Wes Craven

Wes Craven Trivia

He is an avid birdwatcher.
He nearly turned down the option to direct the hit Scream (1996/I) because the first scene with 'Drew Barrymore (I)' reminded him too vividly the climax sequence of The Last House on the Left (1972), his first film.
"The" Elm Street is located in Potsdam, NY (a small town just south of the Canadian border). Craven was a Humanities Professor at Clarkson College, also in Potsdam.
Lives in Los Angeles. Has a production company with his professional partner 'Marianne Maddalena', called Craven/Maddalena Films.
Rumoured to have named his onscreen horror creation Freddy Kruger for a boy who used to bully him in high school.

Wes was born in Cleveland in 1939, and raised in a Baptist family. After an unhappy childhood he left Cleveland to study for a degree in English Literature, at Wheaton College, Illinois. But after illness, he left the school for one year before returning to study psychology. In 1963 he took a degree in writing and psychology and in 1964 he took a Masters from J. Hopkins University. While he was a humanities college teacher, Wes married Bonnie Broecker, mother of both his children, Jonathan and Jessica. But after few years, they separated and the children stayed with Bonnie. Wes left his job as a teacher and after employment as taxi driver he became a sound editor for a post-production company in New York. And after the co-direction of Together (1971) with 'Sean S. Cunningham', Wes made the horror movie, The Last House on the Left (1972). The movie, released in August 1972, was a big success as was his second movie, The Hills Have Eyes (1977), winning the critic's prize at the Sitges Film Festival. Wes has gone onto win many more awards, including one for the best movie at the Avoriaz Film Festival for Nightmare On Elm Street, A (1984). In 1999 he directed Music of the Heart (1999), a change of direction from the horror genre for which he is known.

"I like to address the fears of my culture. I believe it's good to face the enemy, for the enemy is fear."
On horror movies: "It's like boot camp for the psyche. In real life, human beings are packaged in the flimsiest of packages, threatened by real and sometimes horrifying dangers, events like Columbine. But the narrative form puts these fears into a manageable series of events. It gives us a way of thinking rationally about our fears."
"In retrospect, it's usually pretty easy to look at horror movies and see the influences of the time. And I think right now, with the post-9-11 world and Iraq, creative people are almost being goaded to look at things in the strongest way possible. If you look at the Academy Awards [movies], those are films about real issues. I think everybody is saying, 'We have to talk about the nitty-gritty stuff here.' It's not the time for confections." [March 2006]
"I believe the cinema is one of our principal forms of art. It is an incredibly powerful way to tell uplifitng stories that can move people to cry with joy and inspire them to reach for the stars."
"If we don't get out of Iraq soon, it'll be like A Nightmare on Elm Street" (April 2007)