Director and writer WES CRAVEN, 76, died August 30, 2015 of brain cancer at home in Los Angeles.
Wes made his mark on Hollywood in 1972 with his first feature film, The Last House On The Left. The horror classic “Scream” (1996) and its many sequels gave Craven the opportunity to turn the tables on his own genre – an activity he reveled in.
Actress Rose McGowan, who was also featured in the original “Scream“, said on Twitter: “Shedding tears now”.
“Today the world lost a great man, my friend and mentor, Wes Craven”.
Craven published his first novel, The Fountain Society, in 1999 and went on to direct 2005 psychological thriller Red Eye, before producing remakes of The Hills Have Eyes (in 2006) and The Last House on the Left (2009).
“Horror films don’t create fear”, Craven had said.
“We had a very hard time getting an audience into a theater on my name”, he said in an October interview.
In the words of the man himself: “I tried to make movies where I can honestly say I haven’t seen that before and to follow my deepest intuitions and in some cases literally my dreams”.
He is survived by Labunka, his sister Carol, son Jonathan, daughter Jessica, grandchildren Miles, Max and Myra-Jean, and stepdaughter Nina.
“Wes was a friend to PETA and to animals, and we will miss him dearly”. Wes Craven served as executive producer for MTV’s Scream, based on the films.
Craven, born in 1939 in Cleveland and raised in a strict Baptist household, graduated with a masters degree in philosophy and writing from Johns Hopkins University.
“He was a consummate filmmaker and his body of work will live on forever”, said Weinstein Co co-chairman Bob Weinstein, whose Dimension Films produced Scream.
Scream, a meta-slasher that played with common tropes of the slasher films so popular in the 80s, brought to life a genre that was suffering from direct-to-video titles and an over-saturation of franchise sequels.
Therefore, it’s the ideal time to take a look back at an extended Wes Craven interview from Fangoria TV’s series Screamography, which chronicled the rise of some of the most iconic filmmakers in the horror genre from their early upbringing through their most well-known achievements in cinema.