An article by Jamie Stuart
John Carpenter is the creator of Halloween, the most
influential horror film of the last quarter century. It’s mid-October, and
he’s killing time in his Manhattan hotel room, waiting to appear at Lincoln
Center as part of its Scary Movies series. He’s got a head of ashen hair and a
mustache the same. Chain-fueling himself with cigarettes and coffee, he
declares: “I don’t have to work anymore. So, the question is: do I want to
work? It’s a nice position to be in.”
Having been a filmmaker for the last 3 decades, directing some of our greatest
horror and sci-fi films, including The Thing and Starman, as well
as Big Trouble in Little China, years ahead of its time, he perplexingly
offers, “I had never seen Charlie’s Angels before. I was watching it
on television this afternoon. I was dumbfounded. It’s unbelievable! It’s all
I can say. It’s unbelievable. Just as a movie. It’s unbelievable.
Unbelievable. Stunned. My jaw dropped. Wow!”
Stammering back, he concludes with disbelief, “You guys wanted to see that!
Wow! I couldn’t do that. There’s no way in hell I could do that. I’m
sorry, I can’t do that.”
Carpenter was born in 1948 and fell in love with cinema during its first science
fiction golden age of 1950-58. Although he responded just as favorably to
westerns and romantic comedies, he ultimately found himself drawn to the lurid
types of films he would later make his own. His explanation is quite simple:
“They still had that innocent imagination that I really loved a lot.”
More importantly, he observes, “That’s when a lot of the movies were dealing
with scientific issues, and we hadn’t gone to the moon, yet. The atomic bomb
was the monster -- etc., etc... I grew up during that time, and I really found
it to be incredible moviemaking. I just fell in love with it.”
After a battle with USC over his student film turned first feature Dark Star,
he went on to direct Assault on Precinct 13, an homage to Rio Bravo, by
his favorite filmmaker Howard Hawks. He soon followed in 1978 with the landmark Halloween,
which until 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, was the most successful
independent film of all time. The rest is history.
If Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho invented the concept of the modern horror
film (something that Carpenter is quick to point out), then Halloween
invented the form. In its wake, we’ve had to endure every ill-conceived
masked-maniac slasher-flick featuring obligatory handheld P.O.V. shots.
Contrary to popular belief, Carpenter used virtually no handheld shots in Halloween.
He employed a Pana-Glide -- Panavision’s answer to the recently invented
Stedicam -- to achieve the most important opening shot since its inspiration,
Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil. Jumping at this new technology, he beat
Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining by 2 years. He explains, “Panavision
developed its own line -- its own version of the Stedicam -- cause the
Panavision lenses (Primos) are incredibly heavy. Filled with glass. So, the
whole thing tipped forward... But yeah, it glided -- it wasn’t handheld. It
was a gliding sensation.” He lights another butt, then resumes by adding, “I
probably would not have done it handheld, because I was not a fan of
handheld.”
He’s not too eager to discuss his films’ meanings (“Nah. I know what I’m
doing. Why I do things.”), preferring to talk nuts and bolts about his
filmmaking. He goes on, “I’ve become less rigid than I was in those days. I
had very formalized ideas about what kind of visual style I wanted. I refused to
use zooms until the last 10 years. I just had a real fixed idea. This is what I
wanted. Now in my old age I’m more flexible. Open to different ideas.
Different cutting patterns. Maybe not as excessive as some of these young
guys.”
Which young guys? “I really like Paul Thomas Anderson a lot. I think he’s
really good. Damn, is he good! Amazingly good! He really has command of
narrative. Visual narrative. Really interesting. That’s one example. I love
his films. Even though I don’t have any connection with what’s going on on
the screen, he makes me.”
Charlie’s Angels and PT Anderson are just 2 examples of his fascination with
modern cinema. He’s incredibly envious of the upcoming generation of
filmmakers, in particular the indies, because, “Technology’s a great tool
for you. CG’s a great tool. You don’t realize the gift that you have now.
This technology. That’s the thing I think is incredible. It doesn’t look
like film -- it’s not gonna look like film. It looks like digital. But
that’s okay. It’s all about the story.”
This brings up a major point for him. Contrary to most neophyte filmmakers who
are primarily concerned with “shots,” Carpenter wisely declares that the
most important aspect of any film is: “Story. Story. Then comes the story. The
next is story. Then the story. It’s all story.”
Looking back on his own body of work, he’s totally unsentimental. He has no
favorites and dryly admits, “I finished ‘em. They got done. They got shown.
Base-level that’s what it’s all about. It’s hard. If you’ve done that,
you’ve done something. And whatever happens to it, you can’t worry about
that. You do the best you can. You’re creating something. People then watch
it. That is my definition of success.”
He has no illusions. He’s made the films he wanted to make (all of the titles
begin with “John Carpenter’s”), and doesn’t seem to mind how his films
have been received -- noting that in France he’s considered an auteur, in
Britain a horror filmmaker, and in America a bum. “I’ve had the same
experience on every film. With a couple of exceptions. Every movie has gotten
either terrible reviews or mixed reviews, and most of the time the audience
doesn’t know what they’re seeing. Later on, they get it. Sometimes that
comes in a shorter period of time. With Halloween, it happened in a
matter of days and weeks. Sometimes it happens over a period of years. It’s
all the same story.”
He offers a slight attempt at analysis by suggesting, “I think it has
something to do with the kind of movies I make. I don’t know. I think maybe
that has something to do with it. I was just doing certain things a certain way,
which -- hey, look, all I can do is my own films.”
Carpenter doesn’t know what his next project will be and doesn’t seem to be
in any hurry. His steadfast attitude has always worked for him. Fittingly, in Halloween
he chose to have the original The Thing playing on television. In
1996’s Scream, directed by Wes Craven, Halloween was seen
playing on the TV. He contemplates, “Yeah, it’s weird. It’s flattering.
Believe me, it’s flattering.”
His most successful creation continues to live and live and live without his
participation. “I have a very solid duty on the sequels. I open the mail. I
take out a check. A big check. And deposit it in my account. Then I sit back and
watch the NBA.”
“I’ve always thought that a true genius in this world finds a way to make
money without doing anything. That’s one way of not doing anything and making
money. See, if I could just do that all the time... Don’t have to work.
Opening a letter’s not very hard. Then, actually, I can pay somebody to take
it to the bank. It’s great.”
He lights yet another cigarette and jokes about himself, “It’s time to put
him out to pasture. Open the gate. Go on out and graze. Go on and frolic, you
old man. Frolic.”
-Copyright 2002 by
Jamie
Stuart