John Carpenter Has Only One Criteria for a Film Score

John Carpenter directed so many of the greatest horror and action films — The Thing, Christine, Escape From New York, Big Trouble in Little China, Halloween — and you can see his fingerprints on them all, and nearly everything that came after. The simple, foreboding, hypnotic title theme and the creeping, deathly pace of Halloween impacted generations of film and television. Escape’s resourceful hero Snake Plissken was a major inspiration for the main character in Japanese video-game designer Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid series. Toronto singer the Weeknd’s “Starboy� music video references The Fog; the American artist and entrepreneur Shepard Fairey’s Obey clothing line nods to They Live. Growing up drawn to 20th-century popular culture that skews toward the macabre was to obsess over the Carpenter catalogue. So earlier this month, when the opportunity presented itself to speak to the director and musician about his history and process, I rang him up, having spent a good bit of the last year obsessed with the philosophy and world-building in his 1987 religious thriller Prince of Darkness, a low-key masterpiece. The plan was to discuss legacies and career highlights as this month’s Halloween Ends puts a bookend on the story of the deathless knife-wielding killer Michael Myers. Carpenter doesn’t care about all that stuff, though. Instead, he talked me through his inspirations as a horror writer and an unwitting synth-music pioneer and his interests outside of the day job, indulging a lot of my long-held horror-nerd notions but laughing off quite a few of them, too.

What sparked your interest in synthesizers? When you made Dark Star and Assault on Precinct 13, it wasn’t that far along in the grand scheme of synthesizer music in the mainstream, nor long after the Pink Floyd and Stevie Wonder records that hip the public to a lot of those sounds. 
The first movie I saw that made me want to be a director was The Forbidden Planet, from 1956. It was a Technicolor film, and the soundtrack was electronic. The Barrons, a husband-and-wife team, recorded it. They didn’t have synthesizers then. They had all sorts of other stuff that they used, but I remember that stuck with me. The sounds were unusual but musical. And of course, electric guitars are electronic-music instruments. I fooled around with that. I heard Switched-On Bach. That was impressive. Are you familiar?

Yeah, it turned into a whole series. 
I thought if I could get ahold of a synthesizer, I could sound big. I could do various parts. That was why I got started. Along comes Dark Star, and I worked on a very primitive … I can’t even remember what kind of synth it was. I graduated to tube synth in Assault on Precinct 13 and onwards, but that was the reason: One man could sound like a little orchestra with enough tracking. That was the thought.

Dark Star is poking fun at these inept hippies in space, and it’s also the name of a Grateful Dead song. Was that a coincidence?
I don’t think I ever heard “Dark Star.�

You’ve directed adaptations of a number of classic horror stories throughout your career, works by Stephen King, Ray Nelson, John W. Campbell, and H.P. Lovecraft. I’m curious about your favorite horror and sci-fi writers, the people who inspired you to craft your own stories.
Well, I have to say H.P. Lovecraft. Not the florid English style, but the stories themselves, the imagination behind them. When I was young, I loved Ray Bradbury and his science-fiction tales. There are a lot of science-fiction writers I grew up on and love: Harry Harrison and others. My dad gave me a book called Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural. That’s where I got my horror tales started. Then, the movies were the big thing for me.

Is there a story you always wanted to adapt that you’ve never gotten to?
I wanted to adapt The Stars My Destination. Never got to.

What was the first film that blew your mind?
It Came From Outer Space. In 3-D.

You make a movie about a freighter lost in space, and then Alien comes out telling a similar story. How’d that go over?
They have a similar origin. Dan O’Bannon, the writer of Alien, was a co-writer and actor on Dark Star. It felt weird. I was jealous because they had more money, and we didn’t have any.

I think this is something that’s lost on younger fans, maybe, how tight things could be. 
It’s so hard when you have no money. I love when people talk to me about it and they say, “Well, you had to use more creativity.� I wouldn’t say that. It’s always better with more money. Always. Don’t let anybody tell you different.

