Interviews
John Carpenter on the Past, Present, and Future: “I Just Keep Going Forward” [Interview]
John Carpenter is a busy guy. Don’t let all the talk about video games and basketball fool you. Look, instead, to his output: In the last eight years, he’s released three Lost Themes volumes, re-recorded renowned themes that span two Anthology collections, scored four films for Universal, and performed at venues and festivals all across the globe.
And that’s just his music.
Carpenter has also been executive producing films, working on myriad projects through Storm King Productions, and will return to gaming next year with John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando. Perhaps the most exciting development as of late, though, was his return to the director’s chair with John Carpenter’s Suburban Screams for Peacock.
The six-episode, unscripted horror anthology series explores the dark secrets and unspeakable evil that sometimes lurks beneath the surface of the sun-drenched streets, manicured lawns, and friendly neighbors of suburbia. Carpenter knows these places all too well. His filmography stems from this truth, and yet, so does his past upbringing.
That latter notion is something Carpenter discussed with Bloody Disgusting. In a freewheelin’ 20-minute chat, the writer-director-producer-composer waxed nostalgic — well, somewhat (you’ll see) — about the life that has surrounded his career. You won’t find answers about The Thing, or thoughts on The Shape. This is just Carpenter being Carpenter.
I’m not really interested in talking about your career.
Good, good!
Now, everyone talks to you about NBA and video games — hell I’ve talked to you about that — what other hobbies interest you?
Hobbies? You know, I play music as a hobby. I play chess. I don’t know. I don’t do much. I work hard, so I don’t have hobbies really. I watch basketball and the news. That’s all.
Would you say you’re a workaholic?
Sure, of course, have been all my life.
Do you get idle hands if you’re not working?
Oh, no. I work on other projects. Always cooking on something.
Yeah, I find myself — even when I have free time over the weekend — that I’m still trying to create something or do something, you know? I can’t really just sit down and watch an eight hour show without doing something with it.
I have trouble with that, too. I have trouble a lot with being patient on things — and that’s age also. That’s to be expected in my age, but I don’t have time to wait around for crap.
You used to hit the sky. Do you still have a pilot’s license?
Yeah, I did. Well, that was a part of my… I had to find out some things about me that I didn’t know. One of them was that I was making these movies about these guys — tough guys — and I was like, “Do I have the courage of these guys?” Let’s find out. So, I tried and picked something really hard. [Laughs.] Ugh, man, and I became a helicopter pilot.
Did it scare you?
In the beginning, yeah. You know, when my instructor said, “We’re going to turn off the engine and land…” What? We’re going to do what? But we did, as a matter of fact. We did.
You mentioned music before, and we’ve spoken in the past about music. But what were some of your earliest concerts? I imagine moving to LA in 1968 must have been fairly busy in that regard. Is there one particular concert you revisit?
Oh yeah, I saw everything. I saw Chicago, when I was first here, walking down Sunset Boulevard, saying, “Well, look at all this. Wow, look at this place.” Walking along, having somebody come out of the shadows saying, “Acid… acid…” trying to sell me some LSD. [Laughs.] I said, “No, no, I don’t think so.” I was just a kid.
But I went to the Whisky [a Go Go] and saw Chicago. They were called CTA, at the time. And Albert King was on stage playing guitar. It was fun. It was good. I saw Shoes. I saw a lot of people. Too many to answer. Well, I mean, I could, I suppose. I don’t remember ’em all.
Ever jam with any of ’em?
No, I didn’t do that. Didn’t jam with anybody.
Is there another life where you solely focused on music — perhaps like your father? Would that lifestyle have appealed to you?
I love music. I don’t really think about it because, you know, it requires… I need the movies to make the music to pay and make the career. It’s one thing at a time, so I don’t think of it that way. But it sure is great. [Pause.] I learned to love it. I was scared at first. I had stage fright, but I got over that, and it’s wonderful. Loved it. Loved it.
Was it always the piano?
No, no, no, no, no… hell no. The piano was… the piano… do we have to go through my entire..?
No, no, no, you don’t have to do that.
My father thought I should learn to play the violin.
Interesting.
