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What if horror movies were never about the killers, but they were more about artists?
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Screen tracked how many escaped identity over 30 years of cinema.
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And we're talking about it today with our special guest, Ben Wright.
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Hey everybody, it is Aaron here from the Phantom Portals podcast, and I am joined by Ben Wright, who is a seasoned guest on the Phantom Portals podcast.
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We were saying before he is back for the sequel.
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How are you today?
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I'm good, thank you.
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Thank you for having me back again.
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I'm excited to talk about this because it is only five days at the moment of recording away from the new Scream movie being released.
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So that's why I'm yeah, excited to be talking about it.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Right.
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And thank you so much for like suggesting the topic.
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And we were saying before we recorded how I'm a little bit of a whoof when it comes to horror movies, and it's no secret to everybody that listens to the podcast that these are usually not my go-to sort of movies.
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But you reached out and and wanted to have a chat for Scream 7 that's coming out.
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And you know, we naturally just said, let's let's make a uh show of it.
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And I started to watch one, two, three.
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And yeah, so in terms of the Scream movies as well, I found that usually I would blanket and say that I'm not really a horror fan, but I've found that like 90s horror is kind of my jam and more like the later 2000s and 2010 sort of horror for me is a little bit more bleak, and that's the kind of horror that I don't really like.
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So I've found like elements within the genre that I'm comfortable with, so to speak.
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Where do you sit on the horror sort of scale, Ben, in terms of your usual viewing?
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Is it a favorite genre?
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Is it a cozy sort of watch?
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What where do you sit?
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Well, it's definitely a cozy watch because I guess I'm one of those freaks that likes to put on uh some freaky stuff and then drift off to sleep.
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In fact, I was telling some of my friends the other day that sometimes if I can't get to sleep, I will YouTube sleep music for villains because I want something a bit darker, because I don't want all this like nice airy fairy stuff.
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But yeah, where I sit on horror, I think maybe when I was growing up, there were a few people who were obsessed with the core three of Michael Myers and um Freddie and Jason, and they never really vibed with me quite so much.
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And I think it was that 90s horror that really hit the right time for me.
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Maybe they were kids that sort of had parents that uh got them to watch those films when they were younger, and that's why they were close to their heart, whereas I was the one who was introduced to horror in that 90s era.
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So yeah, I think just like you, I think the 90s era kind of hits for me.
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But also the the movies that have come, this elevated horror that they describe as now, and things like you know, the Barbaduke and it follows, and a lot of deconstructions of grief seems to be a big trend of the recent horror.
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And so I do like the fact that horror offers many layers that you can work through.
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And I think Scream is sort of the beginning, starting a period of time where you start to see them sort of doing that, but also looking at horror as a genre in culture itself.
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Yeah, and I think I was speaking to Jeffrey Reddick, who was the mind behind Final Destination earlier in one of the podcast episodes that we did, and he sort of was was very forthcoming in the way that the way the way that horror sort of reflects a cultural sort of significance at the time.
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And I think I can agree with you in you saying that the horror elements that have been coming out more recently are definitely reflective of that, but also they do dive into some of those those you know universal themes, and that's becoming a more popular genre as well, to the point where I think a few of the horror genre of movies are actually been nominated for awards and things like that, which is you know unheard of really in history.
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It is getting there, yeah.
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I mean, historically a lot of people have been snubbed in the Oscars because it the horror genre was never really taken seriously, and now with people like Jordan Peel making Get Out and Nope and Us, uh, I think horror has started to be seen as something that is uh is just as impactful as other genres.
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You know, I guess the Academy is just a little bit slow to slow on the uptake on that one.
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Even when you look at like where actors begin to start their careers, a lot of them gravitate towards a horror appearance first, like for Scream specifically, uh Scream 2.
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The amount of stars that was in Scream 2, just at the at the budding start of their career or they came back as like an irony piece, it was uh it was amazing to see in in just that scream two sort of space.
