John Carpenter


John Howard Carpenter is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and composer. Although Carpenter has worked with various film genres, he is associated most commonly with horror, action, and science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s.
Most films of Carpenter's career were initially commercial and critical failures, with the notable exceptions of Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York, and Starman. However, many of Carpenter's films from the 1970s and the 1980s have come to be considered as cult classics, and he has been acknowledged as an influential filmmaker. The cult classics that Carpenter has directed include Dark Star, Assault on Precinct 13, The Thing, Christine, Big Trouble in Little China, Prince of Darkness, They Live, and In the Mouth of Madness. He returned to the Halloween franchise as both composer and executive producer for the horror sequel Halloween.
Carpenter composed or co-composed most of his films' music. He won a Saturn Award for Best Music for the film Vampires. Carpenter has released three studio albums, titled Lost Themes, Lost Themes II, and .
At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, the French Directors' Guild presented Carpenter with the Golden Coach Award. The Directors' Guild described him as "a creative genius of raw, fantastic, and spectacular emotions".

Early life

Carpenter was born on January 16, 1948 in Carthage, New York, the son of Milton Jean and Howard Ralph Carpenter, a music professor. He and his family relocated to Bowling Green, Kentucky during 1953. He was interested in films from an early age, particularly the westerns of Howard Hawks and John Ford, as well as 1950s low-budget horror films such as The Thing from Another World and high-budget science fiction like Forbidden Planet, and began filming horror short films with 8 mm film even before starting high school. He attended Western Kentucky University, where his father chaired the music department, then transferred to the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts during 1968, but quit to make his first feature film.

Career

1960s: Student films and Academy Award

In a beginning film course at USC Cinema during 1969, Carpenter wrote and directed an 8-minute short film, Captain Voyeur. The film was rediscovered in the USC archives in 2011 and proved interesting because it revealed elements that would appear in his later film, Halloween.
The next year he collaborated with producer John Longenecker as co-writer, film editor, and music composer for The Resurrection of Broncho Billy, which won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. The short film was enlarged to 35 mm, sixty prints were made, and the film was released theatrically by Universal Studios for two years in the United States and Canada.

1970s: From student films to theatrical releases

Carpenter's first major film as director, Dark Star, was a science fiction comedy that he co-wrote with Dan O'Bannon. The film reportedly cost only $60,000 and was difficult to make as both Carpenter and O'Bannon completed the film by multitasking, with Carpenter doing the musical score as well as the writing, producing, and directing, while O'Bannon acted in the film and did the special effects. Carpenter received praise for his ability to make low-budget films.
Carpenter's next film was Assault on Precinct 13, a low-budget thriller influenced by the films of Howard Hawks, particularly Rio Bravo. As with Dark Star, Carpenter was responsible for many aspects of the film's creation. He not only wrote, directed, and scored it, but also edited the film using the pseudonym "John T. Chance". Carpenter has said that he considers Assault on Precinct 13 to have been his first real film because it was the first film that he filmed on a schedule. The film was the first time Carpenter worked with Debra Hill, who played prominently in the making of some of Carpenter's most important films.
Carpenter assembled a main cast that consisted of experienced but relatively obscure actors. The two main actors were Austin Stoker, who had appeared previously in science fiction, disaster, and blaxploitation films, and Darwin Joston, who had worked primarily for television and had once been Carpenter's next-door neighbor.
The film received a critical reassessment in the United States, where it is now generally regarded as one of the best exploitation films of the 1970s.
Carpenter both wrote and directed the Lauren Hutton thriller Someone's Watching Me!. This television film is the tale of a single, working woman who, soon after arriving in L.A., discovers that she is being stalked.
Eyes of Laura Mars, a 1978 thriller featuring Faye Dunaway and Tommy Lee Jones and directed by Irvin Kershner, was adapted from a spec script titled Eyes, written by Carpenter, and would become Carpenter's first major studio film of his career.
Halloween was a commercial success and helped develop the slasher genre. Originally an idea suggested by producer Irwin Yablans, who thought of a film about babysitters being menaced by a stalker, Carpenter took the idea and another suggestion from Yablans that it occur during Halloween and developed a story. Carpenter said of the basic concept: "Halloween night. It has never been the theme in a film. My idea was to do an old haunted house film."
Film director Bob Clark suggested in an interview released in 2005 that Carpenter had asked him for his own ideas for a sequel to his 1974 film Black Christmas that featured an unseen and motiveless killer murdering students in a university sorority house. As also stated in the 2009 documentary Clarkworld, Carpenter directly asked Clark about his thoughts on developing the anonymous slasher in Black Christmas:
The film was written by Carpenter and Debra Hill with Carpenter admitting that the music was inspired by both Dario Argento's Suspiria and William Friedkin's The Exorcist.
Carpenter again worked with a relatively small budget, $300,000. The film grossed more than $65 million initially, making it one of the most successful independent films of all time.
Carpenter has described Halloween as: "True crass exploitation. I decided to make a film I would love to have seen as a kid, full of cheap tricks like a haunted house at a fair where you walk down the corridor and things jump out at you." The film has often been cited as an allegory on the virtue of sexual purity and the danger of casual sex, although Carpenter has explained that this was not his intent: "It has been suggested that I was making some kind of moral statement. Believe me, I'm not. In Halloween, I viewed the characters as simply normal teenagers."
In addition to the film's critical and commercial success, Carpenter's self-composed "Halloween Theme" became recognizable apart from the film.
During 1979, Carpenter began what was to be the first of several collaborations with actor Kurt Russell when he directed the television film Elvis.

