WES CRAVEN: INTERVIEWS / EDITOR: SHANNON BLAKE SKELTON / PUBLISHER: UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
When you mention the late Wes Craven to anyone in conversation, they will immediately connect him to the horror genre, and rightly so. Craven built his career creating independent genre movies that pushed some limits and made film lovers take note, even if they felt uncomfortable. However, Craven was always seemingly disappointed that the opportunities provided to him in horror were never really afforded him elsewhere as he tried to break away from being typecast as the man that created Freddy Krueger.
In this book, editor Shannon Blake Skelton has collated 29 interviews with the director which took place between 1980-2015, just before he passed away from brain cancer. The interviews are taken from various magazines and websites and a large percentage are from American horror staple Fangoria (although it’s nice to see there is even an inclusion from Starburst as well) but cover his career extensively.
Obviously there are some overlaps here and there, but the repetition is kept to a minimum as the years roll over to follow Craven throughout his career. Every main feature film he released is covered in some format, from Last House on the Left to Swamp Thing, from Nightmare on Elm Street to Music of the Heart, in addition to some projects that he was connected to but never got across the line.
Each interview is an interesting snapshot of where both Craven and cinema were at that point, even though it only covers 40 years or so. It is repeatedly mentioned how Craven seems so far separated from the persona you’d expect from the man who gave us the bastard son of a thousand maniacs and Ghostface. Indeed, his influences show that he was well educated in cinema and there are also additional cameos within some interviews from those he worked with, including Meryl Streep, Bill Pullman and, of course, Robert Englund.
What could have been a dull collection of time capsule pop culture chats is instead an interesting read that gives us an insight into so much more. An essential read for genre and general cinema fans alike.