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Definitely a really evolving like place in in Hollywood, but I think it's also got a lot more to say than just like hacking and slashing and some scary things in the dark corners of your room.
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So but let's start to dive into Scream and specifically like the cultural context around horror when Scream first came out, because director Web Wes Craven was no amateur when it came to horror, and also Kevin Williamson, the the writer, was also quite adepted at horror, but then they came to Scream with a different sort of lens.
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Uh yeah, so the culture that Scream came in at was I mean, 1978 was uh when we saw Halloween, the first Halloween movie, which introduced us to Michael Myers.
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And then over the subsequent decade or so, we had the introduction of Freddie uh in Nightmare in Elm Street and Jason from the Friday the 13th movies.
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Um and they became kind of like the core icons of Slasher Horror for within the 20-year period prior to Scream being released.
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Uh and what I looked into was like I didn't realize how prolific they were in such a short space of time.
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Halloween, sorry, uh Friday the 13th had nine movies made just in the first one came out in 1980, and so they had nine movies made before the end of the decade, which if you can imagine that now.
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I mean, there's been an 11-year gap between this new Scream movie coming out and the oh, sorry, uh the new run of Scream movies in in 2022, and then the previous one was in 2011.
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So there was these huge gaps there.
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Here, they were just knocking them out.
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And also, we had seven Nightmare on Elm Street films that were made before Scream came out.
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The Halloween movies obviously have done very similar kind of figures uh during that 20-year period of time, to the point where you ended up getting uh, you know, the initial fright and the initial fear of the concept started getting watered down.
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And even by like Nightmare on Elm Street 4, you started getting rapping Freddy.
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Like you got him teaming up with uh with uh a bunch of I I can't remember the name of the band that was uh doing it, but it was a rap band and it was sort of dipping into that kind of urban culture that they were interested in during that ATP's period of time.
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Yeah, it's like everything just started getting watered down and everything started getting a bit more absurd, and people started going like, oh yeah, it's just a bunch of it's just someone coming in with a big machete or you know, fingers or you know, any of that, and they just slash them up and they just got kind of a bit bored of it.
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And it also became a bit of a joke, you know.
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Uh the leprechaun movies you were saying about people who got a star in horror movies.
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Jennifer Aniston was one of the people who got a start in horror movies through leprechaun, and then it was leprechaun in the hood, you know, tapping into the urban culture again.
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So it's just everything just sort of became kind of funny, and it started it started recognizing that it was a kind of funny situation.
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It wasn't really tapping into that original core idea.
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Because it was really just about, oh, these were successful.
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This we didn't expect this to happen.
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So let's just make more and more and more.
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So by the time we got into Scream, I mean, you know, there were jokes of plenty, people weren't really taking it seriously, and that's where Scream kind of hits with this postmodern angle on it, where there it's a movie that acknowledges these other movies and this history of horror that came before it and sort of subverts it in that kind of way.
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Yeah, it's it's very self-aware.
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And I found that when I was watching the initial trilogy, so Scream 1, 2, and 3, that's where my journey has started.
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And I will I do intend to watch the others before number seven comes out, and it's actually getting to the point where I think I'm gonna go and watch it in the in the cinemas because I've I'm really enjoying them.
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But but yeah, you're right.
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I think that it's really self-aware, and that's one of the defining characteristics of the Scream series, to the point where they, you know, at the time they would be listing actors and movies that were coming out during the year that those those films were coming out, so 96 or 97, just scream one and two.
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There was even like some subtle meta references with Courtney Cox and Friends.
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There was a few of those that I picked up in terms of you know mentioning the actors Jennifer Aniston or David Schwimmer playing, was it Dewey or something like that in one of the stab movies?
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Yeah, they they reference it in Scream 2 that he plays Dewey.
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Yeah, and uh it was Gail Weathers says that there were naked pictures of her online, or someone says there's naked pictures of her online, and she says that wasn't my body, that was Jennifer Aniston's body.
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Yeah, a lot of a lot of inter textuality at play just in the dialogue alone.
