It’s kind of a subversive movie but very interesting. He had the central idea for Halloween III. We approached Nigel Kneale, a British science-fiction writer who did some great stuff, to see if he had any ideas, and he did. We could call it Halloween, but it didn’t have to do anything with Michael Myers. So we thought we’d come up with a new story every year. See I thought, stupidly - this shows you how dumb I am - I thought that we were done with telling stories about Michael Myers and the guy in the mask. It started with an idea to do a different story. What’s the story behind 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch? Have you caught her new show, Scream Queens, at all?Ĭome on, please. We made an appearance at the Egyptian Theatre together for a screening of Halloween. She’s had a great career, and Jamie and I have remained friends.
Fun and easy for her, so I made the right choice. And everything came easy to her: the tension, the screams, all that. She just nailed the part in terms of the hard part, which is the dialogue sounding real. She came into the offices, very pretty girl, very nice. I wasn’t aware of her as an actress at all. What drew you to Jamie Lee Curtis to play Laurie Strode? Was it a particular scream, a look on her face? ( Laughs loudly) No! Are you kidding? They’re all unwatchable to me. I watch a little bit and say, “What was I thinking? Why did I do that?!” I just as soon not watch it.Īre there any of your films where you think, “Wow, I nailed it. I can’t handle it! I see all the mistakes. So you see Captain Kirk up there when the rest of us see Michael Myers? I like to think it’s Shatner, but it’s not really. So we spray-painted it, altered the eye holes and just did a couple things with the hair - and there you had it. It was just a strange mask, which was perfect for us. It looked nothing like William Shatner, nothing like anybody, really. One was a clown mask, and one was a Captain Kirk mask. So the art director went up to Bert Wheeler’s magic shop on Hollywood Boulevard, which was right up the street from our offices, and he got two masks. There was a choice we had to make, because we didn’t have any money to make a mask. What is the real story behind the mask? You often hear it’s a William Shatner mask, but it doesn’t look like William Shatner to me. 'Escape From New York' Movie to be Written by 'Luther' Creator Neil Cross (Exclusive) It’s evil out of nothing, evil from no background, which completely creeps me out as a human being, that evil could arrive at my doorstep without a purpose, without a past, without an origin. But it was a movie where the main character, the guy in the mask, really isn’t altogether human. We had very little money and a very young cast except for Donald Pleasence, who was great as a psychiatrist - with a gun, which is fun. Thanks to Halloween, you are frequently credited with creating the slasher genre. This was all over a long period of time, and it was a word-of-mouth movie, so I didn’t really feel the success of it for quite a while. I remember one memorable review: “Carpenter does not work well with actors.” And I thought, “Oh my God, I’m being put down across the country.” But then it kind of got rereviewed. It moved city to city, just a few prints, and the reviews were horrible. I remember that he was very nice, which confused me. Did Ebert’s support help the movie at all? I was six, and Roger Ebert was praising it on PBS’ Sneak Previews. I will never forget my first glimpse of Halloween. ( Theater info and tickets available here.) In anticipation, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Carpenter, the oft-imitated director - and composer - of not just Halloween, but such genre-film giants as Escape From New York (1981), The Thing (1982), Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and They Live (1988). and which includes a special introduction from the 67-year-old Carpenter himself. Fathom Events is behind the one-night run, which bows Thursday, Oct.
None, however, comes close to the original. It also has spawned nine sequels of varying quality, which together have earned more than $362 million. Made for $300,000, the film went on to gross more than $70 million and launched the 1980s slasher craze. The film is John Carpenter’s 1978 classic Halloween, in which a masked bogeyman named Michael Myers stalks the streets of suburban Illinois (actually South Pasadena) to terrorize a bookish babysitter named Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, in the role that made her a star). And that, according to its director, is the only way it was meant to be seen. One of the greatest horror films of all time - many consider it to be the greatest - is slashing its way back to the big screen.