1980s: Continued commercial success

Carpenter followed up the success of Halloween with The Fog, a ghostly revenge tale inspired by horror comics such as Tales from the Crypt and by The Crawling Eye, a 1958 film about monsters hiding in clouds.
Completing The Fog was an unusually difficult process for Carpenter. After viewing a rough cut of the film, he was dissatisfied with the result. For the only time in his filmmaking career, he had to devise a way to salvage a nearly finished film that did not meet his standards. In order to make the film more coherent and frightening, Carpenter filmed additional footage that included a number of new scenes.
Despite production problems and mostly negative critical reception, The Fog was another commercial success for Carpenter. The film was made on a budget of $1,000,000, but it grossed over $21,000,000 in the United States alone. Carpenter has said that The Fog is not his favorite film, although he considers it a "minor horror classic".
Carpenter immediately followed The Fog with the science-fiction adventure Escape from New York. Featuring several actors that Carpenter had collaborated with or would collaborate with again, as well as several notable actors, it became both commercially successful and critically acclaimed.
His next film, The Thing, is notable for its high production values, including innovative special effects by Rob Bottin, special visual effects by matte artist Albert Whitlock, a score by Ennio Morricone and a cast including young actor Kurt Russell and respected character actors such as Wilford Brimley, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Keith David, and Richard Masur. The Thing was distributed by Universal Pictures.
Although Carpenter's film used the same source material as the 1951 Howard Hawks film, The Thing from Another World, it is more faithful to the John W. Campbell, Jr. novella, Who Goes There?, upon which both films were based. Moreover, unlike the Hawks film, The Thing was part of what Carpenter later called his "Apocalypse Trilogy," a trio of films with bleak endings for the film's characters. Being a graphic, sinister horror film, it did not appeal to audiences during the summer of 1982, especially when E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which presented a much more lighthearted and family-friendly depiction of alien visitation, was released two weeks prior. In an interview, Carpenter stated that E.T.s release could have been largely responsible for the film's disappointment. As The Thing did not perform well commercially, it was Carpenter's first financial disappointment.
During filming of The Thing, Universal offered him the chance to direct Firestarter, based on the novel by Stephen King. Carpenter hired Bill Lancaster and Bill Phillips respectively to adapt the novel into different versions of the screenplay. Carpenter had intended Richard Dreyfuss as Andy McGee, but when The Thing was a financial disappointment, Universal replaced Carpenter with Mark L. Lester. Carpenter's next film, Christine, was the 1983 adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name. The story concerns a high-school nerd named Arnie Cunningham who buys a junked 1958 Plymouth Fury which turns out to have supernatural powers. As Cunningham restores and rebuilds the car, he becomes unnaturally obsessed with it, with deadly consequences. Christine did respectable business upon its release and was received well by critics; however, Carpenter has been quoted as saying he directed the film because it was the only thing offered to him at the time.
Starman was produced by Michael Douglas, the script was well received by Columbia Pictures, which chose it in preference to the script for E.T. and prompted Steven Spielberg to go to Universal Pictures. Douglas chose Carpenter to be the director because of his reputation as an action director who could also convey strong emotion. Starman was reviewed favorably by the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and LA Weekly, and described by Carpenter as a film he envisioned as a romantic comedy similar to It Happened One Night only with a space alien. The film received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Jeff Bridges' portrayal of Starman and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Musical Score for Jack Nitzsche.
After seeing footage of Starman, the executive producer of the Superman film series, Ilya Salkind, offered Carpenter the chance to direct the latest Alexander–Ilya Salkind fantasy epic '. Salkind made the offer to Carpenter during lunch at The Ritz, and while he loved the idea of differing from his normal traditions and directing a children's fantasy film, he requested 24 hours to think about the offer. The next day he had made a list of requirements should he direct the film; they were: 100 percent creative control, the right to assume scriptwriting duties, being able to co-compose the film's musical score, total editorial control, the casting of Brian Dennehy as Santa Claus and a $5 million signing-on fee. Salkind withdrew his offer for him to direct.
After the financial failure of his big-budget action–comedy Big Trouble in Little China, Carpenter struggled to get films financed. He resumed making lower budget films such as Prince of Darkness, a film influenced by the BBC series Quatermass. Although some of the films from this time, such as They Live did develop a cult audience, he never again realized mass-market potential.
Carpenter was also offered The Exorcist III'' during 1989, and met with writer William Peter Blatty during the course of a week. However, the two disagreed about the film's climax and Carpenter refused the project. Blatty directed the film himself a year later. Carpenter said that although they argued about the ending, they had a mutual respect and talked about an interest they both shared: quantum physics.

