Interviews
Behind the Music That Kills: An Interview With the Master of Horror, John Carpenter
For over 40 years, Michael Myers has existed as one of the greatest icons in horror. Coming into existence in 1978’s Halloween, Michael’s violence and terror have only been rivaled by few slashers in the genre. “He is supposed to be the boogeyman, a force of evil,” says director, writer, and music composer John Carpenter. Carpenter, alongside film producer Debra Hill, shaped Michael – creating a being that represents the darkness like no other. Carpenter continues, “The Shape, Michael Myers, is an all-purpose boogeyman. In other words – Godzilla was an all-purpose monster […] You think about Michael Myers, he is really flexible.”
Since that of the 1978 film, its 1981 sequel, and the non-conical Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Carpenter has remained distant from the Halloween franchise; that is until the 2018 entry directed by David Gordon Green, written by Green, Jeff Fradley, and Danny McBride. The 2018 film stands as a canonical sequel to the 1978 film – disregarding all the other films. Green set out to create a new trilogy within the franchise, the next chapter being this year’s Halloween Kills. Though Carpenter is not acting as director or taking part in the writing of these films, his creative contributions take form in each of the film’s musical scores.
While Carpenter is acknowledged so often for his filmmaking, the impact of his music cannot go ignored. There’s an interesting story where, upon sharing the original Halloween with an executive – where no music or sound was present – said producer did not like the film. It wasn’t until the executive saw Halloween with its score that it captivated them.
Throughout so many of his films Carpenter has created his own scores; his passion for electronic music coming to him early in life, partially thanks to his father’s musical work and discovering the synthesizer through the science fiction film Forbidden Planet (1956). This latter point has been of great influence on him throughout his career, electronic music making for the overwhelming musical presence in his films. Even in his personal material the synthesizer is a strong component within his craft. It’s an instrument heavily used throughout the horror genre – its sounds straddling auras tranquil, unsettling, ethereal. Speaking to the synthesizer’s prominence and relationship to horror, Carpenter says, “It’s [used because it’s] cheap, that’s why. I don’t know why that connection is there, but the synthesizer has a unique sound. It’s like none other; I knew that early on.”
Whether making his own music or scoring Halloween Kills, Carpenter works alongside his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies. In starting work on the soundtrack for this film, Carpenter expresses what he and the team brought into the scoring process. “We started on the Halloween movies with two things. One, we have the midi from the original score; by that I mean, we have the original score I did years ago – the various songs with that. Then we tend to update them, adapt them, and use parts of them there and there. Once we’re dealing with the movie and we’re watching it, then we can work with new material – that’s all improvised.”
Part of this updating comes in the form of the revamped Halloween theme – perhaps one of the most iconic songs in horror next to The Exorcist theme. This time around, the song kicks with an added industrial tinged bass, an added choir-like singing section sprinkled there and there. Compared to the late ‘70s, there’s so much more musicians can do today with audio equipment – with such new innovations inspiring Carpenter’s reinterpretation on the classic tune. “[There] are brand new sounds that are constantly being updated,” he says in discussing the restyled take on the Halloween theme. “That’s where the inspiration comes from. Brand new sounds, it’s unbelievable. We’ve come a long way since 1978.”
When working on the music for Halloween Kills, Carpenter tends to approach the material knowing that a tone will be involved, while primarily relying on having the visuals present before him. “I generally know what I want to do in terms of atmosphere [coming into a film], but we score to the movie. It’s exact; I want the final cut in my computer and then we start scoring to it. I don’t think about [particular musical ideas] ahead of time.” In further discussing how he translates image/action to music, he shares, “There is no one rule for all of it. Depends on where we are in the story, or what the characters are involved in or generally the thematic material going on. There are a lot of things taken into account. But there are no rules. Sometimes you can counterintuitively score something; go in the other direction, go soft, quiet – sometimes that works.”
Much like the previous soundtrack, the material on the Halloween Kills soundtrack displays an array of sonic intrigue; from gently flowing compositions stirring with mystique, to the most riveting of adrenaline rushes, eliciting the feel of a stalker in pursuit of his prey. One such track that reflects the latter is the record’s first single, “Unkillable.” “It was fun to see it take shape,” Carpenter states regarding the origin of the song. “We just went with the scene; the scene guided us.”
While most of Carpenter’s time with Halloween is now predominantly based around music, the passion for his and Hill’s character is still ever present. Yet though Michael tends to get a lot of the attention from fans, Green’s films aim to elevate that of 1978’s final girl – Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). Curtis has appeared in other Halloween films since the first two, however, the Laurie in this new trilogy displays new depth – a woman hurt by horrific trauma, yet also strengthened, ready to face her demon head on. Given that progression and all Curtis has done in her career, Carpenter is beyond proud of her. “Jamie’s awesome. She well deserved the [Golden Lion for Lifetime] Achievement award at the Venice Film Festival. She has developed into such a fine actress – she is a force of nature. Her character [Laurie] – she is a person.”
Whereas other iconic slashers have had their fair share of reboots/remakes over the years, Halloween by far has been among one of the more adapted works (for good and bad). But for Carpenter, these tributes and interpretations bring a great joy. “It’s fabulous. All of this is fabulous. Never expected this. It comes out of nowhere; it’s great, it’s a gift. Everything about the movie business is surreal. There’s nothing normal about it.” He expresses added praise for Green’s vision and what he has done with Halloween’s story and its characters. “[David] is a really talented director. He took Halloween by the throat. I’m very impressed with him as a director.” And these aren’t just nice words, for Carpenter is thrilled for Halloween Kills. “[The film] kicks ass. It’s the ultimate slasher movie. This is a horror film times ten. That’s what I love!”
