#Scream4: A Really Depressing Editorial
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @BigDPitchas
I love Scream. It’s important to establish that first.
The first Scream, written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Wes Craven in 1996, is a pretty perfect movie. I love the sharpness and simplicity of the story. How it simultaneously skewers and celebrates the teen slasher genre. How there’s countless clues throughout the movie forecasting the identity of the killer, but they fly right over your head until you rewatch it, and every time you do, you pick up something else. The score, by Marco Beltrami, is phenomenal. It’s a masterpiece that forced a dormant genre to step up its game.
One of the things I’ll always remember is how scary it was the first time I saw it. Because I didn’t generally get scared by horror movies involving monsters and supernatural killers. But I knew that everything that happens in Scream could happen in real life. At any moment, someone could put on a mask, come to your house, and gut you with a knife. There’s something beautiful about that.
Scream 2, also written by Williamson, directed by Craven, and scored by Beltrami, came out in 1997. I think it’s just as good as the first. It raises the stakes, kills off at least one character we weren’t willing to lose, and again, is littered with clues that reward the discerning viewer. It’s wise to not expect rushed sequels to live up to the greatness of the original, but Scream 2 defied all reasonable expectations.
I should mention that the cast in Scream 2 was just as brilliant as in Scream, if not better. Liev Schrieber is unreal as Cotton Weary. He bounces between funny and terrifying so imperceptibly, you are just floored every time he’s onscreen. Courteney Cox has an amazing arc from cold bitch to human being. And David Arquette steps up as a loveable hero who may be unfathomably out of his league, but really has no choice in the matter. Wes Craven proves he’s still the master with some of the most fucking incredible tense sequences in horror history, like when the killer hunts Gale through the labyrinthine college studio, or his attack on the police car escorting Sidney and Hallie off campus, the ensuing carnage, and the subsequent escape from the wreckage. I remember tearing my Gummi Bears box to bits watching this in the movie theatre.
And then there’s Scream 3. It came out in 2000. Craven directed and Beltrami scored, but Williamson didn’t write. I’ve heard that because he was busy working on a TV show, Williamson was unable to do the screenplay for Scream 3 (there may have been more to it than that, but that’s all we know), so he instead provided a treatment or scriptment that was the basis for a screenplay by Ehren Kruger. If you ever watch the Scream Trilogy back to back to back (which I often do), the decline between Scream 2 and Scream 3 is so steep, it’s palpable. The dialogue is bland. The set pieces are forgettable. The actors are there, but the characters aren’t (Parker Posey kinda shines, primarily because she improvised a lot of her own stuff). The killer has impossible powers and there’s no clues to figure out who it is. With Scream 3, this franchise became the lame shit that Scream had been mocking in the first place. The script isn’t the only problem; the movie seems plagued by a general malaise in all directions. Though I think it all still comes down to that damn Kruger screenplay, because I suspect everyone involved would’ve stepped their game up if they had material that inspired them. It’s the material on the page that ignites the passion inside a cast and crew, and they’ll be the first to tell you that. But like, at one point, Jay and Silent Bob make a cameo. As Jay and Silent Bob. How the fuck is that even possible? There was a Clerks VHS at Stu’s house in the first Scream. It doesn’t make sense, but the movie was a wash anyway, so I can see why they just left it in. Scream 3 ruined what could’ve been a perfect horror trilogy.
Ten years have passed. In that time, I’ve occasionally found myself trying to get Kevin Williamson’s attention on Twitter, begging him to show me the treatment he wrote for Scream 3. Since that day in 2000, I’ve always wondered what Williamson would’ve done with Scream 3, and I figured seeing his treatment would help me imagine the Scream 3 that should’ve been. But in the past couple years, the Scream landscape has changed forever.
Kevin Williamson wrote the screenplay for Scream 4. It is intended to be the beginning of a sequel trilogy. Wes Craven said he would only direct it if the script was good enough, and apparently, it was. The film is shooting as we speak. We should have every reason to believe it’s going to finally correct the errors of Scream 3.
But there’s a problem. Of course there’s a problem.
First, there was all the cast reshuffling. Lake Bell was signed on, then left due to scheduling issues. Lauren Graham signed on, then also left due to scheduling issues. Zap2It reported that she really left because she had problems with a script rewrite that significantly reduced her part. Now Hayden Panatierre is supposedly very upset at her formerly sharp role being drastically dumbed down. Is it typical for this many sweeping changes to be happening as production is getting under way? Oh yeah, and The Weinstein Company has replaced Kevin Williamson with Ehren Kruger.
That’s right. Kevin Williamson, the man who created Scream, wrote the only two good installments, and wrote the script that convinced Wes Craven to sign on for Scream 4, has been replaced with Ehren Kruger, the man who wrote the piece of shit Scream 3 and has since collaborated on such other garbage as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. He’s apparently rewriting the movie now, and rumors abound that Williamson wants nothing more to do with the franchise. When Zap2It called out Craven for allowing his movie to be butchered, he tweeted in response, “I have not been given control of the script.” He could’ve said any number of reassuring things, but instead, he chose those telling, horrifying words.
I don’t know what to think about this. Why is this happening? All I know is that nobody has the entire story, so all we can do is speculate. I pray that this is all just a big joke, part of some new hypermeta advertising for the movie. Even the names of the actors involved (Bell, Graham) are an homage to Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone– the killer’s weapon of choice. None of it’s real. Like Billy Loomis said, it’s all just one big movie.
But the more likely situation is just that the one chance this franchise had at redemption is now gone forever. I expect Scream 4 to continue on this troubled road and come out on 4.15.11 and be horrible and make me relive the crushing disappointment I felt ten years ago. This movie was important to me. I was looking forward to it more than any other movie. More than Nolan’s next Batman movie, I was looking forward to reliving the Woodsboro magic in Scream 4. I knew Williamson would write a really clever script, and everyone else involved would come together and make it into something really special.
I actually have a Scream 4 teaser poster autographed by Wes Craven hanging next to me as I write this. I won it from Craven on Twitter by correctly answering a trivia question in like 33 seconds. The Weinstein Company, in the depths of their infinite artistic wisdom, will determine how I feel every time I look at that poster for the rest of my life.
And right now, Weinsteins– I feel lousy.