Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven (born August 2, 1939) is an American film director and writer, perhaps best known as the creator of many horror films, including the famed A Nightmare on Elm Street series featuring the iconic Freddy Krueger character and the Scream films.

Early life

Craven was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Caroline (née Miller) and Paul Craven.Wes Craven Biography (1939-) He had a strict Baptist upbringing.The Biography Channel - Wes Craven Biography Craven earned an undergraduate degree in English and Psychology from Wheaton College in Illinois, and a masters degree in Philosophy and Writing from Johns Hopkins University.Muir, John Kenneth (1998). Wes Craven: The Art of Horror. Jefferson, South Carolina: McFarland & Co. ISBN 0-7864-0576-7. pp. 8-9. Prior to landing his first job in the film industry as a sound editor for a post-production company in New York, Craven briefly taught English at Westminster College and was a humanities professor at Clarkson College of Technology (now Clarkson University) in Potsdam, NY.

Directing and writing career

Craven's works tend to share a common exploration of the nature of reality. A Nightmare on Elm Street, for example, dealt with the consequences of dreams in real life. New Nightmare "brushes against" (but doesn't quite break) the fourth wall by having actress Heather Langenkamp play herself as she is haunted by the villain of the film in which she once starred. At one point in the film, we see on Wes Craven's word processor a script he has written, which includes the exact conversation he just had with Heather — as if the script is being written as the action is unfolding. The Serpent and the Rainbow portrays a man who cannot distinguish between nightmarish visions and reality. In Scream, the characters frequently reference horror films similar to their situations, and at one point Billy Loomis tells his girlfriend that life is just a big movie. This concept was emphasized in the sequels, as copycat stalkers reenact the events of a new film about the Woodsboro killings occurring in Scream. Scream included a scene mentioning the well-known Richard Gere gerbil urban legend. Craven stated that he received calls from agents telling him that if he leaves that scene in, he would never work again.www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Boulevard/7811/screamreferences.htmlwww.ew.com/ew/article/0,,289310,00.html Craven was also set to direct Beetlejuice but dropped out to co-write and executive produce the third outing for Freddy Krueger. "The" Elm Street is located in Potsdam,www.imdb.com/name/nm0000127/bio NY (a small town just south of the Canadian border).