Original subtitles

Hello! What's your favorite scaring home?...

Scream is just like, phenomenal. Scream reinvented a genre.

That was a beautiful time in the movie business.

There was this little place for magic to kind of be creative. You

had Wes Craven who's a master of telling those stories. In my wisdom I turned the

subject down one home and thought about it and

I said, okay, the job's still open to do it.

This writing material that gave the audience

a lot of credit. It was clearly a genre that he loved.

So we didn't really expect it to have

this success that it would. You made 30 million

the first weekend. And then the next weekend, coming

up and then the next weekend, everyone up again.

Drew was like, no one's going to think that I'm going to die.

Everybody's a suspect! A lot of secrecy around the script.

People literally thought I was the killer.

I remember seeing a lot of blacked out pages in my script.

So I thought I might be wearing one of those.

I didn't know that I was going to be the

killer until well into shooting. No one's safe.

She really hit me. She accidentally punched me. It was very intense to seek those space.

It becomes such a part of her pop culture.

This could grow and grow. It could be a

part of the board. It's a scream baby.

Allison, a documentary on scream. Listen, everyone's doing

a retrospective these days, okay? Like Halloween,

Friday the 13th, even Psycho is doing what?

Is someone butt hurt because we didn't go to the screamathon at the theater tonight?

Look, it would have been really nice to see him in the theater, okay? Yeah.

And to see Josh and or Mark in the process.

What? Josh and or Mark? Okay. What? They had nothing to do with it.

Yeah. We can watch all three movies

tonight and you can geek talk to either one about them tomorrow.

Fine. If we're going to do this right, where's the popcorn? popcorn.

Hello. Hello. Howdy. Who's this? Who are you

trying to reach? Do you like scary movies? Oh, I get it.

It's Josh trying to check in on you.

Mark then. How's the movie marathon?

You never answered my question. Do I like scary movies?

Not unless they're classics. We're all about shop value these days.

Sure. Is there a reason your bothering us? We're

about to start a movie marathon of our own.

Yeah. I'm getting my glasses. I'll be right back.

Are you about to watch the string movies? That's

the plan, but then you already know that if you're

you're supposed to be asking me for movie questions by now? Yeah. I like that idea.

Well? Who do I did all three screen movies? Oh, I'm Jay.

You couldn't think of a harder one.

What's great then? Okay then. It was the first person I could kill in screen.

Another easy one. You're bearing where? It was Steve.

Her boyfriend.

Right, let's go. I'm gonna eat this all.

Come on, Rachel.

Right? Rachel.

It's a problem.

I think you've got more to learn about the screen movies.

I already know everything!

I'm going to do the whole story.

You know, in the early 1990s horror films

in general and American horror in particular

were really in the dome rooms. The 1980s were the heyday of the slasher movie.

Nightmare in Elm Street, Friday of the 13th

Halloween, you know, the last entries in those series

at that time had pretty much tank.

The studios and the independent companies were all looking

for horror icons, new franchises to exploit, but they were pretty much burned out.

The industry was ready for a big change and that was provided by screen in 1996.

Hello? Hello Sydney.

The title of the movie when we bought the script was called Scary Movie.

I remember reading it at night in my house alone

and having to stop after the first 30 pages

and I found myself laughing and terrified at

the same time so I immediately called that night

couple of executives at Dimension. Bob White seems company who received it.

And so we had about a night to read it because

Bob White seems anybody more with Oliver Stone.

While there was a little bout of competition between a couple companies and mainly

director based companies that had done horror

movies in the past, it wasn't like the mainstream

studios were like I gotta have that. And then Bob bought it.

The balance of the horror and the comedy and the script was what was the script.

And you know, we were experimenting with some newcomer, you know, directors.

Before Wes had signed on, I worked for another director who had been up for the

job of directing it but had felt it was far more comedic.

When the script first came to me, I had heard

about it actually. I read it from the opening

with the character who gets disemballed at the end. I just felt like that.

Just don't want to do this again.

I felt as though Wes Craven, who had been one

of the bright lights, a horror starting in the direction.

As an artist, he really wanted to do lots of different things.

I mean if you see Wes's career, he's written a novel,

he directs, he attempted to do a Broadway play.

It was one of those periods in my career when

I was taking, I've got to get to it something

besides just genre. And in my wisdom, I turned

the project down. What happened is I was doing

an autograph session that one of these conventions

and it must have been 11 something like that.

I see, I've seen all your movies. You need to do

something kick ass. The movies you're doing are,

not kicking ass anymore. They're getting soft.

And you know that stuck with me.

So one hung by that and I coped my back up, okay. But the job's still looking to do it.

Why did Kevin was brilliant in writing the script?

I heard he wrote it in 30 days and it changed everything.

At the time, you know, everyone was so

focused on making timeless movies. You didn't want

to reference that specific time in which you

were making the movie. Because there was an idea

that, you know, you wanted the movie to live in perpetuity.

And Kevin's whole thing was diametrally opposed to that. He was like, I

want to make it about right now, pop culture.

This thing is going to live like that.

Kevin was writing material that gave the audience a lot of

credit in terms of intelligence. And that's what made it so much fun.

What's your favorite scary movie?... in Halloween.

Kevin homage, Halloween, left right and center.

You know, even in the opening, Drew Barrymore,

which is your favorite movie when the killer

asked her on the phone. Halloween, you know,

they say things like we're going to go down to

McKenzie's house. The boy's name is Billy Loomis.

In 1978, Halloween was the slasher icon movie.

It spawned a genre. And I think Scream reinvented a genre.

There's a couple things in this film that were just incredible great luck.

Find out the mask was one. In the script, it

was written ghost mask. Kevin didn't describe

what the guy would be wearing. What is this?

What is this guy? It's a guy in a mask in a,

a what? And I just could not get my head wrapped

around with the killer. So we had done a bunch

of sketch stuff, John Bissen, who was our

designer at the time, did a whole bunch of stuff.

And I know that there was a lot of discussion about what mask to use.

They had like the scary mask and it's like

overly scary mask and like these weird, you know,

they would bring these like kind of samples.

We would, you know, stick our face in there

and try to figure out what their, you know, look at what the options were.

So we were doing a location scout on the second floor of this nice little house,

little old lady, uh, owned it and she lived

there with her husband for a bajillion years.

And I went into a bedroom and I found the ghost mask.

And I said, hey guys, what about this?

Wow. Look at that. What I got. And we went up and said, what's that?

So my husband used to collect masks.

I don't know where he got it. Could be part of her.

So we took it back and, uh, you can't put something on screen that you don't own.

So we gave it to K&B and said, make something like this.

We took that design and we needed to kind of

do a tweak on it like a 20% tweak only because

we were trying to avoid any copyrighted infringement.

Bob Kurtzman sculpted. I'm going to say

did like 10 versions of that mask. This is an original K&B mask made for scream one.

This one actually, I don't believe was used on screen.

Mine is the only one that has this sort of arrowhead nose to it. All the other K&B's

have a straight across. It's a straight across

like a perfect triangle. And the eyes are a little

bit different on mine. So I don't think it was

used on screen, but it's definitely one of the originals.

They had K&B make molds and carvings and replicas

just no matter what you did on camera, it didn't have that same value.

And I just didn't like the way I looked.

And so when I came to the second day when the mask really

had to be revealed, I took the mask that we didn't know and I shot the entire day.

Just worried about, am I going to get the studio suit and know

there's my job and never worked again, so I think.

And at the end of that day we got a call we said

we found there's a little thing on the edge of

the mask if you look really close and said it's fun world. And we looked that up and

at the mom and pop outfit up in New England.

They wanted to use the mask in a movie.

And being just a simple country boy that I am,

I said okay, that's fine. Just be sure that you

in the credits say Ghost Face courtesy of Fun

World Easter Unlimited, our parent company.

And send a hundred dollars. So there was scenes

filmed with the original mask and slowly we

got a lot more and we were able to work them

into the movie and that's what we see today.

That particular time everybody was interested in just scream and I took off with it.

I registered the name Ghost Face and to make sure that it

was forever one of the saying I went back to the

original copyright of this and amended it to where the description said Ghost Face.

So forever the image and the name are one of the same as officially Ghost Face.

You know it's become our generation's Frankenstein and Dracula.

Wes has created two of those created Freddy Krueger and now the screen.

It's always reminded me of a ghost in pain.

You know you've never saw what a ghost looked like when

it was in pain before and that's what that mask

has always reminded me of. Boy that thing is just so powerful.

You know it's one of the things where

you say well why is that different from something

somebody really good like A&B did that was kind of

it's just like that's what art is.

It's like somehow somebody got just perfectly right

and something very close to it is like.

Hello. Tombob came to me Drew as attached to star.

She was to be Sydney Prescott. Bob called back and said that.

