Godfather of horror speaks to Cal State Long Beach students

Filmmaker • Wes Craven, shown here on the set of "Scream 2," spoke at Cal State Long Beach during the recent Widescreen Film Festival, which featured 10 of his highly acclaimed horror films. Dimension Films

 

By Michelle Zenarosa

Online Forty-Niner
Contributing Writer

As a young Christian boy, Wes Craven prayed before going to sleep every night, asking God to let him get married and have sex before the world blew up.

"That's what my films are about — scary things going on in the world," Craven said, addressing the question of what his greatest fear was when he spoke to film buffs, fans and students at the recent Widescreen Film Festival, which included 10 films he believes to be the most influential to his work.

"The world is getting itself in a lot of trouble and it's been that way for a while."

One of the "scary things" he was referencing was the current war in Iraq.

"Nothing is as horrendous as warfare and human life being spent in the struggle of power," Craven said.

Freddy Kreuger and politics are an unlikely mix, but to Craven, horror films reflect reality.

"I always get the question, 'Where do you get these ideas?'" Craven said. "I say, 'Read the front page of the New York Times.' It's easy today; you see people chopping off other people's heads."

But politics was not the only thing Craven talked about. Being raised in a strict Christian household, he was not allowed to see any films except Disney's until he was 24-years-old.

Because of that he received his artistic input from reading voraciously. When he finally began to watch non-Disney films, he was amazed at the complexity of them.

Craven credits his start in filmmaking to his former job as a teacher when a few students asked him to be a facilitator for their film club. Although he knew nothing about making films, he agreed. Finally, one day he quit teaching completely and decided to make movies.

"Everyone thought I was nuts," Craven said. "I thought I was nuts."

After making a couple films and not making any money, he was deep in debt. He borrowed $5,000 from Sean S. Cunning-ham, creator of "Friday the 13th," to make "Nightmare on Elm Street" and hasn't been broke since.

"I think a really interesting thing happened," Craven said. "I thought nobody is going to see this and I'm just going to write the most harem-scarem thing. I never knew the power it would have over the audience."

Today, after seven sequels, "Freddy," inspired by Greek mythology and Orpheus descending into hell, is one of the most well-known horror figures in the world.

"I had no intention of making scary movies," Craven said. "I didn't want to make movies that upset people very much. The only thing I understood was how to construct a good story."

Craven has created a wealth of scary films and writes them all with the premise that humans have primal fears and basic struggles. He writes stories in which the characters are stripped of everything — phones, tires, even clothes.

"A lot of philosophers say we find out we are all alone in these fragile bodies," Craven said. "The films are all about how you do as an individual [coping] with things you rely on being taken away from you. For me, whatever life throws at me I want to survive it and overcome it."