On a recent episode of the podcast Collider Ladies Night, actress Judy Greer revealed how horror king Wes Craven created a warm, familial atmosphere on the set of Cursed. The actress says that it was not what she expected going into filming, especially because of the dark nature of the film.
One of the ways Craven achieved this domestic feeling was by giving the cast and crew the New York Times crossword puzzle every day, according to Greer.
“He printed out every single morning the New York Times crossword puzzle for everybody on set. There was a stack of them, and so every morning as everyone showed up for work, I can’t remember if it was his assistant or a script supervisor at the time passed out the New York Times crossword puzzle. And so, we were all all day long working on the crossword puzzle. That was the thing we did all day as a family.”
The actress says many lovely things about Craven and her experiences on set. She states that she was “a huge fan of Wes Craven” and was “excited to work with him. He was so kind and lovely and thoughtful. I guess I just didn’t expect that from someone who all I had heard about was how he would scream, ‘More blood, more blood, more blood,’ and how sweet he was. [The] set was really fun. It was like a really family-like environment.”
Cursed is a 2005 horror film directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson. It stars Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg as Ellie and Jimmy Myers, siblings who are attacked by a werewolf. Greer plays the villain of the film, Joanie, who works as a Los Angeles publicist.
The film faced many production delays and was not well received by critics. Nick Schager of Slant said the film was “concocted without an ounce of inspiration by Scream masterminds Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson.” But it is nice to know that they had a good time on set making it.