Wes Craven
Wes Craven Tries Romance
“It was really nice,” Craven mused. “We were kind of isolated from the rest of Paris but just the thought, I can remember just thinking between shots, ‘I’m filming in Paris, this is so fantastic.’ I’ve been to Paris many times and it’s so photogenic. I’ve often thought, ‘God, I’d love to do a film in Paris or a film in Europe.’ Suddenly there you are. It’s just a very heady feeling to be working with French people and the offices were this old building that used to I think repair trolly cars or something. We’d look out our office window and see this big Gantry crane that used to be used. And all the people coming and going on the streets, I was just like, ‘This is really cool. It’s like the old days.’”
Craven’s segment features an engaged couple fighting about the male’s lack of romance while visiting the grave of Oscar Wilde. The ghost of Wilde teaches the man a thing or two about flowery prose. The couple is played by Rufus Sewell and Emily Mortimer.
“I just went after certain actors. Emily I’d worked with before and we needed to do it very quickly, so I just called her up and basically she said, ‘Okay, great.’ Rufus, we kind of had the strictures we couldn’t bring people from the United States. We didn’t have time and there wasn’t a budget for it. They kind of needed to come from Europe so I just said, ‘Who are the leading men that are around that are available?’ His name was mentioned. I had seen some of his work and really liked it and said, ‘Let’s take a chance with him.’ He was probably thinking the same thing about me.”
For the role of Wilde, Craven cast fellow Paris Je T’aime filmmaker Alexander Paine. “I kind of discovered in the course of just being around the offices of that place that people had been doing cameos in each other’s films. And then shortly after that, I got a call from Alexander Paine who I’d never met and said, ‘How are you doing? I like your films.’ ‘I like your films.’ ‘I hear you have a role for Oscar Wilde you haven’t filled yet and I’d love to do it. What do you think?’ I said, ‘Let’s talk.’ So he came over and he looked like yeah, that could be Wilde. It’s not quite the famous drawings of him but he has an elegance and a sort of charisma. He said, ‘You can revoice me. You’ll have to revoice me.’ I said okay and it was as informal as that. He came down, got wardrobe I think in an hour and showed up a couple days later when we were shooting and pulled it off beautifully.”
Each filmmaker shot their segment separately, but a few would overlap. “I only met Vincenzo [Natali] and Alexander Paine. They were the two guys that were around when I was shooting. It was kind of a long serial shoot where people would come and shoot and hang out a little bit and then go. So obviously mine was kind of in the middle and it was the one that was going the most and then Vincenzo was about to shoot I think right after I finished mine I went and played a corpse in his vampire movie and froze my butt off for a whole night. And then somebody else had shot just before us. I think Alexander Paine had just so that’s kind of who was around.”
Paris Je T’aime opens May 4.
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