1990s: Commercial decline and ''Halloween H20: 20 Years Later''

Carpenter's 1990s career is characterized by a number of notable failures: Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Village of the Damned, and Escape from L.A. are examples of films that were critical and financial failures. Also notable from this decade are Body Bags, a television horror anthology film that was made in collaboration with Tobe Hooper, In the Mouth of Madness, yet another Lovecraftian homage, which did not do well either commercially or with critics but now has a cult following, and Vampires, which featured James Woods as the leader of a band of vampire hunters in league with the Catholic Church.
Carpenter was originally in consideration to be the director for the Halloween sequel project, . Since Jamie Lee Curtis, the main actress from the original and the sequel Halloween II, wanted to reunite the cast and crew of the original film, she asked Carpenter to direct Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. Carpenter agreed to direct the film, but his starting fee as director was $10 million. Carpenter rationalized this by believing the hefty fee was compensation for revenue he had never received from the original Halloween, a matter that was still a contention between Carpenter and Halloween producer Moustapha Akkad even after twenty years. When Akkad balked at Carpenter's fee, Carpenter quit the project. Steve Miner assumed directing of Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, which was a commercial success despite receiving mixed reviews.
During 1998, Carpenter composed the soundtrack for the video game Sentinel Returns, published for PC and PlayStation.

2000s: Semi-retirement

In 2001, the film Ghosts of Mars was released. During 2005, there were remakes of Assault on Precinct 13 and The Fog, the latter being produced by Carpenter himself, though in an interview he defined his involvement as, "I come in and say hello to everybody. Go home."
During 2007, Rob Zombie produced and directed Halloween, a re-imagining of Carpenter's 1978 film that resulted in a sequel two years later.
Carpenter worked as director during 2005 for an episode of Showtime's Masters of Horror television series as one of the thirteen filmmakers involved in the first season. His episode, "Cigarette Burns", received generally positive reviews, and positive reactions from Carpenter fans, many of whom regard it as on par with his earlier horror classics. He has since contributed another original episode for the show's second season entitled "Pro-Life", about a young girl who is raped and impregnated by a demon and wants to have an abortion, but whose efforts are halted by her religious fanatic, gun-toting father and her three brothers.

