Capone talks to legendary director-writer-producer-composer John Carpenter about THE THING--celebrating its 30th Anniversary--and his appearance in Chicago this weekend!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

As I mentioned last week, Chicago longest-running and finest horror and sci-fi convention, Flashback Weekend, is happening this weekend in Rosemont (near O'Hare Airport). For all the details (and there are many), take a look at the Flashback Weekend website. But I did want to call your attention to a few highlights, including the first-ever appearance of writer-director-producer-composer John Carpenter, who will be introducing a 30th anniversary print of THE THING on Friday night. I don't see how any right-thinking film lover could pass up an opportunity like that. More on Mr. Carpenter in a minute…

Flashback Weekend will also feature appearances by Linda Blair, who will be hosting a 4K digital screening of THE EXORCIST on Saturday night; Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, who will be hosting the world premiere (complete with red carpet) of H.P. LOVECRAFTS THE EVIL CLERGYMAN, along with director Charles Band and composer Richard Band; Ken Foree (DAWN OF THE DEAD; FROM BEYOND); Tony Todd (CANDYMAN; the FINAL DESTINATION movies; HATCHET I & II); Dick Warlock (John Carpenter's frequent stunt coordinator and Kurt Russell's frequent stunt double); Tyler Mane (Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN 1 & 2); Scout Taylor-Compton, Kristina Klebe & Danielle Harris (the babysitters of Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN 1 & 2); Meg Foster (THEY LIVE); and Kim Darby (the original DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK and TRUE GRIT).

The line-up will also include a whole bunch of actors who have played Jason Voorhees in various FRIDAY THE 13th movies (including the great Kane Hodder), and actresses who have been in many of those films as well (see the website for the complete list).

In addition to THE THING, THE EXORCIST, and THE EVIL CLERGYMAN screening, the nearby Muvico Theater will be hosting screenings of AMONG FRIENDS, directed by Danielle Harris; THE BLACK WATERS OF ECHOS POND, starring Danielle Harris and written & directed by Sean Clark; NAILBITER, directed by Patrick Rea; and a few more shorts and features. Again, check the site for the full schedule and details about introductions, parties, etc. I'll be co-hosting, as always, so please come and say hi between the endless Q&A happening on Saturday or at the screenings.

Now back to John Carpenter. It goes without saying that for many of us, Carpenter is a hero, a guiding force in genre filmmaking from DARK STAR, ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and HALLOWEEN to THE THING, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, and THE FOG to BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, THEY LIVE, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, and the list goes on.

Now to provide a little context, last year Quint did a more comprehensive interview with Carpenter (THAT YOU MUST READ NOW) as part of an AICN Legends column. So as not to cover the same ground, most of my interview focused on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of THE THING as well as some broader spectrum question about his career, history, and reason for doing horror and sci-fi films. We only had about 25 minutes, but I think I got some choice responses from him, even a few that went longer than just a sentence or two (something he's kind of known for). But I had a tremendous time chatting with Carpenter and can't wait to meet him this weekend. And for those of you thinking about coming to Flashback Weekend, Carpenter's Q&A is scheduled to happen at 2:00pm on Saturday and run for about 40 minutes. The whole weekend should be great fun; hope to see you there. Now, please enjoy my talk with the great John Carpenter…


John Carpenter: Hello.

Capone: Hi, John.

JC: Hi there, Steve. How are you?

Capone: Good. I’m looking forward to seeing you in Chicago for the convention. Have you ever spent any time here before?

JC: I’ve been in Chicago when I was a child, but that was a long time ago.

Capone: I’d like to focus on THE THING, since that’s one of the reasons you are coming here, for the anniversary screening.

JC: Is that one of the reasons I’m coming?

Capone: That is one of the reasons, believe it or not.

JC: Thank you for telling me. [laughs]

Capone: They have a nice new digital print of it to play on the first night of the convention. But before I dive into that, I just heard yesterday that THEY LIVE is finally coming out on Blu-ray in November?

JC: Yep.

Capone: Have you done anything new for that release?

JC: Yeah, I did a little on-camera stuff, but it’s not very extensive. I think everybody did something.

Capone: All of the people in the film?

JC: I think so. I’m not really sure, but yeah.

Capone: Okay, but we actually can say there is new material on the Blu-ray.

JC: Yeah, there’s new stuff. It’s no fucking good, but it’s new.

