“Sir, please put the phone down, I beg you,” Jordan Peele tweeted last July, from a fan who had suggested he might already be the greatest horror director of all time. “I love your enthusiasm,” Peele added, but “I will not tolerate any slander from John Carpenter!!!” The case for Carpenter as the greatest living American genre film maker is certainly made, whether Carpenter wants to hear it himself or not. His best films, such as his career-making slasher “Halloween” (1978), are breathtakingly composed and imbued with a creeping, sober terror that has earned him comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock. Even the minor titles in his filmography are brimming with ingenuity. The novelist Jonathan Lethem once suggested that the central scene of Carpenter’s “They Live” (1988) – in which a mad drifter, played by WWF star Roddy (Rowdy) Piper, puts on magical sunglasses and observes a campaign of subliminal submission by mind-controlling aliens – should be kept in a time capsule as the pinnacle of neo-B cinematic art. But ever since the dismal critical reception of Carpenter’s sci-fi thriller “The Thing” (1982) — which Vincent Canby derided as “virtually storyless,” “instant junk” and “the quintessential idiot movie” — he’s had a chip on his shoulder. popular opinion about his work. His most famous quote – though it’s hard to confirm whether he actually said it – is a commentary on his own changing reputation: ‘In France I am an author. In England I am a horror film director. In Germany I am a filmmaker. In the US I’m a bum.”
In conversation, Carpenter, now seventy-four, is succinct in a way that would seem hostile were it not accompanied by hints of deadpan comedy. He hates to talk about cinema, which may be a by-product of the same tortured perfectionism that contributed to his early retirement more than a decade ago. Carpenter hasn’t directed a film since his snake-pit thriller “The Ward” (2010), and he’s kept a cautious, selective distance from the industry ever since. I still have an email from a publicist explaining that Carpenter would not attend the Toronto International Film Festival that year because he “was called up for jury duty (seriously).” Carpenter composed the music for many of his films, and he agreed to serve as composer and executive producer for David Gordon Green’s new cycle of “Halloween” sequels, including this fall’s “Halloween Ends.” But bring up the 40th anniversary of “The Thing” this year — or the welcome fact that the film is widely regarded as a modern classic these days — and his patience wanes. We spoke on the phone twice recently; Carpenter was in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife, the producer Sandy King. Both times he seemed to have an eye on the clock and was much happier discussing video games, pro wrestling and his beloved NBA champions the Golden State Warriors. But sometimes I wondered if maybe he was enjoying the movie talk more than he was letting on. Our conversations have been condensed and edited.
I know you are an NBA fan and a Golden State Warriors fan. Can we start talking about that?
Secure. What do you want to know?
I’m in Toronto. Was this a particularly satisfying title after losing in the Toronto final in 2019 and then being out of the fray for a while?
They’ve had some disasters in recent years, starting with KD’s [Kevin Durant’s] injury and then, in the same game, it was…
Klay Thompson – he was injured too.
Those were grim times. It looked like the Warriors would be over. They were undervalued by the whole league, okay? No one picked them to be a great team, or even a winning team; they were just ignored. But look what happened: They beat Boston. It was an amazing win, a beautiful, beautiful win! I mean, I can’t say enough.
Do you read a lot about the NBA or listen to basketball podcasts, or just watch the games?
I watch the game. I was a Lakers fan until, well, until Lebron came along. . . .
Have you ever played basketball yourself?
I did, but I wasn’t well. I’ve tried.
Were you a shooter, or did you play indoors?
I was an attacker. Tell me about Toronto. What’s happening over there?
You mean the city, or the basketball team?
The city. I made a movie in Toronto a few years ago.
I didn’t mean to jump on the gun, but you know the cinema in “In the Mouth of Madness” (1994)? That’s where I got married, at the Eglinton Theatre.
Oh my God.
What are your memories of Toronto during “In the Mouth of Madness”?
We had some good locations. We had to drive for hours to get to this covered bridge. I remember that – my God. But it worked, you know? Everything we had in terms of location, everything we needed was there. It was a good shoot, and then it got cold.
I like the opening of ‘In the Mouth of Madness’, with all those novels produced by printing presses. Was the idea to make something about the way horror comes off an assembly line?
Yes, but the whole thing was . . . I thought no one ever really wrote a great Lovecraft story. This was my attempt to do that.
What is your relationship with Lovecraft?
I’ve been a Lovecraft fan since I was little, ever since my father gave me a book called “Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural.” I remember when I first read Lovecraft and just loved him.
Did you really have a visceral fantasy as a child? Was it easy to imagine the things in those books in your mind’s eye?
Visceral imagination? I had a fantasy. I don’t know how entrenched it was, but yes, I was a big fan of horror movies and monster movies, like most of us at the time. Lovecraft was an author from an era that I haven’t really experienced. He’s one of the founders of science fiction and horror, and I love his stuff, just love it.
One comment that has been made about your movies is that, just like in Lovecraft, evil is something monstrous that characters have to confront face to face, rather than coming from within. There are times when the people on the screen just can’t believe what they’re looking at, or how to deal with it.
I think you are right. It’s true, and I’m not exactly sure where that came from. But that’s it.
Were there things that you were specifically afraid of growing up? Fears or phobias, whether they have found their way into your movies or not?
I was afraid of everything when I was little. Everything scared me.
Did that get better as you got older?
Well. I mean, I overcame that. My whole life has been about overcoming fear and dealing with it, personally and professionally. One of the things I personally did to overcome my fears was to become a helicopter pilot. I got my commercial pilot’s license, and it was only because I thought, if I’m going to make movies about tough guys, I better be one for a minute. It’s quite challenging to do, pilot a helicopter.
Do you remember the first time you managed to get a helicopter in the air?
Yes of course.
How was it?
It was fantastic. I mean, they’re unlike anything else. They are dangerous, but you are trying to tame the beast. Anyway, I got my pilot’s license in ’82 or ’83 – I can’t remember which one – and I was on the run.
You didn’t fly one of the helicopters in ‘The Thing’, did you?
No.
The helicopter sequences in that movie are pretty amazing.
Well thanks. It was actually a few different guys who flew – one was in Stewart, British Columbia, and the other in Juneau, Alaska, above the ice fields. But hey, it’s a helicopter movie.
Those opening shots of a helicopter chasing a dog across the ice are so strange and mysterious. Where did it come from?
The animal we used for the chase was named Jed. He was part wolf, part dog. He was just an incredible animal, so well trained. He actually ran right under the helicopter because he was so well trained. It’s an unusual scene. Like, what are these guys doing? Why are they after this dog?____
This year marks the 40th anniversary of “The Thing”. It is a film that has become very old after a very rough reception.
Maybe. It wasn’t a fun experience, you know? But I felt just as much about the movie then as I do now: I really love it. I thought I did pretty well.
“The Thing” is a remake of the movie “The Thing from Another World” which was produced by Howard Hawks, and I know you’re a fan of his work. How did you first come to his movies?
I studied him in film school and saw him in person. He came down to talk at the school. I fell in love with his work because it is so versatile. He did adventures and ‘The Thing from Another World’, he did cowboy movies, comedies. I mean, he did all kinds of things. I studied the plumbing: how Hawks made movies, how he staged scenes. I loved that. But other than that, I loved the strong women he had. I’ve always been attracted to that.
“Halloween” certainly has that with Jamie Lee Curtis, and that character became an archetype for the “Final Girl” idea.
Where did that come from, the “Final Girl”?
There is a book by a film scientist named Carol J. Clover called “Men, Women, and Chain Saws” where she writes about how many horror movies have this character at the end after all the others are killed looking down the monster. “Halloween” is Exhibit A.
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