As we wrap this week’s analysis of The Thing, here is an interview with John Carpenter. Some excerpts:

What’s your opinion of the current state of horror?

Horror today is pretty much like it always has been. Horror is such a venerable, such an adaptable genre. Ever since the beginning of cinema, it’s been with us. Most horror films are awful, some are good and there are a very, very few that are really good. It’s always kind of been that way.

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I’ve read that you like to write on instinct, or off-the-cuff sometimes, yet at the same time, you are really good at building suspense and hitting those points. How do you combine those two?

The biggest issue in terms of writing is your structure and your outline for your film, and where things happen, and how they’re built up. That’s the big issue in any kind of movie, whether it’s a horror thriller, a science fiction film, a love story, a drama, a comedy. It’s all about structure. So the big work that’s done on the screenplay is figuring out the structure before you sit down and write it.

I never wanted to be a writer. I always wanted to direct, but I was forced to write my way in during the ‘70s to make a living – and it was a great living. I’d write screenplays for hire, sometimes [other] people’s ideas, sometimes my own ideas. I learned a lot from that. The biggest thing I learned during that time was to do a lot of the plumbing, the structural work, right up front, and then everything just kind of takes care of itself.

So did you do the whole 3×5 cards on the wall thing to nail the structure?

I’ve never been good at that. I thought it would be great to do but too time consuming. I just wrote an outline and perfected it, go over and over and over it until it was fireproof, in my opinion. Then I’d sit down and write the script. Sometimes very quickly based on the work I’d done before.

For more of the interview, go here.