Well, it wasn’t that interesting… because I didn’t have any talent. Anyway, I sat there… scratched away… oh, it was so painful… and I hated it. I didn’t want to do it! So, you know, I finally just outlasted years and years of it. [Beat.] Ah, I had to play in the high school orchestra. Let… me… tell.. you… ah, when you walk to your high school carrying a violin, you are a mark! It says, Beat the shit out of me. This spine that I wear. So, they did. It wasn’t fun. So, at the end of that, I learned the keyboards, then I started learning guitar, and then it went on from there. I played in cover bands and such and… onward.
Was there ever a moment — even with The Coupe De Villes — where you thought, God, this could be cool to just be rockers?
It’s the dream of every young guy who becomes aware. Everybody has that dream. So, no, I left that behind looooong ago.
Well, kind of. You have headlined festivals at this point, so you did get to have the dream a little bit. I remember seeing you on a live feed at Primavera Sound, and seeing all the people gathered. Probably bigger than most of the indie bands there.
It was fabulous. Are you kidding? It was a dream come true. It wasn’t my dream, but it was a dream come true.
Do you like to travel?
Not really, not particularly. [Laughs.]
Was touring fun or was that a chore?
No, that was fun. We had a bus. It was a bus tour. There was a lot of camaraderie on the bus with the band. I mean, I loved it, I got along fine. Went in my bed, got to sleep, it was no big deal. We didn’t… there was no drugs, nothing like that, we didn’t do that. It was awesome.
Growing up in Bowling Green, Kentucky, did you have any local urban legends or ghost stories that have stuck with you?
Well, there was a house on Cemetery Road, where people were murdered, and everybody was afraid to go near the house, and it was haunted, and all this crap… None of it was true. But there was a house there. People were murdered in the late ’40s. But no, it was kind of a stupid town anyway.
Are you more of a city guy?
I’m not a rural South guy, I’ll tell you that. I’m not a Jim Crow guy.
Yeah, yeah, sounds right. I got pulled over outside Bowling Green.
Yeah, exactly. [Laughs.] What did the cop do to you?
He had sped behind me, I was trapped between two trucks, and I was driving just an old, shitty Oldsmobile, and I had to speed up to get ahead of the trucks, let him pass by. But by doing that, he pulled me over, and I said, “You do realize I sped up to let you pass since you’re riding my ass.” He didn’t like that.
[Laughs.] And what did he say to that?Oh, he gave me a ticket. He saw my long hair, my name… [Laughs.]
Yeah, you had no chance.
Before you were in Bowling Green, you were upstate in New York at Carthage. Do you have any memories from that time?
Oh yeah, sure. My parents used to go back there in the summer and the winter, and we’d visit my grandparents. I remember driving there. [Pause.] Oh god, you know, it took two days to get up there. So, I remember that drive. It was horrible. But we did it. My father… my mother didn’t offer me a way out.
I wanted to go to Syracuse like my father, but he said, “No deal, you’ll be miserable.”
Exactly. [Laughs.] Exactly, no.
You’ve been in California since the late ’60s, though. What is it about the place? Is it the food, the weather, the…
Everything. It’s just awesome. It’s the best place on Earth to live.
So, you got there, looked around, and said, “This is it.”
Yep. That’s it. This is home. Home it is.
You lived in Northern California for a bit, too?
Yeah, I had a house up there in Inverness.
Beautiful area. We were up there earlier this year, closer to Bodega Bay too, but then we got really sick, and we realized there are no pharmacies open past, like, seven around here. So, that was fun.
[Laughs.] Oh man, were you really sick?Yeah, we had to keep pushing back the check out date. Hotel was pissed.
Yeah, it’s a little tough there, but not bad, it’s what you’re there for. Those are all idiot hippies up there.
[Laughs.] Yeah, it’s gorgeous, and preserved, which I really loved. [Beat.] So, this is something I’ve been asking my father lately: As the years go by, how have you maintained adult friendships? Do they matter as much as they used to?
Well, I’m focused on family primarily. But I’ve had friends for years; for instance, from film school, even from high school and elementary school. I’ve had Tommy Lee Wallace and Nick Castle as friends. They’ve been my friends forever. So, you know, I can count on them. I don’t need to see them all the time. We played together. And, I mean, it’s awesome. I don’t know what else to say … it was so great. It was such a great deal to have friends like that that go back that far.
Do you all have text threads to keep in touch? Maybe talk about things like the Damian Lillard trade?
