Wes Craven Quotes & Sayings

The thing of sitting in an audience and going into a dream-like state with several hundred other people that are sharing exactly what you're feeling is a profound event. — Wes Craven

My mother never saw any of my films until she was in her late 80s, and that was 'Music of the Heart' with Meryl Streep. — Wes Craven

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

I love the fact that a lot of my audience is people from the inner city. African-Americans love my films. — Wes Craven

I can see that I give my audience something. I can see it in their eyes, and they say 'Thank you' a lot. You realize you are doing something that means something to people. — Wes Craven

The first monster you have to scare the audience with is yourself. — Wes Craven

I didn't even know what a horror film was. I kind of made it up as I went along. — Wes Craven

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

[I was] feeling like I'd done something horrible, "I'm a despicable person and I'm perverse," and all these things, to a sense of the power and the necessity, in a sense, of horror films and dealing with dark material. — Wes Craven

I couldn't find an actor to play Freddy Krueger with the sense of ferocity I was seeking. Everyone was too quiet, too compassionate towards children. Then Robert Englund auditioned. — Wes Craven

I had a musician friend once tell me that it's not in the orchestra that you get the true test of the musicians but in the little trios and quintets where you really get to see if they've got the stuff. And the composer. — Wes Craven

In general, I don't even have the luxury of rehearsal time on most films that I make. It is just a scene-by-scene full cast read through. It's very much just doing the rehearsal sometimes the day before, at the end of the day, but just on the spot as the scene unfolds. — Wes Craven

I wasn't allowed to see movies when I was a child. It was against the religion I was raised in, Fundamentalist Baptist. I didn't go into a commercial movie house until I was a senior in college, and that was on the sly. It wasn't until I was in graduate school that I immersed myself in films. Then, I went to see all the films by Bergman, Fellini, etc. — Wes Craven

I think that there has been a slow recognition that there's a mind at work here, and there's a skill and some bit of artistry, and that I could probably do other things. Otherwise, I don't know that I would've been given the opportunity to do Paris, Je T'Aime. — Wes Craven

A businessman can be as military as any politician. — Wes Craven

I make something I can look at and say, "That's a good piece of work, and there's some terrific directing and acting in it, and you should be proud of it." — Wes Craven

I think the experience of going to a theater and seeing a movie with a lot of people is still part of the transformational power of the film, and it's equivalent to the old shaman telling a story by the campfire to a bunch of people. — Wes Craven

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

In the '60s, I was teaching humanities at a college in upstate New York and trying to publish a novel I'd written in graduate school. But nothing was happening. So I moved to New York City and got a job as a messenger at a place that made movies. — Wes Craven

I never went to film school, so I never had the chance to be rejected. — Wes Craven

I think the important thing about staying creative and staying sharp and original is not to look back too much. — Wes Craven

Something like Nightmare On Elm Street, to me, was kind of an examination of levels of consciousness and the pain of facing the truth, and how easy it is to fall asleep, or want to fall asleep. — Wes Craven

Within the structure of 'Scream 4,' there is the film within a film, but that's been part of the 'Scream' franchise since 'Scream 2,' when you had the 'Stab' franchise. — Wes Craven

People who are kind of at the cutting edge of life and survival, and being near the nitty-gritty, like my films, and I like that. — Wes Craven

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

As long as you keep the audience on the edge of their seats, either scare them or keep them guessing, you can put anything in there that you want. — Wes Craven

Stories and narratives are one of the most powerful things in humanity. They're devices for dealing with the chaotic danger of existence. — Wes Craven

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

I was paralyzed from the chest down when I was 19, so I kind of put my head together about dying, and I think I've come to terms with it. — Wes Craven

I believe the cinema is one of our principal forms of art. It is an incredibly powerful way to tell uplifting stories that can move people to cry with joy and inspire them to reach for the stars. — Wes Craven

If you continue in this vein, I'll amputate your thumbs and big toes so that you'll reel through the rest of your life like a drunken orangutan. — Wes Craven

I came from a very strict background. — Wes Craven

A collection of masks, depicting historical figures in life and what I like to call the eternal repose. — Wes Craven

All of us have our individual curses, something that we are uncomfortable with and something that we have to deal with, like me making horror films, perhaps. — Wes Craven

It's quite rare that you make something and think that you did something that no-one else had done. — Wes Craven

I have felt over the years a definite progression or arc from feeling guilty about what I had done with the first one [film], because certainly there was all that fundamentalist guilt that came pouring back in. — Wes Craven

I don't want to rescind American directors but I think that European directors in general, because of the size of the nations in Europe are exposed to all different cultures, they can easily travel from one distinct culture to another in a matter of hours - you can drive for two weeks across the United States and you're in the same basic culture - so there is a certain breadth of understanding and sophistication that they bring to it and frankly, in some cases they are less expensive than American directors. — Wes Craven

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

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

I'm the kind of director, at any given moment, an idea occurs to me, I'll just do it. — Wes Craven

The experience of going to a theater and seeing a movie with a lot of people is still part of the transformational power of the film, and it's equivalent to the old shaman telling a story by the campfire to a bunch of people. That is a remarkable thing, if you scream and everyone else in the audience screams, you realize that your fears are not just within yourself, they're in other people as well, and that's strangely releasing. — Wes Craven

Many, many things are dangerous in our world, commercials and TV are dangerous, and so is the world of sitcoms. But nobody does anything about them because they're turning in alot of money. — Wes Craven

I have a lot of fans who are people of color. I think, if nothing else, I kind of understand that sense of being on the outside looking in, culturally. — Wes Craven

If you think it, the camera will see it. — Wes Craven

In 'Scream,' there is very real drama that would be in almost any drama. — Wes Craven

