20 Questions: Kevin Williamson

the man behind scream and dawson's creek talks about teenage sex, bad dreams and scary lingerie

It took the son of a fisherman to resurrect the dormant horror film genre. Writer-director Kevin Williamson drew on his childhood love of scary movies to create the highest-grossing horror film franchise in movie history--"Scream" and its sequel, "Scream 2." Along with director Wes Craven and a cast of young TV stars, Williamson has parlayed his "unconditional love of Jamie Lee Curtis and director John Carpenter" into a cottage industry.

Williamson was born and raised in the fishing town of New Bern, North Carolina. Influenced by his storytelling mother, he originally considered a career as an actor, studying theater and film at East Carolina University. He moved to New York, where he landed bit parts on stage and TV, then relocated to Los Angeles, where he worked as an assistant to a music-video director and took screenwriting classes at UCLA. His first screenplay, "Killing Mrs. Tingle," will serve as his directorial debut this year. Williamson's second sale, "Scream," made horror film box-office history and was followed by an adaptation of the novel "I Know What You Did Last Summer." After that, Miramax secured Williamson's services for $20 million. "Scream 3" and "The Faculty" are forthcoming, and Williamson wrote the story for "Halloween: H2O," starring one of his idols, Jamie Lee Curtis. Williamson has also found time to create the provocative TV series "Dawson's Creek" for the Warner Bros. Network and is developing another series, "Pamlico," for ABC.

Robert Crane caught up with the indefatigable screenwriter and director at his West Hollywood office. Crane reports: "The smell of success permeates Williamson's office--assistants and publicists scurry about the comfortable surroundings, which are laden with 'Scream' merchandise and posters. Williamson is young, handsome and rich. It's enough to make anyone scream."

1

[Q] Playboy: Which involuntary bodily response serves as a standing ovation for the horror film auteur?

[A] Williamson: A scream? I like to hear the gasp. I like that lull, when your mouth is dry and you hear the gurgle of not being able to swallow. You hear the gasp, followed by laughter, because the viewers are laughing at themselves for getting so worked up. And then you realize that they are really enjoying themselves.

2

[Q] Playboy: Would you be better or worse at what you do had you gone through therapy?

[A] Williamson: I have gone through a lot of therapy, and I'm a much better writer for it. I mean, my entire career is based on my therapy. The kids on Dawson's Creek all speak psychobabble. The fact that I sat down to write at all was a result of some huge breakthrough I had in therapy, working through my demons in order to have the confidence to put pen to paper.

3

[Q] Playboy: We read about your Uncle Phil holding you by the ankles and dangling you over a school of sharks. Do you two still hang out?

[A] Williamson: We do hang out, actually. He is the coolest guy. There was a long period of time when I was traumatized by that experience. I had nightmares about it. My uncle was 18 years old at the time, a kid himself. Now we have a big laugh about it. We sit back and smoke cigars and laugh about the whole thing. But he gets harassed--it has reached a point now where every time he walks into the local grocery store, the local diner, people just look at him and go, "I can't believe you did that to your nephew."

I guess I should give him ten percent of my earnings because it was experiences like that that led my brain down a dark path, which has ultimately been fruitful. So I'm very grateful for that shark experience. In fact, I just signed a book for my uncle with the message "Thank you for what was possibly the best experience of my life."

4

[Q] Playboy: Is a partially clad woman more fearful than a fully clad woman?

[A] Williamson: What is scarier for the viewer will not necessarily be scarier for the woman. But seeing skin is definitely scarier for the viewer because there's a vulnerability factor. Our clothing is our armor a lot of the time, so, yes, a scantily clad woman is probably more scared than someone who has an armor of clothing around her. There's something vulnerable about visible skin--seeing the surface that can so easily be punctured. When you cover it up with clothing, you put a whole layer between the audience and the character.

5

[Q] Playboy: You're directing your script Killing Mrs. Tingle. Is this an opportunity for revenge?

[A] Williamson: Yes, it's my revenge movie. My high school English teacher said to me, "You can't spell, your diction is terrible, you come from the sticks. You'll never be a writer." I wrote this story about a girl who is raped by her boyfriend, and it was a little too graphic. When I stood up to read it out loud, the teacher stopped me in the middle of it and told me to sit down. She said, "Your voice is one that should never be heard, and you should give up any idea of becoming a writer, because it will never, ever happen." And I believed her for a long time. The story was a little ahead of its time, because date rape wasn't a big issue then. It struck a chord and the teacher certainly didn't want to hear it and she wanted to shut me out. And she did shut me up, for a dozen years.