No, no, we don’t even bother with that. We don’t just get together when there’s something to talk about, unless it’s… eh, fuck it. They have their own lives, you know, away from me.
Yeah, sounds a lot like my dad. What’s your relationship to the past? Is there an era that you tend to revisit?
That’s an interesting question. [Pause.] Well, I mean, I just keep going forward. I had a serious illness in 2015. I’m just lucky to be alive. So, I don’t look back too much. Every morning is a blessing here.
That’s a good mindset.
Yeah, that’s the way to do it. Don’t worry about that stuff.
There’s been a clip of you making the rounds online about being a short-term pessimist on mankind’s survival. Have you always felt that way?
Well, I’m a really big pessimist. [Laughs.] I’m optimistic about mankind’s survival in the sense that I want it to happen. What manages to survive I don’t want to go into that night, you know? I don’t want to curl up and die. But… you know, I’m realistic, which makes me cynical. But, I don’t know. I try not to think about that.
Does that ever keep you up at night?
No, no, I don’t sit up at night, thinking about that. Hell no. [Long pause] I worry about the Golden State Warriors.
So, you’re still in for Golden State?
I do. I like Golden State, and I like the Bucks from Milwaukee. I love them.
Well, I’m destroyed by them. I’m from Miami.
Miami? You’re getting nowhere, pal. Ever.
Hey, we’ve done pretty well in these past few playoffs. We were zombies last year.
You might as well just accept it. You gettin’ nowhere.
So, if basketball is what keeps you up at night, is that also what gives you peace these days?
Sure. I mean, look, when I was a kid, I wanted to desperately play basketball. I just wasn’t any good. Didn’t have the sports bug in me. I didn’t have the ability. But I loved it. I loved it growing up. And I still love it. It’s just a great game, man, come on!
What position would you have wanted to play?
Guard or forward, I guess.
Did you ever play any other sports?
Archery, I was good at that. I was real good at that. I became an American Archer, which is just a distance deal. But yeah, I loved that. Loved that. [Beat.] It’s just not very sexy.
Are you kidding? Every person that’s an archer in movies — they all look great. Even Kevin Costner with his English accent.
I don’t know about that.
Yeah, maybe not.
Let’s not get too far here.
Well, thanks for chatting, John.
Absolutely, my pleasure.
You’re now the artist I’ve interviewed the most, and I’m not even a journalist anymore. But when the opportunity popped up to chat again, I leapt at the chance. Thanks again, and have a good one.
Thanks man, and thank you. You take care.
Interviews
Paul Tremblay on Fighting AI with Horror in New Novel ‘Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep’
Paul Tremblay didn’t start his writing career believing he’d be battling machines over the sanctity of his job, but like so many writers of his generation, the battle found him. In the years since Large Language Models (LLMs) and neural networks started gaining traction as an advertised shortcut to creativity, Tremblay has been active in lawsuits to prevent the use of his works in training AI models, and he’s found that, with each new project, he has to consider the possibility that some LLM, somewhere, is going to latch on to what he’s creating.
“Now I feel like I’m thinking about, ‘Man, how am I going to write things that would be really hard or impossible for an AI to replicate?’,” Tremblay told me, speaking by Zoom from his home in Massachusetts. “Maybe some of that is ego. I’m sure every writer thinks, ‘Oh, an AI could never write what I write.’ Yes, I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t part of the thought process.”
While that’s something Tremblay might consider with any new work at this point in his career, the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Head Full of Ghosts, The Cabin at the End of the World, and many other novels and short stories tackled it in a more direct way with his latest book. Inspired by Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, and the quirky humor of the Coen Brothers, Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep is Tremblay’s attempt at a sci-fi-horror mash-up that’s both darkly funny and existentially nightmarish. It’s also, in his own words, a screed against the movement by AI companies to supplant human artists.
“I didn’t want to make it too didactic, but no, I playfully described this book as an anti-AI screed,” he said. “This book, in particular, was driven by anger and frustration, for sure. Not every book is going to be driven that way.“
Despite the emotions that fueled it, Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep does not read like a screed. Instead, wielding offbeat humor and tech concepts that feel both lived-in and frighteningly tactile, the book lays out tandem narratives all building to the same conclusion, each of them exploring our relationship to machine learning in a different way. One of these narratives belongs to Julia, a former gaming streamer looking for a new challenge in life, who gets a call from a California tech company with an interesting offer.
