John Carpenter

John Carpenter

John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, producer, actor, screenwriter, and composer. He is associated most commonly with horror, action, and science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s. Carpenter composed or co-composed most of his films’ music. He won a Saturn Award for Best Music for the film Vampires.

About John Carpenter in brief

Summary John CarpenterJohn Howard Carpenter is an American film director, producer, actor, screenwriter, and composer. He is associated most commonly with horror, action, and science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s. Most films of Carpenter’s career were initially commercial and critical failures, with the notable exceptions of The Fog, Escape from New York, and Starman. Carpenter composed or co-composed most of his films’ music. He won a Saturn Award for Best Music for the film Vampires. At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, the French Directors’ Guild presented Carpenter with the Golden Coach Award. Carpenter has released three studio albums, titled Lost Themes, Lost themes II, and Anthology: Movie Themes 1974–1998. He wrote and directed the 1970 exploitation thriller Someone’s Watching Me! This is the tale of a single woman who discovers that she is being stalked by a woman on Mars. Carpenter’s first major studio film of his career, Halloween, was a commercial success and helped develop the slasher genre. He also co-wrote and directed The Thing, which is considered one of the best exploitation films of all time. He returned to the Halloween franchise as both composer and executive producer for the horror sequel Halloween. He has also written and directed a number of television series, including The X-Files, The Simpsons, and The Simpsons Movie. He has been described as a “creative genius of raw, fantastic, and spectacular emotions” by the French Director’s Guild of Directors.

He was born in Carthage, New York, and grew up in Bowling Green, Kentucky. He attended Western Kentucky University, where his father chaired the music department. He studied at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts during 1968, but quit to make his first feature film, The Resurrection of Broncho Billy, which won an Academy Award for best live-action short film. Carpenter also directed Assault on Precinct 13, a low-budget thriller influenced by the films of Howard Hawks, particularly Rio Bravo. His first major film as director, Dark Star, was a science fiction comedy that he co-written with Dan O’Bannon. Carpenter wrote, directed, and scored it, but also edited the film using the pseudonym “John T. Chance” He has said that he considers Assault on Preinct 13 to have been his first real film because it was the first film that he filmed on a schedule. Carpenter is the father of actress Debra Hill, who played prominently in the making of some of his most important films, including In the Mouth of Madness and The Thing. He co-produced and wrote the script for Halloween, which was adapted from a spec by Irvin Kershner, adapted by Faye Dunaway and Tommy Lee Jones and directed by John Lee Jones. Carpenter was also the co-writer and co-producer of the 1978 horror thriller L.A. Eyes, starring Austin Stoker and Lauren Hutton, which received a critical reassessment in the United States, where it is now generally regarded as a classic.