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The brothers Weinstein, that is, founders of Miramax, the indie outfit that has seemingly released as many quality movies in this brain-dead decade as all the major studios combined. Williamson passed up "quite a bit more money" during the bidding for Scream 2 in order to join fellow youth-centric auteurs Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith and Robert Rodriguez (for whom he's now writing a high school sci-fi horror script) in the Miramax stable. "Teens today have been exposed to so much," says Bob Weinstein. "[Writers] that don't pander win the game. Kevin understands this brilliantly, and he's got the talent to go with it."
He's also working really, really hard to make sure his new bosses never regret that sunny assessment. "My days consist of ringing phones," he says of his new mogul's life. "It never ends. I'm finishing up the Rodriguez script this month. Then in January, we're in pre-production for Tingle. We'll shoot that in March and April and edit in May. Then in June, I'll start writing Scream 3."
It'll be interesting to see what he comes up with. The Scream flicks are cool, but they aren't exactly an aesthetic revolution, and Williamson knows this. "I hope I'm not at the top of my game," he says. "I'm a work in progress." Several, actually. In his spare time--think midnight to dawn--he's writing not one but two scripts on spec. "I want to do for action movies what Scream did for horror movies," he says. "I want to attack that genre; I want to kick its butt. And I want to do the same thing for romantic comedy." And to think that, but for one fateful bump in the Westwood night..."I know," he says. "Scary, isn't it?"