Though its sometime away, Carpenter waits with equal excitement and patience in scoring Green’s final entry in this new Halloween trilogy, Halloween Ends. As far as potential musical ideas, Carpenter stands by his practice. “We are going to wait and see. The tone of the movie is the most important thing, where the characters go is the most important thing. We’ll wait and see. It’ll be great I tell you.”
I and Bloody Disgusting would like to thank John Carpenter for his time in partaking with this interview. You can catch Halloween Kills in theatres and on Peacock this weekend.
Interviews
‘Rubberhead’ Director Nick Taylor on FX Maverick Steve Johnson, Practical Effects, and Seven-Year Journey
Horror journalist, producer, and podcast host Nick Taylor moves into the director’s seat for his feature debut with illuminating documentary Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson.
It chronicles the wild life and career of SFX maverick Steve Johnson, based on the multi-volume book series Rubberhead: Sex, Drugs and Special FX, and those familiar likely already know Rubberhead isn’t your standard horror documentary.
Johnson is responsible for so many memorable movie monsters, having worked on Fright Night, Poltergeist II, An American Werewolf in London, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Night of the Demons, to name a few. He’s also extremely candid in ways that feel atypical in this industry, open about his failures as much as his successes.
“It was a natural progression for sure,” Nick Taylor tells Bloody Disgusting of his transition into filmmaking ahead of Rubberhead‘s world premiere next week at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 23. “I think with my podcast, I got adept at interviewing people and pulling creative lessons out of them, which was the point of my podcast. I wanted this movie to be sort of a creativity pill for artists where if they’re starting a project or feel creatively stuck, they could watch this movie and be inspired and get actual practical creative lessons.”
Taylor’s background in PR and marketing also organically led him down this path.
He charts the course from book promo to documentary director: “But also Bloody Disgusting had a lot to do with this movie because in the very beginning when I first met Steve, I was helping him promote his book and I said, ‘Hey, I got a marketing background and a journalism background. Let me help you promote this book. I’ll just pitch stories from your life to the media, and we’ll see what happens.’ And John Squires wrote an article about Steve making Slimer under the influence of tons and tons of cocaine, and that went fairly viral.”
“For a week, it was story time with Steve,” Taylor continues. “He would tell me a story from his life, and every story was about a major movie, a major director, lots of drugs and alcohol and insanity. I would write them up, and I think John published about three or four of them. So huge shout out to John Squires because that was really great. So yeah, there were definitely a lot of outgrowths of my journalism background that definitely contributed to this movie.”
Rubberhead condenses the multi-book series into a cohesive feature film with a breezy runtime, sparking the obvious question as to how Taylor approached condensing Johnson’s life down to an under 2-hour documentary film.
“That was one of the more difficult parts of all of this, because we had enough for a series or an epically long six-hour fan documentary,” he answers. “But from day one, I did not want to make a fan documentary. I love them. They’re a lot of fun, but I did want the movie to stand on its own two feet as a character-driven portrait of an artist and a time period and a technology, that being practical effects. I did want to be objective. I didn’t want to make this too long. I wanted to make it re-watchable. So I think we just really had to focus on what the narratives were that we wanted to tell. So there were some basically almost cliché archetypical mythic narratives present in Steve’s life. We could have made this way longer, but we wanted to keep it short. But luckily that’s why you have special features.”
Johnson quickly proves to be an engaging subject thanks to his self-effacing wit and frank self-reflections; expect no shortage of stories about how drugs factored into the height of his career or the failures it wrought.
That rare quality was an asset for Rubberhead, Taylor confirms. “He does not shy away from anything about the drugs, the addiction, the bridges burned, the mistakes made, the lessons learned. He just is honest about all of it. He’s had a lot of time for reflection, and he’s done a lot of reflection, so he doesn’t shy away from any of it, which is huge because it’s very refreshing. I don’t think a lot of people are that way, at least in this industry from what I can see. So I think it was hugely beneficial. We wanted to lean into that, and we wanted to make this sort of a gonzo Hunter S. Thompson sort of wild tale through Steve’s overall life.“
Condensing his life into this doc was a slow and steady process for Taylor, too. “It’s been almost seven years. It’s been a labor of love. We’ve been as indie as it gets. We would shoot what we could when we could, and then we would edit when we could. Then after a while it all came together.”
In a way, making Rubberhead brings Taylor’s horror fandom full circle. It turns out that the very film that sparked his interest in the genre and practical effects also comes with an amusing Steve Johnson anecdote.
Taylor explains, “My gateway for sure was Beetlejuice. I saw that at a very young age; I think I was four or five. I felt somebody had shown me, my soul. I get a little emotional thinking about it. There was something about that movie that felt so strange and unusual, but also felt so familiar. It was spooky, but it was fun, and it was lighthearted, and it had humor, but it also had this macabre celebration to it that I just really got into as a kid. I felt somebody had shown me my own soul. And funny story, Steve got fired from Beetlejuice because Tim Burton gave him his hand-drawn designs and Steve’s like, ‘Oh my God, these look like kids did them. This is not what you want. I know what you want. I’m going to redesign these for you.’ And Tim Burton was like, ‘Yeah, no, you’re not.’ So yeah, funny story.”
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