157 Quotes by Wes Craven

It's obviously not buckets of blood; it's a psychological thriller, ... For me, it was kind of an announcement that I can step out of the horror context and hold my own with the best of them.

Everyone from Tom Cruise to Jude Law was talked about for this role - and not everyone was available, and some we couldn't afford.

Everybody's making horror films and, to me, not especially well. I don't know if it's (due to) the corporations taking over studios or what it is. But it really calls for some young filmmakers to come in and just do something from their hearts.

The audience that would see that movie, by and large, doesn't go to see horror films, ... It was a great pleasure to make, and to see Meryl (Streep) nominated (for a best actress Oscar) for it. But most of the people I run into who loved it are surprised that I made it. When you have a name that means scares, you have to live with that.

After that, everybody-assumed I must be a terrifying person who lived in a cave. We both tried to make other kinds of films, but we couldn't get any money. They were offering us money to make scary movies, so I went off and made The Hills Have Eyes , and Sean went off and did Friday the 13th ,

I just feel it takes just one picture where it becomes common knowledge that Craven can do other things,

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.

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.

I realized that I really, almost by accident, had fallen into a labyrinthine, very powerful paradigm for dealing with these things through genre films. And once I realized that and realized the power of it, and the fact that because horror films aren't, in general, studio products - studios back them sometimes, but they don't try to meddle too much, because they kind of don't want to sully their skirts - you have a lot of freedom.