Wes Craven Interview, Hills Have Eyes 2

Posted By : Meh, Tuesday Feb,27
Filed Under : , Horror Sequels & Remakes,

At ComicCon we not only got to talk to Wes Craven about Hills Have Eyes 2 but we also got an early sneak peak at Hills Have Eyes 2. Essentially the film is about a group of national guards on a training exercise in the desert where they once tested nuclear bombs. Somehow they end up being attacked by the mutants, and after one of them is captured and dragged into the tunnels, the rest of the team goes down to save her.

It looks like there are going to be a lot of original gore scenes—and any horror nut can be happy to expect that. One really good clip was when a mutant grabs a guy hanging off a cliff and pulls him up by one arm only to slash it off with a machete as he watches his victim plummet to his death—FUN! Oh and the Chameleon character has a really long tongue, but I’ll leave it up to your imagination to decide what he does with it.

During breakfast that morning I was treated to another Hills clip that was not shown in the convention hall, and I’ll just say that if you’re a fan of the maggot baby birth from Exorcist the Beginning or the zombie baby from Dawn of the Dead 2004, you’re going to have a new scene to add to the gross-out list. Hills 2 features a pretty nasty mutant lady almost ripping in half as she spews forth a mutant baby and a lot of liquid from her nether regions (gag).

How did you prepare for the film to be out there in the desert, and play roles as women in the military?

Jessica: Personally I come from an athletic background so for me I was really excited about the challenge, we definitely had some training, we had a British military officer come out with us for about 2 weeks, and it’s hot there and gets up to about 120 degrees, and we’re out there learning how to march and shoot weapons.

So, Cravens… how did you guys come about writing this film together?

Jonathan: I held a gun to his head…(laughter) no, that’s not what happened.

Wes: I think the story was banging around between the studio and myself and focusing on the national guard troupes, and originally we had some people working on it who fell off the project at the last minute, and essentially the film wasn’t going to happen unless something wasn’t done and I offered to write it and I invited John to come with me, and the first draft had to be finished in a month, so we basically checked into a hotel for the month of May and came up with what we thought was a really good script. And in all honesty there were parallels between the national guards out in the desert up against terrible threats, and so there seemed to be a certain relevance to it as well.

Q. I know this is way off topic, but is there any chance for a Scream 4?

(Laugher) Security? (Laughter) Thank you, yes!

Q. I’m an aspiring movie producer, and I was wondering what was the process of producing a movie like this?

Wes Craven: Wow. Good question. A lot of drugs are involved (laughter), Well you know, well Jonathan was there a longer time that I was, it’s very hot, it gets up to about 120, there are logistic involved obviously with filming in Morocco, which is where a lot of movies are shot, like parts of Babble were shot, so being in the desert in an Islamic country, but hopefully it’s about getting something done in a 3rd world country bringing in equipment from all sorts of countries, we have people from 23 countries, but the logistics are really something.

The funniest thing I remember is that KNB (the guys that did our special effects makeup) had a lot of body parts for a certain scene in the film, and so they have a crate full of arms to deliver to the set and so they had a box labeled as contents “box of arms” so that brought the army down on us and everyone else, but I really don’t think they thought it was a real crate full of arms.

Q. I’m trying to be a screenwriter but I want to thank you for the first 10 minutes of Scream, but my question is related to Hills 2 being a remake, but what is your opinion of the common practice of remaking films, especially horror films, in Hollywood today?

Wes: Well one of the interesting things is that it’s not that recent, and I’ll give you a striking example, the Maltese Falcon, a film that has been through it’s 3rd remake, so if you look at it that way for a film to be on its third remake and turn out to be a film that people talk about for the next 50 years, so our opinion on this is never to take it like you’re knocking-off a remake, but if you can find an film with your own vision, and not just a shot-for-shot remake of the original, then why not?

In the case of Alexander Aja, he came into the film business because of Hills the Original, and Martin, you know, a guy who had done one great film Butterfly, and a lot of experience in great music videos, and you know something unusual is going to be done…and this takes any stigma off it for us, you know, is a film good or not, that’s all I really care about.

Q. When you, as actresses are looking for a new project, find out that Wes Craven and Jonathan are on it, does that allow you to approach it differently, or maybe a little more seriously?

