![]() ![]() Not every director who signed on to the anthology series Masters Of Horror deserved the title, but John Carpenter surely did. Although he’s made significant. The horror master, releasing a new album of film scores, talks John Wayne, why he never watches his movies, and having his work co-opted by neo-Nazis. Westerns are all about the standoff – that final showdown, ticking seconds off the clock as sweat trickles down the face of a lone cowboy with his hand over his pistol, ready to pounce. They’re about the long game, the waiting game with the big payoff. Being an avid fan of westerns his entire life, this is the kind of tension director John Carpenter has always attempted to bring to each scene of his polished projects, even if the stories don’t necessarily fall in the sweltering heat of gunslinger territory. That’s why all of his horror movies pack such a punch. That’s why his Kurt Russell roles so closely resemble John Wayne, and why his shootout scenes feel so deliberate and exciting. It’s also why it’s so difficult to rank all of the incredible films that the master filmmaker has crafted over the course of his iconic legacy, but here we are, in the glorious month of October, so I’ll give it a shot. A director whose quick-witted and full-blooded approach to genre filmmaking has won him both mainstream success and a cult following, was born in Carthage, NY, in 1948. When he was young, his family moved to Bowling Green, KY, where his father served on the music faculty of Western Kentucky University. As a child, became fascinated with such '50s science fiction and horror films as and, as well as the classic Westerns of and; he began shooting his own 8 mm films -- mostly monster movie pastiches -- in his spare time. After graduating from high school, attended Western Kentucky, and later transferred to the University of Southern California to study filmmaking. There, he co-wrote a student film called The Resurrection of Bronco Billy which, in 1971, won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short. Inspired by this success,, along with friend and fellow film student, began work on a sci-fi parody called. Over time, expanded the student short to feature length at a cost of 60,000 dollars, and the film received positive reviews when it was released theatrically in 1974.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2018
Categories |