costume. They would just take, I would take it off in the morning when we got back, and then the evening when I went back to work, because the continuity of the blood had to be the same, they would just damp, they would just wet it. They would just like dampen the blood, and then I would get a sticky thing back.

That kind of thing, I wanted to burn that costume at the end of the movie. I swear to God. Here's Skeet Ulrich. Well, the maids hated us, or hated me, that's for sure, at the hotel, because we ruined a lot of sheets and pillowcases, no matter how much you scrubbed. I didn't know the trick about shaving cream at the time, that that takes it off pretty easily, but there's always residuals, and it always winds up on your pillowcase or sheets. And fortunately, I wasn't shooting from home. Here's Matthew Lillard.

I have distinct memory of looking over the two of them, Skeet and Nev, and the three of us just putting our hands together, our fingertips touching and like slowly going back and forth and getting lost in that sort of like the stickiness of everything. Because when you're, look, at the end of that day, when you're like screaming and running for your life for like, you know, 12 hours, at some point, you know, you do that for like 22 days or whatever that last sequence was, you do go a little mad sometimes. Here's Jamie Kennedy.

It was pretty much three weeks in the house, which was cool. And it was the same house every night. And we just went in and we just shot the hell out of this house. And we just were getting killed and running and blood and jumping and shooting and falling. And I liked it. Here's screenwriter Kevin Williamson. Yeah, we were at that house way too long. It just went on and on and on.

Here's Marianne Maddalena, Wes Craven's producing partner. People live, people die scene, as we call it. That's what the AD called it on the call sheet. You know, I had a couple lines here and there, which were great, and then I would be shot, lay down for a while,

and I woke up. So I loved it, but it was definitely one of our scenes that bonded us more. Here's Matthew Lillard. That last 20 minutes and you're laughing and you're horrified

is sort of very rare error in terms of it being done. I mean, I always go back to the Bill Paxton example in Aliens where they're running for their lives and he's like blasting aliens

and, you know, he's like blasting aliens and you know he's got such a great handle of the comedy in Life and Death Staked. Oh my god we thought Wes went nuts because we didn't know the sofa had feathers in it and we all thought he was Wes was crazy to carry on with everyone covered in blood and which is really corn syrup and feathers wall over them. I'm so emotional and Wes is very reserved. And I think that's why we got along because I was, he taught me things. How do you, he taught me how to deduce situations and use your brain and not just react emotionally.

And I think I probably got him to get a little bit more emotional. You know, I think that the great thing about him is that he wanted to be entertained. Matt is so committed. He is so committed, like 100% to every moment. And he also has a really quick mind, is insanely funny. Vulnerable.

And allows himself to be vulnerable. There's a moment where Skeet hits me with the phone and I scream, you fucking hit me with the phone, you dick. Fuck! Ah! Fucking hit me with the phone, dick! And to me, you know, that's one of the, a moment that was born out of situation, right?

And I think that speaks to Wes and to Kevin in that, you know, you always get a take that was as written. And then Wes would continually look for new and different sort of takes or different, he'd want improv. Like, he would want options in the editing, in the editing bay, right? Like, he would sit behind the monitor and laugh and giggle and sort of, like, and direct. But he would, like, you know, he would, like,

he wanted the funny as well as the drama. And, I don't know, I mean, that's the thing I liked about him is that he was like, he wanted the funny as well as the drama. And I don't know. I mean, that's the thing I liked about him is that he was open to anything. He once came up to me and it was in that final sequence of the first film. And I was exhausted. And it's like levels of fear because you don't want to be monotonous either. You don't want it to be all the same level. And in the scene with Skate and Matt when I'm against the counter and I'm just like,

they're about to kill me and I'm about to get my strength. He came up and he just whispered in my ear. He said, imagine you've got, I think it was a thousand bullets ricocheting through your body and he walked away. And that was phenomenal. Part 5 Someone is playing a deadly game. Scream wasn't even called Scream until after production began.

