John Carpenter

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John Carpenter in September 2001

John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948 in Carthage , New York ) is an American director , screenwriter , producer , actor and film music composer . With films like Halloween - Die Nacht des Horens (1978) or The Rattlesnake (1981) Carpenter exerted a great influence on the horror and science fiction genre and cemented his reputation as a "cult director".

life and work

John Carpenter was born in Carthage , New York, grew up in Bowling Green ( Kentucky ) and attended Western Kentucky University , where his father was the head of the music department. He later graduated from the University of Southern California to study film. As part of his student thesis , he worked there as a writer on the Oscar- winning short film The Resurrection of Broncho Billy .

From 1970 Carpenter worked together with his fellow student Dan O'Bannon on the science fiction film Dark Star . Dark Star was initially produced as a 45-minute short film and expanded to an 82-minute feature film in 1974. The film, which was realized with a low budget of 60,000 dollars, depicts in a satirical tone the adventures of a hippie-like spaceship crew whose task it is to blow up "unstable planets".

The space travelers not only suffer from the lack of toilet paper, but also have to deal with the "exotic", a murderous extraterrestrial (Dan O'Bannon later wrote the script for Alien , a kind of further development of the grotesque exotic episode). To Carpenter's disappointment, Dark Star received little attention at the time and, contrary to what had been hoped, brought him no directing commissions. Today the film is considered a classic of its genre.

With Assault - attack at night , John Carpenter realized a homage to the western classic Rio Bravo in 1976 . The beleaguered prison in the original film became a police station in the no man's land of Los Angeles, which is attacked at night by a heavily armed youth gang. A police lieutenant and a death row convict organize the defense of the isolated police station, which has little to do against the nightmarish attacks of the gang members. Although Assault , which was produced with a budget of 150,000 dollars, did not become a cinematic success, the 28-year-old John Carpenter first drew attention here, also internationally, as a new directing talent. The film has become a classic over the years and is now considered a style-defining cult film and a genre reference. In 2005 a remake of the strip was produced, in which Carpenter was not involved.

At Assault , Carpenter occupied almost all key positions behind the camera, sometimes under a pseudonym, and acted as director, screenwriter, editor and composer. The musically gifted director also composed the soundtrack for many of his films and is one of the few film directors who work in this role, alongside Charles Chaplin . The synthesizer soundtracks created by Carpenter usually consist of relatively simple, but catchy melodies that emphasize the dark atmosphere of his films.

Since there were still no lucrative directorial contracts, Carpenter wrote numerous scripts for film and television films in the second half of the 1970s, several of which were realized. In 1978, Irvin Kershner directed the horror thriller The Eyes of Laura Mars , in which Faye Dunaway was seen as a telepathic photographer. Carpenter himself realized the psychological thriller The Invisible Eye about a young woman who is threatened by a psychopath in her apartment for American television . This film was clearly based on the work of Alfred Hitchcock .

In 1978, the 30-year-old Carpenter made his final breakthrough as a film director with the horror film Halloween - The Night of Horror . The insane killer Michael Myers returns to his hometown Haddonfield after his escape from psychiatric hospital and cruelly kills several babysitters there. Written by Carpenter and Debra Hill, Halloween was based, among other things, on the Italian Giallo thrillers and presented its relatively simple story in a modern, innovative film language.

The film, which was made with a minimal budget of $ 325,000, became a worldwide box office success and grossed $ 47 million in the United States alone, around 150 times its budget. In addition to the well-known character actor Donald Pleasence in the role of the psychiatrist Loomis, the still completely unknown Jamie Lee Curtis played the leading role of the babysitter Laurie Strode. Curtis founded her decades-long Hollywood career with the film and acted several times in the following years as the so-called "Scream Queen", who utters shrill cries of horror in horror films.

With Halloween , John Carpenter created the blueprint for the modern slasher film , a subgenre of horror films in which a group of teenagers have to defend themselves against a cruel killer who punishes his victims for their "sins" and "wrongdoings" and often murders them with stabbing tools. Carpenter's Halloween theme tune became very well known and is now one of the soundtrack classics. The tremendous success of the film established one of the longest-running horror film franchises, spawning eleven sequels and remakes over four decades, which were, however, directed by other directors.

After the success of Halloween , Carpenter was able to make his subsequent films on a higher budget. However, the director has shown no interest in making high-budget films with superstars throughout his career. Carpenter, who is considered lonely and shy of people, was never part of the typical Hollywood scene and, as far as is known, has little contact with the filmmakers or networks there. Little is known about his private life. From 1979 to 1984 he was married to the actress Adrienne Barbeau , who also starred in some of his films. In 1990 he married Sandy King , who has produced the majority of his films since the 1988 film You Live . Previously, she worked as a script supervisor on his films Starman and Big Trouble in Little China .

In 1979, John Carpenter directed the TV movie Elvis - The King , a biopic in which Kurt Russell played the lead role. With The Fog , he made a horror film in 1980 about dead ghost pirates who terrorize the inhabitants of a small town from a fog bank. Here again Jamie Lee Curtis played the main role. This film also became a box office success, grossed $ 21 million on a budget of one million dollars in the US alone and became a classic of its genre. In 2005 a remake was produced, in which John Carpenter was only involved as a producer.

