Kevin Williamson: Fear and Trembling

It was at this point that he began to turn the crippling trauma of the "Mrs. Tingle" experience to his advantage. Flat broke, he borrowed cash from a friend to take a UCLA screen-writing course, for which he wrote a script about getting revenge on the bitchy confidence crusher. Killing Mrs. Tingle sold in short order to Inter-scope. There was a setback when he got canned from the project (was "Mrs. Tingle" right again?) and was replaced by other writers, including budding South Park idiot savant Trey Parker, but he didn't give up. He dove into a second script, Scary Movie, which he completed in three days while holed up in a friend's house in Palm Springs. Miramax picked it up for $500,000 plus box-office points, and Wes Craven directed it virtually word for word. It was released as Scream. After the hip, self-aware, ironic film became a blockbuster, Williamson vaulted to the top of every Hollywood power-broker's automatic redial list.

Considering the difficulties Williamson had getting where he is today, it's no wonder he harbors insecurities about his accomplishments being, well, a fluke. "Sounds like you've contracted that fairly typical Hollywood syndrome that, any minute now, someone's going to tap you on the shoulder and say--"

"Time's up, we've found you out!'" Williamson interjects, chuckling. "I always feel like a fraud. There's always that 'Mrs. Tingle' thing lurking in me."

Whether Williamson thought he could write or not, Hollywood had faith in him. And why not? There were people who could recite Scream line for line and considered it a masterpiece. And Williamson turned out to have plenty of other juicy, crowd-pleasing ideas in his head. Within months of Scream's success, he penned another slasher film, I Know What You Did Last Summer, which he adapted from Lois Duncan's novel. Although the location was different (it was set in a coastal village, not a high school), the director was not Wes Craven (it was Jim Gillespie, who had only directed TV shows) and the cast was largely made up of TV personalities new to the big screen (Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Johnny Galecki), it became a huge hit. Was it Williamson's intention to capitalize on the slasher genre? "Part of why I took the job is that there was a lull in getting paid by Miramax for Scream," he says. "I thought, 'I'm never going to work again.' When somebody wanted to throw cash at me, I took it."

At the same time he was exorcising his slasher fantasies, Williamson was cooking up an idea for a TV show about sexed-up teens in a small coastal town. He pitched the concept to the Warner Bros. TV network and got a 13-episode commitment. Dawson's Creek went into production with stars-in-the-making Katie Holmes, James Van Der Beek, Michelle Williams and Joshua Jackson, and with Williamson serving as executive producer and chief writer. But just then Miramax wanted him to cough up a script for Scream 2. "That movie nearly killed me," he says. "I was in the middle of doing Dawson's Creek in North Carolina and the Miramax henchmen flew down there to follow me around and force me to write Scream 2. They actually sat me down in a room and made me write an outline, which I'd then fax back and forth to them and Bob [Weinstein]. Bob would call me up screaming. That movie should have sucked for the way we made it. [Director] Wes [Craven] did a phenomenal job--a better job than he did with the first. But, oh, God, it was a nightmare."

Perhaps with an enhanced appreciation for how his time should best be spent, Williamson wrote only the early drafts of this month's The Faculty, a horror sci-fi movie about aliens taking over a high school. He was originally going to direct the film, but ultimately decided against it, leaving the job to Robert Rodriguez (_Desperado_ and From Dusk Till Dawn). "I drifted off to do Mrs. Tingle instead," he explains. "I was always nervous about The Faculty because it's such a big special effects science-fiction movie, a genre I know nothing about. I was going for The Breakfast Club meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and I wrote two drafts, but I kept saying, 'I'm the wrong writer for this movie.' The studio eventually hired George Huang [writer/director of Swimming With Sharks] to work on it. He's a good friend and he would send me faxes of rewrites. I'd call him up and say, 'What the fuck is this? You're ruining the script.' He'd scream right back, 'Shut up.' It was a big party."

What does Williamson think of the finished product? "I haven't seen it so I don't know," he says. "I have a feeling it's going to be a roller-coaster ride. Robert really knows how to shoot this kind of movie. I don't think he's going to miss. But then again, when I work with people they become friends, so I can't be objective."

The upcoming Killing Mrs. Tingle is the project closest to Williamson's heart. When Miramax gained control of the project Williamson had been thrown off years before, it became the obvious choice for his directorial debut. The role of Mrs. Tingle, a hateful schoolteacher on whom dark, sweet vengeance is exacted by her fed-up students, was said to have interested Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Sigourney Weaver and Sally Field, for starters. "I screen-tested an Oscar-winning actress or two," Williamson concedes, "but I wanted Helen Mirren badly."

How did the predominantly young cast, which includes Dawson's Katie Holmes and big-screen newcomer Barry Watson, handle working with such a revered, seasoned British actress? "The kids were really nervous," he says, "particularly Katie, who'd had a bad experience with a certain Oscar-winning someone with whom she had screen-tested for the movie. But the first day we had a table reading, Helen just walked in like any other human being, having a lot of fun. I didn't buy it and said to people, 'Give her until day four and she's going to turn into a stark, raving actress.' Day four came and she was even nicer, joking it up, having fun."

And how did everyone deal with the other notable veteran in the cast, Molly Ringwald? Williamson himself is a self-confessed fan of the John Hughes movies in which she starred. "The day Molly was supposed to start working, Katie Holmes and I just stood outside the trailer too nervous and in awe of her to go in," he recalls. "But she was a very good sport and seemed to like commenting on herself, playing in a movie with Katie Holmes when Molly was the Katie Holmes of her moment.

"Overall, we had so much fun," Williamson continues. "We even called the set 'Camp Tingle.' I'd made a pact with myself: 'You may never get to direct again, so enjoy it.' And I did."

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