Kevin Williamson is 61 years old today. He was born on 14 March 1965.
If you know Williamson at all, it is likely because he wrote Scream. He also wrote Scream 2 and Scream 4. And he co-wrote and directed Scream 7. But don’t misunderstand. Williamson is no one-trick pony. He’s done a lot of varied work.
And as much as I love Wes Craven, Scream works because of the script. Yes, the producers could have messed up the film. But it is the screenplay that made it iconic. And in 1996, it was quite something!
Now? I don’t know. I’m well past meta horror. Screenwriters commonly use it to cover over bad writing. Hell! GEICO used meta horror in an ad back in 2014! So we find ourselves in an environment where horror fans would prefer we just get on with the story and stop with the cuteness.
I don’t blame Kevin Williamson. He wrote Scream for the kind of people who read this website. But long-term, it has made us all have to put up with regular people making jokes about the rules of horror films. And as with someone talking about a book they’ve only read about on Wikipedia, they don’t understand it very deeply.
Narrative writing is very interesting. Any writer is negotiating with all the writing that has gone before. A keen observer will see the same set-up entirely differently for a film made in 1970 versus one made in 2010. Anyone who sees this comes to an uncomfortable conclusion: all writing is ephemeral. And so is all reading and viewing!
Regardless, Scream is a wonderful film that is tons of fun to watch. But today, I’d rather highlight another of Kevin Williamson’s meta horror films, The Faculty. I think it is even more fun than Scream. Plus, we get to watch Jon Stewart being stabbed in the eye. (BTW: I think Stewart is great in the film; it’s too bad he didn’t do more acting!)
Unfortunately, I can’t find The Faculty online. So here’s Scream:
Image cropped from Kevin Williamson by Gage Skidmore/ under CC BY-SA 2.0.