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Yeah, and and and I also saw it with some of the actors when they were actually previewing the the trailers and things for Stab One in in the movies, you know, they would use like Luke Wilson to play Billy Loomis in one of the trailers as well.
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So that sort of meta atmosphere is one of the defining characteristics.
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And you know, it hadn't been done before, as you as you say.
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And there is a fine line to walk, I think, as well, because when when you are poking fun at like those sort of elements of horror that it creates this environment where the creators know that the audience is self-aware in that space, and they're not sort of treating them like a like an idiot in that way, but they're also saying, Hey, we know that you know these tropes, but we're also going to try and scare you by subverting them, or then also like leaning into them as well.
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Yeah, so what you've actually hit on there is is postmodernist theory.
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And I don't obviously it's a very broad theory, it goes into art, it goes into philosophy, it talks about culture, um, but when you narrow it down into the world of film, you have these periods of time, and each one of them are essentially a comment on the previous era.
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And to give a a really simple, very simplistic approach to it just for the sake of time, if if film was created at the beginning of what was called a modernist era, a traditionalist era that came before it might have been your sort of mustache twizzling, tie the woman to the to the train tracks, and then a big hero comes along and uh saves the day.
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It's a very clear-cut role.
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The modernist era started having a bit more introspection about what the protagonist is doing.
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You know, you started seeing the sort of emergence of an anti-hero, protagonist who might do things in a little bit of a different way in order to ultimately achieve the goal of good defeating evil, but it ultimately was a good defeating evil kind of role.
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I mean, and and again, for context, this is very much an American film approach to these concepts.
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And when Scream came in, you you had them essentially going, okay, well, the postmodern era essentially was recognizing that you had to kind of deconstruct the era before it, but you like in terms of the morals and values that were in play.
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And during the 90s and and through that postmodern era, you start getting a very nihilistic approach, which is where Scream excelled because you had kids hearing about a murder that happened the previous night, and they're just laughing and joking and making jokes about did you leave liver in the mailbox?
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Because I heard you live her in the mailbox, you know, like that kind of thing.
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And it it sort of spoke to a very jaded teen culture of the time.
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But it was also a period of time where you started seeing film itself playing with the form.
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But like, you know, a movie like Memento would be quite a postmodern movie because it's changing the structure of how movies are done.
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It's not just beginning, middle, and end, it's actually we're gonna show you the ending and we're gonna work all the way backwards, going in reverse order and just mixing up the format.
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And Scream was one of those kind of movies that although it didn't change film form in the way it told the stories, it very much was acknowledging the film culture and how that was impacting the characters in the film.
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And yeah, so when you're talking about tropes, I mean the film itself, the original film obviously uh speaks of I think the line is a big-breasted woman running up the stairs when she should have been running out the front door, kind of thing, is talking about these the final girl tropes.
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The final girl trope very much came from Jamie Lee Curtis in in Halloween, uh, and that's that sort of sparked the concept.
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And then you see it in a variety of films of just the the last survivor, and it was normally a girl because I mean you can go back and look at the the weird combination of appealing to teen culture while also shaming them for their sexual activity.
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Like you could talk for days about that kind of thing, and that's another one of the trips which she's actually brought up in the first film where um Billy is trying to get a Sydney to into bed, and and as a marker of watching a horror film, you're like, oh no, this means Sydney might get killed.
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And Randy, the the film nerd in the film, even makes comment of it as like you cannot sleep with anyone, you can't lose your virginity because that means you're gonna be the next target.
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And it is yeah, it is this like role of tropes that they they play around with in the Scream franchise, lesser so as the movies have gone on, and I think that's a more complicated topic to talk about in in that sense.
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But um, but for the time in the 90s, that it just hit that postmodern era and nicely, and it was going like, you know what, kids aren't taking these horror movies seriously anymore, and the people making them aren't really taking them seriously anymore.
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And what's interesting actually is um that you mentioned Wes Craven being the director of uh the first four screen movies before he passed away.
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He actually made a nightmare on Elm Street, which was called The New Nightmare.