6

[Q] Playboy: Why are horror films excellent date movies?

[A] Williamson: They're a roller-coaster ride. You're sitting in a dark room clutching each other. It's great foreplay.

7

[Q] Playboy: Neve Campbell said in Scream, "All scary movies are the same. Some stupid killer is stalking some big-breasted girl who can't act and who's always running up the stairs when she should be going out the front door." Would the horror be diminished if the character had smaller breasts?

[A] Williamson: I guess it would depend on what she looks like. Most horror films are so plot driven, you don't really have enough time to develop character. So breasts replace character. A young guy--the core audience for these films--responds to young, bouncing breasts. That's supposed to take the place of character development. So in a sense those breasts are the character. It's all about breasts. Oh God, I'm going to get killed for this.

8

[Q] Playboy: Which actors make good horror film heroines?

[A] Williamson: Jamie Lee Curtis is the end-all. I have had an unconditional love for Jamie Lee Curtis since I was 12 years old and saw Halloween for the first time. That's the reason I participated in Halloween: H2O--just for the opportunity to sit in a room with her and gawk at her, which I did a lot. And getting back to the breast thing, you know.

I wrote the story for Halloween: H2O. The screenplay was written by others. I sat down with Jamie--and her breasts--and we discussed where Laurie Strode would be 20 years later.

9

[Q] Playboy: What more can you do to Laurie, this poor woman?

[A] Williamson: That's what we asked. This movie is played very real. We play it straight in the sense that we do know it's Halloween, part seven, and we don't shy away from it. One thing we try to do is go back to the original. We try not so much to send up the first one, but to honor it, you know, and to pay homage to it, pay tribute to this wonderful, groundbreaking film. So there are all sorts of little inside jokes--all the true fans of Halloween will get them. We left in dialogue and scenes and beats, so you almost have to be a Halloween expert to get the movie. I would urge everyone to see the first movie again before going to see Halloween: H2O because then you'll truly enjoy it.

10

[Q] Playboy: There's a strange cross-wiring in horror films. The killer wants to kill the woman, and the straight guy sitting in the audience wants to fuck her.

[A] Williamson: You just want to thump that killer on the forehead, don't you? Since there's no character development, there is no way to relate that character to the viewer except to show someone who is beautiful and desirable. We want her, so we root for her. We want her to live. We want her to persevere. That too takes the place of character development, which is unfortunate, but it's typical for a plot-driven movie.

11

[Q] Playboy: What are some of the new variations on horror film stereotypes?

[A] Williamson: What I'm dying to do is kill the heroine. It's time to see Jamie Lee Curtis die, or to have Neve Campbell get it at the end of the movie and then begin Scream 3 with the surprise revelation that she's alive. Traditional filmmaking dictates that you can bend the rules only so far. In horror movies, the stereotype is that if you do something bad, you will be punished. I try to dispel that in a lot of instances, particularly in Scream. Neve's character loses her virginity and doesn't die. The horror genre has set up this plot that rules that if you have sex you die. So I knew immediately upon sitting down to write it I was going to let her lose her virginity and still live. I would have fun with the idea that sex doesn't always equal death. When you are drinking and doing drugs, that is an extension of the sex-equals-death idea, because drinking and doing drugs usually lead to sex and in a teenager's world, sex always leads to lots of judgment. That's the big stereotype.

12

[Q] Playboy: Dawson's Creek is a real place. Did the Williamson Realty and Development Corp. buy creekfront property in anticipation of the show's becoming a hit?

[A] Williamson: Kind of like the baseball diamond in Field of Dreams that everyone is going to come to? No. I come from a family of fishermen, and we don't deal in real estate at all. But Dawson's Creek really exists. It's where I lost my virginity.

13

[Q] Playboy: Describe the Dawson's Creek theme park. Would a high school teacher be one of the rides?

[A] Williamson: Oh God, I hope so. You know, I'm new to all this TV and movie stuff, but it's my understanding that marketing is where it's at. So, sure, Dawson's Creek lunch boxes and action figures. We could have a lot of fun with teacher and student action figures. You have set my mind racing. I hadn't really thought of any of this until now, but I'm going to make a few phone calls as soon as this interview is over.

14

[Q] Playboy: For a teenager, is there such a thing as too much sex?

