John Carpenter - Terror takes shape

[Gast Stefan Jania]

Buch ist da und nach dem ersten Durchblättern sind da viele schöne Fotos drin. Die meisten in schwarz-weiß und nur aus dem Zeitraum zwischen HALLOWEEN und CHRISTINE, dabei aber leider ohne THE THING. Dennoch ein wirklich schniekes (und großes) Buch.

 

Nachdem ich jetzt auch endlich die Zeit dazu hatte: jau, gefällt. Überwiegend Fotos, klar. Teilweise die wirklich guten Stills, die als Werbung benutzt worden sind. Dazu dann aber auch viel "Behind the Scenes". Die kurzen Texte finde ich sehr interessant. Bei Christine ist es zwar etwas Keith Gordon-lastig, aber der Kerl hat was zu sagen. Gesamturteil: Daumen hoch, hat sich gelohnt!

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Nachdem ich jetzt auch endlich die Zeit dazu hatte: jau, gefällt. Überwiegend Fotos, klar. Teilweise die wirklich guten Stills, die als Werbung benutzt worden sind. Dazu dann aber auch viel "Behind the Scenes". Die kurzen Texte finde ich sehr interessant. Bei Christine ist es zwar etwas Keith Gordon-lastig, aber der Kerl hat was zu sagen. Gesamturteil: Daumen hoch, hat sich gelohnt!

Viele der Carpenter-Bilder sind toll. Schön, ihn bei der Arbeit zu sehen und teilweise sind da echt coole Sachen dabei (Carpenter im Halbdunkel vor dem kaputten Fenster, welches Michael Myers kaputt gemacht hat, dahinter Donald Pleasence). Die gute Atmosphäre bei den Dreharbeiten überträgt sich durch die Bilder, ein wirklich schönes Fotoalbum.

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Bevor der Tag rum ist:

 

ALIVE FILMS presents

John Carpenter's BIRTHDAY

 

 

 

Alles Gute zum 67. Geburtstag!

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Ob es wirklich das beste Interview ist, sei mal dahingestellt, aber sehenswert ist es allemal. Robert Rodriguez spricht mit John Carpenter.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrEgwxagb-g

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Rarer Teaser zu Carpenters THE THING, der als Easter Egg auf der französischen DVD zu finden ist:

 

[Alexander Grodzinski]

John Carpenters Top-Ten-Liste der, seiner Meinung nach, besten Soundtracks:

 

The 10 best film soundtracks, according to John Carpenter

[Alexander Grodzinski]

John Carpenters VAMPIRES erscheint ungekürzt auf Blu-ray im schicken Mediabook mit drei Covervarianten.

[Stempel]

Interessant.

Ihm geht es wie uns allen.

Er steht auf die Sachen, die veröffentlicht wurden als er Kind und Jugendlicher war.

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Inspiriert durch Martins HALLOWEEN-Set-Photo im "Lustiges"-Thread: Jamie Lee Curtis und John Carpenter 1978 am Set von HALLOWEEN und 2013 bei der Präsentation der 35th Anniversary Blu-ray.

 

 

Oder auch John Carpenter und Kurt Russell im Wandel der Zeit.

 

 

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Die Gruppe "Retro Promenade" hat ein Album aufgenommen, auf dem sie der Musik von John Carpenter Tribut zollt. Das Album, welches einfach nur "Carpenter" heisst, kann man kostenlos herunterladen, um eine kleine Spende wird aber gebeten. Manches klingt tatsächlich sehr Carpenter-ish, insgesamt ist es aber doch eher 80er-Synthie-Pop, würde ich sagen. Hier gibt es mehr Infos.

 

Das Cover:

 

 

 

 

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Zum Track "Night" aus dem LOST-THEMES-Album gibt es jetzt sogar ein offizielles Musikvideo, mit Carpenter in der "Hauptrolle":

 

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Neues Interview mit Carpenter über seine Musik und das Filmbusiness allgemein.

