The interfering producer Bob Weinstein nearly dropped Scream’s mask, until the filmmakers intervened.
Each iconic horror mask has some kind of story to it, whether it’s Micheal Myer’s Halloween look originating from a $2 William Shatner mask that the production team discarded after the first film and could never quite replicate again, through to the 20 different designs of Scream’s iconic Ghostface mask that the production team created, before simply going with the one they’d found in a garage.
Whilst we covered that particular story a week or two ago, more details have emerged as to the legend of the Ghostface mask, with a story surfacing that if Dimension Pictures boss Bob Weinstein had gotten his way, the Ghostface mask would have been scrapped at the beginning of production.
One of the film’s producers, Kathy Conrad, recalls that Weinstein personally was viewing the daily rushes for the film early into production, and was particularly unhappy with the mask. As she recalls: “the controversy, which is pretty notorious, had a lot to do with the ghost mask. They felt like things looked flat. They felt like things were unexciting, that the mask wasn’t scary. I was getting calls early in the morning that were very demanding about ensuring that things change”.
Weinstein sent one of his executives down to the set, demanding that the film be reshot with a series of new masks, but the production team were able to negotiate a different outcome, as Konrad recalls. “What was being asked of us was to shoot everything that we’d already shot with several other masks so that Bob could decide which one he liked best. No, nobody’s doing that. So the idea was presented, can we cut together what we have shot and can we prove to you it’s effective? We were given that courtesy period and Patrick Lussier, who was the editor, worked very quickly and nimbly. You cannot see these movies for what they’re going to become without the tension being built into the cutting”.
Of course, the Weinstein brothers were notorious for recutting the work of their filmmakers, with many of the more egregious hackjobs being recounted in Peter Biskind’s book, Down And Dirty Pictures. On this ocasion though, Wes Craven and his team were able to present the edited footage with the Ghostface mask to Bob Weinstein and he relented
There will of course be a new film in the Scream saga with us early next year, and we can’t wait. Until then, you can catch the trailer here.
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