In recent years filmmaker John Carpenter has benefited from widespread critical reappraisal of some of his more ambitiously strange movies, such as Big Trouble in Little China and the disturbingly prescient They Live, which fared poorly compared to his blockbuster masterpieces Halloween and The Thing. “It’s a nice feeling,” Carpenter says by phone from his office in Los Angeles. “I just wish they had been received better in the beginning.”
Have a listen to songs written or influenced by John Carpenter. (Note: You’ll need Spotify installed to hear ’em.)
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Soundtrack work has long been a refuge for forward-looking composers, as well as one of the easiest ways to expose mainstream audiences to contemporary and experimental classical music of the type usually found only in art galleries and tiny theaters. Recent film history is filled with scores by people who might’ve been classical composers in another life (Christopher Nolan’s master of Sturm und Drang, Hans Zimmer) or who actually are in this one (Philip Glass, whose score to Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line is among the all-time most synergistic musical accompaniments to a film). It’s likely that few people who saw Shutter Island even realized that they were also listening to works by some of the most important classical composers of the 20th century, assembled by Robbie Robertson.
Carpenter started composing his soundtracks in large part because it was cheaper than hiring someone. His first film, Dark Star, which he and cowriter Dan O’Bannon funded themselves, was an ambitious sci-fi absurdity with a tiny budget, and Carpenter could play piano. He got into synthesizers for similarly pragmatic reasons. Part of it was the creative control they afforded (Carpenter is an auteur of the old school), but just as important, he explains, “You can sound big just by playing keyboards. In other words if you sit down and play it on the piano, you can’t necessarily be the most powerful sound. But boy, with synthesizer setups you can really sound good.”
Carpenter is delighted by his influence on modern musicians, and even more delighted by modern gear. “Modern synths now have built-in samples,” he says. “They have all these amazing sounds in them and you can dial them up. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s the greatest.” And Cody has introduced him to the recording software Logic Pro, which he’s found to be a perfect fit for his auteurist tendencies.
He’ll do signings and photo ops (Fri 5-8 PM, Sat 10 AM-2 PM, Sun 11 AM-4:30 PM), introduce the premiere of a 2K digital remaster of The Thing (Fri 9:30 PM), and participate in a Q&A (Sat 2-2:40 PM).