Paul Tremblay in documentary series “First Word on Horror”
The company has, it seems, implanted some new technology in a brain-dead middle-aged man which will, in theory, allow them to pilot the man’s body through a rudimentary, still-developing system of controls. Julia, with her gaming background, would be the pilot, in her own way just as much a test subject as the human vegetable she’s controlling.
Julia is a Gen Z streamer with an omnivorous pop culture appetite, inspired by Tremblay’s own adult children, who riffs on The Big Lebowski constantly and calls her strange new meat puppet “Bernie” in reference to Weekend at Bernie’s. Her wide frame of reference, and her interest in art and stories far beyond video games, is in part informed by Tremblay’s own experiences with Gen Z, and in part a response to AI companies who scrape art and culture as a means of consuming it for reference without really experiencing a story.
“I know that one of the arguments that OpenAI and other tech companies are trying to make is like, ‘Hey, you writers, you artists, you take pop culture, you take your influences, and you create something. That’s just the same thing that the bots are doing.’ And it’s just not,” Tremblay said. “I wanted to have Julia have her outlook informed by all this pop culture, and I wanted to make that feel really human as a way to show how inhuman the AI is.”
The other side of the story belongs to “Bernie,” who’s addressed in his point-of-view chapters as “You.” In these chapters, the technology in Bernie’s body starts to flicker images through his seemingly dead brain, delivering half-remembered imagery and perspective in a nod to the “hallucinations” of an AI model groping for understanding it can never reach. These chapters in particular show off Tremblay’s flair for formalist shake-ups, and echo the kind of hyperstimulated writing that Dick and Ellison made so influential.
“I think it was more just the general Philip K. Dick feeling of ‘The world is so strange,'” Tremblay said. “He’s a lot funnier, I think, than maybe a lot of people credit him. That’s definitely what I was thinking of when writing the book.“
Bernie’s chapters embody the strangeness of Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep, presenting imagery that’s at times puzzling, at times eerily filmic, and always unnerving. They also mirror Julia’s own journey in fascinating ways as the odd couple – the Gen Z gamer and the middle-aged vegetable – traverse the United States, and the tech in Bernie’s body wakes up to the possibilities of using his flesh for its own purposes. It’s a compelling narrative technique, but it presented some new writing challenges for Tremblay.
“I quickly realized I couldn’t write this book the same way I have in the past,” he said. “By that, I mean all my other novels I had written in the order in which it was presented, even things that are nonlinear, which is most of them. I knew I couldn’t do that in this book. It’s not a spoiler, but hopefully the readers figure out pretty early that the Bernie chapters are a little bit of a preview of the next chapter from Julia, what’s actually happening with Julia. It’s all refracted from him.”
Mary Roach’s Stiff
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep began with a simple image, inspired by Tremblay’s reading of Mary Roach‘s book chronicling the history of our treatment of corpses, Stiff. As he read, Tremblay imagined a body sitting on an airplane, remote-controlled by someone else. At the time, it was a “silly what-if” concept, filed away in his head. Years later, when he became an author suing a tech company to keep AI from scraping his work for ideas, it started to feel frighteningly plausible, taking the “silly what-if” into the territory of a high-concept horror show about what happens when we try to exploit and commodify uniquely human aspects of consciousness.
“It stuck with me,” Tremblay said of that what-if imagery. “And then a few years later, when I was a part of the case suing OpenAI on behalf of writers, that what-if suddenly didn’t seem as silly. The more I learned about how that corporation operates and without really any sort of ethical thought to anything, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to play with that. That’s actually happening.”
So, what if someone actually in favor of generative AI picks up Tremblay’s self-described “anti-AI screed?” He hopes that, at the very least, he’s made the ride enjoyable in a distinctly human way that might begin to reshape the conversation.
“I think that was another reason why I wanted to have the humor,” Tremblay said. “If people are reading this book who aren’t on the side of like, ‘Hey, LLMs taking authors’ books is bad,’ maybe if they read something that’s cut with some humor, that maybe they’ll be more easily swayed.”
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep is now in bookstores everywhere.
You must be logged in to post a comment.