Wes Craven Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. How can you have 'Scream' without Ghostface? It's like 'Friday the 13th' without Jason.

Wes Craven

#6. 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

#7. I come from a blue-collar family, and I'm just glad for the work.

Wes Craven

#8. 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

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

Wes Craven

#10. 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

#11. But I made him the Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security because that added an element of political espionage.

Wes Craven

#12. 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

#13. If I'm going to be a caged bird, I'll sing the best song I can.

Wes Craven

#14. Everybody is afraid of the unknown. Everybody is afraid of the people that they've done terrible things to!

Wes Craven

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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

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

Wes Craven

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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

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

Wes Craven

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. Everybody's making horror films and, to me, not especially well.

Wes Craven

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

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

Wes Craven

#35. In 'Scream,' there is very real drama that would be in almost any drama.

Wes Craven

#36. 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

#37. I've experienced a great deal of, you know, ostracism from the making of films.

Wes Craven

#38. A businessman can be as military as any politician.

Wes Craven

#39. 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

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

Wes Craven

#41. My mother wouldn't even let me read DC Comics.

Wes Craven

#42. 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

#43. All I'm doing is rearranging the curtains in the insane asylum.

Wes Craven

#44. 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

#45. I came from a very strict background.

Wes Craven

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. I had been a college teacher. I had taught Greek mythology.

Wes Craven

#49. When you have a name that means scares, you have to live with that.

Wes Craven

#50. 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

#51. 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

#52. 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

#53. 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

#54. I didn't see many films until I was in college teaching.

Wes Craven

#55. 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

#56. Dad, girls don't fall down every time they run.

Wes Craven

#57. 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

#58. It's quite rare that you make something and think that you did something that no-one else had done.

Wes Craven

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

Wes Craven

#60. 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

#61. 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

#62. I think the important thing about staying creative and staying sharp and original is not to look back too much.

Wes Craven

#63. 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

#64. 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

#65. The first monster you have to scare the audience with is yourself.

Wes Craven

#66. 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

#67. I never went to film school, so I never had the chance to be rejected.

Wes Craven

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. 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

#71. 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

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

Wes Craven

#73. Horror films don't create fear. They release it.

Wes Craven

#74. 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

#75. 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

#76. If you think it, the camera will see it.

Wes Craven

#77. [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

#78. 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