Sure he’s been scaring our socks off for a year now. But screenwriter Kevin Williamson wants to tell us a Christmas story.
The Southern-born scripter of “Scream,” “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and now “Scream 2”, says his mom predicted his career path before he did.
This was after he’d lived in New York then Los Angeles for a while, trying his hand at acting. Then he decided to turn his hand to writing. Finally. “I called her and said I was gonna try out this writing thing. And she said, `So you finally got the hint from when I gave you the typewriter when you were 10.”‘
It was a Christmas present. And here comes the warm-fuzzy yuletide part of our interview: “She had it gift-wrapped, and left it in the back seat of the car.”
Then, in the spirit of the season, somebody broke in and stole it. So his mom–whom he describes as a born storyteller–and his dad, a fisherman, had to borrow money to replace it. “Isn’t that a sappy story,” Williamson, 32, says. “They were your basic Southern parents, they’d sacrifice anything for the kids.”
And now, he has the chance to pay them back: He’s buying them a new house in their hometown, New Bern, N.C. He can afford it: In a year’s time, he’s gone from struggling screenwriter to the hot Hollywood scribe.
He’s planning to pen the third, final installment of the “Scream” saga, and he consulted with Jamie Lee Curtis to write the screen treatment for “Halloween 7.”
Sex, wit and a keen knowledge of movies are some of the trademarks of Williamson’s witty writing, even in a hand-me-down project such as “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (based on a teen book by Lois Duncan). His dialogue is marked by its freshness and spice. But he says there’s a secret to it: It’s really just based on all the Southern gossip and yarn-spinning he grew up hearing.
“I just mask it and put it in the mouths of savvy teenagers,” he sa9s. “But if you really listen, it’s just a bunch of Southern people, sitting around talking.”