2010s: ''The Ward'', focus on music and return to ''Halloween''

The Ward, Carpenter's first film since 2001's Ghosts of Mars, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13, 2010. Carpenter narrated the video game F.E.A.R. 3, while also consulting on its storyline. On October 10, 2010, Carpenter received the Lifetime Award from the Freak Show Horror Film Festival. Test footage from the set of Darkchylde emerged in July 2010 and on October 31, 2010, it was announced Carpenter will direct. On February 3, 2015, the indie label Sacred Bones Records released his album Lost Themes. On October 19, 2015, All Tomorrow's Parties announced that Carpenter will be performing old and new compositions in London and Manchester, England.
In February 2016, Carpenter announced a sequel to Lost Themes titled Lost Themes II, which was released on April 15, 2016. He then released his third studio album, titled ', on October 20, 2017.
Carpenter acted as executive producer, co-composer, and creative consultant on a new film in the Halloween film series, titled Halloween, and released in October 2018. The film acts as a direct sequel to Carpenter's original film, ignoring the continuity of all other previous films. It was his first direct involvement with the franchise since 1982's '.

Techniques

Carpenter's films are characterized by minimalist lighting and photography, static cameras, use of steadicam, and distinctive synthesized scores.
With the exception of Someone's Watching Me!, Elvis, The Thing, Starman, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, and The Ward, he has scored all of his films, most famously the themes from Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13. His music is generally synthesized with accompaniment from piano and atmospherics.
Carpenter is an outspoken proponent of widescreen filming, and all of his theatrical films were filmed anamorphic with a 2.35:1 or greater aspect ratio. The Ward was filmed in Super 35, the first time Carpenter has ever used that system. Carpenter has stated he feels that the 35mm Panavision anamorphic format is "the best movie system there is", preferring it to both digital and 3D film.

Film music and solo records

For a recent interview, Carpenter stated that it was his father's work, as a music teacher, which first sparked an interest in him to make music. This interest was to play a major role in his later career: he composed the music to most of his films, and the soundtrack to many of those became "cult" items for record collectors. A 21st-Century revival of his music is due in no small amount to the Death Waltz record company, which reissued several of his soundtracks, including Escape from New York, Halloween II, , Assault on Precinct 13, They Live, Prince of Darkness, and The Fog.
Carpenter was an early adopter of synthesizers, since his film debut Dark Star, when he used an EMS VCS3 synth. His soundtracks went on to influence electronic artists who followed, but Carpenter himself admitted he had no particular interest in synthesizers other than that they provided a means to "sound big with just a keyboard". For many years he worked in partnership with musician Alan Howarth, who would realize his vision by working on the more technical aspects of recording, allowing Carpenter to focus on writing the music.
The renewed interest in John Carpenter's music thanks to the Death Waltz reissues and Lost Themes albums caused him to, for the first time ever, tour as a musician., Carpenter was more involved with his music career than filmmaking, although he was involved in 2018's Halloween reboot.
Carpenter is also narrator on the documentary film The Rise of the Synths which explores the origins and growth of the synthwave genre, and features numerous interviews with synthwave artists who cite Carpenter as a significant influence. The retro-1980s synthwave band Gunship also feature in the film, with Carpenter having also contributed an opening narration for their track entitled "Tech Noir." The narration is in line with Carpenter's earlier work on apocalyptic themes.
Carpenter is featured on the track "Destructive Field" on his godson Daniel Davies' album Signals, released February 28, 2020.

Personal life

Carpenter met his future wife, actress Adrienne Barbeau, on the set of his 1978 television film Someone's Watching Me!. Carpenter was married to Barbeau from January 1, 1979, to 1984. During their marriage, Barbeau starred in The Fog, and also appeared in Escape from New York. The couple had one son, John Howard Jr., nicknamed "Cody" to avoid confusion with his father.
Carpenter has been married to producer Sandy King since 1990. King produced Carpenter's later films In the Mouth of Madness, Village of the Damned, Vampires, and Ghosts of Mars. She earlier had been the script supervisor for his films Starman, Big Trouble in Little China, Prince of Darkness, and They Live. On They Live she was also associate producer. She co-created the comic book series Asylum, with which Carpenter is involved.
Carpenter appeared in an episode of Animal Planet's Animal Icons titled "It Came from Japan", where he discussed his love and admiration for the original Godzilla film.
Carpenter is also a known supporter of video games as a media and art form and has a particular liking for the Sonic the Hedgehog and F.E.A.R. franchises, even offering himself as a spokesman and helping direct the cinematics for F.E.A.R. 3. He has also expressed an interest in making a film based on Dead Space.
In 2005, Titan Productions announced a new title in development for next-generation consoles. Psychopath, a first-person action game, was being made in collaboration with Carpenter. Titan has not yet announced a publisher, platform, or release date for the thriller. The only details that Titan has released about the game's story is that it revolves around a former CIA operative who is forced back into duty to stop a serial killer. Titan's aim in the industry was to push projects through multiple forms of media. In conjunction with the game, a film version of Psychopath was also in the works. Carpenter was to direct the film and the game's cutscenes and character design. Since then, there has not been any further developments on the video game nor the film.
Carpenter holds a commercial pilot's license, flying rotorcraft-helicopters. He has included helicopters in his films, many times doing a cameo as a pilot.
He is an atheist.