You worked on the scores for many of your most beloved films. Does any one theme stick out to you as your favorite right now?
I like various ones for various reasons. I like Halloween, obviously, just because of its simplicity. I like the music in Prince of Darkness a great deal.

Is there a score you’re especially proud of that can stand on its own as an album?
Well, I don’t know if it stands on its own. Scores are meant to enhance the movies they’re with, so that’s what they’re there for. That’s why they’re important for a film. I’m proud of them all because I think they succeeded. Musically, I’m most proud of the Lost Themes albums my son and godson and I did recently. And that music is for a nonexistent movie, for movies that are in your mind. You provide the movie, and we provide the soundtrack.

You mentioned Prince of Darkness. That’s a film about a church protecting ancient secrets with a score full of distorted sounds of organs and human voices, this liturgical stuff. In The Fog, your seaside-ghost story, the music is more ambient. How much are you thinking about setting when you’re working out themes for a film?
I’m trying to be conscious of it. There’s always thematic material in a movie, whether it’s the location and the characters, the story, and it’s where it goes. Movies have themes, and themes are important. I always want to echo them, if possible, in the music.

Assault on Precinct 13 gives a gang revenge story a theme that has an early hip-hop feel. There’s a kind of rock song playing early on in Big Trouble in Little China. Do you pay attention to what the public listens to when making film music? Are you making music that might exist inside the world of a film?
No, not really. I’m aware of the music on the radio, but I’m not trying to re-create it. It’s project-specific is what it is. What does the project require?

Your Apocalypse trilogy — The Thing, Prince of Darkness, and In the Mouth of Madness — tells three very different stories about the loss of control and the loss of trust in others. What kept you circling back to that theme?
Well, I got fascinated at some point with the end of things. The Thing turned out to be an end-of-the-world project. I don’t think I knew at first. It was just a monster movie, but the implications of The Thing became clear, and it was like, Oh dear, there’s no way out of this. It’s the end of mankind. When you talk about the end of things, that’s an apocalypse. I have to give honorable mention to this Masters of Horror episode I directed, “Cigarette Burns.� That was an apocalyptic story, too. That’s an honorable mention in the trilogy.

You also made Escape From New York and Escape From L.A., films that imagine a future where China and Russia are at war with the United States. Is it disappointing, 40 years later, for that timeline to still be plausible?
It’s not fun. I don’t like thinking about it. I made another movie that was also somewhat prescient called They Live. It was about alien Republicans.

So, They Live comes out and does well but gets destroyed in the reviews but later takes on this second popular-culture life among people who, as you say, find the political message prescient. How does it feel when a good idea gets panned?
I’ve gotten bad reviews on every movie I’ve ever made. How do I feel about it? I feel like going home.

You have this thing with Halloween that doesn’t come along often, this franchise beloved across five decades. Do you have to be protective of that kind of legacy? Do you take it personally when one comes out and people don’t like it?
No, I don’t care. I don’t really care.

Delightful. I don’t think Halloween III gets the love it deserves. Would you be doing something else entirely if it took off?
That’s correct. It didn’t, but I wish it had because we could start telling other stories. People wanted to see Michael Myers once again. So there you go. The Halloween movie I love the most is the one I made back in 1978, the one I directed. Others are other people’s visions. That’s the way it goes. That’s what happens when you give up. I didn’t want to direct sequels. I didn’t think there was story left. Boy, was I wrong, huh?

But you don’t regret not being more hands-on with the series …
Hell no. They have to pay me every time they make one.

What does it take to keep your finger on the pulse of what scares audiences?
A good story is what I look for, not the scariest thing I can think of.

Okay, but what’s your scariest monster?
I don’t find any movie monster scary. Real life is scary. Terrifying.

What’s the real-life monster keeping you up at night?
Oh God, Syria, Russia. Syria poisoning its own people. Russia, what’s going on in Ukraine. Terrible. Cruelty in life. It’s there. It’s everywhere.