[Both Laugh]

Capone: At the end of the day, maybe there’s no difference. Did they do anything in terms of restoring it at all?

JC: Dude, you’re asking me a question I have no answer for. So it’s high def now, okay. I don’t know what else they have done.

Capone: I just took a shot in the dark that you might know.

JC: Hey, that’s okay. You would think the director might know, but no. [Laughs]

Capone: I have a feeling a lot of my questions are going to be shots in the dark here.

JC: Hey, go ahead. No problem.

Capone: Whenever I talk to George Romero, I always love digging into the social messages of his films. I don’t think he would make a film unless he could insert a message or two about what was pissing him off at the time. When you were making some of your earlier work, did you attempt to pepper into your films an expression of what you saw as society’s ills or other things that were on your mind?

JC: Not quite as much as George. He really worked that. I was a little bit less than that. I mean, THEY LIVE is an obvious example of something that I considered society’s ill. I was angry about the Reagan Revolution, so it was a scream in the dark, but not so much some of the early ones. They were pretty much straight-forward, take the drama as it is, take the story as it is.

Capone: I always wondered about the end of THE THING, having one black character and one white character be the surviving people, if that was some sort of small statement on your part about “This is what it all comes down to. We either have to live with each other or we're going to just eat each other alive basically, literally.”

JC: That’s inherent in the story, but more than that it’s a story about trust, people losing trust and faith in each other, which seemed to be pretty much evident at the time in the world and in our society, which is losing faith. But that was about as broad as it got. It was about that and a monster from out of space too. [Laughs]

Capone: That’s true. Let’s not forget that. For some people, that level of faith and trust is asking a lot, to trust basically a stranger or someone who is different from you.

JC: There you go. You know, the era I grew up in--I was born in the later '40s, but in the '50s before the '60s came along and sort of tore us all apart,--it was a homogeneous population, pretty much all the same. There was a lot more trust then. There was a lot of fear and a lot of anxieties, but there was a lot of trust in the military, there was a lot of trust in institutions. Not so much when I was making THE THING.

Capone: Probably not, no not in the early '80s. Speaking of that, as a kid, were there significant types of films that you were drawn to?

JC: Well all movies pretty much. I loved science-fiction and horror films, but I loved westerns too. I was really drawn to them.

Capone: What did you like about them?

JC: It was the American Myth and the heroics. All of it. It was just our mythology, which was overtaken by the STAR WARS mythology, and that was the end of the westerns. And the Italians killed them off, but beautifully. Those were some beautiful death throes

Capone: That’s true. Did you at some point decide that horror and sci-fi was going to be your specialty? Or did the studios you were working for decide for you?

JC: It found me. You get associated with a kind of movie that you are successful at first, and that was the first one. I had made a thriller, ASSAULT ON PRECINT 13, I had made a really low budget sci-fi movie [DARK STAR], but nobody took that seriously. But this genre made some bucks, and that’s what they cared about. That’s all they care about, except for honors, like if you get Meryl Streep in a movie.

Capone: Once you realized those were the kind of films you were going to be making, did you set your sights on “What am I going to do that’s going to be different than what everybody else is doing right now?”

JC: Absolutely.

Capone: How did you accomplish that?

JC: “What kind of stories can I tell that are just slightly different? What direction can I take this rather broad genre?” I mean it could be almost anything, and “How can I make something out of this?” My essential goal was to be a professional movie director. That’s what I wanted to do since I was about eight years old, and I got to realize that. So here I am in this category, which is fine with me, that’s okay. "Let me make the best of this. Let me do some stuff that’s different.”

Capone: Yeah. As broad a genre as it is, it was also a pretty crowded landscape at the time in terms of horror and science fiction. Special effects were making more people interested and coming into that genre, because they had new toys to play with. Were things you wanted to do to not just distinguish yourself, but really stand out?

JC: Well not in that sense, not in a special effects sense, but in a dramatic sense. THE THING is a perfect example. I got to work with all of these really good actors, which was terrific. A lot of science fiction and horror movies doesn’t have that kind of caliber of performers. Some of them do. That was quite a summer we had there in 1982. There were a lot of good movies that summer.

Capone: The Alamo Drafthouse down in Austin is dedicating a series of screenings to that fact.

JC: I know all about it, yeah.

