10 Genre Directors Who Stepped Out Of Their Field (And Failed)
5. Wes Craven Went Back To School... Music School
It's fascinating to watch Wes Craven burst out of the scene with grindhouse fare, gritty, realistic Video Nasties like Last House on The Left and The Hills Have Eyes when you consider his background.
Prior to his first feature, Craven was an English and Humanities professor at Westminster College and Clarkson University, respectively. But he left academia to shoot porn.
Craven shot "many hardcore X-rated films" under pseudonyms. It wasn't until he met producer Sean S. Cunningham that the two set to work on a cheap horror film that would guarantee a return. And both Last House and The Hills Have Eyes have just a hint of academic pretension: the first is a loose remake of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring and the second a retelling of the Sawney Bean clan.
It wasn't until 1999, after Craven had finished re-igniting the genre with the one-two punch of the first Scream films, that he returned to school with diminishing results.
While Music of the Heart is by no accounts awful, it's often viewed as a middle-of-the-road inspirational teacher story in the vein of To Sir With Love, Dangerous Minds and Lean On Me. Critics praised Craven's technical prowess and Meryl Streep's excellent performance as Roberta Guaspari, a violinist who founded the Harlem School of Music.
It's since come under internet fire for being a white saviour film, but otherwise it's a mere blip on an otherwise horror-centric filmography. It also only made back half its budget.