Drew has made his slight change.

She didn't want to start filming anymore.

Drew called. I was like I don't want to be Sydney.

I have this great idea I want to be Casey.

She's got to be the opening girl and that's how it was now just the opening girl.

The whole poster I drew space on so you're like oh it's a Drew Barry one.

The fact that we killed America's sweetheart at

the end of 15 minutes it was like a body punch to the into the audience.

I have a box. It's called a phone box.

So we had two phones hooked into it. Drew's cordless phone.

A separate cordless phone before it goes face.

Everything's working fine. Nobody's thinking twice about it.

There was a surge in the generator and

it blows my box. You're lucky that the house had two lines.

You plug those. The phones into the house lines and we start using the house lines.

Then at one scene Drew needs to make phone

calls but she doesn't need anyone else in the other line.

In fact no one's supposed to be.

It's the police. So she starts starting like an screaming.

Hang out. I'm on my screen.

I'm gonna. No, we know they're the phone.

I didn't unplug the phone. She's calling the police.

We're in the middle of the take and the phone starts

ringing and we're like what's going on? Why is

the phone ringing? We pick it up and it's the

police asking what the hell we're doing and why did we keep calling it?

As far as casting a role of Sidney Prescott we were basically given card blanche.

We just saw every girl in town. We just screen tested Dev,

Brittany Murphy, AJ Langer, and Alicia Wet.

We had great choices. It just really came down

to just the subtle nuances of who really was

Sidney Prescott. Nick Campbell just embodied the

innocence, the freshness. She was just perfect.

And she's beautiful without being quote-unquote

Hollywood bombshell big boobs. She's not that.

She's this all-American kind of girl. She has these

little cute teeth and they're not, you know, beaver teeth.

But they're like a little bigger and I think I used to say that cute little buggies.

The craft was the first feature film I'd done in America.

I'd been acting in Canada for five

years before that and then a professional dancer before that.

And then a screen was the first lead I got.

She was remarkable. I mean she was a consummate professional because she'd been in

she does that really good of running and scared

but yeah she's bad ass face. When that girl's

running and you know fear and terror you're like

oh no don't hurt my little, my little bugger.

And I think that that's why it's worked really well

for Nav because she does have that persona that's very calm.

You know it which is also what Sidney Prescott kind of

has. She deals with the situation she has to deal with.

So I think it's very the fitting at her own personality.

I think there's just something in Nav that is she

has an old soul and I think Sidney you know they

had a really tough life. Her mother was murdered

but she came from Brooklyn home. She knew a lot

of more of a secrets about her mother.

She's more just someone who's vulnerable and he's in

defining her own strength. Sidney Prescott is the final girl.

And the final girl was the term that

comes from Carol Clover's book men women and chainsaws.

They aren't victims. These are women like back.

And I think a lot of times these movies

get underrated by people who don't understand

that they actually are largely about it you know

the empowerment of women to face the bullshit

men in your lives who try to fuck them over.

She's a big part of why the franchise is last

so five years later ten years later they're still coming back to it and saying will you

continue to carry it? There was always the

model and the mentality that we're making this for a price.

And generally when that happens you

have the best luck with finding a fresh ensemble.

If I'm right about this I could save a man's life.

Do you know what that could do for my book sales?

There are characters like Go Weathers in real life.

I've seen many get weathers that are just

so anxious and they will do anything to get the story. Courtney was definitely the most

experienced. She's been around for a while.

She was very well known because of friends obviously.

It becomes the issue of bringing somebody off

television so can they go into the movies and it

worked perfectly. She's a terrific killer.

She got to play somebody really sharp and tough and

screw somebody if she had to and stabbed in the

back of whatever it took to get where she wanted to

get. I think it started Courtney quite a bit on the first one.

We stated this double three in

in Santa Rosa that was overlooking the parking

lot. So I'd be sitting there just going crazy

just waiting like there's some sick of in

this level would come down and I'd finish it

out of the door. She's like oh wow what are you

doing? Are you stalking me? Because exactly what I'm doing.

Did you really put her liver in the mailbox? Because I heard that they found her

liver in the mailbox. Several times in the

casting it was like well this is really who I have

in mind but this guy is really interesting.

When I had my final call back for scream it was like

I just all bracketed my ear and Jason Lee was

there and they're like nice hair and my hair was

pink and so I went in for like last producers like pink hair.

I was like oh no done. I just love him.

He's got such an amazing comedy with.

In the first one it really displayed it a lot.

He really got to play around with like his voices and the

characters and he's really captured a really

aspect of himself too. You know this guy can be anybody.

There's one point in screen too where

he suddenly starts talking in an English accent

you know and he just did that and the taking is so cool.

He and Matthew were a good team.

They're like side show bobs. He thinks he didn't go out with me.

I remember Matthew Lillard. His girlfriend was

a casting assistant who worked across the hall

and he happened to be visiting his girlfriend

one day and I walked and I said could you come in

audition please because you look perfect for this

movie I'm casting. Originally they brought me in

for Skeets Park Billy and I was clearly not nearly

handsome enough to be non-traumatic interest

at the time so they moved me over quickly to stew.

Matthew was just a little pissing vinegar and

laughter but he also is an actor a real depth.

I don't know we know you're not. Skeet all over

I'll never forget that audition because I was

reading the Sidney Prescott role while he was

auditioning and I thought oh wow you're hot.

Skeet is a great looking guy kind of leader of the pack

but the danger of him is that he's dangerous feeling.

He walks the fine line of both the charming

rogue and the absolute psychopath. Corn certainly.

Same stuff to use for pigs blood and caring.

He does so many settled turns and twists and

keeps you guessing right through to the end.

Then once he reveals who he ultimately is you are riveted to the insanity.

When I first went in they wanted me to look at

the role of Billy or stew and I was a little old

for it but to play younger. No. But I really like

the role of the dude. It was written more of like

being a muscle baron kind of lughead and I saw something else.

Plus I got to kiss Courtney Cox and I wanted to do that desperately.

He isn't a way to do it. I mean he's not clueless like

degree but he has that innocence and openness and just what you see is what you get.

The script he also had to hide at the end and it

was a decision that the character was going to be

so loved we felt that they should stuff him in the ambulance at the end not death.

Well I learned that do we had a possibility

of staying alive when we shot the final scene.

So I came out on the stretcher and I was dead and then busted a second take and said

you know what just kind of give him a nod or something shows that we're still alive.

At the premiere he said you know he lived. It's great.

Please don't kill me Mr. Ghostface. I want to be in the seat.

My character is Tatum Riley and she was just the girl that I never loved.

So she was just a foreign you know probably dates at the ballplayer kind of character.

But she was so funny and I thought there was just a lot of heart to her

which I wanted to bring to the role. When in I heard they had cast Neve the way Holly

with his two two brunettes were not allowed to

be in the same film. It's just a fact.

So Kathy Conrad the producer has blonde hair.

Kathy who's your color. I'm going to make my hair blonde

and you can see their eyes just kind of like oh we can remember blonde.

I'd done a movie for a dimension called Phantoms

and Bob Weinstein called me into his office and

said would you do me a favor and do this

walk on in this movie. All I had to do was to

get out of a car and walk up a flight of stairs

with one of the easiest jobs I've ever done.

It was fun doing this thing right where I could just put it.

We all knew that the audience would be into it. The only thing I vividly remember

is Wes is telling me you've got to catch her.

The first take I got the camera and I got to

catch her while I go to catch her and the thing I

catch is is her left tip. All I can remember is

oh my god I'm groping her boob. Oh my god I can't let go.

I can't let go. I've got it.

If I go she's gonna fall. You know here's the big TV star and I'm nobody.

I'm her sidekick. The first thing I do is cop a feel.

When you cast for a voice you get sent a million cassettes.

Every guy can do 45 voices.

It's after a while it's like well and then suddenly you

hear Rogers and I was like well just that voice is chilling.

You know I've gotten letters from people who say you're Mr. Jackson. I really like

your voice from these movies. Can you tell me where

I can get one of those voice boxes that you use?

Of course there being no voice box. It's me.

I made a policy of the actresses or actors

never singing him. Typically in Hollywood it

would be the guy would be standing behind camera

giving the other lines. You would be someplace

quite distant on a real telephone talking to them.

When I'm working I have a monitor there so I can

see through the camera's POV still they can't

see me of course. He was only ever a voice to me and West wanted that to help all the

actors with their fear. It kept it real.

Oh yeah I love our movies. With the mask and the costume

ghost faces almost like a drawing that could

come from any child's nightmare. When they put

that thing on they get stronger throwing stuff in

furniture and I'm like wait a minute who is that?

Like is that a WWF wrestler? It's behind the mask. Is it just somebody's big cousin?

