John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948) is an American filmmaker, composer, and actor. Most commonly associated with horror, action, and science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s, he is generally recognized as a master of the horror genre.[1] At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, the French Directors' Guild gave him the Golden Coach Award and lauded him as "a creative genius of raw, fantastic, and spectacular emotions".[2][3]
For other people named John Carpenter, see John Carpenter (disambiguation).
John Carpenter
January 16, 1948
- John T. Chance
- Martin Quatermass
- Filmmaker
- composer
- actor
1969–present
Carpenter's early films included critical and commercial successes such as Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), Escape from New York (1981), and Starman (1984). Though he has been acknowledged as an influential filmmaker, his other productions from the 1970s and the 1980s only later came to be considered cult classics; 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 a composer and executive producer on Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills (2021), and Halloween Ends (2022).
Carpenter usually composes or co-composes the music in his films. He won a Saturn Award for Best Music for the soundtrack of Vampires (1998) and has released four studio albums: Lost Themes (2015), Lost Themes II (2016), Anthology: Movie Themes 1974–1998 (2017), and Lost Themes III: Alive After Death (2021). Since 2012, he has co-owned the comic book company Storm King Comics alongside his wife, film producer Sandy King.[4]
Early life[edit]
John Howard Carpenter was born in Carthage, New York, on January 16, 1948, the son of Milton Jean (née Carter) and music professor Howard Ralph Carpenter.[5] In 1953, after his father accepted a job at Western Kentucky University, the family relocated to Bowling Green, Kentucky.[6] For much of his childhood, he and his family lived in a log cabin on the university's campus.[7][8] Carpenter said that both he and his family felt out of place in rural Kentucky, growing up affected and bothered by the highly religious Bible culture of the deep south, and found cinema as an escape from the racism and politics around him. He listed It Came From Outer Space as the film that influenced him to become a filmmaker, recalling "I was sitting near the front of the theater, and a meteor came out of the screen and blew up in my face. I jumped up and ran to the back of the theater...I thought it was real! I was a kid and realized from there how powerful cinema could be."[9] He later found particular interest in the westerns of Howard Hawks and John Ford, as well as 1950s low-budget horror films such as The Thing from Another World (which he would remake as The Thing in 1982) and high-budget sci-fi like Godzilla and Forbidden Planet.[10][11]
Carpenter began making short horror films with an 8 mm camera when his father gifted him a camera and a projector before he had even started high school.[12] Just before he turned 14 in 1962, he made a few major short films: Godzilla vs. Gorgo, featuring Godzilla and Gorgo via claymation, and the sci-fi western Terror from Space, starring the one-eyed creature from It Came from Outer Space.[13] He graduated from College High School, then enrolled at Western Kentucky University for two years as an English major and History minor.[14] Carpenter dropped out of college to play bass guitar in a successful rock 'n' roll band, and while on tour in Europe in 1968, a fan approached him about going to film school, a concept he did not know existed until then.[15] Since no film school existed in Kentucky at the time, he applied to the USC School of Cinematic Arts and enrolled in 1968. While at USC, Carpenter shared classrooms with Dan O'Bannon, John Milius, Nick Castle, Tommy Lee Wallace, Christopher Vogler, and Ron Underwood, and was lectured by names like Orson Welles and George Lucas, though admitted to clashing with many students and faculty, and described himself as "a bit of an outlaw".[16] John would ultimately drop out of school in his final semester in order to make his first feature film.[17]
Career[edit]
1960s: Student films and Academy Award[edit]
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).[18]
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.[19]
1970s: From student films to theatrical releases[edit]
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.[20]
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.[21] 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.[22]
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.[23]
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.[24] 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."[25]
Film director Bob Clark suggested in an interview released in 2005[26] 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:
Style and Influences[edit]
Carpenter's films are characterized by minimalist lighting and photography, panoramic shots, use of steadicam, and scores he usually composes himself.[75] With a few exceptions,[a] he has scored all of his films (some of which he co-scored), most famously the themes from Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13. His music is generally synthesized with accompaniment from piano and atmospherics.[76]
Carpenter is known for his widescreen shot compositions and is an outspoken proponent of Panavision anamorphic cinematography. With some exceptions,[b] all of his films were shot in Panavision anamorphic format with a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, generally favoring wider focal lengths. The Ward was filmed in Super 35, the first time Carpenter has ever used that system. He has stated that he feels the 35 mm Panavision anamorphic format is "the best movie system there is" and prefers it to both digital and 3D.[77] Carpenter is avid against using digital cameras, and called digital filmmaking "the death of the art of filmmaking". He has suggested that the industry standard that shifted from film to digital solidified his departure from filmmaking.
In a 2019 interview with the British Film Institute, Carpenter further listed his favorite films as The Exterminating Angel, Bringing Up Baby, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Only Angels Have Wings, Scarface, Chimes at Midnight, Chinatown, Vertigo, The Searchers, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.[78] Carpenter expanded on his favorite films in an interview with Rotten Tomatoes, adding Gojira, Citizen Kane, Rio Bravo, and both Blowup from 1966 and Blow Out from 1981.[79] Carpenter has also spoken very fondly of several horror films from the 1950s and has considered The Thing From Another World, The Fly, and Them! as some of his favorite all-time films.[80] In a 1994 interview with The Guardian, Carpenter called Hard Boiled "the best action film ever made" and stated that Hong Kong action films have always been a major influence to his work.[81]
Carpenter is an avid fan of Howard Hawks and has repeatedly titled him as his favorite director, drawing openly heavy inspiration from Hawks's style.[82] He has also drawn inspiration from names like John Ford, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski, Luis Bunuel, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Huston, all of whom have been considered amongst his favorite filmmakers.[83][84] He has since named Quentin Tarantino, John Woo, and David Cronenberg as influences to his later-career films.
Carpenter has been known to be highly critical of the film industry. In a 1978 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Carpenter openly spoke negatively of films by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and Robert Altman, calling Altman "not a good filmmaker" and "slightly masturbatory", and Spielberg a "pretentious" filmmaker and a "studio shill more concerned with making money than making good movies."[85][86] Carpenter has stated that horror films in recent years have mostly bored him, but has singled out praise towards It Follows, Let The Right One In, and the work of Jordan Peele.[87][88]