 

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Am 31. Juli kommt Carpenters ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK als Doppel-LP von Silva Screen:

 

[Stempel]

Eher so eine Art Hörspiel, wenn man sich mal ansieht, wieviele Stücke mit Dialogen drauf sind.

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Das ist eben die Vinyl-Version der erweiterten Silva-Screen-CD. Dort konnte man die Dialoge einfach überspringen, da es einzelne Tracks sind. Die Musik selbst ist ohne Dialoge. Auf der LP wird das natürlich etwas schwieriger.

[Stempel]

Gab es schon so auf CD?

Aha, alles klar.

 

Denke, ich brauch das aber nicht wirklich.

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Ja, Silva Screen brachte vor einigen Jahren eine expandierte CD der Musik heraus. Das Album wurde von Alan Howarth produziert und neu abgemischt. So klingt die Musik ein wenig frischer und knackiger als auf dem alten Varese-Album.

 

John Carpenter/Alan Howarth - Escape From New York

 

Von Silva Screen kam ja auch eine komplette Fassung der Musik zu Carpenters THE FOG.

[Stempel]

Für mich lohnen sich keine erweitereten Carpenter- Alben.

Höre sowieso meist nur jeweils das Hauptthema.

 

Okay, bei der Klapperschlange ist der "Gefangenenchor" natürlich noch was feines.

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Jean-Michel Jarre und John Carpenter über ihre Zusammenarbeit für Jarres neues Album "E-Project", welches im Oktober erscheint.

 

[Gast Stefan Jania]

Interessant. Mal schauen, ob das nach 39 Jahren wieder ein neues Jean-Michel Jarre Album bei mir wird oder ob ich mir nur den einen Track kaufe. Ich finde es beim Schauen des Videos aber erschreckend, dass Carpenter nur acht Monate älter ist Jarre. Der eine immer noch beinahe jugendhaft, der andere seit Jahrzehnten "Opa". Die Natur meint es mit einigen manchmal gar nicht gut.

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Interessant. Mal schauen, ob das nach 39 Jahren wieder ein neues Jean-Michel Jarre Album bei mir wird oder ob ich mir nur den einen Track kaufe. Ich finde es beim Schauen des Videos aber erschreckend, dass Carpenter nur acht Monate älter ist Jarre. Der eine immer noch beinahe jugendhaft, der andere seit Jahrzehnten "Opa". Die Natur meint es mit einigen manchmal gar nicht gut.

Carpenter erinnert mich immer mehr an den Crypt-Keeper aus "Tales from the Crypt".

 

 

Dass er seit Jahrzehnten eine Zigarette nach der anderen raucht, dürfte seinem Äußeren auch nicht gerade zuträglich gewesen sein, aber dennoch ist und bleibt er einfach eine coole Socke.

 

Zu den restlichen Zusammenarbeiten für das Album (unter anderem auch mit Tangerine Dream und M83) gibt es auf YouTube auch Clips. Sind schon einige nette Sachen dabei.

[Nightwalker]

Ja, John Carpenter ist wirklich ziemlich schlecht gealtert. Aber ich höre ihm auch gerade bei Interviews immer wieder gerne zu, einfach weil er direkt aus dem Herzen spricht. Nichts beschönigt, sondern ehrlich ist.

 

Die Idee von Jean-Michel Jarre zu dem neuen Album ist wirklich interessant und ansprechend. Ich denke auch, dass ich mir das Album sicherlich kaufen werde.

[Alexander Grodzinski]

John Carpenter wird im Juli 2016 beim ATP Festival in Ásbrú, Island, zum ersten Mal in seiner Karriere seine Filmmusik live bei einem Konzert spielen.

 

 

 

We’re thrilled and delighted to have the legendary composer John Carpenter performing live at our ATP Iceland festival in Ásbrú, former NATO base in Keflavík, on July 1-3, 2016. It will be the first time the acclaimed American director and composer has ever performed his compositions live.

