Written Interview: John Carpenter

Today’s interview is with writer-director John Carpenter. The writer part of that hyphenate description may surprise you: He has 35 writing credits on his IMDB page. Excerpts from the interview:

The Ward’s an interesting project for you because the film’s main antagonist is internalized, whereas in many of your previous films, the villains are simply there.

It’s a different story, one that I really enjoyed making. It’s a little bit more challenging. There are two different stories in horror: internal and external. In external horror films, the evil comes from the outside, the other tribe, this thing in the darkness that we don’t understand. Internal is the human heart. The Ward is the latter [kind of] story. That kind of story is much more challenging and harder to tell.

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Is there a particular project you’ve done that didn’t catch with audience but that you’re nevertheless proud of?

Several, I guess [laughs]. That’s the story of my career. The Thing was a big bomb and I think that’s one of my best films. I’m really not passionate about Village of the Damned. I was getting rid of a contractual assignment, although I will say that it has a very good performance from Christopher Reeve, so there’s some value in it.

For more of the interview, go here.

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