John Carpenter
When somebody who makes movies for a living - either as an actor, writer, producer or director - lives to be a certain age, you have to admire them. It is an act of courage to make a film - a courage for which you are not prepared in the rest of life. It is very hard and very destructive. But we do it because we love it.Collection: Courage
I love making movies.Collection: Movies
In England, I'm a horror movie director. In Germany, I'm a filmmaker. In the US, I'm a bum.
There are two different stories in horror: internal and external. In external horror films, the evil comes from the outside, the other tribe, this thing in the darkness that we don't understand. Internal is the human heart.
What scares me is what scares you. We're all afraid of the same things. That's why horror is such a powerful genre. All you have to do is ask yourself what frightens you and you'll know what frightens me.
To make Michael Myers frightening, I had him walk like a man, not a monster.
Evil hiding among us is an ancient theme.
There are a lot of movies that I don't care about, especially not remakes.
I think there are certain subjects I don't want to tackle, that I don't think I could do a good job with. I don't think I'd be good with... broad comedy? I don't know. Maybe I would.
Well, 'They Live' was a primal scream against Reaganism of the '80s. And the '80s never went away. They're still with us. That's what makes 'They Live' look so fresh - it's a document of greed and insanity. It's about life in the United States then and now. If anything, things have gotten worse.
I can play just about any keyboard but I can't read or write a note.
I don't watch my films. I've seen 'em enough after cutting them and putting the music on. I don't ever want to see them again.
You have to fight really hard for a private life, and sometimes you don't have one. It just gets to you after a while. It's tough.
It's a very good time for horror. This business certainly has changed, but there's still room for serious horror films. Look at 28 Days Later, that's not a tongue-in-cheek picture.
I made a decision back in 1978 that, in a trade off for money when I directed Halloween, I would have my name above the title in order to basically brand these movies my own.
In Halloween, I viewed the characters as simply normal teenagers. Laurie, Jamie Lee's character, was shy and somewhat repressed. And Michael Myers, the killer, is definitely repressed. They have certain similarities.
One could make money and get a career going with a low-budget horror film about killers attacking on holidays. It is always flattering to have somebody copy you.
I don't want to be a part of the demographics. I want to be an individual. I wear each of my films as a badge of pride. That's why I cherish all my bad reviews. If the critics start liking my movies, then I'm in deep trouble.
Film buffs who don't live in Hollywood have a fantasy about what it's like to be a director. Movies and the people who make movies have such glamour associated with them. But the truth is, it's not like that. It's very different. It's hard work.
First of all, I was a wrestling fan when I was young. Even when I figured out what wrestling was, I was still a fan.
I enjoyed 'The Avengers.' I couldn't do that kind of movie though. Superheroes aren't my deal.
I have two different categories of favorite films. One is the emotional favorites, which means these are generally films that I saw when I was a kid; anything you see in your formative years is more powerful, because it really stays with you forever. The second category is films that I saw while I was learning the craft of motion pictures.
When I was a kid, I loved 'The Curse of Frankenstein,' 'The Creeping Unknown,' 'X: The Unknown.' I love 'Forbidden Planet,' 'The Thing from Another World.' They were science fiction/horror movies, generally.
One of my heroes is a composer named James Bernard, and oh my God... I can still listen to his music today and be stirred and moved by it. But I think that you fall in love with... Well, again, when you're young, it really is more powerful. Much more terrifying.
Way back in the '70s, I was approached to talk about the story I'd write for a Spider-Man movie. They also talked to me about Batman. I had to think about it, but that was way, way back when.
I've gone through various periods with superheroes. They work in the right hands, but they don't work in other hands. It's tricky. But any movie is tricky. It's impossible to say, 'This is what you do in any situation.'
I stopped directing in 2001 for four or five years, until I did the TV series 'Masters Of Horror.' I had been working steadily as a director since 1970. That's a long time. I was burned out.
From early on, when synthesizers were first introduced into music, I liked the idea that you could get a big sound with them, electronic, but like an orchestra. And I could play it all myself. That was exciting.
I had a talent for scoring films. I just developed it.
I never got in this business, in cinema, to make horror movies. They arrived on my doorstep and I got typecast. Which was fine, I enjoy it, but I got into this business to make westerns. And the kind of westerns I used to see, they died. So that didn't work out.
The strongest human emotion is fear. It's the essence of any good thriller that, for a little while, you believe in the boogeyman.Collection: Fear
What scares me is what scares you. We’re all afraid of the same things. That’s why horror is such a powerful genre. All you have to do is ask yourself what frightens you and you’ll know what frightens me.Collection: Powerful
It [horror genre] never dies. It just keeps getting reinvented and it always will. Horror is a universal language; we're all afraid. We're born afraid, we're all afraid of things: death, disfigurement, loss of a loved one. Everything that I'm afraid of, you're afraid of and vice versa. So everybody feels fear and suspense.Collection: Loss
Movies are pieces of film stuck together in a certain rhythm, an absolute beat, like a musical composition. The rhythm you create affects the audience.Collection: Musical
We all question our sanity. Everyone has had an experience of loss of control of something.Collection: Loss
Directing is all about storytelling. It's not about equipment, or anything else.Collection: Storytelling
When you have no money, you need invention.Collection: Needs
Horror has been a genre since the beginning of cinema, all the way back to the days of silent films. I don't think it will ever go away because it's so universal. Humor doesn't always travel to other countries, but horror does.Collection: Country
Horror found me. I got into the movie business to make westerns.Collection: Horror
Fears are all psychological. Being afraid of death, loss of a loved one and disfigurement are all powered by your mind, and that's very powerful stuff.Collection: Powerful
To make movies you just have to want it enough. You have to have the passion for telling stories. You have to get by the love-of-movies aspect. You can't just be a movie fan.Collection: Passion
Horror is a reaction; it's not a genre. Somebody's life would have to be in danger for it [story] to be a horror story.Collection: Horror Stories
Horror is always the same. It changes with the culture and changes with technology. The stories are always the same. There are just two basic stories in horror, two simple ones -- evil is outside and evil is in here [points to his heart].Collection: Heart
I'm pretty happy with who I am. I like myself and what I'm doing. I don't need to be the world's greatest director or the most famous -- or the richest. I don't need to make a whole lot of great films. I can do my job and I can do it pretty well. This is the realization I've come to, later in life. It's called growing up.Collection: Jobs
A lot of it [success] is luck. That's a huge part of it that no one wants to talk about. You just got to be in the right place at the right time.Collection: Luck
Horror stories have always worked on film. It's where they work. That's where vampires and ghosts and UFOs are real. They're not particularly real in life, but they're real on the screen. It's the communal aspect of movie-watching.Collection: Real
Anybody can make a movie, if you have the will. The digital revolution has made it very inexpensive to make a film. Anybody who wants to can do it.Collection: Digital Revolution
What a director does... essentially, it's storytelling, but a director also controls the feeling and the sounds and the texture. It's an act of creation, like a symphony or a painting or a story. But with different tools.Collection: Symphony
There's nothing better than being in an asylum, if you're going to have a bunch of crazy people in an asylum, and they're all beautiful Hollywood actresses.Collection: Beautiful
Child pornography is taboo. There are really no such things as snuff films. That's a legend. But movies are like pieces of dreams, and we don't need to go into those dreams. Those dreams are beyond. Child pornography - it's horrible. Human suffering is a horrible thing in real life.Collection: Dream