The Hooksexup Film Lounge: Q&A Wes Craven


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No, you heard that right: Wes Craven is indeed one of the directors of the romantic omnibus film Paris, je t'aime, which tackles love in the City of Light through brief vignettes, each set in one of the city's twenty arrondissements. True, his film is set in the Pere Lachaise cemetery — home to the final resting places of, among many others, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Yves Montand, Marcel Proust, Maria Callas and Oscar Wilde, the focus of this short. Leave it to the auteur of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream to milk romance out of such a funereal setting: here, a couple (played by Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell) begins to bicker when a visit to Wilde's grave inspires the woman to chastise her fiancé for not having any sense of wit. Hooksexup spoke to Craven recently about his fondness for other genres and his lifelong desire to make a romance. We also made sure to ask him about the particular cultural relevance of horror during periods of social upheaval. — Bilge Ebiri

How did you, of all people, wind up making this movie?
The producers were kind enough to call me and ask. One of their directors had fallen through, and they needed a replacement. Once I heard who else was participating in the project, it was a real no-brainer for me. They did say it had to be in that particular arrondissement, and they told me there was a great cemetery there. So at first I thought they were gonna want something weird, where a guy jumps out from behind a gravestone, or something. But that wasn't the case, which was a relief. They told me it didn't need to be scary, that it just needed to be about love in Paris. That felt like a great opportunity — not having to scare people.

Had you ever been to Pere Lachaise before?
I had never been there. I was in the middle of a press tour in Europe for Red Eye when they called me. So we popped into Paris for a day, knocked around the cemetery for a while. It was great; I was struck by how many different spots there were in that place, and how many opportunities it presented for telling different stories.

The first shot of your film is a wide establishing shot of the cemetery, with your credit superimposed on it. So, a cemetery, directed by Wes Craven — the viewer automatically expects that there will be a horror element. Were you consciously playing off that expectation?
I didn't think of that at all, to be honest with you. Frankly, I just wanted to show as much of the cemetery as I could. I wanted to give a sense of how many little places are in that cemetery, how big and expansive it is.

How did you decide on that particular story, and on the grave of Oscar Wilde?
First, I wrote a script about the grave of Jim Morrison, about a couple and their inhibitions. The male was a very straight-laced guy. Then, we found out we couldn't get the rights to use that particular grave. So then we came up with something about the grave of Edith Piaf. And just as we were preparing to shoot, we couldn't get the rights to that grave either! So the story that you see in the film I had to write in just a couple of hours. And it really flowed out of me. I'm not sure where it came from. I got married recently, and I was feeling very happy and romantic. So that was certainly on my mind — this story of how you translate a love into something livable, something real that can last. It just came out.

Oscar Wilde, although he is seen as a romantic figure today, also had a keen sense of the macabre. Do you feel any kinship with Wilde?
I do, actually — very much so. I was once a lit professor, so I was obviously familiar with his work. But as I started re-reading his poetry and his works, I realized that there was a real humanity in there. I actually wondered why I didn't think of Wilde in the first place. And his tomb was perfect. We did nothing to that tomb. That's what it looks like: it's covered in kisses and little memorials to Wilde. He was a great person to inspire a story about love.

You noted that it was a relief not to have to scare people this time around. Have you thought about branching out of the horror genre more? Red Eye was more of a thriller, and you also did Music of the Heart a few years ago.
It's really a matter of what kinds of movies you can get people to pay you to do. I had a good opportunity on Music of the Heart — it was a sweetheart deal with the Weinsteins, where they gave me a three-picture deal and told me one of the pictures could be out of genre. I did a few episodes of The Twilight Zone, and a couple of them could be called romances. But really, it's about the opportunities you're presented with. I've tried to wedge romance into some of my films. The Hills Have Eyes had it, and I had the ongoing romance between Dwight Riley [David Arquette] and Sidney Prescott [Courteney Cox] in the Scream series. That was a fun little romance to carry out over three pictures. So you can get away with romance in a genre pic, as long as you can make it scary. Of course, that's another reason why I leaped at the chance to do Paris, je t'aime.

Do you hope to continue going in other directions?
I've been trying to go in other directions from the first time I started making films. Sean S. Cunningham and I worked in an office for years generating scripts that were not horror, that were in other genres. We wanted to do different things, but nobody was interested. Everybody was offering us money to make scary films. We held out for as long as we could — and then we gave up. I went and did The Hills Have Eyes, and Sean went and made Friday the 13th.

You're also credited as a producer on the remakes of some of your work, such as the recent Hills Have Eyes films. How closely involved are you with those?
They're being made under the aegis of me and my producers. We thought it'd be nice to find people who'd put their own mark on these films, who'd come back with a great film, without us interfering or micro-managing them. It's really their own work. And while I'm certainly not phoning it in, I'm giving the filmmakers the freedom to do what they want.

Do you think horror is a more pigeonholing genre than others?
Absolutely. When you start out making horror films, you're trapped. I guess if you're really successful at comedy, something similar happens. Woody Allen tried to branch out into serious films and people said, "Why don't you make us laugh again?"

When you make a horror film, people think you're crazy, cruel, nuts. They don't think you have the ability to make a comedy. So you try to educate the audience to accept you in other genres. But you're kind of stuck, as a director. Horror reflects things about ourselves that are ugly, and people need to deny that, to assume that it's just coming from whoever made the film and not reflecting human nature. They have to think, "This is coming from that person," so that they don't confront certain things about themselves. They don't look around them. But seeing the world around you in a clear way is the beginning of wisdom.

It seems like we had a real boom in horror during the Vietnam years, and now, with the war in Iraq, we seem to be undergoing another one. Do you think horror's popularity coincides with this sort of social anxiety?
None of us can tell for sure, but it seems likely that horror has a relation to what's happening in society. There is definitely a sense in the air today that things are not right. The stuff you see in horror films is not sui generis. It doesn't just come from the minds of twisted filmmakers. I mean, we had a group of people strike a severe blow right at the heart of America on September 11th. And then we have a government that has broken its own laws and has really put us in a bad place. Our government has actually admitted to torture, tapping wires, getting rid of habeas corpus. This is scary stuff.

People talk a lot about the torture we see in films today. But that's why these films have connected: this is a unique time in American history, where the government has admitted to torturing people. I mean, it's like Chile in the '70s, or Argentina under the generals. We've got people who've been imprisoned for five years without being charged or tried. It's in the air. The culture cannot help but reflect that atmosphere.

Just the other day, I was reading the blog of a soldier who is in Iraq. He said at the end of one of his posts, "I used to wonder how good people can do evil things. Now I wonder how good people can avoid doing evil things." I think that maybe films can help us in some way take an honest look at ourselves.


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