Capone: I think they're playing THE THING or maybe they’ve already played it, as part of that celebration. I have such a vivid memory of seeing THE THING when I was probably about 14. But it was the first movie that made me really want to know how some of those practical effects were done, which led to me running into Rob Bottin’s name for the first time. How did you find him work with him on that film?

JC: Rob was an assistant to Rick Baker for a few years and he started showing up…I think he showed up on THE FOG. He played the main ghost at the end there. He was all in black yielding a sword. He was just a real gung-ho kid. So THE THING comes along, and he comes with his idea and said “Listen, The Thing could look like anything. It doesn’t have to look like one thing. This is just a great opportunity to show our stuff,” and he sold me on it.” The idea being that The Thing has been traveling through space and whatever visiting different worlds and imitating various life forms on those worlds. So he could pull any of them right out of his bag of tricks, and who knows what the original form looks like? Some of the studio folks really obsessed with that. They wanted to know what it initially looked like, which didn’t matter to me.

Capone: Was that freeing in a way, not to have to just design a single creature that you kept coming back to?

JC: It was a challenge and it was freeing, but it was a challenge too. If you think about it, it’s unlike a lot of monster movies where they get up and they start attacking you. [Laughs] This thing hides until you find it, so it’s in camouflage all of the time, then it suddenly attacks back.

Capone: You mentioned you had this incredible cast that a lot of films of this genre didn’t have. Did it feel at the time like this was a turning-point film for you, in terms of the caliber of the actors, the bigger budget?

JC: It was an opportunity. This was a chance to work with Universal on a bigger film with all of the accouterments that working for a studio provides you; it’s really nice. In those days, it was really nice. They had a real studio there. They had different studio departments to do different things. They had [legendary matte painter] Albert Whitlock there, although I must tell you the truth is he never painted a thing for my movie, his assistants did it. The old piece of crap. I think he thought he was above our movie, yeah I think so. He was an arrogant little British guy, and I complemented him on some shot--I think it was the guys walking to the saucer or something--and he says, “I didn’t put paint to brush.”

Capone: And he’s proud of that.

JC: “You didn’t? You piece of trash. I can’t believe it.” He’s done some great stuff, but he was such a disagreeable little man. You had to visit with him and have tea with him. Oh man!

Capone: The other reason the production was different for you is that you didn’t do the score. You had Ennio Morricone do the score, which I guess that’s just something you can’t pass up if you have that opportunity.

JC: It started first that nobody wanted me to do the score. It wasn’t like, “Oh, I get to choose this.” It was assumed that somebody else would be hired, and Morricone’s name came up. He was just brilliant, a brilliant composer.

Capone: Did you get musician’s envy listening to what he did?

JC: His orchestral stuff was really different than my stuff, and it’s the essence of the movie. Everybody thinks of that opening, real simple, but his orchestral stuff was just beautiful and sad, which made the movie what it is. It made the movie this hopeless situation.

Capone: It is a rather bleak ending.

JC: [Laughs] Oh my god, yes.

Capone: Can you set the record straight about this supposed different ending that you may or may not have shot for safety?

JC: Okay, no. I took a shot. I didn’t shoot an ending. I did a shot of Kurt sitting in the warmth someplace, and we can assume it’s McMurdo Sound, maybe he's been saved. I don’t know why I did it. Maybe it was massive insecurity, because I realized by the point we got there that “Boy this was a dark movie. Lord, this is dark.” I ended up not using it; I just figured, “You’ve got to go with this. We’ve got to just go and be true to our school here.” The studio, of course, after they read the script and after we had been shooting, suddenly realized “Oh, it’s this kind of ending, we don’t like that.” “Well, why are you waiting until now? You want to figure out something else?” So they said “Well why don’t you just have Kurt Russell blow up the Blair monster, just kill him, and then have him come out in the cold at the end and don’t have the scene with Childs, just drop that and see if it plays better to the audience.” It made no difference.

Capone: Yeah, that’s still pretty bleak, yeah.

JC: Right, it's still hopeless. [Universal Chief Sidney] Sheinberg said, “Can you imagine THE THING with this triumphant orchestra playing as he kills it?” “No, no, no, not really.” But they wanted a more JAWS type thing.

Capone: As part of Flashback Weekend, your old friend Dick Warlock is going to be here as well. Tell me about hooking up with him and a little about your working relationship.