Carpenter realized the futuristic action film Die Ratterschlange (1981), which takes place in an apocalyptic New York of the near future that has been converted into a huge prison island, with a budget of six million dollars (US box office: 25 million). In doing so, he fell back on a script that he had already written in the mid-1970s. Leading actor Kurt Russell, who had appeared in Disney comedies for years, was able to distinguish himself as a new action star with this film. Cast in the supporting roles with well-known old stars like Lee van Cleef and Ernest Borgnine , The Rattlesnake became a worldwide cinema success and a groundbreaking work of the cyberpunk genre, on which numerous films, books and computer games are based. The rattlesnake , however, was the director's last big hit, whose career has been very volatile since then.

In 1982, John Carpenter staged The Thing from Another World, a modernized remake of the horror classic of the same name from 1951. The main actor was again Kurt Russell. It was Carpenter's most expensive film to date and cost around $ 15 million. Unlike the director's previous films, however, this one was a box office flop and only sold $ 19 million in the US. The criticism criticized the overemphasis on the hard splatter and disgust scenes. Mask expert Rob Bottin had created groundbreaking special effects for the spectacular transformation of the "thing". Although this film flopped, it is now considered an influential classic of its genre, which has inspired numerous films and computer games.

With Christine , John Carpenter adapted a bestseller by the popular horror author Stephen King , in which a "vengeful" classic car causes fear and horror. In Starman (1984) he told the romantic story of an alien in human form ( Jeff Bridges ) who falls in love with an Earth inhabitant.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986), a large-scale fantasy film with elements of horror and kung fu, cost $ 25 million and grossed only $ 11 million in the US. This failure marked a turning point in Carpenter's career. The director turned to budget horror films such as The Princes of Darkness (1987), You Live (1988), The Forces of Madness (1994) and The Village of the Damned (1995). In 1992 he stageda science fiction comedywith Hunt for an Invisible Man , which had the character of a commissioned work and barely revealed the director's individual handwriting. The film grossed only $ 14 million on a budget of $ 40 million in the US market.

With Escape from LA , John Carpenter realized a relatively high-budgeted ($ 43 million) sequel to Die Ratterschlange in 1996 , which was received with reserve by critics and audiences and, according to the general tenor, fell far short of the quality of the first film. Even with Vampire (1998) and Ghosts of Mars (2001) the director was unable to build on earlier successes. In 2010, The Ward , a horror film set in a mental hospital, was John Carpenter's last directorial work to date. This film also went largely unnoticed.

In recent years Carpenter has been primarily active as a musician and toured the US and Europe to play his albums Lost Themes and Lost Themes II live. He has expressed interest in working as a director again, but has not yet been able to find any sponsors for new projects.

Others

Carpenter claims to have been influenced by Alfred Hitchcock , Howard Hawks and the television series The Twilight Zone . He also values ​​the work of directors such as John Ford and Sergio Leone . He does the audio commentary on the DVD version of Play Me a Song of Death .

In addition to many other appearances, he answered questions in the 2008 documentary Science of Horror Katharina Klewinghaus.

Since the 1987 film The Princes of Darkness , Carpenter has worked primarily with cinematographer Gary B. Kibbe .

At the end of October 2011, the National Film Preservation Foundation released Captain Voyeur, Carpenter's first short film, which was made while studying at the University of Southern California .

Regular cast

John Carpenter is considered shy of people and does not like to use big stars in his films. Instead, he likes to work with old friends:

Relation to music

There was a lot of music in John Carpenter's parents' house and he took violin and piano lessons very early. He later learned to play the guitar and founded the hard rock band Coupe de Villes in the mid-1970s .

In 2015 he worked with synthesizer artist Jean-Michel Jarre on a track called A Question of Blood for Jarre's collaboration project.

Filmography (selection)

John Carpenter in North Hollywood , California in 2010

Legend: Director (R), Production (P), Actor (D), Screenplay (B), Editing (S), Music (M), TV Production (TV)

Computer games

Discography

  • 1974: Dark Star
  • 1976: Assault on Precinct 13
  • 1978: Halloween
  • 1980: The Fog
  • 1981: Escape from New York
  • 1981: Halloween II
  • 1982: Halloween III
  • 1982: The thing from another world
  • 1983: Christine
  • 1986: Big Trouble in Little China
  • 1987: Prince of Darkness
  • 1988: They Live!
  • 1990: The Music of John Carpenter
  • 1991: Body Bags
  • 1994: In the Mouth of Madness
  • 1995: Village of the Damned
  • 1996: Escape from LA
  • 1998: Vampires
  • 2001: Ghosts of Mars
  • 2002: The Essential John Carpenter Original Soundtrack
  • 2015: Lost Themes
  • 2016: Lost Themes II
  • 2017: Anthology: Movie Themes 1974–1998
  • 2018: Halloween

literature

  • Frank Schnelle: Suspense, shock, terror. John Carpenter and his films. Fischer, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-924098-04-2 .
  • Willy Loderhose: John Carpenter. The big film book. Presented by Jason Dark. Bastei Lübbe, 1990, ISBN 3-404-28185-3 .
  • Gerhard Hroß: escape to fear - the horror of John Carpenter. belleville, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-923646-42-9 .

Web links

Commons : John Carpenter  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPUcfe25rW4
  2. ↑ Info on imdb.com
personal data
SURNAME Carpenter, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carpenter, John Howard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film music composer
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Carthage , New York