There’s a lot of love for your ’80s work, but I don’t know that we talk enough about the ’90s. What’s your assessment of that period?
That was my blue period. I was just trying to make movies. I’m a poor, old horror director trying to make a living. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it. I get up in the morning, have coffee, and go to work. My fear in movies is not finishing one, not having it come out. That’s scary. Luckily, every movie I started has been finished and come out. You give birth. It’s done.

How do you feel about remakes? 
I’m not going to answer that because I don’t know. I’ll have others answer about if they’re good. There are two kinds of remakes for me: One is where I’m the originator of the material. I wrote the screenplay. Two: It was an assignment from the studio. “We want you to do this.� If it’s an assignment from the studio, they don’t pay me when they do a remake. They own the material. If I’ve generated the screenplay, they have to pay me. That’s the kind of sequel I like. My movie exists. Make your own. You want to pay me a bunch of bucks, fine. Have a great time.

How often do you watch your old stuff?
Never. I don’t want to see it. When I watch my old movies, I see the mistakes and the things I didn’t do and I start looking like, “What am I doing? That’s stupid. Why didn’t I do this?� That’s painful. I don’t want to do that, so I don’t watch.

It’s a mark of growth when you can look at something you did a long time ago understanding how you could do it better today. 
That’s a mark of growth, huh? Okay.

So you made your contributions to the history of music and film, and people can do whatever they want as long as they pay up?
There’s certain things I can only care about so much in my life. I care about my own movies. I don’t care about anybody else’s the same way. I don’t have room.

Have you seen anything recently that you liked?
Not in a bit. I like Jordan Poole. I think he’s really good.

Peele! But we can talk about the Warriors. How do you feel about the Jordan Poole and Draymond Green fight?
It doesn’t make me happy, but Draymond is … a volatile character. Let me put it that way.

What does the typical day look like for you now?
Day-to-day looks like preseason NBA and video games.

Which games are you playing? What got you started?
All kinds. I started with Sonic the Hedgehog. I love that game. It was very hard. In the old days, they didn’t put save points in the right place. I evolved through the years. Let’s see: Horizon Forbidden West. Fallout ’76, I really like. Crash Bandicoot.

Have you played Elden Ring? It’s set in this big, dark, decrepit world. You might appreciate it.
No, I’ve never played that.

Your father was a music professor, and your son is a musician. Do you feel like music is the family business, although most people probably know you as a director?
It’s a passion that each of us has, my son, my dad, and I. It may be genetic. I don’t know why. Music is an astonishing art form. If you can dabble in it, it is all the better.

When did you start dabbling?
My father forced me into violin lessons when I was 8 and I didn’t have any talent, unfortunately, but he wanted me to play. That was a mistake. I developed keyboard and guitar stuff. I really wasn’t that good.

I think people who’ve heard your stuff would find that hard to believe.
I wasn’t a virtuoso by any means. I was okay. My son is a virtuoso with the keyboard. I’m not.

Do you have to strive toward the simplicity we hear in your music?
I don’t think about it. Does it sound good? That’s my criteria. Does it work for the movie? I don’t care how simple it is. Simplicity is a blessing, sometimes.

What does it take to get in the mood to make music for scary movies?
You go downstairs and start to work. Let’s go.

Some people can create on a schedule and others need to keep paper and laptops and keyboards around at all times in case an idea comes in the middle of something else.
That’s happened. When I’m working with people, we try to keep a schedule. We’ll meet at noon and start working and see when we get tired.

Do collaborators make your life easier, as a director who is sometimes also working on the score of the same film?
It depends on the personality of the person and what we’re doing. I work with an engineer differently than I would a co-creator. It all depends. There’s no one rule. But one of the things I had to learn is how to deal with people because directing movies is all about that, dealing with actors. That can be tough, sometimes. Most of the time, it’s absolutely wonderful but occasionally, there are actors who are difficult to work with.

Which actors have been the easiest to work with over the years?
Kurt Russell and Sam Neill. I love both of them.

You must have good Kurt Russell stories. 
I have a lot of incredible Kurt Russell stories, but I can’t tell them to you.

This interview has been edited and condensed