JC: Dick was Kurt’s stunt double and had been for years, so he came along with Kurt. I can’t remember at what point or with what movie where I first worked with him. I think it was ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. And he’s just such a nice guy, so I just began to use him more and more and not only as Kurt’s double. He played Michael Myers in the second HALLOWEEN and various things. He set himself on fire, and did all sorts of great stuff.

Capone: He seems like the kind of guy who you would have just a bunch of incredible stories about. Do you have one great one you can share?

JC: Dick Warlock was the straightest, kindest guy you would ever want to meet. He’s not an outrageous guy at all. He was doing a stunt in THE THING where he was playing Palmer and had to jump up to the ceiling. So we did it in reverse, and he was hanging from the ceiling, and he fell. We used gravity to do our stunt. And he was unhappy about by the fourth take. “Man, I don’t want to do this anymore,” and so we didn’t.

Capone: I read a quote of yours where someone asked you if there was a particular film that was a struggle for you to get made, and you said, “All of them were a struggle to get made.” Was there any film that actually was not that much of a struggle to get made? Is the end result any different depending on how much you had to really struggle to get something done?

JC: No, that had nothing to do with it. It’s just a lot of pain, and then it comes out. The triumph for me is that you get your movie done and it’s pretty much the way you envisioned it, and everything else there’s nothing you can do about, whether people like it or they don’t like it or it makes money or it doesn’t make money. But if you can get a movie out in the theaters or TV or on DVD or wherever it’s going to go, that looks and sound pretty much like you had envisioned it, that’s the triumph. See my low expectations? [Laughs]

Capone: With THE THING, was it particularly painful when the critics didn’t respond to the movie? Obviously the regard it is held in today is not what it once was you. I realize prestige doesn’t pay the bills, but was it particularly painful on that film that people didn’t respond?

JC: It was kind of painful. It was not the critics so much; it was the fans. They hated it. It’s just the science-fiction and horror fans hated it.

Capone: That’s so strange.

JC: They hated it. There was a famous magazine back in the old days, Cinefantastique. There was a cover “Is this the most hated movie ever made?” There you go. I guess it was. I think they thought I had raped the Madonna. That’s what I think they had believed. I had transgressed some line, some unspeakable line. I’m serious that’s what it felt like.

Capone: But by taking on this particular project as a remake?

JC: I have no idea. That’s the only thing I can come up with that I had gone too far, I had taken this little gem of a movie, which it is. The original THING is one of my favorite movies. I love that movie. And crapped on it, apparently. They couldn’t take it.

Capone: The prequel to THE THING came out fairly recently. Did you see it? What did you think?

JC: I have seen it, yes.

Capone: Do these remakes feel like some sort of weird violation?

JC: I don’t want to comment too heavily, except I thought that, “Show me your teeth,” [Laughs] that was kind of a silly [If I remember correctly, whether or not people had fillings was a sign they were an alien or not]. When it happened, the first time it happened, I thought “You’ve got to be kidding. Really? Really?” I don’t understand parts of the prequel. I don’t understand the girl falls apparently from this enormous height at the very end, and then at a cut or two she just gets up off the floor. How the hell does she survive that? This thought came through my mind, this one word—“Reshoots.” I don’t know if that was part of it, but that made no sense. Where did she fall to? I don’t get it. It was confusing to me.

Capone: I know somebody that visited that set, and they said that every single effect they saw that was practical was all replaced in the final version by CG effects.

JC: My goodness.

Capone: I can only imagine what it would have looked like the other way, but I guess Universal just didn’t have faith in how it looked.

JC: It’s more complicated than that. The practical effects that we did, they're all rubber effects. It can’t do much; it’s just a hunk of rubber sitting there moving around a little bit, right? But if you have it trying to do too much, it’s going to look bad, and you just can’t do it. You have to design what it does to its limitations, and then it will be great. If you notice a lot of the movies that are special effects makeup movies that are memorable, they have to do with transformation, going form A to B--a werewolf comes out or something like that. That’s where it really works, so it’s all-transformational. It’s not going to run around the room very well.

Capone: Although you had a couple of shots where things are running around.

JC: Well yeah, a little bit.

Capone: You did a great job of making it seem like you didn’t have limitations with your effects.

JC: Oh my gosh, you have no idea. But thanks for saying so.

Capone: John, I look forward to meeting you in a couple of weeks and thanks for taking the time to talk.

JC: All right, man. Thank you.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter