I know I’m coming out with this a little late, but I feel as though I need to say something personal on the matter of Wes Craven’s unfortunate passing. He was one of my greatest idols, and my first introduction to horror. Without Wes Craven, I probably wouldn’t write in the way I do.

Let me set the mood for a moment. I was eight years old, barely into the first semester of my third grade year, and I was flipping through the channels on my bedroom television, mostly hoping to catch some late night Dragon Ball Z or something wildly inappropriate to talk to my friends about at school the next day. In truth, I should have been asleep long before then. But I was a little shit. And a curious one, at that.

Eventually, I came across what I now know to be the opening sequence of Scream. You know, the scene where Drew Barrymore is running in slo-mo while the black of Ghostface’s cloak billows in the wind just before he ganks her for getting the question wrong. I couldn’t help but to stare. I’d seen the Ghostface mask before in Halloween shops and posters, but my parents never made it a point to immerse me in horror, as you might imagine. Up until that point, I mostly associated the mask with “bad”. But there, in my bedroom, there was nobody to turn off the television. Nobody to tell me to cover my eyes.

Admittedly, the scene was more intense than I was prepared for, what with the intestines and the hanging (sheesh). But I was too entranced to change the channel again. I had never seen anything like it. I soon found myself watching my first horror film…and loving it.

Sure, I was scared, but in a fun way. I enjoyed the mystery. I laughed at Stu’s terrible jokes (“liver alone *sticks tongue out*”). I loved Randy’s “rules” to survive a horror film (which I found incredibly accurate in the coming years, once I exposed myself to every popular horror film imaginable), and I thought Sidney Prescott was pretty damn hot, even at my young age. And that ending. That fucking ending. It was so bizarre to me that the characters were carrying out the plot of a horror film while explaining that they were carrying out the plot of a horror film. It blew my mind. Who knew horror could be so much fun?

Naturally, I told my friends about it the next morning in class. And none of them gave a flying fuck. Not that I could blame a bunch of second graders for not caring about a movie they weren’t morally allowed to watch for another nine years. But it was frustrating. I wanted to talk to someone about it. My parents couldn’t know I had seen such a slaughterfest, and the internet wasn’t exactly the thing to do yet. So what could I do?

Well, I could write about it.

Before I ever saw Scream 2, I wrote a one-page elementary school level treatment of my own. It mostly involved Gale (Courtney Cox) killing everyone to make a good story, and Sidney and Randy saving the day and getting married in the end (give me a break, I was eight). I wish I knew what happened to it. Rest assured, it exists somewhere. But I eventually saw the actual Scream 2 and forgot all about it. Because Scream 2 kicks ass.

So thank you, Wes. Thank you for my love of horror. Thank you for making me want to be a writer. And thank you for the Screams. Rest in Piece, brother.