 

John Carpenter will be performing a musical retrospective of his work, his first solo record of non-soundtrack music Lost Themes, plus brand new compositions. The Horror Master will also be joined on stage by both his son Cody Carpenter and his godson Daniel Davies (both of whom co-recorded Lost Themes), in addition to a full live band and spectacular stage production.

 

“We are incredibly honoured to present the first ever show by this legendary film-maker and composer. Having had the opportunity to present the maestro Ennio Morricone twice in recent years, it has been a burning ambition of ours to also present John Carpenter, who is both a pioneer and a huge influence on us and so many great musicians and film-makers that we work with. You’d be fucking crazy to miss this,” said ATP’s Barry Hogan.

John Carpenter has been responsible for much of the horror genre’s most striking soundtrack work in movies he’s both directed and scored, such as Dark Star (1974), Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), Escape from New York (1981), Christine (1983), Starman (1984), Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Prince of Darkness (1987), and They Live (1988) to name a few.

 

The themes that drive them can be stripped to a few coldly repeating notes, take on the electrifying thunder of a rock concert, or submerge themselves into exotic, unholy miasmas. It’s work that instantly floods his fans’ musical memory with imagery of a menacing shape stalking a babysitter, a relentless wall of ghost-filled fog, lightning-fisted kung fu fighters, or a mirror holding the gateway to hell.

 

Composers before him had used minimalism to create terror, whether it was two piano notes for a killer shark or the stabbing strings of a mother-obsessed psychopath, but it was Halloween’s brilliantly interwoven synth melodies that truly took genre scoring to a new, more sinister level.

 

In February 2015, John Carpenter released his first solo record of non-soundtrack music, Lost Themes on Sacred Bones Records, to overwhelming critical success. Recorded with son Cody and godson Daniel, John Carpenter proved that not only could he perfectly score his own films – he could also score the movies in your mind. Lost Themes debuted on both the US and UK top 100 charts and garnered extensive and glowing coverage in The Guardian, The New York Times, The Times (UK), Uncut, The Wire, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, Pitchfork, Vanity Fair, Newsweek, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, Artforum, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, and countless other music, horror, and lifestyle magazines.

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Carpenter hat Luc Besson wegen dessen Film "Lockout" verklagt, da dieser sehr viele Ähnlichkeiten zu "Escape from New York" aufweist - und gewonnen.

 

 

In 2012, Luc Besson's mid-budget action factory delivered "Lockout," a sci-fi-ish action movie that saw a game Guy Pearce leading a dumb yet more-enjoyable-than-it-had-any-right-to-be adventure about an ex-con tasked with rescuing the President's daughter from a prison… in space! Like I said, it's dumb. The box office was dreadful and reviews were worse, though on a positive note, Box Office described the picture as "a sleek, slick and shameless rip-off of John Carpenter's Snake Plissken films 'Escape from New York' and 'Escape from L.A.' " And Carpenter himself agreed.

 

The director took production company EuropaCorp and the film's writers — Stephen St. Leger, James Mather and Besson— to court over the matter, claiming they plagiarized his work. Surprisingly, Carpenter has won. These kinds of cases are notoriously difficult to prove, let alone win, but in this case, a French court ruled that enough similar distinctive elements from Carpenter's "Escape From New York" were borrowed to merit a sanction. Here's an excerpt of the ruling via Observatoire européen de l'audiovisuel: 

 

A number of elements present in both ‘[Escape From New York]’ and ‘Lock-Out’ could in fact be considered as stock elements in cinema. Other elements differed, such as the pace of the film and the special effects, but this could be because of the amount of time that had passed between the releases of the two films —1981 and 2012— and by the evolution in both techniques and mentalities in the intervening period. The court nevertheless noted many similarities between the two science-fiction films: both presented an athletic, rebellious and cynical hero sentenced to a period of isolated incarceration —despite his heroic past— who is given the offer of setting out to free the President of the United States or his daughter held hostage in exchange for his freedom; he manages, undetected, to get inside the place where the hostage is being held after a flight in a glider/space shuttle, and finds there a former associate who dies; he pulls off the mission in extremis, and at the end of the film keeps the secret documents recovered in the course of the mission. The court held that the combination of these elements, which gave the film ‘New York 1997’ its particular appearance and originality, had been reproduced in ‘Lock-Out’, apart from certain scenes and specific details that were only present in the first film. The difference in the location of the action and the more modern character featured in ‘Lock-Out’ was not enough to differentiate the two films.