Yeah they're wearing prosthetics like I've worn

prosthetics to be either an alien or monster or whatever.

It seemed kind of low-tech to me you know. It was a little difficult to see at times.

How I remember us coming to wipe in the blade

off is we shot out of sequence and we were bloody night.

I just mentioned it and I said hey you know it's a direct cut to me running through

the hall with a clean night. A West just about 42

seconds and said well wipe the knife off on camera.

We landed in Santa Rosa. It offered a lot of

everything that we were looking for and it was a

great staging space to get to Heidelberg and

several of the other locations that we filmed that.

There was a really beautiful old school.

We had got approval from the school the high school

in Santa Rosa High School to shoot there.

While there was some discussion at the high school site

the school board really didn't know the level of

discussion that was taking place. The board had

questions about what was this film about.

When I first saw the script there was no question

who was going to be at some level of beyond the

normal scope of business. There was an influence

in this community that was a bit shaded by

the polyclouse murder. The board was concerned

about the level of graphic violence that was taking

place in the film. One parent heard about it,

another parent heard about it. People started

getting very upset and they had a town meeting

literally with a thousand people with everybody standing

up and giving their opinion as to whether or not

we should or shouldn't shoot there. People were very

concerned about violence against kids and this movie

part and parcel promotes and talks about violence and kids.

We teachers, we very much were intrigued

by the idea of the film being here mostly because of principle.

We heard that the principle was

killed in the film. And it became a little bit

of a witch hunt it felt like if I later said

we could not shoot here. We were the unwanted

stepchild and we kind of relished in that.

We're so bad. They don't want us at this school.

It was ultimately decided by the board that the

to the general running of the operation of the school.

And that's where we made our decision.

Luckily we found the school in a very great

production designer with Miller and we made it work.

After we shot the first weeks of shooting the

Drew Barrymore sequence, he called me up on the

Monday of the second week and you know you never

sure about your career. I haven't had a hit in a quite a while.

I guess I just want to tell you, nobody else will tell you this,

but your daily sock. As I got the phone call

saying, you know, that mask is not scary, that mask

is kind of a joke and it was a directive from

Bob that we pull out all the masks that we had

been looking at which there was about we had eight

or so on the top track. And we shoot the scenes

that we were filming with a different mask each time

until they were satisfied with what mask was like.

My guts were like, and I'm not for the whole second week.

I said, I have a plan. If you let us finish the sequence because we can shoot

everything this sequence and we're going to cut it

together for you and we're going to send it to

you. And if you think it's terrible, you can

take over this movie, you can fire a West, you

can fire us all. West was cutting during the day

with his editor. So, you know, here this poor

guy is working all night long and then going to

sit in his editor all day to basically save his

job and save the movie. And then we can form

it on film and send the 13 minutes off to Bob

Weinstein in New York to have a look at it.

Following Monday, the Monday of the 30 week, I get this call and say,

Baaass! I looked the way you'd done. It's fantastic. I'm keeping it calm.

What the fuck do I know about the alias? Thanks, bye!

Maybe your mom is just a baby and happy woman.

Well, you know, I've said to myself from time

to time of my long career is, you know, a lot of

the films that you made that really become hallmark films are built around family.

You know, tales of ice and ice dust on the left, maybe around straight.

And, you know, I didn't have anything to do with the writing of a screen one.

It came to me completely finished. But I think Kevin realized

the same thing because a lot of this story is

built around the kind of soap opera of Sidney

Prescott's mother and what she was really up

to. That woman was a slut bag or flaster shit

all over town like she was Sharon Stone or something.

Poor city that was clueless.

Bob would cut weary and Billy's father and all this stuff

that is all kind of those very interesting,

powerful, family secrets that parents keep in their children.

If you hide important facts from your

children as a parent, it's somehow corrodes the

experience because there are places that have just

been stinky fully and I go with them and they'll

never get to know who you were in the entirety.

So if you're doing a story about that stuff, your

five steps ahead of a story that's just about

what your kids going out in the forest without

any connection to family or anything else.

I love Henry Winkler. He had never seen a horror

film and he was fascinated by it and he just

came out and I think he did most of what he did

and a day and there's that scene where he happened

to have a pair of scissors and he was telling me

what a punk he was for, you know, and he had to

scissors up to the kid's throat which is totally

unscripted to the kids there. So scissors were

pretty sharp, pretty capable.

But look, he hadn't decided that the kid was convinced he was

to have his throat clipped off. Don't just cut.

Cut was added to it. There was a moment when

I was being stabbed and West Yell cut and he

whispered to me, he said, do you think it hurt me?

I said, yeah, I do. He said, do you think it's exclusion when you stand? I will hide.

I guess I've never been stabbed but I, okay, I'm gonna say yes.

I think the biggest hardest thing we did,

especially in screen one, was scene of 1-18.

I think when we finished it we had T-shirts made

eye-survive scene 1-18 and that was everything

that stews house. It really was a big giant real

garage door and they had to nail me in because

I was small enough that I was falling through.

And so I just, I went up and down and that thing like 20 times.

I have bruises from here to here but you know.

That was one of the fun ones was in the

garage, you know, chasing her around. I thought I'd

put up a pretty good fight. I was, I'm always irritated

when I died when I could take her. But at least I got her with a beer bottle.

She got a little blow in one time and that

was pretty funny. I'm a good shot but throwing

not so much and they were all real beer bottles.

The first row I think I hit him and then the

second one they'd put a big red X right next to

the camera hit this and instead I threw it right to the line.

I was on the roof.

My ankle was tied to the luggage rack. That was it.

The stunt woman that was the driver we had not marked

through at half speed. The first take, she went so damn fast.

The camera fell over in the van, fell backwards and I went off the roof.

I remember grabbing the windshield wiper blade with my right hand.

I went off the front of the fucking van.

Literally. Everybody dies but as a sweetie to carry on and plan to see you.

That scene especially, you know, was doing a million sit in the kitchen,

torquing around around, they were running around, they were getting step.

Part of you know, it was like endless. And it was physically

very challenging and a lot of fight sequences.

Emotionally it was very challenging I think because

Sydney's going through so much at that point.

One of the great things that Wes gave us is he

gave us a freedom to find things in the moment.

A lot of their key scenes the scenes in the kitchen

when they have to stab each other and everything.

I'd say 90% are lines written and 10% are things that they just worked up together.

You panned the ass pomas boy.

Fuck!

Like you did me with a fuck dick!

These little improv moments came out of because he

hit me with the phone. You know, it slipped out of

his hands because it was bloody. They had this

tremendous chemistry together that really worked.

Because Wes was given free reign and Kevin wasn't like, this is my word, this is

the way it's gonna be. You know, there was this

little place for magic to kind of be creative.

The hardest thing I ever did was learning how

to wear duct tape and hop around for six hours.

You know, it was really neat about it. It was watching

him do the violence scenes over and over and over again.

As an actor you get into this place and the

energy it takes and I distinctly remember sitting

in a corner just being exhausted. And you know that

gelatin is like sticky. So you blood all over your

just would sit there for like an hour and just

play with his blood to stick, stick, stick, stick.

And you'd see the three of us were in separate

quarters now of Skeet and I covered in blood just

doing nothing but playing.

Those guys at the end they were just covered with blood.

They were just caked with it.

The actor is increasingly wearing these bloody bloody clothes that they never could

change because you could never figure out the continuity.

You could never take a bloody shirt for

instance and then have another shirt exactly right.

So you just use the same shirt over

poor Matthew who had more blood than Skeet than

Anne just was like okay you know here we go.

I'm like sorry pal you know and it's like three

in the morning and putting blood all over the poor guy.

Well we finally finished that.

The actors told me that they took all of their

wardrobe out in a field and burned it.

There's blood all over the place and that was that.

We're all staying in the hotel in like a little motel

in the whole crew and cast. We were just having a a great time.

I think we couldn't believe we were getting paid to have fun like that.

We weren't filming and we were bored in the town room.

It was really nothing to do.

We decided to get in the car and um I don't know find

something to do. And then all of a sudden we saw all

these prom limos with people like hanging out moo

because it was prom time. So we started chasing

prom limos to end up at like the Radison Hotel

and crash a prom party. So that's what we did.

That's what crazy story where I put on deals, cost you. And I put a uh the

blasher's trench coat on. I ran into set and started flashing everybody.

That's creepy. We worked nights for like weeks

on end and you come back to the hotel and we

had set up a bar. One night you know we were

just gonna amount of drinking going on like

skis with his chick and according to David looking

lovingly Matthew and I'm sitting there and I'm

like I turn and I'm just looking at Earl. W Earl Brown is like man you buddy! Man you!

That's right boy. I was the annoying little brother

along for the ride and I'm like oh fuck.

I'm like I'm gonna hook up with Earl.