Legacy

Many of Carpenter's films have been re-released on DVD as special editions with numerous bonus features. Examples of such are: the collector's editions of Halloween, Escape from New York, Christine, The Thing, Assault on Precinct 13, Big Trouble In Little China, and The Fog. Some were re-issued with a new anamorphic widescreen transfer. In the UK, several of Carpenter's films have been released as DVD with audio commentary by Carpenter and his actors.
Carpenter has been the subject of the documentary film John Carpenter: The Man and His Movies, and American Cinematheque's 2002 retrospective of his films. Moreover, during 2006, the United States Library of Congress deemed Halloween to be "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
During 2010, writer and actor Mark Gatiss interviewed Carpenter about his career and films for his BBC documentary series A History of Horror. Carpenter appears in all three episodes of the series. He was also interviewed by Robert Rodriguez for his The Director's Chair series on El Rey Network.
Filmmakers that have been influenced by Carpenter include James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro, Robert Rodriguez, James Wan, Edgar Wright, Danny Boyle, Nicolas Winding Refn, Adam Wingard, Neil Marshall, Michael Dougherty, Ben Wheatley, Jeff Nichols, Bong Joon-ho, James Gunn, Mike Flanagan, David Robert Mitchell, The Duffer Brothers, Jeremy Saulnier, Trey Edward Shults, Drew Goddard, David F. Sandberg, James DeMonaco, Adam Green, Ted Geoghegan, Keith Gordon, Jack Thomas Smith, and Marvin Kren. The video game Dead Space 3 is said to be influenced by Carpenter's The Thing, The Fog, and Halloween, and Carpenter has stated that he would be enthusiastic to adapt that series into a feature film. Specific films influenced by Carpenter's include Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th, which was inspired by the success of Halloween, Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, which was heavily influenced by The Thing, Wingard's The Guest, which was inspired by Michael Myers and influenced by 's music, Nichols' Midnight Special, which is said to have used Starman as a reference point, and Kren's Blood Glacier, which is said to be a homage to or recreation of The Thing.
Hans Zimmer also cited Carpenter as an influence on his compositions. The 2016 film The Void is considered by many critics and fans to be heavily influenced by several of Carpenter's films.
His legacy also includes his unrealized projects.

Discography

Studio albums

Features directed

Television movies directed


ActorDark Star
Assault on Precinct 13
Halloween
Someone's Watching Me!
Elvis
The Fog
Escape from New York
The Thing
Christine
Starman
Big Trouble in Little China
Prince of Darkness
They Live
Memoirs of an Invisible Man
Body Bags
In the Mouth of Madness
Village of the Damned
Escape from L.A.
Vampires
Ghosts of Mars
Total
Tom Atkins2
Adrienne Barbeau4
Susan Blanchard2
Dirk Blocker2
Robert Carradine3
Nick Castle4
Jamie Lee Curtis4
Charles Cyphers6
Keith David2
Frank Doubleday2
Dennis Dun2
George Buck Flower6
Pam Grier2
Season Hubley2
Jeff Imada3
Peter Jason7
Darwin Joston2
Stacy Keach2
Al Leong3
Donald Li2
Nancy Loomis3
Sam Neill2
Robert Phalen3
Donald Pleasence3
Kurt Russell5
Harry Dean Stanton2
Nancy Stephens2
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa2
David Warner2
Victor Wong2