 

Europacorp has been ordered to pay 20, 000 euros to Carpenter, 10 000 euros to the screenwriter (the script is credited to both Carpenter and Nick Castle), and 50 000 euros to the rights owner of the movie. Granted, these are fairly paltry sums for a company as big as Europacorp, but it's a very significant ruling. While art forms have a long history of borrowing and recycling elements, the judges in this case seem to say that there is a line that can be crossed, and that some genre creations do have enough distinctive characteristics to be protected by law.

Quelle

[Alexander Grodzinski]

Neues Interview mit Carpenter über "Halloween", die Klage gegen Luc Besson und ein neues Album 2016.

 

In a rare one-on-one, the horror/sci-fi auteur shares new details about Michael Myers, reminisces about the late 'They Live' star Roddy Piper and reveals why he sued the 'Lockout' director — and won.

One of the greatest horror films of all time — many consider it to be the greatest — is slashing its way back to the big screen. And that, according to its director, is the only way it was meant to be seen. The film is John Carpenter's 1978 classic Halloween, in which a masked bogeyman named Michael Myers stalks the streets of suburban Illinois (actually South Pasadena) to terrorize a bookish babysitter named Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, in the role that made her a star). Made for $300,000, the film went on to gross more than $70 million and launched the 1980s slasher craze. It also has spawned nine sequels of varying quality, which together have earned more than $362 million. None, however, comes close to the original. Fathom Events is behind the one-night run, which bows Thursday, Oct. 29, at 7:30 p.m. and which includes a special introduction from the 67-year-old Carpenter himself. (Theater info and tickets available here.) In anticipation, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Carpenter, the oft-imitated director — and composer — of not just Halloween, but such genre-film giants as Escape From New York (1981), The Thing (1982), Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and They Live (1988). 

I will never forget my first glimpse of Halloween. I was six, and Roger Ebert was praising it on PBS' Sneak Previews. Did Ebert's support help the movie at all?

I remember that he was very nice, which confused me. I found it very strange. Halloween was released regionally. It moved city to city, just a few prints, and the reviews were horrible. I remember one memorable review: "Carpenter does not work well with actors." And I thought, "Oh my God, I'm being put down across the country." But then it kind of got rereviewed. This was all over a long period of time, and it was a word-of-mouth movie, so I didn’t really feel the success of it for quite a while. I was on the sidelines.

Thanks to Halloween, you are frequently credited with creating the slasher genre. What were you actually trying to create?

Just a little horror movie. We had very little money and a very young cast except for Donald Pleasence, who was great as a psychiatrist — with a gun, which is fun. But it was a movie where the main character, the guy in the mask, really isn’t altogether human. He has no characteristics. He's, uh, almost like a machine. He was just pure evil. That was what I intended to do. It's evil out of nothing, evil from no background, which completely creeps me out as a human being, that evil could arrive at my doorstep without a purpose, without a past, without an origin. So that's the idea behind it. It was put together to scare you. That’s all.

What is the real story behind the mask? You often hear it's a William Shatner mask, but it doesn’t look like William Shatner to me.

Not at all, no. There was a choice we had to make, because we didn’t have any money to make a mask. So the art director went up to Bert Wheeler’s magic shop on Hollywood Boulevard, which was right up the street from our offices, and he got two masks. One was a clown mask, and one was a Captain Kirk mask. It was supposed to be Captain Kirk. It looked nothing like William Shatner, nothing like anybody, really. It was just a strange mask, which was perfect for us. So we spray-painted it, altered the eye holes and just did a couple things with the hair — and there you had it. I like to think it’s Shatner, but it’s not really.

