When Wes Craven guided Meryl Streep to an Oscar nomination
In 1999, sandwiched between two Scream sequels, horror maestro Wes Craven made another movie that is often forgotten by his legions of fans, despite it starring Meryl freakin’ Streep.
Craven’s one-time dalliance with the greatest actor of her generation came when his career was inarguably at its highest point. In 1996, Scream took Hollywood by storm, proving that scary flicks didn’t all have to be low-rent schlockfests with ropey scripts and even dodgier acting. Scream had a whipsmart, meta script, a gaggle of young stars poised to make their mark on the industry, and a veteran horror director operating at the height of his considerable powers. It’s about as perfect a horror movie as has ever been made, and the world responded accordingly; it made a huge $173million at the worldwide box office.
Naturally, as soon as Scream became an unexpected megahit, production company Dimension Films wanted a sequel rushed into production yesterday. Craven knew he had leverage for the first time in years, though, as he was only contracted to make one Scream movie. So, if Dimension wanted more, it would have to make it worth his while. Cue Craven using his newfound cloud to negotiate a lucrative three-picture deal: two Scream sequels and a mystery movie of his own choosing.
Amazingly, Craven put the pedal to the metal so fast with Scream 2 that it was released only 51 weeks after Scream, which is an incredible turnaround considering sequels usually take at least two years. Hell, it’s also a good movie, which should have been impossible to realise in that short timeframe. Whatever the case, Scream 2 was also a megahit, but Craven didn’t have time to rest on his laurels.
After all, he had to turn his attention to convincing an iconic star to play the lead in his mystery movie: Music of the Heart, an emotional biopic of Roberta Guaspari, the New York City music teacher who campaigned for music education funding in the city’s public schools. To his delight, despite being a guy more known for throwing buckets of blood and viscera at the screen than making heartfelt, syrupy music biopics, Craven got his woman; it just wasn’t Streep.
Yes, you read that correctly: Craven didn’t initially tap Streep for the lead role in his very first sojourn outside of horror. Instead, he hired Madonna, then fresh off Evita, and the ‘Material Girl’ icon began studying the violin. However, after a few months, she dropped out of the project, and Craven set out to woo Streep, whom he didn’t think he’d have been able to get in the first place.
“I had to have a very long, very erudite conversation with Meryl before she’d consider doing Music of the Heart,” Craven admitted. Whatever he said, though, it worked, and Streep came on board. Hilariously, on day one of the shoot, she revealed to him that she wasn’t exactly familiar with much of his work, but she did know Scream, if only because it put the fear of God in her children.
“On the set the first day I met her, she said, ‘We live in a house in Connecticut, down at the end of this long road, in the middle of the woods,’” Craven recalled with a smile. “‘And my daughters watched Scream on our television set, and they were terrified to sleep in the house after that.’ I got busted by her right away.”
Determined to make the most of his opportunity to prove to the world that he had more strings to his bow than just scaring the bejesus out of people, Craven put everything into Music of the Heart. Astonishingly, he also developed Scream 3 at the same time, leading to a crazy scenario where there was less than four months between the two films’ release dates. In the end, his gamble didn’t pay off in terms of box office, as Music of the Heart was a flop, but it did net Streep one of her customary Oscar nominations, making it the only one of Craven’s films to have garnered an acting nod from the Academy.
Sadly, the Nightmare on Elm Street creator was never able to exercise these non-horror muscles again, but he was happy he at least got his shot, by hook or crook. “I come from a blue-collar family,” he mused, ever the pragmatist. “I’m just glad for the work.”
He claimed he was happy to return to horror, but in a bittersweet follow-up, given how his later career panned out, he added, “I’ll take every opportunity to get out, but if I am going to be a caged bird, I’ll sing the best song I can.”
