SCREAM Star David Arquette on the End of the Trilogy

By: Ian Ebright
Date: Wednesday, February 16, 2000

Ian Ebright sat down for a telephone interview last week with David Arquette. The actor is busy plugging his latest movie project, a wrestling comedy called READY TO RUMBLE, but he's known to horror fans for starring as Officer Dewey in the mega-successful horror trilogy, SCREAM, SCREAM 2, and SCREAM 3.

QUESTION: YOUR 'SCREAM 3' PULLED IN OVER $34 MILLION ITS OPENING WEEKEND. ANY SHOT FOR A FOURTH INSTALLMENT WITH THE ORIGINAL CAST?

DAVID ARQUETTE: No. Not with the original cast. That's it.

ARE YOU GLAD TO BE DONE?

Yeah. It was fun; we had so much fun doing it. It's good to go out on a high note with some integrity instead of going 8,9,10. It's borderline cheesy already. It's good to just get out where we did. No need to kill everything.

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE OF THE THREE 'SCREAM' FILMS?

Personally, I like the first one because it's where I met Courtney [Cox Arquette] for the first time and we we're all sort of innocent. [We] really didn't know it was going to be a big movie, we were just enjoying it. Success brings a certain amount of jadedness. But I think all of them are above the standard.

WHAT'S THE SINGLE MOST UNIQUE QUALITY IN WES CRAVEN'S DIRECTING STYLE?

His ability to know exactly where the audience is at every moment. He'll know things while we're shooting something that I could never see. [I'll ask] 'Who would do this?' But that's the point- embrace that disbelief in what you're doing because the audience is going to scream back 'Don't go there! Don't go into that hallway!' [And Wes Craven would say] 'But that's what we want. Just believe it and it'll work.' He knows where the audience is at every point of the movie. That alone is just a gift.

DID YOU FEEL A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EHREN KRUGER AND KEVIN WILLIAMSON'S WRITING STYLE?

Personally, there were elements of our characters; a voice was sort of lost as far as Dewey and Gail were coming from. Just as far as that went, because Kevin did create our characters. We had already been through two of them, and it seemed a little softer, not me so much but Courtney's character for sure. But it all worked for the best. We had Parker [Posey] come in and shoot...that was good for Courtney to play sort of the straight character. On the same scope it's not as much fun to play a straight character as it is to play an over the top, fun, crazy character. I think Ehren did an incredible job, blew me away. But as far as the voice of our certain characters, it did seem a little lacking.