Dress 4 Breasts 2015

“I Don’t Feel Like I Gave Birth to Jesus”: Wes Craven on A Nightmare on Elm Street

by Jim Hemphill 

in Directors,Interviews on Aug 31, 2015

Wes Craven, one of the greatest horror directors of all time, a man who directed classics in almost every decade of his professional life,passed away yesterday, August 30, of brain cancer in Los Angeles. Last October, Craven spoke toFilmmaker‘s Jim Hemphill about perhaps his most celebrated creation, A Nightmare on Elm Street. As a way of remembering Craven, we are reposting it today.

On November 9, 1984, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Streetopened in American theaters and changed the movie industry forever. Serving as a bridge between the primal ferocity of Craven’s earlier work (Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes) and the visually expressive professionalism of his later films (The Serpent and the Rainbow, The People Under the Stairs, Red Eye), Elm Street also introduced one of the most iconic horror movie villains of all time and put New Line Cinema on the map. A make-or-break production for New Line and its founder, Bob Shaye, A Nightmare on Elm Street established a new franchise for the company and enabled an expansion that would lead to decades of important films – it’s entirely possible that without Craven’s classic there would be no Boogie Nights, no My Own Private Idaho, and of course no Lord of the Rings trilogy. The film also breathed new life into the stagnant teen horror genre, fusing the art house surrealism of Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolfand Bunuel’s dream films with the conventions of 80s body count movies to set the standard for years to come – until Craven himself reinvented the genre with Scream. On the eve of the picture’s 30th anniversary, Craven reflects on the creation of a horror masterpiece. MORE...

10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Roger Corman

by Scott Macaulay 

in Directing,Filmmaking,Production on Aug 10, 2015

The legendary Roger Corman is America’s proto-independent filmmaker, having produced literally hundreds of films and directed dozens more, most of them genre films made under a “fast, cheap and profitable” model that still offers guidance for new filmmakers everywhere. And while Corman is best known for films made during an earlier independent era, one in which regional distribution circuits and drive-ins offered screens for movies made far away from Hollywood, Corman is still innovating — and monetizing. Corman’s Drive In is his VOD YouTube channel, where, for $3.99 a month, you can dip into his vast library and sample films like Rock and Roll High School, Swamp Woman and Strip Teaser.

Aside from the still prolific nature of his filmmaking — hisSharktopus vs. Werewolf premiered last month on the SyFy Channel — Corman is known for discovering talent. Early directors of Corman pictures included Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard and Francis Ford Coppola, all of whom took something away from the Corman School of Cinema.

On August, 22, Corman will be appearing at the Anthology Film Archives in New York to screen his 1959 horror comedy, A Bucket of Blood. In the below interview, conducted in 2013 but appearing here for the first time, Corman distills his various experiences and insights into ten lessons for producers and directors making films of all kinds. MORE...