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And in that film, he was actually trying to play with meta commentary and and recognizing that it was all, you know, that it was kind of part of a filmmaking process and that kind of thing.
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And that didn't quite go quite as well, probably because people were just kind of a bit tired of seeing this Freddie Krueger character.
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So it's interesting that after a lot of convincing, uh, he ended up taking on another stab, if you will, yeah, at a at a meta commentary.
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And and that's where Kevin Williamson came in.
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Because actually he he said that he was adept at horror.
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He wasn't, he hadn't proved proved himself at this point.
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He was, he wrote the film in about three days, from what I remember correctly.
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He wrote it over a weekend because he was needed to pay his rent.
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He was three months behind on his rent, and he just needed to go away to a nice isolated place and really knock out the script.
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And he just started just looking at the kind of world, you know, how culture had kind of moved on from where these horror movies had begun, and was like, okay, well maybe we can maybe we can play around with that and see how to to make some kind of fresh new thing.
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And I mean, the the other angle of it is is obviously these horror movies in culture itself that were saying, oh, well, these movies they're influencing children to do violent negative acts.
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And I believe what really cements Scream as a postmodern film is, as opposed to the era that we're in now, which I can sort of show you the contrast of, is the line that Stewie says at the end of the first Scream film, which is uh no, Sid, don't you blame the movies.
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Movies don't create psychos, movies make psychos more creative.
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And it is it was a commentary of just going, no, fuck you, don't blame the movies.
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Like there are psychos out there, and if they want to emulate movies, that's just because they're already psychos, kind of thing.
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And yeah, and that was really that was really them reflecting upon culture.
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What we've actually moved into now is a meta modern era.
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It's a it's a flowing term, but it seems to be in the term that has risen to the top because we're kind of in the era and we're trying to interpret it as it happens instead of looking at it in hindsight.
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And now we're in an era where films are actually thinking about how film itself is impacting culture.
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So, in in that kind of contrast, you know, you've got movies like The Fable Mans, which essentially is like an autobiography, semi-autobiography of Steven Spielberg.
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Um, you've got Babylon, you've got a bunch of movies that are recognizing film's influence in the world of culture, or the culture that we have now.
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But you know, that's why Scream is a postmodern movie, because it's saying, nope, we're not gonna be self-reflective, we think you're wrong, and we're gonna make a comment about that directly answering the kind of talk that was being had in government around that kind of time.
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Yeah, and I I think um in terms of that culture that we're talking about, it goes on to like my most valuable takeaway for this movie where we talk about how media does evolve over time, but our identity to that media also can change because of the film.
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But you know, the film can be a reflection of that as well.
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But I think the important thing is that we we sort of question that relationship and the stories that are being told and how it's shaping us or strengthening us.
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And in terms of this scream franchise, you're right, because each one that I watched, one, two, and three, you could tell that there was a definite focus or a message I'll put in quotes that they were trying to portray to the target audience, like you said, the first one being that movies create sort of violent people.
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And then I feel like in number two, they kind of doubled down on the fact that that uh sometimes movies or TV shows in that era in 1997 were monetizing people's trauma, or like it it moves into like a new wave of especially in the third one in in that was released in 2000, it's like the actual institution of control around Hollywood.
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So I feel like like those three from the ones that I've seen is really reflective or or shows like a I don't know if it's reflective, but it it's definitely like a poignant statement to make in this genre of horror.
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And I think it really hits that target audience because as you said, in the in the early 90s you have this teenage culture that's sort of starting to move away from the traditional norms.
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And yeah, I just think it really hit them sort of straight in the sweet spot.
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Yeah, I mean, it's a complicated thing for the screen.
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If we're talking about the first three films, and I mean realistically, the first three films, it was it was designed to be a trilogy.
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One came out in that, well, not originally, it came out in 1990, very quickly made a sequel, which came out in 1997, which actually had a lot of trouble during the production because it was in that era where the internet was starting to take form, and so therefore there were actually leaks of the script, all the excitement of it, and then the the scripts got leaked.