The stream is actually the first time we had ever seen and

Wes asked me to come in and he showed me that

scene where Drew Barrymore gets killed and he said

all right well when you take this home and write

the music for it and bring it back Monday morning

and it's uh through what you got and basically

started my career. With Sydney's theme I thought it

might be neat to use a female voice to identify

with her character and so behind that I have sort

of a bed of whistling. I think that applies sort

of an eerie character to the background of that.

We've always got bigger and bigger the first

scream one as much thinner. This essentially

only have like 60 minutes of scoring it.

Yeah. Second one had like 85. I like over 90.

We went back to the MPAA on scream one nine times

trying to get an R-rated. We kept getting an NC-17.

You're dealing with shocking things and it's

not about I want 2,000 gallons of blood.

It's not about that. It's about getting under the skin

and shocking and getting into personal things.

You're just fair game. It's dealing with those

fears and those fears are bouncing around and all

of our psyches and subconsciouses and the mind

kind of wants them to be dealt with where they

know they'll actually be safe but it'll seem like

they're about to be involved in something really horrible.

The key scenes were Drew Barrymore

hanging in the tree. We high sped the shot in order

to pound through it even faster because the

slower version you really hung on the board with

the moment of my identity. Tatum's death in

the garage was more graphic. All those probably

aren't hurt by the cuts we made. The ones that

suffer I think are in the finale with Billy and

Stu when they stab each other. Right now the way

it's cut you see it hangs on Sydney too long.

In the non-censored version you see them stab each

other and it is horrific. I think it has a lot impact.

You never get a name you never know if

it was seeing your film and quite often it's a

different group each time. So it's quite horrible to do it.

The other thing the MPA went after and

ultimately didn't win on was one line of dialogue.

Movies don't create psychos! Movies make psychos

for creative life! It's just like why you know you

think a BA you can't you should not object to a thought.

I was writing all these long letters you

know first amendment this is art this is expression

blah blah blah blah. At the very end when we

were totally desperate Bob Weinstein had a studio

makes a call and comes back because I got you an

art. You did? How'd you do it? I convinced him

it was a comedy and that was it. I said really

yeah I told him it was all satire. It wasn't till

the end of the film that they started talking

about changing the title. And what Bob so cleverly

instructed in his kind of marketing notion was

that you can't mark it a new genre to an audience.

Bob suddenly came off a screen which we all thought would never work. We are looking at

from the rap dinner which was just a small

amount of crew and the cast and they gave these

out to everybody. The movie was then called scary movie.

So I have my scary movie thought especially for cast and crew. I'm scary.

I have my one book. Still with the one minute.

I remember people drinking those that night

thinking you want to keep especially because then

they changed the screen. This was another stroke

of genius in the part of Bob the Weinstein

um you know traditionally for decades Christmas

was family-filled period. Now maybe an action film

and Bob came up with the idea of releasing it to

Christmas and we were all horrified and terrified.

And I know Variety did an article about a

month before we came out and called this DOA.

We're coming out again to be with somebody ahead in one fine day.

Like who would release a horror slasher movie in Christmas?

When the film first came out it did okay but not great and I thought well there

and then the next weekend instead of going down and

normally a film it doesn't do well it goes down 50 60 percent.

It went up and then the next weekend

everyone up again was unprecedented and that was Bob

you just somehow saw okay nobody ever you know

it opens on uh Christmas with a horror film but

what does the horror audience do? They're probably

you know bored stiff so let's give them a film.

I do remember being at the premiere I remember

the next day there was a picture of Wes and I

in the LA Times and they had interviewed some

fortune teller lady that was at the party

it just just hired to whatever you make a

little fortune teller and they said how do you

think this movie will do to the fortune teller

she said I think maybe it would make no money

and go poof and I remember you know it's always not like ah sucker look at this now.

What is it ridiculous to say it took the country

by storm? It was the first horror film in a

long time that had legs you know that had word

of mouth that just kept building and building and building.

It could very easily have been you know

the kind of thing that didn't do well for one

weekend and just went away. We thought if it

made like 30 million it'd be amazing and it'd be

like last forever it was like a cool movie.

Did we know it was going to be a touchstone of pop culture

no? I actually remember the actors we were all

talking we were saying you imagine it actually

did well there might be loud we even cost you and

now every all the way you know kids come to my

door in these green messages which is fun.

You know it was like a thinking man's horror movie

you know you sort of you had to follow the

twists and turns and you had to be trying to stay

five steps ahead of the plot. The only thing was

Kevin and Wes were staying ten steps ahead of

that and that's what made it so much fun to watch.

It was the first time I remember ever ever ever

screaming out loud in a theater. Matthew Perry was

sitting like three seats away from me and I was

mortified at my exclamation at such a high volume

as only a 13-year-old girl can scream.

The greatest thing about you know once you start working

with him is watching Wes watch his own movie

because he gets such a kick out of scary nobody

is just sitting there like you could just totally see a little devious childhood.

I think Wes reinvent himself keeps his finger on the pulse of

youth because he is a highly intelligent and

creative man he simply knows what he's doing

and he's good at it. It would be hard to make

screen today because it's a taking a chance.

Our movie which never happens today you know

went into theaters in December and was still in

theaters in May. Scream opened the floodgates to

a full blown slasher revival you know what I know

she did last summer or been legend and they just

kept coming out one after the other but it was a

great boon to the horror fans and the horror genre

horror was hot again. I mean that was the rebirth

of teenage horror you know and just like in the

80s just like Halloween was it was the birth a lot

of sub-par movies. Are you suggesting that

someone's trying to make a real-life sequel? That too.

Who would want to do that? Sequels to suck.

If the first one's successful the traditional

trajectory is you want to make the second one

as quickly as possible. We were still in

theaters when we were in prep for the second one.

In this one it was following the same character

maturing before the audience's eyes because

you know that was very young when she did the first one.

We got more money to make it.

We had Kevin Williamson. We had the same actors.

I was actually signed on to the second one already so

that wasn't a choice but for me at that time we

had such a successful film at the beginning of

my American career had no hesitation about being the second.

Kevin had a hard job in screen too of surprising the audience again.

Now you know what the premise is. You just have to figure out

who the killer is. Sequels come with their own

set of rules which is okay now you're famous

and now you have the success and now people are

actually imitating you. And there's a pressure on

the second one to be as good as the first one.

There's a pressure on Kevin to write a script as

smart and genius is that which is probably why

the older dad of sequel suck is true because

you end up with this kind of thing that gets

laden with everybody's ideals on it and it doesn't

get to be what it needs to be. Kevin had this

great idea for a film within a film stab.

It was a brilliant idea based on Sydney Press God's life

so all of Sydney's pain and everything else had

dragged into being a genre film. I think that's

what this underlying message of these movies can be

especially what goes on with Sydney's character

you know just because somebody's saying it is not

necessarily true just because this reporter just

has you know run with this story is possibly not the truth.

And then Kevin sent us I think

something like 30 pages by email we read it was fabulous.

It was on the internet in its entirety

that night and all those of you little fuckers out there think that's really cute.

You fucking ruined our next three months. One of the end

endings would definitely was posted on the internet.

It's not good but there's no really other thing you can do about it. I think I just

moved to LA months before I got the audition

for Scream 2 and there was a lot of secrecy around the script.

I think it was my last audition I

was going in for and they're like okay we're

gonna send you the script and you just need to

bring it back in an hour. I'm probably not gonna be

finished with the script. So really they literally

messaged it to my home and an hour later

somebody was knocking on the door to get it back.

So scripts came out and it had this brown swab.

It was actually some paper from the tobacco industry to camouflage their memos.

You couldn't highlight it you couldn't mark it so we had to like

sit there you had to especially hold it up to

read it in the light and they held out the end.

I wasn't going to sell them but secret tape with

me especially if you had to do with West Craven.

That script went through a lot of changes and

I can remember writing sessions when Kevin was

already off working on you know it was totally

short of the time where we would have six people

in room trying to brain check each other because

you get a plot line worked out for say in the

second half of the second act and then oh no we

can't because she was there and you can't there

before you can't so it's like you know a lot

of trying to figure out plot points and things

in the middle of shooting which is another thing

that comes from people screaming up your script.

It took a little bit to find our rhythm.

Kevin was distracted right now his co-producer Julie

plaque was my assistant that at certain point

the film was underway he had to go off and be on

his television show. We were sending Julie to be

with him to try to get him to write something or

take dictation or whatever and we're getting pages from her.

I was writing there are other people writing the whole thing of sitting doing the

play acting all that stuff was written by me.

Probably the scene that is most fun is the

opening scene and how you go in and out of the

stab movie and then the real movie with Jada

Pinkett and Omar Epps. It was a real challenge

to decide when you were going to go full frame

with the Heather Graham moments. It felt like it

was a wesest real tour de force of his commentary on the success of the first film.

It was kind of sad to see Omar go so fast and

so brutal like you know right through the air

you know they always have cool opening sequences

you know but that was the kind of craziest part

of the beginning of that one to me.

I stopped treating me like glass do I am like a break.

The interesting thing about Sydney Prescott is

the way in which she changes from the first film

through the second two. I think in the first

movie she is a typical final girl. She's a thrust

into this horrible situation her friends are being murdered.

She is the one who's smart enough

and resourceful enough to figure out a way to

elude these killers. One of the best things

about Sydney is she does have sex in the first

movie and she still wins so you know it's you

felt like there was an evolution there.

It's nice to see that she's not constantly just a victim

you know she actually has become really strong

and passionate and I think for horror films now

that's what you need to see. By the second and third movie she's developed a backstory

that involves her mother and things that were

done to her mother it's not so much that the

sins of the mother are being visited on Sydney as

it is that the sins committed against her mother

are being carried through into another generation.

Oh Sydney's share with us please.

Everybody's just like oh oh my god I'm like did

you get that on film and I had lived that you know

and I was mad at the way in that day because he

said it right after me trying to steal my shine

like oh you're repeated then they wanted it it's

like man I came up with that and I'm trying to

like come in with my fart in it.

I'd let the geek get the glow. Well I gave him a goatee

but I only gave him half of them one because

at the time grunge was big so I had like

I thought he was like influenced but you know

at that time horror movies were like people

being slaughtered and their heads cut off and

people like oh what are you doing with them he can

and it's just like not real let's like if you see

that horrific events you're going to be twisted up

so I thought like he got a little of our darker

he's a little edgier I just wanted him to

evolve I don't know how much I mean he still didn't really have any sex.

This press got my head for the re-complicated past.

Don't really comment where he you know grew I mean

he was just a throwaway character in the first

film when we never thought we'd see and have again

you know and yet done a way to bring him back

in a really interesting way. Even though I'm only in the first film for

some of like 30 seconds it takes a long time to shoot those things and you sort of

living there with those people so we had already

had a rapport by the time we've worked on screen too.

The problem is you've been a red herring once how do you become a red herring twice

I think that was just a lot of different characters.

We're trying to make choices that made him

spooky and made him see what he was a dangerous element.

screen too was an infinitely easier movie to

cast with the success of screen one suddenly

everybody was calling you know I want to be in

this movie I want to be in this movie so we were

just cherry picking you know. It just had a

plethora of people and I mean it had like 20

recognizable at the time it still would be the same very known people.

Everyone had conditions you know before it was unconditional

gonna hit star Michelle Geller and we're gonna

have to fly her back and forth and she was

such a big star at the time. She was the busiest

actress in town we've turned our schedule

upside down for it. Casting the stab movie within

the screen movie was actually fun because you

really could go much campy or much crazier and

yet and come up with some kind of poo-key ideas.

My mom's dad and she's never coming back ever.

I share the scene with Tori's spelling so it

was the first you know big movie that I had done and I will never forget that scene.

This is when I first fell in love with West Craven because

she was so funny because we were sitting there

and got like really quiet so I just started

into my license like um uh Nancy and I said yes and he goes wait till I say action.

Oh okay I was brand new to the sad I didn't know.

Love Jeri Agol, adorable. Great body too.

So I had to go to KMB special effects house and they gave me a fake arm and stuff.

Man when I saw that fake arm it's really kind

of freaky because you're looking at your arm.

I mean they even put the little hairs in and

everything and they sort of attach it to you

and then I get slashed and blood is shooting out

of it and it's a pretty frightening experience.

The self-induced isolation you got going is not healthy. I'm fine. I'm funny.

I was so stupid in the audition as this girl

that's um you know getting ready to go to college

and be with the cool girls. I was just silly

and I ended up booking it and I couldn't believe

at least it was just a work with.

It was a great sense of humor and we had a lot of fun.

Hi I'm Joel the affiliate sent me a new cameraman.

Yeah you got experience huh?

My agent called me and it was like you know you wouldn't do or a movie.

I was like you know the lifespan of a black male in a farm movie. Okay we're on.

So are you setting me up or does this guy look like

well is he no no no it's a good part it's a good

does he die well we don't know. I took your seminar

in Chicago last year I was the one in the front

row asking all the questions. I remember getting

a call about coming in to read for a character

named Debbie Salt and I thought well who wouldn't root for Debbie Salt come on.

A lot of casting is that got boring I think that's I think that's her.

I didn't model Debbie out after anybody but I knew she was just wound a little tight

or I remember seeing a lot of black down pages in my script.

So I thought I might be wearing one of those.

In the fact that Debbie was you know I thought was pretty brilliant.

Billy was a sick fuck who tried to get away with

it. Mickey is a sick fuck who wants to get caught.

He was really intense and that I remember

watching that being like this is a special scene.

To me I thought he definitely did not have a

lot of experience back then but you know he was

this was just something fun to do. It was something

a little kind of cheeky to do and it's not

so straightforward and I think that's why it works for him in that role.

You know I had to get up and sing that David Cassidy song I think I love you.

And I got a copy of it I put it in my rental

car in Atlanta and I listened to it whenever

I drove so I really had this song down. None of us really liked that song.

We were like why this song? What was this song

pick just the song that we had to hear all day?

We hadn't even rehearsed it man. I just it was

sort of like just show up and do it and I knew

going into it if I didn't commit to that scene it

wasn't gonna happen. I mean I did the best I could.

Just like you would like to get back onto my own life.

In the second one there was this thing about

cotton that he was just hungry for celebrity

and that he was hungry for media attention. Cotton wanted a piece of it after he'd been

wrongly accused. It seemed like a good engine for a character.

This is powerful you know and it's touching on really important stuff in a goofy

zany way but it's really smart and it's really

franchise does this great job of taking us through

the pop culture in the way that it's been viewed

and kind of making fun of the whole celebrity

obsessed world that we live in sometimes.

Jimmy dying and having to spend about his death.

I mean there was a sadness you know and I

killed him good no. Blood and face I made very

clearly he's dead and I got killed I was like okay

that'll be a big thing but then it was like fuck

don't know why I gotta get killed. These enormous

pools of talent sometimes you have to knock them

off. It was very bloody and I said it's got to

be horrificly bloody today I wanted to go out

big second of all I got technical and I was like

you're cutting with my crawdery and you cut the

crawdery it's more bloody than you never knows.

But like to this day that's one of like to talk

to things people ask me in my life you know it's

why why why did you tell this game to me. I don't know I guess somebody had to go.

I don't do so much it was I have to agree with

many of the fans that he would never have backed

up against anything without windows I just some part

of me I remember sitting in the theater thinking

no no no no no um so I really enjoyed to accept for that.

My parents were there and I was like

you guys were gonna come down watch me get killed

and we did it and everybody left it was like

the last thing and I they were like yeah you're

gonna go here and like go to the shower and I went

like the shower and there was nobody there and

I'm like yo so I mean I'll move the towel and I'm

like nobody I took a shower by myself at like

sundown in this girls college and like the whole

crew had just found me and I was like it's and I'm

like this is a bad fucking cliche like I'm gonna

he had a fucking kill after my death scene and that's gonna be my life but like I went

in a long shower basically but for a moment in time that was the one creepy moment I

had filming these movies and people I was like

you scared with a horror movie like no it's

like it's fake but that moment I did feel weird here should footage enjoy see

you wouldn't want to be they didn't know where to go with Joe I said to Wes us

And really, truly, I find Jamie Kennedy's character dead in my van. I'm out.

He's like, we mean. I said, I would just leave. Man, I'm not gonna

stand around here. I'm like, I'm not that adventurous.

Like, that's not who we are. Like, you'll never see a black prison get moin' by a bear. Like, you're

not gonna try to feed a bear in the wilderness. You know what I mean? Just to see if we can do it.

Like, we're like, nice, cool. The bear's over there.

Pack up. We're gonna go to the side of the wilderness.

Okay? And he said, well, what do you think you should do? I said, I think I should leave. He said,

you want to leave? I said, yeah, I'll leave. I just want to leave the move. I'll leave the movie.

As opposed to getting killed, can I leave? He goes, how would you leave? I said, cab!

He said, you want to leave? My taxi.

I said, yeah. He said, all right. Can we get a taxi?

The car scene I loved. And it was, you know, basically just roughed

out. I think the cops get killed and whatever it wasn't crashed.

It wasn't pipes that wasn't, you know, ghost face knocked out and having to cross

through the little thing was all just kind of made up more or less on the spot.

And everybody being able to do it. I mean, we pride that screen

opening between the back and the front of the car, right?

Both girls were able to just get through there somehow.

I was looking at, you know, being, I don't know how I was at the time.

But like, I could never get through that.

You know, Wes just said, my dancing, because I was a professional dancer.

I think to do all the physical stuff and to do the action

sequences and stuff, he feels that that has helped me.

Because some bits very physically challenging for me. It's not that difficult.

And Evan, I got in trouble that day.

It was late at night and some small studio pass arena.

And, you know, you're, you're doing all these facial

expressions in the back of the car and just like,

look at you!

No, look at you!

What is that face?

I'm really laughing.

And we couldn't stop laughing in the back.

And finally, Weske was like, okay, stop, stop.

Can we get to, it's like 4 o'clock and I'm wearing a carry.

Look at the story and then we would lock eyes again and start.

We shoot a lot of sequences with a real big knife.

That's a real knife. It's not a prop knife.

So when you hear it in the movies and it makes

that shink, that's the real knife coming out.

So even when the guy had his arms around my neck and

went like this the first time, that was a real knife.

And he was that close to me.

Now, this is the jacket that how he died in on the street.

Okay, you know, and still got like a little bit

of the fake blood and stuff on the air, see?

But, you know, I'm not crazy. You know, wardrobe gave

this to me to just kind of remember the experience,

but I just, you know, I never wear it.

It is just something that people have been across it, you know,

basically right where she got stabbed to the chest and that was it.

Well, I think those, those scenes at the ending was a lot of fun at non-stage.

There, it was chaotic. I liked the physical challenge. I really liked doing that stuff.

I remember being really happy that cotton was vaguely heroic in it.

I didn't get that last scene until we got to the set that day.

I didn't know what was going to happen.

It was kind of fun. It's an exciting way to go to work.

He had me as a killer, cotton as a killer.

It was so many different people who could be the killer.

And I liked that one about the second one.

No, I never did read the draft that had me as a killer, but I'd like to be honest.

There's two killers in Scream 2, Billy's mother, and Mickey.

Mickey's character was seeking celebrity status for being a serial killer.

And I think that, you know, that's kind of unusual at

that time that we were pushing those buttons in the movie.

My motive is in his 90s is Mickey's.

Mine is just good old-fashioned revenge.

I don't know about other crazed moms, but at the heart of it,

it is out of some misguided want to stand out for the children.

Well, I remember those last days, those reveal

days is winding up into more of the action scene.

And then came the day of getting shot in forehead.

And I think Wes asked me just not to blink my eyes.

And so I'm laying on the ground in this, like,

seem like, like, thousand-pound camera is above me.

And then there was this big pop.

We didn't do it again, so I assumed I didn't close my eyes.

I didn't flinch.

At one scene, Neve and Laurie Beckham fell down

together and knocked their heads together really loud.

And we were really afraid that one of them got a concussion.

That was painful.

And it hurt both of us.

Sometimes you have to beat the shit out of the material.

There were a lot of things about that film

that we reconstructed or reordered in editing.

We had an amazing editor, Patrick Lucier, and he and Wes worked together so well.

Patrick Lucier cuts to camera.

So you can film a scene one day and the next day you

have the scene on set with music and sound effects.

So on screen two, Wes had shot specific shots to make the MPA version more violent

so that when we got the NC-17 that we anticipated back from them,

we could then cut it back down and make it the version that Wes wanted.

Wes did start saying more blood in the second one.

The part blood, he was kind of crazy.

And immediately what we get back is an R rating.

For the version that was weighed by a little more violent than we ever wanted.

And how they responded to screen two was the opening they felt

was an excellent commentary on the nature of horror movies.

And that we were being responsible by making that in some way.

I remember my agents calling me the first weekend and both getting

on the phone and saying it made 30 million the first weekend.

And then I said, oh no, is that bad?

That's really good.

Oh, okay, no idea.

And I remember I opened up the New York Times and

there was a picture of me in the New York Times.

And I remember being like, this is gonna be a big movie.

And mostly people say, you know, oh, I remember you from Rosanne.

But every once in a while somebody, it will be, I know you from a screen.

My mother went to go see that movie in the theater.

And I was like, mom, what did you think of the movie?

And she was like, not like that last scene.

No, I can shot in the heart in a really free plan.

Horror is the genre that people look down all the time.

And the reason it continually comes back and the

successful is that people sit in the audience.

And they have a visceral reaction.

I mean, they sit there and have a chemical reaction when they watch this screen.

And that's not easy to do.

To be given a two-dimensional thing and all of a sudden you feel so.

And I think it takes a lot to make that happen and to bring that out in an audience.

It made mad magazine.

It took me to that place.

It was kind of cool.

There's a cartoon of myself, my wife, and my father, mad magazine.

It took me to set it.

There he was in the hallway as Freddie.

I try not to do very much.

But in that case, I thought it was...

A little blurs came out of the fact that we knew each other.

We worked together and really liked each other.

So I called her up and said, why don't you come and play for a day?

The one day I was just hanging out.

I was like, who walked in the back of the party seat?

Which is hilarious.

Because now I was walking out the street last week and the guy from TMZ was like,

hey, you're in Scream 2.

Like, in Scream 1.

He's like, no, you're in the party seat.

I'm like, you need a hobby.

I played the part.

I was studio executive who was worried about there being too much violence.

And horror films.

And since I had made horror films and had violence in them,

the fact that I was a guy who was warning the director not

to put too much violence into it was kind of an inside joke.

I think that was Bob.

Yeah, Bob loves cameos.

You know, because he could say, very fish isn't it? Harry Fisher.

She's like, come to my trailer.

And she's like, they asked me what I wanted.

She had a box of fruit loops and a box of Cheerios and a carton cigarettes.

It's fun to have Jay and Silent Bob in for a little blur of an studio tour.

Of which I was the studio tour guy.

And Wes Craven was in my room.

I didn't approve of every cameo, but it's not up to me.

If you find yourself dealing with an unexpected

backstory and a preponderance of exposition,

you are dealing with the concluding chapter of a trilogy.

Scream 2, Music of the Heart.

And then Scream 3, between those three films.

And I was very, very, very busy.

There was an effort to get it together really soon.

But I think a lot of people were putting their

foot down and saying, you know, I want to break.

By 3, we had less and less access to Kevin.

And it was more and more trying to write and

spot up for the variety of people writing.

And that makes it extraordinary difficult.

Kevin had a lot of other film pollutants.

You know, he was the hottest thing on the planet.

And he had a TV show to maintain that was extremely important to him.

And I could see that he was, you know, sort of exhausted and beat up.

And, you know, he owed a certain amount of pages.

And he owed a lot of people a lot of things.

And I think that, you know, he had written, again, a very healthy outline.

And he had the movie imagined and fashioned out.

Bob got impatient with, you know, wanting to wait.

And there was conversations about, you know, moving in another direction.

I'm a big fan of something works.

And he used to stick with the same teams all the time.

Because that's where it originated.

And also a fan of giving something out of time to really journey.

I'd just been working as a screenwriter profession for a couple years.

Bob, and he called me, said,

let's have a situation on one of our movies.

I need to know maybe do some quick work.

And I said, well, send me the script.

And he said, well, there is no script.

And I said, oh, okay, what are you shooting the movie?

And he said, in six weeks, what's the movie?

And he said, screen three, screen three.

I thought Kevin Williams was writing that.

And he said, so did we.

And nobody would have rather seen Kevin writing, maybe than me.

Mainly what happened is Bob, you know, was Aaron Kruger for two weeks.

The amazing thing about Aaron is that he would go into a room, close the door.

And at the end, he came out with like five, six, seven, eight pages.

That were shootable.

He had an incredible discipline.

You know, Aaron's writing was different.

It was going to be effective.

I mean, that.

But because it wasn't Kevin, you felt that the characters were not quite the same.

It was tricky.

It was, it certainly took a lot of revisions.

And a lot of working with us, a lot of working with the actors,

to get close to approximating the voice he had.

And then what happens with Bob, so he needs a writer who likes,

he takes him away and puts him under the projects.

He gave us a big shock that he said, oh, well,

sorry, Aaron's not available for you anymore.

They've earned another writer while we're shooting,

Lady Kelly Gritis, who wrote Shutter Island and produced Avatar.

I thought it was an amazing writer.

I had met with Wes because he'd written a book called The Countless Society.

And I was adapting it for him, for image movers.

We started talking about the first two screen movies

because he was, you know, in production on the third.

By the end of the launch, he said, well, you

know, we might need somebody in a couple weeks.

Do you want to come on?

And I said, yes, very politely at inside of us.

I started writing from the minute I got there.

Making screens has not been easy.

In some cases, using every trick that you've ever learned every wit in your body

to come up with the right scene for the next day.

The writer on the third did a good job of following suit

and keeping the tone of the films.

Having wrote a treatment, but the treatment is very different than what the movie was.

It took place in Woodsboro.

But it was against the backdrop of a third stab movie being shot.

And it also did involve the killer's ultimate motivation being to lure Sydney back.

I had actually been hired to come back in the screen 3 of St. Killer.

It wasn't quite clear whether it was really Stu

or Stu's twin brother or an actor playing Stu.

I actually was paid to be in screen 3

and never had chance to fulfill it.

Calm might haven't.

And just the shockwave hit.

And everybody that didn't like horror films.

That was in a position of power, came after the studios.

I do think everybody stopped a minute and said,

what's our storyline here?

What's our angle?

What are we saying?

So there was definitely an awareness that was made pretty explicit

to me that the studio was concerned about the sort of moral panic

that was in the air at the time about the relationship

between violent films and video games and music.

It certainly had an effect on us emphasizing comedy

in the third film over more graphic kills.

It almost started taking on aspects of what the first movie was kind of playing with

in a joke sense.

It kind of became a character of itself.

You can't blame a film or a horror film.

It's the reason that a person goes out and cares out at tragedy, like combine.

I think it would have been silly to not make

these films suddenly because we felt responsible.

I don't think we were responsible for that.

I wasn't contracted for the third, and yes, I was hesitant about it.

I think just for the sake of wanting to be doing other things,

I wanted to play other roles and worrying also that I would be typecast.

You know, you do want to be conscious of that.

Scream 3 was actually a bit of a challenge in

the sense that I was shooting drowning mode out,

which was a comedy I did with Danny DeVito and Bedler.

Casey Affleck.

I was doing Scream and I was doing for you five,

so I was between nights and days and having trouble remembering who I was.

I wasn't playing so many characters.

It is her story.

So we definitely wanted her to be the heroine of the third movie,

and we had to work within this scheduling difficulty.

I never just wanted to work on the movie for three weeks.

So we had a limited amount of time that we could spend with her.

Certainly you can look at the third film

and see how in the first half of the story Gail and Dewey

are really driving it, and she's often her own

parallel storyline that eventually converges.

It just felt like it would be wrong

to keep Sydney any shorter truth than that.

You're so right.

Pop Culture is the politics of the 21st century.

3 was a comment on celebrity run-and-lock.

In the first two movies, the killers are blaming Hollywood,

not taking culpability for their actions.

In the third movie, in a perversely ironic way, we

wanted Hollywood to actually be the cause of all of this,

and as Hollywood does, to get away with it.

This is Sydney Priscott's mother.

The central kind of reason for making the third film

was that you were looping all the way back around to how everything started.

And to me, sort of the best way to get there

to how everything began was to literally make it

about that same story, about her mother,

and about her mother's behavior,

who she was, what she'd done.

And so we thought it would be fun to use that, but also play with it.

The mother of Sydney Priscott

wanted to be the actress, and was an actress in horror movies,

and gets raped, and gets pregnant,

gives up her child for adoption.

Since relationship with her mother is a big part of who the character is, obviously,

and it gives some depth to the character that might not be there

if we didn't have that backdrop for her.

One of the first things I wrote with Wes was the

nightmare with the mom coming up to the window.

I was very careful about pulling in kind of my other stick, if you will.

You know, the guy who does the nightmare films,

the guy who has dream sequences and so on.

I held off doing that for a long time,

that it was Sydney's mother in Scream 3,

but I've been very sparing with it.

It wasn't so much about multiple endings of

Scream 3 as it was about multiple beginnings.

There were so many variations on the opening sequence.

I remember the sequence with an actor

and then Damon in a car,

where the killer was calling the actor from inside

and the trunk of the car.

There was an early version, the Kevin's original treatment

where the opening sequence was Sydney

and a friend being attacked at home and then Sydney ultimately killing the killer

and unmasking killer in some van

and this drives her into hiding.

When I was working on a Scream 3,

I was first booked to Double David R. Cap.

And the only thing I saw in my room was Ghost Face outfit.

I said, here's Ghost Face.

I was like, this is awesome.

It was a very proud moment when I found out

that I was going to be killed and pro-logging to film.

I think it was my idea.

It may not have been the best career move I ever did.

You know, because it's hard to be fun to be at

the shooting screen for with all the other kids.

There were a couple different versions that we did.

I believe there is one where he was climbing up through the skylight

and to bring him down and killing him that way.

Do a big 100% cotton fan?

100% cotton came out of a joke that we used

to have in the cutting room on screen too.

He used to talk about how he would get his own show and he would call it 100% cotton.

I love that he'd gone from that kind of relent with appetite

for celebrity to being this kind of Jerry Springer talk show host.

I thought that that was really great.

That made me want to kill him too.

He was studying Hamlet at the time to do it to public theater.

So in between takes there he was reading Hamlet

and there we were on the set of screen three.

It was very intense to see Ghost Face.

You know, at that point it becomes such a

social phenomenon this character, this face.

Again, I hadn't really done a lot of the genre,

so it was great to be working with someone like Wes Craven.

If you're watching this tape, it means as I feared

I did not survive these killings here at Windsor College.

That kind of hurt, you know, because it was like

I was a part of the movies in such a big way and I was like

dead and then I brought back that I was just kind of sad.

There's something you guys should see.

I was a quirky character actress.

That was in her teens.

And so as quirky character actress in their teens,

who ah, have their madarazzo.

There we go. Perfect.

I thought that was good. Real believable kind of DNA, right?

You know, I mean, she was very good.

There was leopard pants and I think it was a purple shirt

and Doc Martens and I think the Doc Martens were actually mine.

As soon as everything was on it was, yep, this is Martha.

This is her. Great.

There's a totally different version of the

scene where Randy appears on the videotape.

One with Randy's sister with a different actress playing

Randy's sister who was a contortionist.

Who was doing strange contortion as the whole time

while you were watching the video.

Needless to say, that didn't work quite so well.

I'm not a criminal.

I think it was the end of my first season of Felicity.

I got this audition and I believe Aaron or someone had written

a couple auditioned sides and one was, you know, the friendly guy, the nice guy.

And then the other scene was evil.

It'd be the killer.

You know, I don't know if everybody had to read that.

I don't know if they knew who was going to be the killer.

I think it'll help me get work.

They were sort of old hat at that time.

And I mean, in the most respectful way.

And they were like there.

We've done this character.

We're good.

Great.

You were great.

You're great, man.

And, you know, like, thanks so much.

One of my last days was one of the scenes

where they rush in and someone's shooting me.

Again and again and again and again.

I've got like 13 squibbs on me.

I'm going crazy and I'm screaming.

And when we were done, David, who looked down and he goes, wow, that was intense.

Good job.

Can I get a coffee?

This is a hero ghost face costume.

That was used in Scream 3.

It was used for pretty much all the third act of the movie in the mansion.

You can see it has all the squibpoles.

This costume is actually considered one of

a kind very unique as it's the only costume.

And then any of the movies that has this snap button closure system.

All the other costumes in the movies were either pull over

or they closed in the middle with Velcro.

The reason this costume was made with the buttons

was because of the squibbs and they were basically

afraid that the explosion of the squibbs going off

would blow the Velcro open and ruin the shot.

So they made this costume specifically for that shot.

There's nobody up there.

When I first worked with Wes on Scream 3,

I remember the script wasn't finished

and we all went into Courtney Cox's trailer

and started talking about what we were going to shoot that dead.

There was a certain level of chaos, but there was

never upset around it, at least from what I saw.

Like there was like, how are we going to do this?

It was like a creative endeavor.

You know, we're going to keep pounding,

you know, pushing clay together and, you know,

in a sense, make this movie.

The other idea that we did keep from the treatment

was the idea of an actress playing gale, Weathers,

and who could potentially drive a wedge between the real girl, Weathers, and Dewey.

That was my favorite idea in the treatment

and so certainly we expanded upon that.

I feel like I am in your mind and that would explain my constant headaches.

My people said they would have reached you for Scream 3.

I wasn't thrilled because, first of all, I didn't want to be scared.

You weren't having a lot of reservations, like, no, you should just go in.

It would be good for your career.

It would be your exposure.

And, you know, you might have fun, you know,

such an actor-dork.

This is how I made sense in my part.

She's so into her part as gale, Weathers.

She knows what gale is thinking.

She's like a ninja.

And she's just, like, almost a shadow of gale, Weathers.

So I think it is really kind of shook gale.

I mean, gale, Courtney, to have this young actress

cleaning her time.

It was fun to watch.

You know how girls can be nasty, caddy.

I never bitchy through each other as well.

It's really interesting to have it

between Courtney and Parker.

I loved her.

Like, she's the girl when we work late.

She grabbed me by the hand.

Okay, come on.

And she'd sing a song to me.

And it was fantastically bizarre.

I loved it.

It was that Hollywood, like, oh.

Oh, this really happens.

Like, you're right.

And I think she's great in the movie.

There's a moment where she jumps into the arms of Weathers.

And, you know, it's obviously over the top.

I got to hold part her and sing to her.

I came from her emotional.

She was supposed to be in Woodsboro.

Yeah, I'm surprised.

She thought about me, you know.

It wasn't that hard to sort of be angry

because in her personal life, she was pretty pissed at me.

It was kind of easy for us to get upset with each other.

You know, life imitated are quite a few times throughout the years films.

You know, this funny thing happened

because they also did scary movie throughout this whole time.

So, whenever I'm recognized on the street, I'm often recognized as doofy.

Did you also doofy reporting?

Which I would like to say I'm not doofy.

I'm doofy.

And I told that to Bob when we were doing for us,

like, Bob, you know that they call me doofy all the time.

Thank you very much.

What's your favorite scary movie? My life.

One of the best surprises of screen three was Patrick Dempsey

as the police detective.

Working with Patrick Dempsey was awesome.

We became great friends.

It's like we were comrades in the movie

and we hung out when we were weren't shooting.

Patrick Kane was hired like the day before he

started to shoot without having read a full script.

And somehow he really found all the nuances of that character

and played him in such a compelling, sympathetic,

yet creepy way that he never managed to make himself not a suspect at the same time.

He always seemed to be a potential romantic lead.

Sydney is the anchor of everything.

So everything comes back to her character for me.

That, to me, was one of the most fun things to

write, especially since as a, you know, the copies

and authority figure you should be able to trust him, but she, you know, pushed pull.

Boyfriend in the second movie.

She should have trusted him.

Patrick Dempsey was a very good fight.

He was tough, he was into it, which was great.

It makes my job easier.

There's a version of the very end of the film,

the final scene that he's not in.

In case A, he was dead or B, they didn't want him to appear

like he was with Sydney at the end of the film.

There's a version I believe where he dies in the final fight scene with Roman.

There, you know, many different variations.

I wasn't nervous or scared of Ghostface.

I had already worked with Andy Dick,

and a number of occasions.

And I knew that I could handle anything.

Seems like so many of the actors on the show were so willing to be physical

and do so much stuff with him.

It was pretty interesting getting that shit checked out of me.

I got in a few good looks before I died.

Courtney put up a good fight.

She stopped my foot pretty good on one of the scenes.

And other places do get hit during fights.

When I came time to die, West was like,

you know, this is really scary.

West just said you've got her corner just play with it.

I believe I was chasing her up some stairs and we find this back closet.

I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe I have to

be scared and I like to run up that, you know,

run up this staircase.

It's like something I've been nightmare.

I'm freaking out, you know.

I remember only doing it a couple of times.

And I was like, that's enough.

That's enough.

And I tell you to my therapist at the time.

And she's like, you know, sometimes it's fine to be scared.

A lot of the sets are dark.

You have your nylon over your face.

You have the mask over it.

So your vision is impaired.

You do sweat profusely in this thing.

And the chin is a good sweat reservoir.

So we were in the little air stream, doing the fight in there.

And in between takes went to the little bed,

sat down and I'm like, we've got a few minutes laid back.

All the sweat poured right back on face,

and Eric King and sat right right back up.

It's like, I'm gonna be doing that again.

She really hit me.

She really, like, accidentally punched me.

That was really something I'll never forget.

My, sorry, right back.

There's a lot of discussion about how many killers there should be.

At one point, they were talking about having

Emily Mortimer's character, a secondary killer involved.

West told me that they were considering having me be the murderer,

or they did a few shots where I was standing around

to maybe suggest that there was something a little bit shady about my character.

I always want to be the killer,

because it's got a lot of pain and rage.

That's an expectation.

They're always too killer, so let's not do that.

And it also felt more focused and more personal for Sydney

to have this one person's jealousy and one person's vengeance.

She shut me out in the cold forever.

Her own son.

I probably knew halfway into my filming of the movie.

I remember Mary Ann.

It was sort of a nonchalant reveal, but I was the killer.

I think we were getting coffee at craft service

table and then she said, you know, right?

I was like, yeah, I know sure.

What? I know.

What are you talking about?

She said, you're the killer.

And I thought, oh, great.

I remember going home and calling whoever was my

significant other than time and saying, like, I'm a killer.

And they were like, great!

I don't know if it made sense looking back on it.

I think, you know, Sydney's brother could show up.

I mean, come on.

You know, it was a late thought.

I think it was like what part of the story has, like, sort of a nodule

that we could attach something to that would be interesting.

Would Kevin have done it? I don't know.

Kevin written that.

Who knows what we're about.

I haven't talked to him about it.

For the most part, it was me and the mask.

And it's cool just to put it on.

You can feel the eyes of everyone looking at you because it's hard to not look at.

I mean, it sort of draws you in.

I really see him in the screen room, looking pretty straight away.

Scott Foley brings us out of a closet.

He's totally bound up hand-in-foot.

Lance's hands were tied behind his back.

And I was behind him and I had a knife to his throat.

And Scott Foley dropped him.

Because that was the scene.

Scott just threw it with all of his might.

You could see this looking horror.

And Lance's face.

And he just went down like a fell line.

Something happened to his hand.

There was a bubble in the back of his hand

that stood above this ridiculous gold Rolex wristwatch.

It was the biggest thing I'd ever seen.

And he was so proud of it.

And he made sure his character could wear it.

And he was like, Jesus, take it easy.

You might have broken his hand.

I don't know.

It felt really bad.

And we were afraid on time.

We thought he was going to kill Scott Foley.

I got my payback for what I did to Lance during that scene.

There's a moment where Sidney's behind the bar.

She's got one of those ice picks that it retracting ice pick.

And she stabs me in the back with his ice pick.

And I had a pad, like a square thing in my back

that protect me.

And she missed a plastic thing on my back.

And these things retract.

But it impaled me.

You can see it.

And that's the take they used.

And literally, I was like, ah, I was scared to crap out of me.

But it was definitely broke skin.

I was bleeding.

And it was everything they've had.

And never sweet and beautiful, which is not a little girl.

This enforced me.

You're obsessed with her.

And you're obsessed with her daughter.

There was frequently conversation during the shoot,

particularly by the actors that it had a slight Scooby-Doo vibe,

which it did have.

It was driven from the beginning by a pair of mystery investigators

who were then joined by Park Bosey's character.

And then her joined by Sydney.

It's of the three of the hardest to obscure.

It's Scooby-Doo, best nature.

I personally love a good Scooby-Doo cartoon.

So it's not always a bad thing.

But I think the two-year gap definitely hurt

the freshness of what the screen franchise was.

I think that, you know, Blair Witch really was beginning a reality television.

It was the reality model.

The barrier between the audience and the screen was dropped.

When you looked and you held up screen three to that idea,

it felt created.

But I think, you know, screen three still

delivered and was a good capper for its journey.

There's a challenge.

But also thrilled to be involved with something so iconic

is a horror franchise.

And unusually for horror franchises,

something that kept it same poor cast together.

Even when we were shooting it, there was like a fantasy

in the air that at some point there would be another movie.

I am tickled pink to be a part of this whole franchise.

Couldn't be happier to work with West Craven of all things.

Oh, it did feel good to be.

And then I'm wrong.

But yeah, that doesn't happen to me a lot.

It is quite the honor because it's a horror movie that's going to go down in history.

This was a machine that was running on all cylinders.

The mask, the movie, the voice, the ghost face, it all worked.

Being able to work with West and being part of something

that kind of tapped into a pop culture was

really like a dream come true as a horror fan.

The screen opened the door and allowed all these other

movies, these saws and saw whatever number they're on

and allowed them to find an audience.

And I think the bar was raised because both West and

Kevin saw a way to kind of reflect back what their

creation was putting out in the world, recognizing how

what you create feeds off the people who see it who then bring

something back to you that escalates the

creative process that then goes back out to them.

These movies are really an outlet for people to screen people laugh.

The screen movies for me were a real sort of coming of age

as a film editor, getting to work with West at

such a great period in his filmmaking career.

You get to do something very few directors get a chance to do

which is do a trilogy that follows people actually as they

physically change before your eyes from childhood to adulthood.

Kevin looked, he said genius.

He had a genius story there in it.

It's like a scene, you know?

It's this little hate card.

What a stupid little thing.

No, oak tree baby.

You know? Just grow it.

The impact of these films on my career was insane.

It was fantastic.

And I hit an amount of fame that it was completely

unexpected for me and a little bit overwhelming.

But obviously the films have done great things for me.

I'm really grateful for them.

And I think they're fun.

And I think we've made audiences get scared and laugh and enjoy themselves.

We've entertained people.

And so I don't think I have any reason to feel back about that.