Daniela: I think so, you know, before I did Hills 2 I did Wrong Turn 2, and so when I got the script I saw that it was a horror film, and then I saw it was Wes and Jonathan Craven and I thought, hmm, I had better take a look at this, and it was an amazing script, so I think it really depends on the material.

Jessica: Yeah absolutely, and people think horror movies can be written really fast and just thrown out there, and when I got this script and saw who was attached to it, I got really excited being a huge horror fan. While some of your movies were not really serious for a while, was there something that made you start taking things more seriously and again start making serious movies again?

Wes: I never felt that with New Nightmare I was making fun of the genre, to me it was fun to make a film about the actors who have made a big popular film and how that film had affected them. And for Scream, yeah there were laughs in it, but it was also very scary, and again I just felt like I was on that next stage of exploration, that deconstructionism if you will, take a look at films that are populated by people who see a lot of films and talk about them by names, to me it was an interesting way to get to a better reality of what horror films are, they affect people’s lives and people talk about them and in some way s I think they try to fight out themselves through scary films, and so I think that by bringing Alexandra Aja to the film that I don’t think he wanted to make it funny at all, so I think he went for the very serious and harsh reality in his last film, and I think that this film has a lot of that as well.

Q. Do you think that there are any horror films that are too PC?

Wes: So you’re saying are there too many horror films that are too watered down?

Q. Yes.

Wes: Well that depends because you can say that The Omen isn’t a true horror film because it doesn’t have blood and guts…but I tend to take it on a film-by-film basis, rather than trying to look at it like where horror is going or whether some films should be called horror.

Q. This question is for Wes.

Wes: Sorry I’m not taking any more questions, asks someone else (laughter)

Q. Which film has been the most enjoyable film you’ve ever worked on?

Wes: Ok I think that Jessica will take that one for me.

Daniela: The Hills Have Eyes 2

(Laughter)

Q. There are a lot of actresses who have gotten their start in horror films and have been given the title of scream queen, is there as stigma still attached to an actress worrying about her career being in horror?

Jessica; No I think there have been a lot of people who have contacted me a lot, and I think that there is plenty of quality horror today.

Daniela: Well I think that when I go to the theater I’ve noticed that it’s not just dramas and comedies; it’s dramas, comedies, and horror films. And horror films make so much money, and people want to go see them, so I don’t think there is anything wrong with being called a scream queen.

Q. Were there any times on the set where you were actually scared, or say a scare was set up but it was funny and everyone had to regain their composure?

Jessica: There are so many different scenes and so much going on all the time, and the conditions weren’t really helping that, and the set was so huge, and really the whole set was a little scary, but it was crazy just sitting back and seeing what we were doing.

Q. The first film is scary because it’s a family that’s being terrorized in the desert, so that really hits home, and the Hills 2 looks like it’s going to be these soldiers so we might not be as scared. So is it going to be as scary considering you can fight back?

Jessica: I agree with you in the remake that there was this vulnerable family and you just feel scared because all these bad things were happening, and in this one there are a lot of characters…

Daniela: And we’re all really young, we’re not that trained, just starting off in the National Guard, and we’re all learning.

Jessica: And Daniela’s character has a son, and she has this driving force throughout the movie because of that.

Q. Do the ladies have a favorite horror film?

Daniela: My favorite growing up was Nightmare on Elm Street and it’s crazy because it terrorized me for years, I didn’t even know that Wes created it and here I am.

Jessica: For me, I mean I loved working with Wes, but I remember growing up being totally scared by Pet Sematary.

Q. What about you Wes Craven, do you have a favorite horror film?

Wes: No, well yes and no, but I was actually raised in a family that went to church and really didn’t get to see those movies until I went to college.

Q. When you think of a father and son team there is only a narrow list of names that comes to mind, and after working together did you find a common ground where we can expect to see a couple more films over the coming years?

Jonathan: Well it certainly was a great process for me, nothing like making a horror film with the master of horror. A great experience to make a great movie that we both were excited about, and having ideas and bouncing them off someone you know so well is a great experience. As far as doing other things, I’m certainly open to that, and we actually got along great, you know, which anyone who has ever written with someone in a room it’s really hard to get along and add to that the explosive potential elements of family, but we actually got along really well.

