Earlier today, we revisited an episode of Mick Garris' Post Mortem featuring Rob Zombie. Well, why not go back and revisit the episode with the director behind the original Halloween now? Let's run down his filmography. Halloween. The Fog. Escape From New York. The Thing. They Live. Prince Of Darkness. In The Mouth Of Madness. In terms of directing, John Carpenter is most certainly one of the all time greats. He has a very distinct style, pacing and tone to his films, which makes it easy to describe them as "Carpenter-esque", and the man himself is also very straight forward when it comes to discussing his work and tastes. It's nice to see him open up a little more than he usually does with his friend and peer Mick Garris for this 5 part episode of Post Mortem.
In Part 1, Carpenter talks a bit about keeping up with what's going on in the genre these days, his dislike of sequels and remakes and the Halloween movies after his and he also shares his thoughts on the ever growing "practical versus CGI" debate. In Part 2 - we get a little backstory into the beginning of Carpenter's career and ambition to break into the film business to make Westerns and he talks in detail about several filmmakers that inspired his own filmmaking approach. Themes are big in all of Carpenter's movies so in Part 3, he talks about his distrust of authority figures and how that theme often plays into his films. Part 4 is a fun discussion on his enjoyment of working with actors, yet his own personal dislike of acting himself despite doing it behind make-up in Body Bags. The 5th and final part is a rare break down of how he approaches his process from the script stage to storyboards to actually shooting his projects.
Rest assured, if you're a fan of John Carpenter, then this episode is a must watch! We give you Post Mortem: John Carpenter!
Want more Post Mortem? Watch all the episodes on our Post Mortem page!