The studio decided that it was better than Williamson's original title, Scary Movie. This was a new kind of horror film, but that meant it was far from a sure thing. The movie's hyper-violence led to fights with the Motion Picture Association, which wanted to give it a dreaded NC-17 rating. Kraven had to submit several cuts of the film before the MPA relented and rated it R. Also, the decision to release the slasher flick five days before Christmas didn't exactly seem to set it up for success. Don't open the door. Don't try to hide. Scream.

Here's Wes Craven's assistant, Julie's terrible. We were all very outraged. Turned out to be a good choice. You know, and funnily enough, the scream mask, you know, is like the munch scream. Here's Marianne Madalena, Craven's producing partner. You know, probably they had an ulterior motive and they thought they could rip us off later with Scary Movie. Wes never got any money or Kevin didn't get any money. So I think they just knew, I don't know how or why they did it. They must have tested it and maybe it had a comical side, you know, like result. But I don't know, the screen was pretty brilliant. Here's Jamie Kennedy.

I think that having it at Christmas, people were so shocked by it. There was nothing like that at Christmas. And they're like, why is this movie coming out now? Here's screenwriter Kevin Williamson. They called it counter-programming and that had to be explained to me because I really did not see how it was going to fare in the Oscar market.

It opened to like $6 million for the weekend. Yeah, no, we were horrified at that, especially when Variety called us DOA against One Fine Day and Beefus and Butthead. And again, like I said, Wes and I went on the Friday night before Christmas to Universal and it was like a revival in the Beefus and Butthead theater. Like people were throwing popcorn and they were freaking out laughing and screaming.

And then we'd wander to our theater and maybe there were seven people in there and no one was laughing or screaming. So we went away so dejected. We really thought, oh, well, you know, we tried, but this one didn't work either. Here's Courtney Cox. Now that I've been reminded, I do remember going, oh, that's a bummer.

This isn't going to work. It's so good. I was just worried that my career was going to be over. That's why I said yes to a lot of stuff before the movie came out. Well, Dawson's Creek was happening, and I know what you did last summer was happening, and they sent me the script for the faculty,

like, on the set of Scream. Here's Matthew Lillard. It sort of felt like it was a movie, you know, that was just going to be another movie in a long line of sort of B-horror movies. And then the second week, it did better. The next week, we made nine, and then the next one, we made ten. And that's when he relayed to us that it was the best exit polls they'd ever seen for any movie in the history of film testing. And that word of mouth, you know, then they tripled the budget for distribution and for

publicity. And, you know, the next thing you knew it was off and running. Here's Nev Campbell. My team all called me at once, which rarely happens. And I thought, oh, I'm either getting fired or something bad's happened. And they call and they're like 30 million and i went oh no is that bad i was so naive at the time i didn't know box office numbers at all i was clueless and they said no no nev that's really good for week two or week three and then it just went like weekend to weekend they would call and say now it's this now it's this now it's 100 you know which was nuts i kind of had that same experience with Friends where the first year was okay. And then on the reruns in the summer,

people started to catch on. And then, so I was just so excited that it took off the way it did. Here's Skeet Ulrich. Maybe if you're part of the Marvel universe now, you can suspect such things, but certainly not when we were making this and horror was dead.

Here's David Arquette. A lot of things sort of change in that world. For one, you have a little more money in your pocket, so you can like, you know, you're not as worried about your rent as you were before kind of stuff. It was interesting. It was the beginning of sort of that whole phase

of being recognized or this or that. And then dating Courtney and she was already famous. So there was paparazzi elements. My first residual check for Scream was double what I made for the movie. And that was like, whoa, what is this? What is Hollywood? And I went to the bank,

like everything was like in walking distance, Sunset and Fairfax where I live. And I walked to the bank of america and i cashed a residual check and then i went across the street to the blockbuster and then i rented scream on video with the money i made from scream in a video story as randy i mean i was, but when I'm Randy. It was super multi-level meta. And I thought, this is weird.

