Jay Craven is a Vermont filmmaker who is perhaps best known for adapting five Howard Frank Mosher books depicting rural Vermont. Craven ‘s 10th film WETWARE, which will be screened Friday in Lake Placid, veers dramatically from that genre to what some describe as a “sci-fi noir” piece. Craven tells WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley WETWARE is based on a novel by Craig Nova that Mosher recommended.
"When I read the novel it had a stunning sort of visual world that it suggested. Nova’s writing is very evocative so it suggested cinema right away. The story deals with a guy who’s a genetic engineer who is modifying humans into what he calls mungos who will do jobs that nobody else wants to do and with success in that line he sort of creates an upgrade model. At the same I read the novel early 2000’s also made a documentary film called “After the Fog”, which interviewed combat veterans from WWII, Vietnam and Iraq. I got involved with the National Center for PTSD which is in Vermont and one day one of the senior researchers came in and said I think we have a solution to Post Traumatic Stress. And I said what is that? She said genetic modification of soldiers before they go into battle. They would be fearless in the face of extreme danger and we could erase emotional memory. And so combined that input with having read the novel and also just having a growing sense the future is sort of now with technologies like that under consideration I was led naturally to this story."
Filmmaker Jay Craven will attend the Adirondack Film Society’s screening of WETWARE at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts on Friday at 7 p.m.
