John Carpenter will always have a special place in my heart because of Halloween. Because of this, I decided to write this paper on him when the first opportunity appeared. I believe this was the first paper I ever wrote in film school.
It’s fun to see how you improve on things over time. This paper looks like grade school work compared to recent papers! I cleaned it up a little bit so it’s a little more readable!
My Paper on John Carpenter
Introduction
It was a dark evening in the house, only lit up in the living room by the hazy glow of an old computer screen. My brother and I just came home and we found our sister sleeping on the couch. Feeling a bit mischievous, I fetched my full-sized movie poster of the horror classic Halloween. I handed it to my brother and had him hold it over the top of the couch with Michael Myers looking ominously at our sleeping sister.
I crept over to the computer, turned up the volume, and the historic Halloween piano keys blasted through the speakers. Right when those notes struck our sister’s ears, she awoke, let off a piercing shrill, flew off the couch, and dead bolted straight to her room!
John Carpenter launched a career with Halloween, but the world found a new filmmaker who could o almost anything with film.
Early Life
John Howard Carpenter, born in Carthage, NY on January 16th, 1946, has spent his whole life in and around movies. In his younger years, his mother would take him to the movies (“John Carpenter Bio”). By the time he was eight years old, his father had given him a movie camera and Carpenter already made his first movie in his junior high school years and began collecting films while in high school (Blowen, B.1). After graduating high school, Carpenter was on the move, attending Western Kentucky University and then transferred to graduate from the School of Cinema at the University of Southern California.
While attending USC, his contributions to the short film “The Resurrection of Bronco Billy” lead to an academy award. This was the beginning of his path as a successful filmmaker (theofficialjohncarpenter.com). Unfortunately, he shortly missed the opportunity to study with the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas (“John Carpenter Bio”).
Halloween – John Carpenter’s Breakout Moment
From Going to Pieces, Carpenter describes, “I grew up watching horror movies, and when I made Halloween, I just took all the lessons that I had seen and what I loved to see on the screen.” After the success of “Billy Bronco,” Carpenter found work in low budget movies. The movie which put him on the map int he horror, more specifically the “slasher”, genre was Halloween. Filmed in just 20 days with a a budget of around $300,000, Halloween grossed over $50,000,000 (Blowen, B.1).
One of his fellow filmmakers, John Landis’s favorite Carpenter quote is, “Monsters don’t scare me – People scare me!” Carpenter goes on to explain that the monster is capable of some evil. He emphasized on this a little more in Going to Pieces with “There are hundreds among us that hunt other humans for their own gratifications. The darkness is in the human soul.”
When approached by monsters (the “evil” coming to get you), we naturally revert to self-preservation (Landis, 240). After they talk about various monsters, Landis talks about how Halloween’s villain, Michael Myers, is human, with the only non-human trait Myers had is the fact he got up and ran after he is shot multiple times in the chest. Carpenter goes on to explain that he is supernational since he is everywhere and nothing is explained about the character (Landis, 241).
Onward from Halloween
One of the points brought up in Going to Pieces is Halloween wasn’t necessarily even a gory film. Carpenter was able to sell the scare through his direction, production, and scoring. Halloween produced a long branch of sequels, all of which were never able to live up to the original. Although John Carpenter did some work in the sequels, he never directed any of them (“John Carpenter Bio”).
Although I deeply appreciate what he has done for the horror genre, I also revel the fact that he didn’t stick to one genre, even if it is what catapulted him to stardom. Some examples of other genre work are comedy-thriller in Memoirs of an Invisible Man, psychological horror with In the Mouth of Madness, action with Escape from New York and Big Trouble in Little China, and sci-fi love in Starman. He also worked in television, shooting a biographical mini-series about Elvis and a horror trilogy John Carpenter Presents Body Bags for Showtime (“The Man”).
His first action film, Assault on Precinct 13, didn’t achieve much success in the United States. However, it did receive critical acclaim at the London Film Festival in 1977, although it did not garnish any directing opportunities for him. He is able to work in most of the major aspects of the production, mainly writing, producing, directing, and producing music for movies. He is proof that hard work, coupled with talent, is a simple pathway to success. It is worth noting as well that no one is perfect. Characterization was one of his weak points as a filmmaker (“John Carpenter Bio”).
Conclusion
John Carpenter is almost the total package. Movie enthusiasts will applaud and share his work, while movie studios love him for his cost efficiency. Producer Michael Douglas signed Carpenter for the movie Starman because “John has a great sense of style and deals with action masterfully. I knew he’d get to the emotional core of the story.” Jeff Bridges loved working for Carpenter, claiming with some directors, you’re afraid to take chances because they might make you look stupid on the screen, but he took care of you. He allows an actor to act and doesn’t treat you as if you’re a piece of machinery.
Actor Charles Smith agrees with Bridges, adding that his sets are fun and gives actors a sense of self-confidence (Blowen, B.1). Carpenter appears to have a leadership style that draws others to him and make them want to work for him. That is the best type of leadership there is. As Xenophon of Athens declared, “Willing obedience always beats forced obedience.”
Works Cited
Blowen, Michael. “Director John Carpenter Talks about the Movie Biz; Big Budgets and Cold Burgers.” Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext): B.1. ProQuest Central. Dec 09 1984. Web. 22 Feb 20112.
Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film. “Prod. Michael Baker.” 2006. StarzEntertainment, 13 Oct 2006. DVD.
Landis, John. Monsters In the Movies. New York: DK Publishing, 2011. Print.
n.p. “The Man.” The Official John Carpenter. Web. 27 Feb 2012.<https://theofficialjohncarpenter.com/biography/>
n.p. “John Carpenter – Biography.” Yahoo! Movies. Web. 27 Feb 2012.
<http://movies.yahoo.com/person/john-carpenter/biography.html>