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So it actually evolved and the killers actually changed from the initial draft because of that leaked script.
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Yeah, they made comments about that in number three as well, didn't they?
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Like Yes.
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Yeah, they said there's three different scripts, and obviously the person has got a hold of the script, so yeah, very good.
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I think that might have been Wes just feeling a little bit irritated and deciding that it would be kind of fun to put that in there.
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Yeah, that was actually a movie.
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The third movie was one where Kevin had stepped away because uh because Kevin Williamson, who wrote Scream, also wrote I Know What You Did Last Summer.
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He went on to have a directing debut of teaching Mrs.
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Tingle.
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He had his fingerprints on a lot of 90s culture, including Dawson's Creek, which is kind of a bit timely, obviously, with uh James Vanderbeek um passing away recently.
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So yeah, he was he was really embedded in that that 90s youth culture.
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But the third film was impacted by another thing which had happened in the real world.
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It was released in 2000, so that means they were filming it in that sort of 1999 to 2000 kind of period of time.
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And in 1999, obviously, there was the Columbine killings.
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So they had again another script disruption because they wanted uh the idea was that they were going to uh there's some talks of bringing Stu back and there being like a cult of ghost face and all this kind of stuff, but they had it centered around a sort of school theme, and at that point it was just you you couldn't do that.
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So it was interesting because Scream 3 is almost like a um maybe not so subtle warning of like all the Weinstein conversation that we had in in 2016, because it is about how Hollywood can take in someone young and impressionable and and chew them up and spit them out.
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You know, it was a about a woman that became pregnant and had a lot of shame around how she became pregnant because it was probably a sexual assault situation, and then she wanted to go live her normal life and tried to you know leave the baby somewhere to be raised separately, and then that's what leads to um this person growing up and wanting to get back into her life, and she just wants to keep complete separation from that, and obviously that evolves to the finale for that film.
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So yeah, the the films themselves ended up being wrapped up in culture and in a lot more of you know, things from real world impacting the film and and and then the film sort of impacting the real world in different ways, you know, that with with the rise of um in film itself, the rise of a teen slasher, kind of like the way Halloween sort of revolutionized the um the horror genre from being like sort of psycho and and the birds and Hitchcock kind of things, and then moving into a youthful teen slasher.
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Scream very much sort of revolutionized that on the film side, but then culture itself was also impacting the way these films were being uh created.
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Sydney survives every era of this sort of media evolution that occurs in number one, number two, number three.
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That's all I've seen so far.
00:20:37.440 --> 00:20:43.039
I assume she she survives through the rest, because I think she appears in number seven from what I've looked at the car.
00:20:43.279 --> 00:20:44.720
But um, yeah, yeah.
00:20:44.799 --> 00:20:47.759
What what do you think she sort of represents in this cultural space?
00:20:47.839 --> 00:21:01.039
I know that she's very much tied to that final girl representation, but she goes through a little bit of a journey through one, two, and three in terms of the way she reacts to the situation that she has been a part of through those movies as well.
00:21:01.359 --> 00:21:05.839
Yeah, so Sydney's got an interesting kind of relationship with an audience.
00:21:06.000 --> 00:21:09.519
You know, she starts off as the typical final girl trope.
00:21:09.599 --> 00:21:11.440
She's an innocent, she's very young.
00:21:11.839 --> 00:21:25.599
They have the little joke about will you settle for a PG 13 relationship as she flashes her boobs to Billy, and and then by the end of it, she decides, okay, now I am going to decide to grow up and I am going to lose my virginity, and I'm going to do it to the person who ends up being the killer.
00:21:25.759 --> 00:21:30.559
But then in two, I think you really get to see the depth of that character in two.
00:21:30.880 --> 00:21:36.960
You can see that she's gained some confidence as the events of Scream were something that had happened in her past.
00:21:37.039 --> 00:21:42.000
And you see that in the beginning of the film because someone calls up and says, you know, do you like scary movies?