[A] Williamson: No. When you're a teenager, it's all about sex. There's no such thing as too much sex because when you're a teenager you're getting very little sex. I remember a point when I was having sex all the time, but until I hit that point it was never happening, and all I could do was talk about it. Or I'd have sex once, and then it wouldn't happen again for months. All I could do was talk about that one experience until I forgot about it. Dawson's Creek has been criticized for dealing too much with sex, but the show is about romance. It's about passion. And it's about sex. Dawson's Creek goes beyond sex, but the characters talk about it because that's what kids talk about. I've sat down with them and listened to them. That's what I talked about when I was a teenager. Ultimately, though, the show is about romance. How romance doesn't equal sex. For instance, the teacher-student relationship started out as sex but has become a nonjudgmental romantic relationship, whether people want to realize it or not. That relationship is based on romance, and I think that's why people have a hard time with it and why the Moral Majority has gone after it. It's probably not the most responsible relationship on television in terms of right-wing philosophy. But it certainly is a nonjudgmental relationship that I find very endearing.

15

[Q] Playboy: What is the set like? Is it as hyperactive as the stories?

[A] Williamson: It's a little Peyton Place down there, because we shoot in North Carolina. The cast will kill me if I reveal too much, but I will say that, yes, you could write an exposé, a Behind-the-Scenes of Dawson's Creek, believe me. I'll leave it at that, because I have to answer to these kids. They would never forgive me, and they are a great bunch of kids.

16

[Q] Playboy: Can you describe where the characters will be five years from now?

[A] Williamson: We're going to treat the first two seasons as one year, and then by the third season I'm sure we'll move into summer, and they will all get summer jobs, and Dawson's dad's restaurant will have opened, so they can all wait tables there. Then we'll push it all the way up to when they're seniors in high school, then they'll go off to college, maybe a nice little liberal arts school nearby with the same picturesque environment. I don't want to do the 90210 thing. I haven't really even thought about it other than to say God, I hope I get to the point of having to figure it all out.

17

[Q] Playboy: Is there anything you won't write about?

[A] Williamson: You'll probably never get some huge war drama or period piece out of me. I'm not interested. I'm more into a contemporary vibe. I've studied Steven Spielberg. I've studied James Brooks. I've studied Terms of Endearment. I learned dialogue from Quentin Tarantino and James Brooks. They have an ear for unique dialogue. I saw As Good As It Gets, and I'm amazed at how the dialogue flows from the characters' lips. I get so jealous when I see someone so talented at writing dialogue. I'm dying to explore as many genres as I can, and you can pretty much guess the stuff I won't be writing about. I'm just not interested in the past.

18

[Q] Playboy: You sleep four hours a night. Do you ever have really bad dreams?

[A] Williamson: I have really bad dreams. I scratched myself last night in my sleep while I was dreaming. I don't know what I dreamed, but I clawed myself in the face. It was really bizarre. I am a big dreamer, but I can barely remember my dreams. It's scary, isn't it? I am most alert at four A.M., when I wake up. I'm alert, I'm alive, I'm headstrong. So I get my best work done then. I can get done in two hours what it would take me ten hours to do in the afternoon. I move fast, and my brain is sharp at that time of day. It's a shame no one else is up with me to experience it, because I'd probably be great in bed. Actually, I've been sleeping a little later these days. I get up about five A.M. now. I have been pushing it, because I've been exhausted. I am running on empty at the moment. I need to go away and rejuice for a while. Then I can get back to that four o'clock schedule. It used to be three A.M. I don't sleep that much--it's really bizarre. Maybe there's something psychological there that I haven't broken through yet in therapy, but I'm not interested.

19

[Q] Playboy: Is it ever a good idea to taunt a monster?

[A] Williamson: Oh sure. That's the most fun. For instance, in Halloween: H2O, there's a point where Jamie Lee Curtis' character goes after Michael Myers. She gets an axe and goes after him. She's like, "You want a piece of me? Let's go." She drops to his level instead of running from him. It's great. It's the cheering moment. Ripley did it in Aliens. The reason it works so well is that it's all about character. What type of character when facing death would choose to talk? You have to be driven to that point by that monster, and that's what leads you to the moment of madness, when you don't care about your life anymore. It's a character-defining moment. It's hard to get there, and it's hard to make it believable. If you can get there, what a great place to take the audience.

20

[Q] Playboy: Being scared and having sex: Describe the connection.

[A] Williamson: For me, the emotions involved in sex and in being scared are the same. When blood rushes and things get engorged, it's a sign of the same emotion. When you're scared, your face gets flushed. You turn red. Your forehead throbs. Blood rushing is always a wonderful thing.