Q. Why did you decide to use mutants as the creatures in these films?

Wes: Well it’s a term that’s thrown about, but from the very beginning with the original Hills Have Eyes it was the people who have mutated in a sense that they had been exposed to radioactivity, so that was the extent of making them mutants. Part of the process of the characters in the film is to realize that they’re being attacked by people…and then realize that they’re human beings and they’re damn smart. So these are some people who have had some mutations but they’re very smart.

In the first Hills have eyes the effects were more realistic, so why did you use the less realistic effects here?

I don’t think we set off to make anything less realistic, but in the first Hills Have Eyes we had one person that came with his own special effect, who was born with unusual bone structure because his mother had taken certain drugs during pregnancy. So in this one we had a little more leeway and were able to mutate the characters even more.

You have this great ability to take people’s sense of security away from them: in Scream she was killed at her house with her parents across the yard, and in Last House on the Left she was just down the street. Is that a goal of yours, to take away the safe places from your audience?

Wes: I guess that’s a way of looking at a concept that you’re really not safe anyplace…you could be safe at home and have some terrible disease pop up from your body, or step outside and be hit by a Mercedes—and that would be a high-class death, so it just has to do with that realization that whatever safety we have could be shattered, and I’ve always been interested in that…

You both play strong female characters in a genre that a lot of times uses women, and that’s great, and Wes in your films you usually have strong female characters, was that a conscious goal of yours?

Wes: I just think, having a daughter, she will tell me if I write a girl falling down “Dad, that’s not cool, don’t have her fall down.” I was raised by a widow…and also like a lot of horror directors it was really just a changing of the time…and when Linda Hamilton’s version of what a woman can be came along it became that women really can kick ass. So I just think it’s an interesting and more real way of looking at things that women are not weak and shouldn’t be perceived by people as weak.

In the last Hills, it was one of the first movies where people had to get up and walk out of the theater particularly what happens to women in the trailer, how did you feel when you saw that? How do you take on a role like that?

Jessica: I was actually one of the people who had to walk out for a second, but Daniela’s character is really the one who deals with that.

Daniela: I look at as being a film, as entertainment, and you know what you’re getting yourself into when you go see that, and it takes you to the next level and that’s why you go see it, so when I took this part I wanted it to get as crazy as it could get, otherwise it would be boring.

So have movies gotten gorier or has the MPAA restricted more of it?

Wes: I don’t think anyone sets off to disgust people, but the fact is that women are often victimized, and often that is in a sexual way, and it’s been going on for a long time, like in Sarajevo, or what has sprung out of Iraq, so it’s not like it doesn’t happen. So what we try to do when we deal with that subject like in Last House on the Left, the rapist, when he is done, you see it in his face that he is completely impotent and has no power over this person. So, sometimes people go off that opportunity…they turn on that anger and they use it…and it’s tricky when you use this topic not to be exploitive, but there are certain situations that are sort of classic situations, and sexual assault is one of them…

How did you think of the storyline for the Hills Have Eyes?

Wes: The original?

Q. Yes.

Wes: There was a family in 1600’s Scotland that became a feral family and went back to the wild and would attack travelers, and when they were finally captured there were brought back to court in London and were tortured for a week before they were executed. I just found the irony first of all for this wild family to turn cannibalistic and then civilized society catching them and then doing more horrible things to then, and I liked that irony. I ran across that in a book called Murder and Mayhem…

You’re awesome Do you feel that with the exposure on television with the war coverage and the coverage of crime that this forces horror films to go a step above the news?

Wes: It’s hard to be a step above what’s in the American news, but I do think that that savagery is so prevalent that we see like in the war in Iraq, that this is cause for a response in the artistic community whether you’re aware of it or not, you just kind of have to come to terms with that kid of insanity.

We’ve been at war for over 5 years, with people who are unidentifiable from innocent civilians, there are people who are willing to climb into a truck and blow themselves up and how do you deal with that, how do you wrap your head around that, and part of the spine of writing this script was lets take some National Guards kids who are just kids and they’re in this situation where you can’t even believe what these people are doing and could be done by a human being, and smart human beings. And in that sense I think a lot of films we’ve seen about torture in the last few years like Hostel, are trying to come to terms with that grappling, how will I react as a writer/direct with torture…you construct a story about how you would somehow deal with that.