So you see Captain Kirk up there when the rest of us see Michael Myers?

Oh, yeah. But I don’t watch the film anymore. I can’t handle it! I see all the mistakes. I watch a little bit and say, "What was I thinking? Why did I do that?!" I just as soon not watch it. 

Are there any of your films where you think, "Wow, I nailed it. I wouldn't change a frame."

(Laughs loudly) No! Are you kidding? They’re all unwatchable to me. I can’t see them anymore. God! I can’t stand it. I cannot take it.

What drew you to Jamie Lee Curtis to play Laurie Strode? Was it a particular scream, a look on her face?

I wasn’t aware of her as an actress at all. She came into the offices, very pretty girl, very nice. She just nailed the part in terms of the hard part, which is the dialogue sounding real. I thought, she could do this. She was just great. And everything came easy to her: the tension, the screams, all that. Fun. Fun and easy for her, so I made the right choice. I had a great cast. She’s had a great career, and Jamie and I have remained friends. We made an appearance at the Egyptian Theatre together for a screening of Halloween. 

Have you caught her new show, Scream Queens, at all?

Come on, please. I’m too busy watching basketball.

What's the story behind 1982's Halloween III: Season of the Witch?

It started with an idea to do a different story. See I thought, stupidly — this shows you how dumb I am — I thought that we were done with telling stories about Michael Myers and the guy in the mask. I thought there's not much more to say. So we thought we'd come up with a new story every year. We could call it Halloween, but it didn’t have to do anything with Michael Myers. We approached Nigel Kneale, a British science-fiction writer who did some great stuff, to see if he had any ideas, and he did. He had the central idea for Halloween III. So we went from there.

I watched it recently. It's a pretty weird film. What do you make of it?

I haven't seen it in a long time. I like the movie a lot. It's kind of a subversive movie but very interesting. I provided a score for it. I hadn’t really done that before, provide a score for a movie I didn't direct. I can't even remember writing it! I just know it exists. 

Speaking of your scores, the original Halloween score has to be the scariest piece of music ever written.

Thank you! It’s pretty simple, goddamnit — I have to tell you, it’s pretty simple stuff. I’m a pretty simple musician.

How did you come up with it?

My father taught me 5/4 time on the bongos. He gave me a set of bongos for Christmas one year. I must have been maybe 13 or 14. And he taught me the 5/4 time: BA ba pa BA ba pa BA pa BA ba pa.… And so I just took that and used some octaves on the piano and came up with it.

What about those deep, dreadful notes?

That’s just synth stuff, you know. Old-time tube synthesizers you used to have tune up. It’s unbelievable when you see the technology today. I just had an album out called Lost Themes, and the technology we used for that compared to what we used for Halloween, I mean, man.

What came first: the film or the score?

I’m just a guy that sits down and has a job to do. In the case of Halloween, I had to score a movie. And I had three days to do it. Which was an improvement on Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) — I had one day to score that movie. It’s all practical on my part, because nobody could afford a composer or an orchestra. This was a way to sound somewhat big with limited resources.

What’s your single favorite shot in Halloween?

That’s a great question. You know, frankly, it’s a shot near the beginning of the movie of an empty street and some leaves just sort of dropping in the foreground, and I think it says “Haddonfield, Illinois” or something like that. I love that shot. There’s nothing to it.

The opening scene still traumatizes me. How did you decide to shoot it through the eyes of the young Michael Myers’ mask?

If you think about it, the opening was one complicated single shot. That’s what we did. We shot in one direction, went through the house and came out the other direction. We had to change all the lights while the shot was going on. We came up the stairs, murdered the sister, came back downstairs. So it was just complicated to do. We added the mask in postproduction.

What about young Michael’s hand?

