Nightmare On Montana Ave
- By Joshua Miller
- Published 03/30/2009
Joshua Miller
In 1957, Joshua tragically drowned at camp while counselors were inconsiderately having sex. Or so everyone thought! Ambiguously undead, Joshua vengefully returned decades later and has been happily killing sexy idiots ever since. He's fought Corey Feldman and Freddy Krueger and even gone into space where he became part robot.
He now lives in Los Angeles and hopes someday to fight Michael Meyers and a Predator.
email - wormmiller@gmail.com
Tonight they did something very interesting at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, CA. They screened Nightmare On Elm St with live commentary from Wes Craven and moderator Mick Garris. Essentially it was a DVD commentary track, if your TV was 20 times bigger and you could ask Craven questions during the film.
I've never been a fan of Garris; Riding the Bullet is most definitely the worst Stephen King movie ever made, which is really saying something, and "Masters of Horror" was a huge let down in my mind. But he seems like a nice guy and had a lot of interesting things to say during the course of the film. He was also very good at posing topics to Craven; knowledgable about the backstories. I kind of gather that Garris is the Peter Bogdanovich of the horror community (minus the quality filmmaking).
Anyway, I won't bore you with an unneccessarily detailed play-by-play. This is my first blog afterall. A lot of what was said won't be news to any Elm St fans out there: the story came from a news piece Craven had read, Johnny Depp was just some guy in a band then, Freddy's shirt colors were chosen because Craven had read that red and green are the two hardest colors for the human eye to process side-by-side (no wonder I hate Christmas!).
Some new things I learned...
For one, despite what I'd read in numerous places recently, Craven VERY CLEARLY stated that he has NO INVOLVEMENT in the upcoming Elm St remake and did not sound super happy about it.
This came up during an awesome moment of frankness when Craven talked about the shitty deal Bob Shaye gave him on the first film. A deal that Craven - just thrilled his movie was actually getting made at the time - did not realize was shitty until Elm St spawned countless sequels and gazillions of dollars in merchandising, of which Craven saw $0.
But, lest you think Shaye is a total jackass (which you should for other reasons unrelated to this story), Craven also noted that Shaye eventually tried to make amends by hiring him to make New Nightmare with a revamped contract so that Craven would finally see a small percentage of the Freddy fortune from that point on. Though to me it seems like Shaye did this not to right any wrongs of the past, but simply because the Freddy brand had died, New Line was starting to flounder, and he knew Craven would be able to give the series a good goosing and wouldn't do it otherwise. Maybe I'm just being cynical.
Craven and Garris also talked a bit about the current state of horror and about the lack of imagination on parade these days. While marveling at a particularly fluid and dreamlike moment in Elm St, Garris even referred to the style of current horror flics as "cut cut bang bang Michael Bay editing." Shitty movies aside, Garris earns a place in my heart for that one.
It was a fantastic evening. As a bonus, my posse decided to cruise by the "Freddy House" on our way home, which is located 1428 N Genesee Ave in West Hollywood, for anyone who might be curious. It looks shockingly the same. It even has the red door they added for the sequels.
The Aero implied they are going to be trying to do more of these live commentaries in the future, so it's something to keep an eye out for.
I've never been a fan of Garris; Riding the Bullet is most definitely the worst Stephen King movie ever made, which is really saying something, and "Masters of Horror" was a huge let down in my mind. But he seems like a nice guy and had a lot of interesting things to say during the course of the film. He was also very good at posing topics to Craven; knowledgable about the backstories. I kind of gather that Garris is the Peter Bogdanovich of the horror community (minus the quality filmmaking).
Anyway, I won't bore you with an unneccessarily detailed play-by-play. This is my first blog afterall. A lot of what was said won't be news to any Elm St fans out there: the story came from a news piece Craven had read, Johnny Depp was just some guy in a band then, Freddy's shirt colors were chosen because Craven had read that red and green are the two hardest colors for the human eye to process side-by-side (no wonder I hate Christmas!).
Some new things I learned...
For one, despite what I'd read in numerous places recently, Craven VERY CLEARLY stated that he has NO INVOLVEMENT in the upcoming Elm St remake and did not sound super happy about it.
This came up during an awesome moment of frankness when Craven talked about the shitty deal Bob Shaye gave him on the first film. A deal that Craven - just thrilled his movie was actually getting made at the time - did not realize was shitty until Elm St spawned countless sequels and gazillions of dollars in merchandising, of which Craven saw $0.
But, lest you think Shaye is a total jackass (which you should for other reasons unrelated to this story), Craven also noted that Shaye eventually tried to make amends by hiring him to make New Nightmare with a revamped contract so that Craven would finally see a small percentage of the Freddy fortune from that point on. Though to me it seems like Shaye did this not to right any wrongs of the past, but simply because the Freddy brand had died, New Line was starting to flounder, and he knew Craven would be able to give the series a good goosing and wouldn't do it otherwise. Maybe I'm just being cynical.
Craven and Garris also talked a bit about the current state of horror and about the lack of imagination on parade these days. While marveling at a particularly fluid and dreamlike moment in Elm St, Garris even referred to the style of current horror flics as "cut cut bang bang Michael Bay editing." Shitty movies aside, Garris earns a place in my heart for that one.
It was a fantastic evening. As a bonus, my posse decided to cruise by the "Freddy House" on our way home, which is located 1428 N Genesee Ave in West Hollywood, for anyone who might be curious. It looks shockingly the same. It even has the red door they added for the sequels.
The Aero implied they are going to be trying to do more of these live commentaries in the future, so it's something to keep an eye out for.