00:21:42.160 --> 00:21:52.640
And she knew that she was going to get those calls because of the stab franchise, which is introduced for the first time as movies in universe which were based on the events of the first film.
00:21:52.720 --> 00:21:56.240
And she knows that's coming out, and she knows that's going to have an impact on her life.
00:21:56.400 --> 00:21:59.279
But she just looks at caller ID and tells this person to go away.
00:21:59.359 --> 00:22:08.559
So you can See her as being like quite a confident person, but then as soon as you find out about the deaths of uh Maureen and I can't remember, I think his name's Phil Stevens.
00:22:08.640 --> 00:22:13.759
So the idea is yeah, sort of emulating the characters from the first film.
00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:23.039
As soon as she finds out that there have been these deaths and that actually maybe there is someone out there actually killing people, you start seeing this vulnerable side to her.
00:22:23.119 --> 00:22:26.240
The trauma is starting to impact her relationships with people.
00:22:26.480 --> 00:22:33.920
Even though she was quite a cautious, you know, more solitary person, you know, she starts this with confidence, but you can see that getting eroded.
00:22:34.079 --> 00:22:44.480
And then throughout that movie, you see, I mean, by the time you get to the end and you know who the killers are, you look back and you can see how the killers have been manipulating her, creating paranoia.
00:22:44.720 --> 00:22:46.319
Is it the boyfriend again?
00:22:46.400 --> 00:22:50.240
You know, have you just fallen in love with someone who's actually a serial killer?
00:22:50.319 --> 00:22:54.079
Are you just doomed to repeat this cycle over and over again?
00:22:54.240 --> 00:22:58.160
Which is actually interesting because that was the original plot.
00:22:58.240 --> 00:22:59.599
That was for Kevin.
00:22:59.920 --> 00:23:00.400
Was it Kevin?
00:23:00.480 --> 00:23:01.119
I forgot his name now.
00:23:01.440 --> 00:23:10.240
It was the boyfriend in the Derek to to be the killer, which I I I very much enjoy the way it ended up evolving into Mrs.
00:23:10.480 --> 00:23:11.519
Loomis and Mickey.
00:23:11.759 --> 00:23:23.039
We'll talk about the killers later, but in that, just this sense of paranoia and gaslighting throughout that movie and seeing how that impacts her was a huge part of who Sydney was going into three.
00:23:23.359 --> 00:23:27.759
And in three, she's someone who's decided to close off her environment.
00:23:27.839 --> 00:23:31.759
She's decided to be a essentially a a um what would you call it?
00:23:31.839 --> 00:23:34.240
Like a therapist on the phone kind of deal.
00:23:34.640 --> 00:23:43.599
Yeah, kind of like youth line or sort of just like a an emergency safe space to to call through to because she's obviously she's obviously a quite caring person.
00:23:43.759 --> 00:23:52.880
She wants to give back, but she's she wants to isolate herself by living in this property which is way out of the way of any of the major hustle and bustle of any local towns and things like that.
00:23:53.039 --> 00:24:02.559
So you can see that the the fact that these events have happened twice to her have made her a very closed-off person and a very paranoid and very scared person.
00:24:02.720 --> 00:24:14.400
And for all the faults of three, I mean you could talk about the quality of it, and and you know, I do think the the events of Columbine, unfortunately, did sort of create a um a turbulent filming environment for for that film.
00:24:14.640 --> 00:24:27.920
What they did with Sydney was was absolute gold, giving her this ability to meet the killer at the end and realize that this person has actually been interwoven and intertwined into the previous films.
00:24:28.079 --> 00:24:32.319
And and for those who I mean, if for those who haven't seen the films, too late, there's gonna be spoilers.
00:24:32.640 --> 00:24:42.880
So, like you find out that it's actually this that her mother was the person I was talking about who was abused in Hollywood and who had this illegitimate child and shunned the child away from her.
00:24:43.119 --> 00:24:46.000
So the killer ends up being her half-brother.
