Throughout your career, you've worked exclusively within the genre of horror. What is it about horror that attracts human beings?

I think fear is one of the primal hurdles in life. It's one that we don't like to think about too much. But I think, quite often, there's this very very ancient need to face up to fears--sometimes it's a roller coaster, sometimes it's rock climbing, sometimes it's going to a movie and seeing things about very deep psychological fears.

For at least the past several years, the prevailing wisdom in Hollywood has been--and the box office has supported the theory--that horror is a dead genre. True or false?

Well, it's kind of been betrayed by the success of Scream. It outgrossed a lot of the big Hollywood pictures this year. So if that's dead, I'll do more of it. I think what happens in horror is that there's not many people practicing it that do it well. But there are a tremendous amount of imitators--usually thrown together by the studios who want to make a quick buck. Usually after a really good film, Hollywood will go out and copy it to death. It takes a while to come up with a totally fresh idea. And I do think there was a sort of a lull in the (horror) market. But, you know, people told me the same thing before I made Last House on the Left, the same thing when I made Nightmare on Elm Street: There's no more interest in horror. But when you do a good original film, lo and behold, the audience comes out in droves. I just think that for any good film--where there's really strong word-of-mouth, and people go back and talk about it over the water cooler at lunch--the film will do very well. And horror is no exception to that.

What was it about Scream that broke that box office stigma against horror films?

It's kind of a horror film, but when you really look at it more closely it's a thriller, it's a murder mystery. It's in some ways a send-up of the most cliched and hackneyed aspects of the horror genre, it's a look at the audience that talks about specific films, so you're sort of in a film within a film. There's a great deal about it that's really intriguing--to say nothing about the fact that it's exciting, scary and funny. All those things in combination is really quite rare.

Between your two most recent films, Wes Craven's New Nightmare and Scream, you've obviously been developing a new direction toward the existential horror film--the post-modern horror film, if you will. Is that something you're striving for?

Well, there's been a lot of thought recently--and this is coming from an ex-Humanities professor--in modern literary criticism, in psychology, on the examination of the narrative of people's lives as a way of defining who they are and what the culture (around them) is. I'm just becoming more and more aware that horror films and movies in general are part of the profound expression of a society--in a way that the society identifies itself and also perceives of its sense of reality. The two sort of cross-fertilize each other a great deal. So it felt incomplete to do a film without taking into account that any characters in the film would be seeing films and talking about films a great deal, especially if they're teenagers. It was just a natural progression to follow. The same thing with New Nightmare. When they asked me to bring Freddy back, the only way I could think of doing it was to do a film that jumped outside the fence of a movie that somehow existed in a complete vacuum of real life and do it about people that really had worked on the film. So it's just part of a general intellectual climate that's going on with a lot of artists and writers.

One of the more interesting trends these days is the obsession with the end of the millennium and how that is weighing on people's psyches. Is that something that interests you?

Yeah it does. I'm fascinated by it. I've been reading a lot about end of century and end of millennial cultures. Some very interesting things have happened in history. In the 1690s, the Salem Witch Trials were taking place and there were witch trials in many other places. At the end of the 19th century, there was a huge surge of what they call neurasthenia, which was sort of nervous breakdown. (That was) the first time that concept came around. People felt overwhelmed by the civilization of the machine. Actually, I ran across some interesting stories of people being fascinated about being in train wrecks. It reminded me of (David) Cronenberg's Crash. It's (all about) confusion and feeling like civilization is outstripping you. And certainly with the recent events with the Heaven's Gate cult, we see extraordinary events like that taking place in our century, too. I think we will find that as we get closer and closer to the end of the century, there will be kind of extreme psychological situations and hysteria of one sort or another.

Is that something you might address in film one day?

Well, yeah. Even in Scream the character says, "We don't need motives, it's the millennium." I think there is that sense with kids that they're coming to the end times. I think once we get into the next century, everybody will relax and say, "Oh, we're not all dead." Yeah, I'm very interested in that and I think I will be dealing with it in subsequent films. Somebody actually approached me to do a film called Wes Craven's Millennium. I was too tied up with this deal with Miramax to pursue it. It was another studio.

You've worked with both of them. I guess you're the expert. How do you tell the difference between Johnny Depp and Skeet Ulrich?

(Laughs) It's funny, I've been asked a lot about that question. I didn't really see Skeet as being that much like Johnny. He has I guess a little bit of that sort of langour and sulkiness and sensuality to him. But I think he's very much his own man. I think that will fall away from him, that comparison. He's got a lot of really fine qualities to him. The role in Scream was very difficult because he had to go in and out of being a suspect about four times, and, each time, when you were convinced he did it, you had to sort of be convinced again that he was quite reliable. That was a very tricky acting role that he did, and he really threw himself into it with great intelligence. He had a lot of wonderful suggestions. I was very impressed by him.

You've had quite a background in working with Hollywood's up and coming young actors.

They're fun. They've got a lot of energy. They're open to direction. And you get to see people very early in their careers. I mean, I directed Sharon Stone in her first speaking role. Johnny Depp. Bruce Willis--when he first came to town, I did a "Twilight Zone" with him. He was totally unknown. So it's fun to see them become huge stars later.

Are you committed to working on a Scream 2 now?

Yes, I do have that contract to do Scream 2 starting shooting around June 15 for Christmas release. And then a second film, which is going to be completely out of the genre and something I've wanted to do for years. Kind of an art house film about a New York school teacher that teaches classical violin to East Harlem kids. It's based on an actual woman's life. There was a documentary on her called Small Wonders that was out last year which was nominated for an Academy Award. It's going to be a fictionalized version of her life. It's something I wanted to do for years. With the success of Scream, I was able to negotiate that as part of my contract with Miramax. We have a multiple picture deal with them now. And frankly, they were very interested in seeing what I would do with that.