Me: Thanks for doing this interview Mr. CarpenterJohn: Call me John, Mr. Carpenter's my father.
Me: Okay John, so out of all your movies, I gotta say Halloween is by far my favourite
John: You didn't like Assault on Precinct 13?
Me: Yeah, it's a classic, but I prefer Halloween
John: You're one of those, I see. I've done a slew of work, but you people only want to know about Myers.
Me: Don't get me wrong I do love all your work, but Halloween blew me away... So, what did you think to the remake?
John: Well Zombie did an interesting job with it, but you can't beat Donalds's performance as Dr. Loomis. I mean, you watch that film and he's scarier than Myers!! The bit where those kids go up to the house and he does a freaky voice... that wasn't in the script, that wasn't even on the set... we'd followed Donald home one evening and that's what he liked to do with his time. In fact, between you and me, Donald never even saw the script, he just made it up as he went along, he believed there really was a killer and that he was actually Dr. Loomis. Method acting fruitcake. When Michael disappeared at the end of the first film, Donald locked himself in his house for months, for fear Michael would come back for him.
Me: That true?
John: The last man to call me a liar was John Romero, and I killed that son of a bitch twenty years ago.
Me: John Romero is still alive
John: That's Stan Lee! You ever seen the two in the same place? That's why the last few "of the dead" movies sucked, what the hell does Stan Lee know about Zombies?
Me: Um... The music, from Halloween, you composed right?
John: Composed is a strong word for what I did. You even listen to that music. I was off my tits on crystal meth at the time. Debra, Debra Hill that is, was with me at the time and she'd puked all over a keyboard after she realised we'd just eaten her cat and put the Chinese takeaway outside. So I was cleaning up the mess and in my drug addled state came up with the tunes you heard in the movie.
Me: So... Michael Myers's mask, is it true that it's a Captain Kirk mask painted white?
John: Yup, it's all true.
Me: Why William Shatner?
John: Well, a lot of hippie's and commies will tell you that I didn't have a budget to get a decent mask made, but that's baloney. You see, you've gotta understand, that back when I made Halloween, people were scared of Bill Shatner. You think people watched Star Trek for the Sci-Fi? No, they watched it because they were scared of what would happen to them if they didn't. Shit, we were all scared of Bill. My original concept for Halloween wasn't about Michael Myers at all, it was about Bill Shatner killing people. When I went to the studio with it they were too scared to do it, so instead suggested I make up a character. But I made a compromise and used a Shatner mask, painted it white so he couldn't recognise his mug. I mean, Shatner's a scary looking bastard as it is, a pure white Shatner... now that's creepy. The amusing thing is the writers of Star Trek the next generation came up to me and wanted Michael Myers to be in it, I told em to go screw 'emselves, but they made Data anyway! Well kid, I gotta go, I've got a fight with Wes Craven in a pub car park in 3 minutes.
Me: Right, well thanks for talking John.
John: No problem, which magazine are you with anyway?
Me: I'm not, I do a blog
John: Oh for fuck sake, I've wasted precious Carpenter time on a wanna be fuck like you, get out of my sight before I write a film about killing you.
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Sometimes the people you most respect the most are the ones that deserve it the least.
Ciao for niaow.
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