Yeah, it was actually [Halloween producer] Debra Hill’s hand, opening the drawer, holding the knife.

I’d like to jump over to Escape From New York, as that’s been in the headlines lately. I see the remake has landed upon a writer.

Well, I had nothing to do with that. (Laughs) No one told me about it. No one ever tells me anything. You have to understand that. It’s the story of my career. The producers are very nice people. They actually came to me and said, “Well, we want you to be involved.” That was six months ago, and I haven’t heard anything since. That’s my story.

Who in a perfect world would play Snake Plissken?

There is nobody. I don’t know. I don’t think there is anybody who could play that part besides Kurt [Russell]. Better you don’t ask me.

In other Escape From New York news, you sued Luc Besson in French court recently for copyright infringement.

(Laughs) They didn’t give us much money.

I think it was something like an €80,000 settlement, 20,000 of which went to you? How much did you want?

I have no idea. Look, CanalPlus is the company that, with me, owns Escape From New York. They came to me and said, "Luc Besson ripped you off on Lockout." Or Lockdown, whatever the hell that was. And they sent me the movie, and yes, he did. It’s the same story. (Laughs) I mean, you can’t do that, can you? You have to change a couple things. He’s after the president’s daughter? Come on. So I took him to French court.

The great thing is, I didn’t have to do anything, really. That's the kind of the job I’ve always wanted — where you don’t have to show up, and something happens. And we won! But any great dreams of retiring wealthy were shattered because they didn’t give us as much money as CanalPlus wanted. They wanted to get Luc Besson. They didn’t like it. [CanalPlus sought €3 million in the lawsuit.]

CanalPlus has some problem with Luc Besson?

Yes! Oh, yes. He has another company. But I think they’re actually doing some business with him, too. [CanalPlus] wanted to also go after the video game Metal Gear Solid, which is kind of a rip-off of Escape From New York, too, but I told them not to do that. I know the director of those games, and he’s a nice guy, or at least he’s nice to me.

Have you heard from Besson?

Oh, hell no! I don’t hear from anybody. You’re not listening to me. No one tells me anything.

We lost Roddy Piper this year. They Live is another of your classic films that Hollywood is always threatening to remake. How did Roddy’s legendary bubblegum line end up in the script?

That’s his line. Wrestling is an unbelievable business, but the big thing to sell a match in the medium is television. They do these interviews, so the thing to do is to come up with a memorable line about an upcoming match. So he had a bunch of lines that he’d written down over the years that he’d maybe used or not used. And one of them was, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum.” I think it was from a match with “Playboy” Buddy Rose. And so I liked the line, so I just used it. He gave me a sheet of his wrestling quotes. He was a really inventive guy.

What about the epic, six-minute fight scene. Did you at any point consider cutting it down?

Why would I want to do that?! Why would I want to shorten it? Oh, hell no! Any way to stretch it longer?

Are you familiar with the artist Shepard Fairey, who based his OBEY street-art campaign on the signs in They Live?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Have you ever met him?

No, I haven’t. They didn’t talk to me, either. You see what I’m saying to you? People do things, but they don’t talk to me about it.

And by that you mean, don’t pay you for it.

That’s exactly right! They don’t ask me. They don’t nicely say, “I’m going to do this.” They don’t even talk to me. It’s just silence.

So you’ve never seen a penny from any Shepard Fairey art sales.

Oh, fuck no! Are you kidding? Why would I see anything? (Laughs)

What about Halloween? People assume it would have made you millions, is that not the case?

No, I’ve made some money on that. Hell, yeah. I’m doing fine. I’m living a great life and get to watch NBA basketball and get to play video games, so there’s nothing I can complain about.

What about another film?

Maybe. Working on a couple things. And have a new album coming out next year — we’re going to do another Lost Themes.

Can you tell me what the movies are about?

No. I'm not going to tell you anything about what my projects are about! If we get the money, and everything's cool, I'll tell you then.

Quelle