John Carpenter

John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948) is an American filmmaker, actor, and composer. Although he worked in various film genres, he is most commonly associated with horror, action, and science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s. He is generally recognized as one of the greatest masters of the horror genre. At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, the French Directors' Guild gave him the Golden Coach Award, lauding him as "a creative genius of raw, fantastic, and spectacular emotions".

Carpenter's early films included box office and critical successes like '' Halloween'' (1978), ''The Fog'' (1980), ''Escape from New York'' (1981), and ''Starman'' (1984). His other productions from the 1970s and the 1980s only later came to be considered cult classics, and he has been acknowledged as an influential filmmaker. These include '' Dark Star'' (1974), '' Assault on Precinct 13'' (1976), '' The Thing'' (1982), ''Christine'' (1983), ''Big Trouble in Little China'' (1986), '' Prince of Darkness'' (1987), ''They Live'' (1988), ''In the Mouth of Madness'' (1994), and '' Escape from L.A.'' (1996).

He returned to the ''Halloween'' franchise as composer and executive producer of the sequel ''Halloween'' (2018), doing so with the sequels ''Halloween Kills'' (2021) and ''Halloween Ends'' (2022).

Carpenter composed or co-composed most of his films' music. He won a Saturn Award for Best Music for the film ''Vampires'' (1998). He released four studio albums, titled ''Lost Themes'' (2015), '' Lost Themes II'' (2016), '' Anthology: Movie Themes 1974–1998'' (2017), and '' Lost Themes III: Alive After Death'' (2021).

Early life

Carpenter was born on January 16, 1948, in Carthage, New York, the son of Milton Jean (''née'' Carter) 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'' (1978).

The next year he collaborated with producer John Longenecker as co-writer, film editor, and music composer for ''The Resurrection of Broncho Billy'' (1970), 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'' (1974), was a science-fiction comedy that he co-wrote with Dan O'Bannon (who later went on to write ''Alien'', borrowing freely from much of ''Dark Star''). 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 (which caught the attention of George Lucas who hired him to work with the special effects for the film ''Star Wars''). Carpenter received praise for his ability to make low-budget films.

Carpenter's next film was '' Assault on Precinct 13'' (1976), 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" (the name of John Wayne's character in ''Rio Bravo''). 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 would collaborate with Carpenter on some of his most well-known 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.Production Gallery (included in the 2003 special edition Region 1 DVD of ''Assault on Precinct 13''). 2003.

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 (in collaboration with David Zelag Goodman) from a spec script titled ''Eyes'', written by Carpenter, and would become Carpenter's first major studio film of his career.

'' Halloween'' (1978) was a commercial success and helped develop the slasher genre. Originally an idea suggested by producer Irwin Yablans (titled ''The Babysitter Murders''), 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'' (written by Roy Moore) that featured an unseen and motiveless killer murdering students in a university sorority house. As also stated in the 2009 documentary ''Clarkworld'' (written and directed by Clark's former production designer Deren Abram after Clark's tragic death in 2007), 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'' (which also influenced the film's slightly surreal color scheme) 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.

In 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'' (1980), a ghostly revenge tale (co-written by Hill) inspired by horror comics such as ''Tales from the Crypt'' and by ''The Crawling Eye'', a 1958 film about monsters hiding in clouds.Audio commentary by John Carpenter and Debra Hill in ''The Fog'', 2002 special edition DVD.''

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'' (1981). Featuring several actors that Carpenter had collaborated with ( Kurt Russell, Donald Pleasence, Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Atkins, Charles Cyphers, and Frank Doubleday) or would collaborate with again (Harry Dean Stanton), as well as several notable actors (Lee Van Cleef and Ernest Borgnine), it became both commercially successful (grossing more than $25 million) and critically acclaimed (with an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes).

His next film, '' The Thing'' (1982), 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 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 (''The Thing'', '' Prince of Darkness'', and ''In the Mouth of Madness'') with bleak endings for the film's characters.

Being a graphic, sinister horror film, ''The Thing'' did not appeal to audiences during the summer of 1982. Since its release, cultural historians and critics have attempted to understand what led to ''The Thing''s initial failure to connect with audiences. In a 1999 interview, Carpenter said audiences rejected ''The Thing'' for its nihilistic, depressing viewpoint at a time when the United States was in the midst of a recession. When it opened, it was competing against the critically and commercially successful ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' ($619million), a family-friendly film released two weeks earlier that offered a more optimistic take on alien visitation.

The impact on Carpenter was immediatehe lost the job of directing the 1984 science fiction horror film '' Firestarter'' because of ''The Thing''s poor performance. His previous success had gained him a multiple-film contract at Universal, but the studio opted to buy him out of it instead. He continued making films afterward but lost confidence, and did not openly talk about ''The Thing''s failure until a 1985 interview with ''Starlog'', where he said, "I was called 'a pornographer of violence'... I had no idea it would be received that way... ''The Thing'' was just too strong for that time. I knew it was going to be strong, but I didn't think it would be too strong... I didn't take the public's taste into consideration."

While ''The Thing'' was not initially successful, it was able to find new audiences and appreciation on home video, and later on television.

In the years following its release, critics and fans have reevaluated ''The Thing'' as a milestone of the horror genre. A prescient review by Peter Nicholls in 1992, called ''The Thing'' "a black, memorable film hatmay yet be seen as a classic". It has been called one of the best films directed by Carpenter. John Kenneth Muir called it "Carpenter's most accomplished and underrated directorial effort", and critic Matt Zoller Seitz said it "is one of the greatest and most elegantly constructed B-movies ever made".

Trace Thurman described it as one of the best films ever, and in 2008, ''Empire'' magazine selected it as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time, at number 289, calling it "a peerless masterpiece of relentless suspense, retina-wrecking visual excess and outright, nihilistic terror". It is now considered to be one of the greatest horror films ever made, and a classic of the genre.

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 (Keith Gordon) 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. He said he directed it because it was the only thing offered to him at the time.

''Starman'' (1984) 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 '' Santa Claus: The Movie''. 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 (the same amount that the film's star Dudley Moore was receiving). Salkind withdrew his offer for him to direct.

After the financial failure of his big-budget action–comedy ''Big Trouble in Little China'' (1986), Carpenter struggled to get films financed. He resumed making lower budget films such as ''Prince of Darkness'' (1987), a film influenced by the BBC
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