I came from a very strict background.
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.
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!'
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.
I've experienced a great deal of, you know, ostracism from the making of films.
How can you have 'Scream' without Ghostface? It's like 'Friday the 13th' without Jason.
I never went to film school, so I never had the chance to be rejected.
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.
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.
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.
Everybody's making horror films and, to me, not especially well.
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.
In 'Scream,' there is very real drama that would be in almost any drama.
I had been a college teacher. I had taught Greek mythology.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I didn't even know what a horror film was. I kind of made it up as I went along.