Scream cost about $15 million to make and ended up grossing $173 million at the box office worldwide. It was the biggest hit of Wes Craven's career. Naturally, the smash led to less clever knockoffs and spawned a sequel that came out less than a year after the first. Two more sequels and an MTV series followed, with a fifth Scream film on the way on January 14th.

Campbell, Ulrich, Lillard, McGowan, Kennedy, and Arquette all became movie stars. And those who survived the original film are still part of the franchise. That includes Williamson, who wrote the reboot. But for the first time, a Scream film won't be directed by Craven. He died of brain cancer in 2015 at 76. I wonder Steven Spielberg wishes he could have just gone to CET in the movie theater, knowing nothing about it, you know? Because when you see something that has such a meaningful impact on you as a filmgoer, and you're like, I'm watching something extraordinary, that changes your life. When I was little and I went to see Halloween with a group of kids, a parent took us to see it, I just remember the audience screaming at the screen.

I remember we were all yelling at, you know, Laurie Strode not to drop that knife. And then she dropped it. And we would just go, no! And it was one of those interactive experiences where it's just a group experience. And I wanted that. I wanted to write that.

I went to a test screening. Yeah. And it was surreal. It's such an audience movie, isn't it? Oh, yeah. We have audience participation, people't it? Oh, yeah. Audience participation, people standing up and screaming at the screen while Jamie's screaming at the screen. Everyone's so active and engaged and on the edge of their seats.

I'd never experienced that before in any movie. I mean, Clueless to me is a perfect movie and a classic. But as a moviegoer, I don't recall linking Clueless ever to the explosion of the teen genre. For me, it was literally watching Scream come out and then Scream 2, and Kevin had been hired to do I Know What You Did Last Summer and Dawson's Creek. And I think right around there also there was, you know,

Buffy was having his moment. It's one of the seminal moments in my career. And I think that that was because we had this leader on set that we all loved and respected. And the further we get away from Scream, the longer you're around and the longer you're a part of this industry, the more you realize that he was just a treasure of a human being. After working as Wes Craven's assistant, Plek became a prolific writer, producer, and director herself. She still misses her old boss. They gave me so much opportunity. And I remember Wes's wife, who he married, I think after Scream 2. I ran into the two of them at a restaurant and she pulled me aside and she said, he might not ever tell you this, but he's so proud of you. Here's Roger Jackson. for the day and I was wrapped. We were taking the car back to the hotel. As we're driving up this

very long drive to get there, I looked out and I saw Wes out in the snow with his camera in the dead dark of night taking pictures of the night birds. That was the last time I saw him and I thought, after all that he's put into night, he's out here in the cold and the snow, following something that feeds his heart, his love of birds and photography. He was just a remarkable man. Here's Patrick Lucier, Craven's longtime editor.

His memorial service was at the Directors Guild of America. You know, there's all these different people who'd worked with him over the years, family and things like that. But there were also all these directors who showed up. You know, Michael Apted, who was the head of the guild at the time, and Edgar Wright,, Christopher Nolan and John Landis, Toby Hooper, and all these people were there for his memorial. And, you know, all these different people spoke, but one of the best speeches was one of Wes's friends from the Audubon Society who played Bird Calls.

It was awesome. Wes would have loved it. I think he'd be smiling from ear to ear because the franchise is living on and I know how much it meant to him. We had one evening where we're all sitting around a bonfire in the first movie and talking and someone said, do you think if this would do well enough that there might actually be a Halloween costume? We're like, nah, that could happen. Maybe, no. And, you know, 26 years later, this Halloween, I was with my sons and took them to a pumpkin patch, and there were probably four or five ghost faces wandering around. And my nine-year-old going, Mom, Mom, go tell them.

Oh, my gosh. Scream lives on today. The reboot hits theaters on January 14th. You see, Sid, everybody dies but us. Everybody dies but us. We're gonna carry on and plan the sequel, because let's face it, baby, these days, you gotta have a sequel.

Aah! This audio oral history was written, reported, and narrated by Alan Siegel and edited by Andrew Grudadaro. Audio of Wes Craven, courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment. Produced by Stephen Allman.