Q. Did what you saw on the news and on TV influence what you were doing on the set?

Daniela: We shot this film in Morocco, and the only 3 English stations they have is an station that plays really bad older movies, and then there is CNN and BBC, and but it’s a different kind of show because they really report what is going on, it’s very different from what we see in the West. And then we would talk about what we were seeing on BBC and CNN…

Jessica: And it’s hard being somewhere else…but we never felt really at danger…but from seeing the outfits and landscape we were working in shown similarly on TV it was surreal.

Q. What would be your favorite horror film that you’ve ever seen?

Wes: I honestly don’t make those kinds of lists…but Texas Chainsaw Massacre…the Exorcist. The fact is there are probably a half dozen or a dozen horror films that I think are classics…all the way back to Frankenstein.

Some of the other things you’re involved with, there is talk about you working on something for Vegas?

Wes: We’re having dinner tonight with John Carlin??? And his wife tonight, and he approached me and I wrote a script called Magic Macabre, a story of a magician of sorts who sold his soul to the devil and has a magic act in Vegas…and after I wrote it and went to Vegas and had a look at some of the stuff they’re doing…some of the shows are astonishing, so this is something that might happen, it might not happen…so we’ll see what happens.

I regret not seeing episodes of Project Greenlight, and Feast was really good, and I was wondering if you were thinking of doing something like that again?

Wes: Yeah sure, it was a lot of fun…it was a lot of work, there were like 500 final scripts, and we had to read through close to 100…but it was fascinating. But I’ll tell you if you’re interested in directing…because we were looking at 100 of the would-be horror directors, don’t copy other people, because literally 90% of them you could say this if from this film and that is from that film, but John’s stuff you could never say that.

Q. I was wondering if there will be any more sequels, and how do you keep things fresh for your audience.

Wes. Well you know, I don’t think that sequels are at lower standards, it’s interesting to have people in the desert, and you think what kind of story can you tell in that environment…and in some ways, the fact that it’s a sequel helps it to get made…but I found that making sequels to my old films is a fun way to make films with young directors and keep it all in motion. This particular cycle of horror is not going to last forever, so we just try to make films and keep them interesting.

Q. Ladies, how much input did you have with developing your characters in bringing them to the screen?

Jessica: We all sat down and had a talk and went through back-story…and they helped us develop a sense of the characters.

Daniela: And they let us try a take, if we wanted to try something, and see if it works (laughter).

Q. There is a scene in Nightmare on Elm Street where Nancy takes off her shirt and is bareback for a moment, and I always refer to that scene as the awakening of my sexual being because it’s the first time I remember being aroused.

(Big laugh)

…And so, do you get that a lot?

Wes: No, that’s the first time. That’s an interesting moment because as a director sometimes you can ask someone to take their shirt off and sometimes they’ll do it, and with Heather, she was young, and when it came time to do that, she turned away from the camera and it was like, that’s sexy, and she wasn’t facing the camera, but it worked.

Q. Yeah, so thank you.

Wes: Next time I see Heather I’ll let her know.

Q. The way films are made sequentially; there is a lot that goes into making the characters come out emotionally, where do you go to help draw out that terror environment.

Jessica: We shot the last scene the very first day of shooting, so in a way it was really good because we knew where we would finally end up being. Personally, I take like a song that really relates to me and I listen to that before a scene, or I talk to the actor I’m in the scene with and we’ll talk about it…

Daniela: It depends, sometimes I’ll take things from my life, as Daniela, and sometime it just happens naturally.

Thanks to Wes Craven and the gang for taking the time to answer some questions. If you have not already watched the Hills Have Eyes 2 Trailer you should. Its action packed and so far it looks like we are going to have a great horror flick on our hands. Below is all the latest clips off TerrorFeed for Hills 2!

Martin Weisz Interview, Hills Have Eyes 2

Jessica Stroup Interview, Hills Have Eyes 2

Jacob Vargas Interview, Hills Have Eye 2

Wes Craven Video Interview, Hills Have Eyes 2

Hills Have eyes 2: Base Camp

Hills Have Eyes 2: Lives at Stake

Hills Have Eyes 2: Death Is Not Better

Hills Have Eyes 2: God Not Here

Hills Have Eyes 2: Make The Jump

Hills Have Eyes 2: The Cave

Hills Have Eyes 2 TV Spot: Drag

Hills Have Eyes 2 TV Spot: Surface

Hills Have Eyes 2 US Trailer

Hills Have Eye 2 Teaser Trailer

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