by Anthony O'Connor
John Carpenter is, put simply, one of the most influential genre directors of all time. His breakthrough film was the spectacularly successful, much-imitated, slasher flick Halloween (1978), and that movie alone would have cemented his legacy as a master of the craft. However, Carpenter went on to direct Escape from New York (1981), The Thing (1982), Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Prince of Darkness (1987), They Live (1988) and In the Mouth of Madness (1995), among many others.
At the core of all his films, at the very heart, exists a synth-infused pulse of music, very often composed by the man himself (a notable exception being Ennio Morricone’s ominous score for The Thing). It’s perhaps fitting, then, that Carpenter, having more or less stepped back from film since 2010’s The Ward, now sells out arenas worldwide playing his music to adoring fans.
On the eve of the release of his new album, Lost Themes III: Alive After Death, Carpenter had a good old fashioned chinwag with us from his California home.
“I’ve known I loved music since I was a kid,” Carpenter reminisces, cheerfully nostalgic. “My dad was a music teacher, and I grew up in a house with music, always music. Classical music. And [my dad] decided, in his great wisdom, that I should learn to play the violin at eight years old. Unfortunately, I had no talent [laughs]. I got out of that eventually and learned to play guitar.”
So, who influenced Carpenter? Who were the people who thrilled the man in his formative years?
“I was very influenced by The Beatles. My God, I still love them! And, I don’t know, I loved movie music. Loved scores. I was very taken with the music of James Bernard: the composer for The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958). I’m a big fan of his, big fan of Bernard Herrmann too. Love Hans Zimmer as well.
“The score that most influenced me,” Carpenter muses, “is from Forbidden Planet (1956) [by Bebe and Louis Barron]. It was the very first electronic score, ever, and I still love it. Awesome. There’s nothing that sounds like a good [electronic] score. And the electric guitar is an electronic instrument too, okay? And I love the sound of an electric guitar. I just wanted to be involved with that kind of feel, that otherworldly, alien-esque feel. I don’t know why, I can’t exactly tell ya.”
In terms of the creative process for his own music, “it’s all improvisation. It might start as an idea, a phrase, a chord. It just starts and off we go.” And the track titles – featuring haunting turns of phrase like “Vampire’s Touch” and “Carpathian Darkness”? “Well [laughs], they are titled to be amusing to Cody (Carpenter) and Daniel (Davies) and I [“the band”]. The one called “Skeleton” on the new album was originally titled “Skeleton Penis”. But, look, the boys talked me out of it [laughs]. I thought it would be avant garde but they said people wouldn’t see it that way.”
Carpenter is at turns amused and bemused by his indelible impact in popular culture. When told about David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (2014), and the way the film itself and the score by Disasterpiece are clearly love letters to the more horrory items from his canon, he says, “Well, I guess I should check that out then.”
He becomes more animated when the conversation turns to South Park, particularly the episode “Cripple Fight” that features an almost beat-for-beat recreation of the back alley blue between Roddy Piper and Keith David from They Live. “I heard about that! [laughs] Which is ridiculous but really funny.”
When we tell Carpenter he was one of the first film composers we ever paid attention to as kids, at the age you first realise that actual people make movies and they’re not purely composed of magic, he laughs knowingly. “Oh wow, thank you. I know exactly what that’s like. When I was a kid, I remember the first time I paid attention to the composer too.”
And does Carpenter feel gratified to have such a profound influence on popular culture, sonically speaking? “Are you kidding? It’s fabulous! It’s fantastic, yeah. I love it. I don’t know how influential I am, but I love the fact that there’s an echo of my stuff in film scores, I love that.”
These days, Carpenter is in a more relaxed mode and the man has a relatively new passion. “I love video games. What’s caught my attention recently… Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, is a great game. For about two years now I’ve been playing the Fallout game, Fallout 76. Which is an absolute glitchathon but I still love it. I’ve been playing old games, too. I play the Dead Space series, there’s three of them. I’m just waiting for something great to come out, always waiting for something great.”
Carpenter is also across the recent disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077, a game that is beset by near-constant bugs and glitches, including one that removes the player character’s pants at awkward times. “It had some problems, huh? It’s hilarious!” He laughs so hard at this he begins coughing. “It’s great, isn’t it great? I mean, what were they thinking? Oh man, that’s funny.”
When asked if he’d like to get back into film, Carpenter becomes thoughtful: “Sure, I’d love to. If it’s right, you know, if it’s the right story. If it’s something that I care about, and it has the right budget, sure. I don’t know if I’d be able to do it that fast, I’m an old man now. I have a leisurely pace.” We remind Carpenter that 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road was directed by George Miller, who at 75 is two years older than him. “Well, there you go. Maybe I should do Cyberpunk 2077: The Movie? And, like, have the character’s pants come off and there’s just wang hanging in the breeze! We’ll include all the glitches. I like it!”
In terms of legacy, Carpenter has become philosophical about his films that flopped on release, but have been reevaluated since as cinema classics. “In terms of The Thing, when it came out? They hated it. The fans hated it. Horror fans hated it! Unbelievable. I still don’t get it.” When we suggest the popular theory that coming out the same year as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) doomed it to drown in a sea of Spielbergian schmaltz, he chuckles: “Yeah, I think that’s probably it. But that’s in the past, all in the past. Everything is good, everything is beautiful.”
As we chat with Carpenter, America is greeting the first day of its new president Joe Biden after four years of… let’s just say, divisive leadership by a bronzer-daubed, racist ham hock. Carpenter shares the mood of cautious optimism of many in his country: “Well, it’s a big deal this inauguration. What a relief! [laughs] I did not know what to make of all that. But, you know, that chapter has ended and now we’re moving onto a new one. That’s the way you have to look at it.”
Finally, we ask the question of the true fanboy. In a perfect world, with a limitless budget, what movie would John Carpenter return to, for a continuation or sequel. Would he revisit Jack Burton? See what happens next to The Thing? Find a new joint for Snake Plissken to escape from?
“I might be able to do a little bit more with Prince of Darkness, believe it or not. I think I could… but I’m not going to tell you how [laughs]. I think there’s more story there. I’d like to check in on Jack Burton (from Big Trouble in Little China) too, I don’t know what he’s up to now. I’m a little worried about him. I don’t know what else you could do with They Live. Maybe send [the aliens] back to Planet Republican? [laughs] Never say never in this damn business.”
Lost Themes III: Alive After Death is available everywhere from February 5 through Sacred Bones records.
Photos by Sophie Gransard
