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Interview with John CarpenterLifting the FogBy Jeffrey M. Anderson
In elite film circles John Carpenter's name usually elicits
weary eye-rolls. Or, from the most devoted fans, "didn't he once do
something good a couple of decades ago?" But look closer and Carpenter is
one of the few old-school filmmakers working today. Having studied the great
directors of the studio system like Howard Hawks and John Ford, Carpenter has
more or less based his entire career on their model. He has worked for all
different studios, jumping from independent films to larger films. And yet he
has always stayed true to his own singular vision. Each and every film
Carpetner has made sports his signature style. Watching the excellent MGM DVDs The
Fog (1980) and Escape from New
York: Special Edition (1981) helps prove
this point. Carpenter's The Fog is
one of the only films in his long career that I hadn't seen, and I'm glad I
waited for MGM's impressive new widescreen DVD ($19.98) to do it. It's a
beautifully-made, atmospheric chiller with a top-notch performances by an
amazing cast. Back in 1980, Carpenter and his co-producer Debra Hill had scored
the highest-grossing independent film of all time with Halloween, a record that was held until 1999's The
Blair Witch Project. Most directors would
have gone on to make something "serious" to prove that they could do
it, but Carpenter and Hill were still interested in scaring people. Their first attempt at The Fog was more along the lines of a Val Lewton production -- meant to scare
through suggestion rather than graphic violence. But it soon became apparent
that the film wasn't working in that form and re-shoots became necessary.
Director Carpenter looks favorably at the experience. "I've had many
learning experiences in my career," he said recently from his Los Angeles
office. "You've got these ethereal ghosts who are after somebody, but you
need something that the audience can see." And so, Jamie Lee Curtis,
Adrienne Barbeau, Janet Leigh, Hal Holbrook and Tom Atkins had gorier ghosts to
deal with in this tale of pirates who return to a small California town 100
years later to avenge their deaths and recover a stolen cache of gold. Better still, John Houseman appears in the film's prologue
narrating the tale over a campfire! "He intimidated everyone, all the
crew," Carpenter says. "He was really sweet with me. I really enjoyed
working with him." Barbeau steals the film though, as the throaty-sexy
late-night DJ Stevie Wayne, who does her best to warn the citizens of Antonio
Bay from the evil beasties. Janet Leigh's presence clearly references
Carpenter's love for Hitchcock, but she manages a couple of very good scenes,
proving that she's more than the sum of Psycho. Carpenter's excellent use of widescreen comes in handy here,
perfectly capturing the empty spaces of small town life. When the fog, backlit
in an eerie green, enters the frame, you see the way it moves, filling the
scene from back to front. "I was probably most influenced by John Sturges
and Bad Day at Black Rock, The
Great Escape, The Magnificent
Seven," he says. "I've always
loved widescreen, and it just appeals to me." And, as usual, Carpenter provides creepy score for The
Fog, similar to his classic
"Halloween" music. "I've been playing music all my life,"
he says. "My dad was a classically trained musician. I'm not. He
physically tried to teach me violin. I rebelled against that." Instead
Carpenter learned guitar and synthesizer. "I needed somebody cheap and
fast to do the music. And it was practical. I began to realize that by doing
the music myself I could make the films have a uniqueness to them." The almost forgotten Escape from New York reveals a near-visionary workmanship, a low-budget
film heavy on atmosphere and playful of character. Its $6 million budget bought
what looks like a $50 million film. "A lot of that goes to pay people.
There wasn't much money on the screen," Carpenter says. One of the people
who worked on the film was none other than James Cameron, who went on to
international success with Titanic.
Cameron painted "mattes" for the film, or glass backgrounds. At one
point, Carpenter says, Cameron was finishing up just minutes before the scene
was shot; the paint was still wet. The film's futuristic hero, Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is
about as bad as can be. Caught during a robbery, he's given a certain number of
hours to fly into New York City -- now a gang-run war zone -- and rescue the
President of the United States (Donald Pleasence). Wherever he goes, his
reputation precedes him: "I thought you were dead!" goes the refrain.
"I had worked with Kurt in Elvis.
He pulled off that role, and it was completely convincing," says
Carpenter. "He told me he wanted to do another movie with me but just
don't make him a nice guy." Snake meets up with an oddball cast of
characters and, as in Howard Hawks films, the bad guys team up against greater
bad guys. Carpenter uses Cinemascope framing to help establish
physical relationships between characters, and always tells stories within a
"genre" (sci-fi or horror) format to help get his point across with
less soapbox grandstanding. The director seems proud of his two films, but he tends to
downplay his entire career, and his status as an auteur, in general. "I don't know. I think there's a
couple of movies I didn't do a really good job with. I feel like I've made my
own films, for better or worse. August 23, 2002 and November 6, 2003
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