Horror films don't create fear. They release it. — Wes Craven

I've experienced a great deal of, you know, ostracism from the making of films. — Wes Craven

When I was a kid, I was taken to something called Telenews in Cleveland by my best friend's father. My own father was gone by the time I was 5, I think, but this man would take us to Telenews at the end of World War II, and we'd watch all these newsreels. I'd seen real stuff. That kind of stuck in my mind. — Wes Craven

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

If I'm going to be a caged bird, I'll sing the best song I can. — Wes Craven

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

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

I did have the resource of having taught Greek mythology and the history of Western civilization, and you can go back into the plays of Aeschylus and follow what happens when people seek revenge, and there are people plucking their eyes out. And Greek mythology is filled with all kinds of monsters and whatnot. — Wes Craven

All I'm doing is rearranging the curtains in the insane asylum. — Wes Craven

When you have a name that means scares, you have to live with that. — Wes Craven

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

I went to a Christian college. You would be expelled if you were caught in a movie theater. It was ridiculous. — Wes Craven

My brother and I both used to worry about dying at 40 because our father died at 40. That probably wasn't terribly rational, since my father led a rather unhealthy lifestyle, shall we say. — Wes Craven

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

My mother wouldn't even let me read DC Comics. — Wes Craven

I come from a blue-collar family, and I'm just glad for the work. — Wes Craven

The first monster that an audience has to be scared of is the filmmaker. They have to feel in the presence of someone not confined by the normal rules of propriety and decency. — Wes Craven

Some people ask why people would go into a dark room to be scared. I say they are already scared, and they need to have that fear manipulated and massaged. I think of horror movies as the disturbed dreams of a society. — Wes Craven

A friend introduced me to Bob Shaye. He was one of the most remarkable men I've ever met. He was a Fulbright scholar, an excellent chef, and very knowledgeable about the arts. — Wes Craven

Everybody is afraid of the unknown. Everybody is afraid of the people that they've done terrible things to! — Wes Craven

Last House offended a lot of people. The results in the theaters, even in Boston, reminded me a bit of things from when I was studying theater of the absurd, and the rise and the appearance of Ionesco plays, and things like that. Thinking, "My God, people actually are getting into fistfights. People are having heart attacks. People are actually trying to get into the projection booth to destroy the print." — Wes Craven

Whenever I go to have a meeting at Universal, the security guard just leaps to his feet and comes over, bumps my hand, and says, 'Thank you! Thank you - I love your films!' — Wes Craven

There was a generation of kids who were just kind of emulating distant heroes and wearing peace symbols, and parents who were thinking of themselves as liberal and removed from barbarity, but it also was the era of Vietnam. I very much was influenced - and I think the whole country was kind of in a state of shock - for the first time seeing the horror and cruelty of war. — Wes Craven

Dad, girls don't fall down every time they run. — Wes Craven

There's more emphasis on art and culture in Europe than there is in the United States and I think that a lot of American directors and writers are just trying to copy other American horror films, they don't pick up much in the way that European filmmakers do. — Wes Craven

I had been a college teacher. I had taught Greek mythology. — Wes Craven

I came to terms with living mostly in a world of horror pictures or genre pictures. I have had a few chances to get outside and do something different, like Paris, Je T'Aime or Music Of The Heart, but mostly it's been my lot. And to have created, with a few shocking films, an awareness or a perception of me as somebody dangerous and scary - that can be sold, but trying to sell me for some other kind of picture, like Music Of The Heart, was very difficult. — Wes Craven

You can look at what's happened to America in the last years and say a lot of people were asleep. A lot of people were not staying awake and watching what was going on and facing the pain of that and dealing with it.I don't care if the rest of the audience doesn't think along those lines at all, because the audience is a huge spectrum of people, from people who are introspective to people who just want to be scared and have fun, and all the points in between. — Wes Craven

I was anathema in polite society after I made 'Last House.' People literally would grab their children and run from the room. — Wes Craven

I'm writing a film called 'Bug.' It's an original script, and it's not about killer insects. It's a thriller set in a high school. The bug of the title refers to a surveillance device. — Wes Craven

A lot of life is dealing with your curse, dealing with the cards you were given that aren't so nice. Does it make you into a monster, or can you temper it in some way, or accept it and go in some other direction? — Wes Craven

But I made him the Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security because that added an element of political espionage. — Wes Craven

I learned to take the first job that you have in the business that you want to get into. It doesn't matter what that job is, you get your foot in the door. — Wes Craven

I wrote, I think, half a dozen films that were completely out of genre. Comedies, love stories, even one serious film about Vietnam, and we couldn't get backing for any of it. And we both sort of drifted from making, at that time, serious money on Last House to going through it all in the course of almost three years and only getting offers to do something scary again. — Wes Craven

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

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

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

I realized that I really, almost by accident, had fallen into a labyrinthine, very powerful paradigm for dealing with these things through genre films. And once I realized that and realized the power of it, and the fact that because horror films aren't, in general, studio products - studios back them sometimes, but they don't try to meddle too much, because they kind of don't want to sully their skirts - you have a lot of freedom. — Wes Craven

I'm having a reputation of being somebody who will not be crazy. Not descend to doing drugs and spending an enormous amount of money, and instead delivering a product to people. Something they can sell and recoup their money and make a profit. — Wes Craven

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

I think if anybody had a roll of dice with a lot of money at stake, they would not want Wes Craven and a romantic comedy. — Wes Craven

Everybody's making horror films and, to me, not especially well. — Wes Craven

I didn't see many films until I was in college teaching. — Wes Craven

If you're in a theater, people are texting, all around you. You have the little glowing screens everywhere. Think of how annoying that can be. — Wes Craven