00:24:46.240 --> 00:25:00.480
And you find out that when he turned up into Sydney's mother's life, it was before the events of Scream, and because he was shunned away from being a part of this family, he felt isolated and started going slowly insane from that.
00:25:00.640 --> 00:25:10.079
And because she can see how that killer was sort of the origins of her mother's death and Billy and Stu attacking her in the first two, and Mrs.
00:25:10.240 --> 00:25:20.559
Loomis and Mickey in the second, and how it's all sort of interwoven together, she really gets to this point where she can say that she feels safer and she's put all of this to bed.
00:25:20.799 --> 00:25:27.920
Um which, as we know, you know, there's other movies that come afterwards, but ultimately that those three movies really do give her a great arc.
00:25:28.079 --> 00:25:52.079
And the interesting thing about where Sydney sits in terms of culture is the queer community of attached themselves to Sydney, or they they have a strong bond and relationship with Sydney because of this sense of going through a lot of hardship and a lot of people coming to get them and that kind of thing, and then rising from the ashes and finding themselves and becoming a more well-rounded and and calm and confident version of themselves.
00:25:52.240 --> 00:26:03.599
So yeah, Sydney's Sydney's connection to culture is really comes from a relatable trauma that you get to see come to a pretty calm close by the time you get to three.
00:26:03.759 --> 00:26:26.720
And and in terms of obviously, because there have been more movies, she's in four, she's in five, she's not in six, which was more to do with contractual issues, arguments she was having with the studios at the time, what Neve Campbell was, and then she is going to be back in seven, you see her as a much more confident person who's had enough of this shit and she's willing to like storm into buildings and chase down the killer instead of being this victim.
00:26:26.960 --> 00:26:37.839
And so even though those films do sort of close off her story, they're really closing off her story of victimhood and allowing her to be a much more character with a lot more agency in in the later films.
00:26:38.079 --> 00:26:51.039
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true because the final scene that you see her in in number three is is when she goes to lock the door and put the code in, and obviously the door clicks open again, and she's quite happy to go and watch a movie with her friends with that door being left open.
00:26:51.119 --> 00:26:56.640
But also, I think, you know, that's metaphorical for the Scream franchise, you know, the door is left open for another one coming through.
00:26:56.880 --> 00:27:01.119
In terms of her the final act of number three as well, I thought it was very interesting.
00:27:01.200 --> 00:27:14.880
And I don't know if I'm I'm picking up the right sort of cinema cinematography cues here, but before it was like revealed at the end where where she sort of held her half-brother's hand while he sort of passed away for the first time before he came and jumped back as they do in the trophy.
00:27:15.200 --> 00:27:21.200
Like, I thought that was a very sort of compassionate way and really highlighted the fact that Sydney has gone through a lot, a whole lot of growth.
00:27:21.359 --> 00:27:31.039
And despite all the pain and the and the trauma and the suffering that she's gone through at the hands of this person, she can still then be understanding to this person here who's also suffered and come on the other side of it.
00:27:31.200 --> 00:27:48.960
Because just before that, I feel like they did like a flip or a reversal, because there was a moment where the the killer at the end of number three was then like searching this basement for Sydney, who was like in hiding, and then you see the close-up of her like pulling the tools down, and then she jumps out from out of the counter and stabs him in the back very much like Ghostface does.
00:27:49.200 --> 00:28:08.480
So I think that that was almost a clever way to say, you know, Sydney could could go one of two ways, and then the close with the sort of the holding of the hand is like, and honestly, I'll I was waiting, because I I know nothing about Scream and how it continues on, but I was waiting for for one of the main three to actually sort of become a killer or a ghost face killer.
00:28:08.559 --> 00:28:12.799
But then Sydney sort of says in in number three, she says, you know why people kill bad people?
00:28:12.880 --> 00:28:14.000
It's because they choose to.
00:28:14.160 --> 00:28:27.519
And and that's that was a line that sort of stuck with me to say, okay, this person's uh sort of self-realizing the journey that she's gone on, and to the point where now she's at the end of it and can leave that door open, and as you said, leaving her victimhood behind.
