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John Carpenter Quotes (1948-)
Writer, Musician, Director
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About John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter (January 16, 1948 –) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, musician, editor and composer.
John Carpenter Quotes
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful John Carpenter quotes.
“I staggered through my career and came out the other end, alive. I made some films that meant something to me. In my opinion, they weren’t all great, and they weren’t all successful, but they sure were ‘me’. And this is what I was going through or thinking or feeling as a director at the time, and I’m very proud of them. A lot of great directors just never had the chance to have their work appreciated and celebrated and watched, all these years after they were made. So, man, what do you want out of life? It’s great!”
“There were two times in my life that inspired me the most. The first was when I was a kid, probably the most emotionally influential time, when you’re naïve and innocent. I went to movie theaters and fell in love with genre films in the 1950s, when there was a big wave of monster movies. My passion came from the young guy who was watching The Fly back in 1958. Then, going to USC I began to watch movies in a different way and was exposed to different kinds of movies, foreign films. We had directors like Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks and John Ford come down and lecture us. It was unbelievable!”
John Carpenter Quotes by Topic
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John Carpenter on The Thing (1982 film) 3 quotes
“People hated it. It was HATED. Especially by the horror fans. I thought that was the best film I’d made but everybody dumped on it”
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John Carpenter on Vampires (film)
“I wanted to make an edgier film than some of the ones I had been doing a few years earlier, so I really let the actors loose.”
John Carpenter on Escape from New York
“The city officials not only gave permission, but were very helpful. We were the first film company in history allowed to shoot on Liberty Island, at the Statue of Liberty, at night. They let us have the whole island to ourselves. We were lucky. It wasn't easy to get that initial permission.”
John Carpenter on Torture
“Question: Films like Funny Games (2007 films) have a strong streak of sadism in them, with psychological as well as physical torture. For me, it’s one of quite a few ‘blow your brains out’ movies of the last eighteen months [Carpenter laughs]. Are we trying to rationalise and digest events in the middle-east?
John Carpenter: Yeah, that’s partially it. All the torture movies…well, you know where that came from. That’s not a mystery - look at the Abu Ghraib photos. ‘Oh yeah? Well we’ll get even with you’…Of course, it’s a big deal, it’s a part of our government now, torture. Please! So if they’re gonna do it, we can show it. It just became that. The war is grim; all war is grim.”
John Carpenter on Halloween (franchise)
“I didn’t think there was any more story, and I didn’t want to do it again. All of my ideas were for the first Halloween – there shouldn’t have been any more! I’m flattered by the fact that people want to remake them, but they remake everything these days, so it doesn’t make me that special. But Michael Myers was an absence of character. And yet all the sequels are trying to explain that. That’s silliness – it just misses the whole point of the first movie, to me. He’s part person, part supernatural force. The sequels rooted around in motivation. I thought that was a mistake. However, I couldn’t stop them from making sequels. So my agents said, ‘Why don’t you become an executive producer and you can share the revenue?’ But I had to write the second movie, and every night I sat there and wrote with a six pack of beer trying to get through this thing. And I didn’t do a very good job, but that was it. I couldn’t do anymore.”
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About John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter (January 16, 1948 –) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, musician, editor and composer.