Rewatchables Reference

• The first 12 minutes – Drew Barrymore on the phone, the horror movie trivia quiz, the boyfriend getting gutted, the Jiffy Pop as a timing device, and then her parents hearing her die through the phone. 'It's in the conversation for first scenes, period.' The movie had to display a mastery of the form in that first 12 minutes for the rest of the movie to work.
• Jamie Kennedy doing the rules at the party while watching 'Halloween' – 'There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie.' Number one: you can never have sex. Number two: you can never drink or do drugs. Number three: never say I'll be right back.
• The last 20 minutes – the kitchen scene where Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich are stabbing each other, blaming each other, stumbling around. Neve Campbell finally gets the gun. 'That is a phenomenal six minutes.'

• The Ghostface mask – still kind of scary. You see it on trick-or-treaters every Halloween and it's still unsettling.
• The opening scene in its entirety – Drew Barrymore's performance, the horror movie quiz, all of it has aged stupendously.
• The self-referential nature of the movie – the first horror movie to acknowledge the existence of other horror movies. It created an appreciation for the genre writ large.
• The reveal that the killers are two high school kids – nobody was thinking about that in 1996. It was always an adult murdering high school kids. The double-killer twist was something nobody saw coming.

• The dependence on landlines – the entire movie hinges on home phone calls, and the reception question for 1996 cell phones is debatable.
• David Arquette and Courteney Cox's chemistry – knowing they fell in love, got married, and then divorced makes their scenes a little sad now.
• David Arquette's performance – 'he's really terrible in this movie.' He plays Dewey like he's brain damaged.
• Henry Winkler's scenes didn't age great – especially the moment where the principal touches Sidney's face with two fingers, which today would trigger an investigation.
• The astonishing lack of diversity – not a single non-white actor with a speaking line in the entire movie. Scream 2 corrected this immediately by casting Jada Pinkett Smith.

• Drew Barrymore was originally supposed to play Sidney Prescott. She was locked in, loved the script, and gave it credibility. She had to drop out after four days due to other commitments.
• Molly Ringwald was Kevin Williamson's first choice for Sidney – he wrote the movie for her. She said she was too old (she was 27), and she was right.
• Reese Witherspoon was pursued hard for Sidney and wanted no part of it.
• Ben Affleck was supposedly considered for the Skeet Ulrich role.
• Rebecca Gayheart was up for the Rose McGowan part – they ended up putting her in Scream 2 instead.
• George Romero and Sam Raimi almost directed the movie. Sam Raimi's version would have been funnier; Romero never really made a movie like this.

• Kevin Williamson wrote the script in three days in Palm Springs. The original title was 'Scary Movie.' He pitched it as a trilogy from the start.
• The Gainesville Ripper (Danny Rolling) murdered five college students in Florida and was eventually executed. Williamson used it as direct inspiration.
• The movie was almost NC-17 multiple times due to the violence. The Drew Barrymore death scene originally had visible guts.
• The final scene took 21 days to shoot out of a ~60 day schedule, using 40-50 gallons of fake blood.
• Santa Rosa High School refused to be in the movie. The credits include a passive-aggressive 'no thanks' to them.
• Linda Blair from 'The Exorcist' has a cameo as a reporter outside the school.

Matthew Lillard as Stu Macher. He's in maybe a third of the movie but he's the most exciting thing in it. Not necessarily the best performance or greatest actor, but he is really going for it. His face does stuff – eye bulges, mouth frowns, finger-pointing. 'He looks like a kid in the background of a Norman Rockwell painting.' Improvised some of his best lines.

• Wes Craven – three stages of horror: Last House on the Left in the '70s, Nightmare on Elm Street in the '80s, Scream in the '90s. 'Pretty underrated now.'
• Neve Campbell – either this or the Bailey intervention scene in Party of Five. The hosts go with the intervention.
• Skeet Ulrich – clearly his apex. Had the strongest 'next Johnny Depp' momentum. Now the Riverdale dad.
• Matthew Lillard – absolutely his apex. He was hot, thought he was going to really hit it, and then his career fizzled.
• David Arquette – despite holding the WCW Heavyweight Championship belt, this is definitely his apex.
• Rose McGowan – dating Marilyn Manson might be a contender, but this is probably it.

• Drew Barrymore's character doesn't call the cops because the killer says 'they're too far away' – and she just... accepts that?
• How did they disembowel the boyfriend Steve so quickly? It's like a velociraptor clawed at his body.
• Matthew Lillard somehow gets a 240-pound cameraman up onto a roof by himself. Skeet Ulrich was still upstairs.
• Where did two 17-year-olds get a professional voice changer? Did they spend time at Radio Shack?
• Billy Loomis planned to explain being covered in corn syrup to the police how exactly?
• Sydney's dad just leaves for 'an expo' the weekend of the anniversary of his wife's murder while a killer is on the loose.
• There's a killer who's murdered two students and hasn't been caught, and the whole school has a massive party a week later.

• What's the next day of school like for Sidney Prescott? She's lost everybody. The hosts unanimously agree: she's done for the rest of the year.
• What does the homeowner do with that house after 15 murders and 50 gallons of fake blood? 'I'm bulldozing it and selling the land.'
• The stabbing plan: where exactly do you tell your co-killer to stab you so it looks like you were left for dead but doesn't actually kill you? 'Hit me somewhere down here, preferably on the side.'

• Jason says the horror genre won – Scream revitalized the genre and created an appreciation for horror writ large. 'People were like, oh, 'Halloween' is great, I love the Freddy movies.'
• Bill says Wes Craven – a sweet, intellectual guy who got typecast as a horror director. He used the leverage from Scream to finally make the sincere drama he'd been wanting to make for decades (Music of the Heart with Meryl Streep, who got an Oscar nomination).
• Matthew Lillard is also in the conversation – he was the dominant guy in this movie that made $290 million and launched an entire horror era. His career probably should have gone better.