00:28:27.759 --> 00:28:36.319
So I, from a position of not having seen the rest, am personally interested to see where they take her, and then also very interested to see what they do with her in number seven.
00:28:36.400 --> 00:28:43.519
Um we might talk about number seven a little bit later because I know that in number seven, she does sort of like she's a parent in number seven, is from what I've seen.
00:28:43.759 --> 00:28:52.640
So before we we go on to talk about number seven, I want to highlight uh obviously the the star of the franchise, other than Sydney, is is Ghostface.
00:28:52.799 --> 00:28:55.440
So Ghostface is a very iconic mask.
00:28:55.519 --> 00:29:11.680
Even having not seen Scream, I knew that that mask was from Scream, but I think it does a very important thing where for a franchise, and you know, through Final Death talking about Final Destination, one thing that they didn't have in Final Destination was like a marketable killer to s to to you know sell merchandise for.
00:29:11.759 --> 00:29:14.559
But obviously, this is a very popular like ghost face.
00:29:14.880 --> 00:29:23.440
And I feel like what Ghost Face represents is important because it can change in every movie, but it also ties the movies together through a centralized villain.
00:29:23.519 --> 00:29:37.599
So I feel like that's a very creative space, and it's almost like the same way that they say about superheroes, you know, Spider-Man or Batman could be anybody because it's the symbol that matters, and it's the same thing with Ghostface, and he really represents the cultural problem, you could say.
00:29:37.920 --> 00:29:44.880
Yeah, the the evolution of the motives behind the killers have always been quite a fascinating element of the Scream franchise.
00:29:45.039 --> 00:30:07.119
But what what it actually does is by having this ghost face character, you don't have a Freddy Kruger, so you just know who that is, or it's Jason Voorhees as a you know, it could be anyone, which means that the movies become a bit of a murder mystery, a bit of a whodunit kind of situation, which is not something that you had from previous slashes, because you just know who's coming around to kill them.
00:30:07.359 --> 00:30:13.279
They're more of a why sometimes, you know, especially the first ones, is like, well, why is this killer coming after us?
00:30:13.440 --> 00:30:20.640
But you know, Scream has the why and the who, and it creates that paranoid feeling of like, oh well, it could be any one of the friend group.
00:30:21.279 --> 00:30:25.359
Because you're constantly picking and trying to guess, and I will say I never guessed a single one.
00:30:25.519 --> 00:30:26.799
No, but was very bad at it.
00:30:27.039 --> 00:30:27.920
I don't think I ever do.
00:30:28.079 --> 00:30:35.519
I've been talking to a lot of Scream fans recently about who the killer in Seven's gonna be, and ultimately the more I think about it, the more I don't care.
00:30:35.759 --> 00:30:41.599
Because I kind of want the ingenious level of manipulation that I've seen in some of these films.
00:30:41.680 --> 00:30:45.839
And I don't, you know, I have I do think that the first two are my favorite.
00:30:46.079 --> 00:31:01.359
I think two is definitely my favorite even over one, but that's because it has that extra layer of of meta to it and the stab, the introduction of like the stab movies and how that influences the world in which they're playing in and talks directly about tropes.
00:31:01.599 --> 00:31:15.680
But yeah, in terms of the killers, I mean Stu Marker, loves Stu Marker, uh Matthew Lillard as Stu Marker, just a bit of a loony, probably like just lured into this idea by Skeet Ulrich's uh character of Billy Loomis.
00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:26.480
You know, like his name's Billy Loomis, and like which, you know, for those who don't get the reference, Billy would be a reference to, and I it's a guy upstairs, what is it, the peeping tom one?
00:31:26.559 --> 00:31:28.079
I can't remember, is it Dark Christmas?
00:31:28.160 --> 00:31:29.119
Uh, I can't remember now.
00:31:29.200 --> 00:31:35.680
And and Loomis is uh the doctor from Halloween who's trying to get Michael Myers back into uh you know into custody.