John Carpenter has this one recurring nightmare.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m in a huge, massive town I don\u2019t really know,\u201d he says, \u201cand I\u2019m looking for the movie district. And inevitably all the theaters are closed down. They\u2019re all closed down. That\u2019s what the dream is.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m visiting Carpenter at his longtime production house in Hollywood on one of L.A.\u2019s unjustly sunny October afternoons. A vintage \u201cHalloween\u201d pinball machine and a life-size Nosferatu hover near his easy chair. I tell him I don\u2019t think Freud would have too much trouble interpreting that particular dream.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I know,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cI don\u2019t have too much trouble with that either.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, it truly haunts him \u2014 \u201cand it has haunted me over the years for many dreams in a row,\u201d he continues. \u201cI\u2019m either with family or a group, and I go off to do something and I get completely lost. [Freud] wouldn\u2019t have too much trouble figuring that out either. I mean, none of this is very mysterious.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carpenter is a gruff but approachable 77 these days, his career as a film director receding in the rearview. The last feature he made was 2010\u2019s \u201cThe Ward.\u201d<\/a> His unofficial retirement was partly chosen, partly imposed by a capricious industry. The great movie poster artist Drew Struzan died two days before I visited \u2014 Carpenter says he never met Struzan but loved his work, especially his striking painting for the director\u2019s icy 1982 creature movie \u201cThe Thing\u201d \u2014 and I note how that whole enterprise of selling a movie with a piece of handmade art is a lost one.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole movie business that I knew, that I grew up with, is gone,\u201d he replies. \u201cAll gone.\u201d<\/p>\n John Carpenter with John Mulaney, appearing as a part of \u201cEverybody\u2019s in L.A.\u201d at the Sunset Gower Studios in May 2024.<\/p>\n (Adam Rose \/ Netflix)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n It hasn\u2019t, thankfully, made him want to escape from L.A. He still lives here with his wife, Sandy King, who runs the graphic novel imprint Storm King Comics, which Carpenter contributes to. He gamely appeared on John Mulaney\u2019s \u201cEverybody\u2019s in L.A.\u201d<\/a> series on Netflix and, earlier this year, the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. gave him a Career Achievement Award \u2014 a belated lovefest for a veteran who was sidelined after \u201cThe Thing\u201d flopped, cast out into indie darkness and was never personally nominated for an Oscar.<\/p>\n The thing that does keep Carpenter busy these days (other than watching Warriors basketball and playing videogames) is the thing that might have an even bigger cultural footprint than his movies: his music. With his adult son Cody and godson, Daniel Davies, Carpenter is once again performing live concerts of his film scores and instrumental albums in a run at downtown\u2019s Belasco this weekend and next<\/a>.<\/p>\n The synthy, hypnotic scores that became his signature in films like \u201cHalloween\u201d and \u201cEscape from New York\u201d not only outnumber his output as a director \u2014 he\u2019s scored movies for several other filmmakers and recently made a handshake deal in public to score Bong Joon Ho\u2019s next feature \u2014 but their influence and popularity are much more evident in 2025 than the style of his image-making.<\/p>\n From \u201cStranger Things\u201d<\/a> to \u201cF1,\u201d<\/a> Carpenter\u2019s minimalist palette of retro electronica combined with the groove-based, trancelike ethos of his music (which now includes four \u201cLost Themes\u201d records) is the coin of the realm so many modern artists are chasing.<\/p>\n Very few composers today are trying to sound like John Williams; many of them want to sound like John Carpenter. The Kentucky-raised skeptic with the long white hair doesn\u2019t believe me when I express this.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, see, I must be stupid,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause I don\u2019t get it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe true evil in the world comes from people,\u201d says Carpenter. \u201cI know that nature\u2019s pretty rough, but not like men.<\/p>\n (Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n Carpenter is quick to put himself down. He always says that he scored his own films because he was the only composer he could afford, and that he only used synths because they were cheap and he couldn\u2019t properly write music for an orchestra. When I tell him that Daniel Wyman, the instrumentalist who helped program and execute the \u201cHalloween\u201d score in 1978, praised Carpenter\u2019s innate knowledge of the \u201ccircle of fifths\u201d and secondary dominants \u2014 bedrocks of Western musical theory that allowed Carpenter\u2019s scores to keep the tension cooking \u2014 he huffs.<\/p>\n \u201cI have no idea what he\u2019s talking about,\u201d Carpenter says, halfway between self-deprecation and something more rascally. \u201cIt all comes, probably, from the years I spent in our front room with my father and listening to classical music. I\u2019m sure I\u2019m just digging this s\u2014 out.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether by osmosis or genetics or possibly black magic, Carpenter clearly absorbed his powers from his father, Dr. Howard Carpenter, a classically trained violinist and composer. Classical music filled the childhood home in Bowling Green and for young John it was all about \u201cBach, Bach and Bach. He\u2019s my favorite. I just can\u2019t get enough of Johann there.\u201d<\/p>\n It makes sense. Bach\u2019s music has a circular spell quality and the pipe organ, resounding with reverb in gargantuan cathedrals, was the original synthesizer.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s the Rock of Ages of music,\u201d says Carpenter, who particularly loves the fugue nicknamed \u201cSt. Anne\u201d and the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. \u201cEverybody would go back to Mozart or Beethoven. They are astonishing \u2014 Beethoven is especially astonishing \u2014 but they\u2019re not my style. I don\u2019t feel it like I do with Bach. I immediately got him.\u201d<\/p>\n Carpenter was also a film score freak since Day 1. He cites the early electronic music<\/a> in 1956\u2019s \u201cForbidden Planet\u201d and claims Bernard Herrmann and Dimitri Tiomkin as his two all-time favorites. Just listen, he says, to the way Tiomkin\u2019s music transitions from the westerny fanfare under the Winchester Pictures logo to the swirling, menacing orchestral storm that accompanies \u201cThe Thing From Another World\u201d title card in that 1951 sci-fi picture that Carpenter remixed as \u201cThe Thing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe music is so weird, I cannot follow it,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet Carpenter feels more personally indebted to rock \u2018n\u2019 roll: the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors. He wanted to be a rock star ever since he grew his hair long and bought a guitar in high school. He sang and performed R&B and psychedelic rock for sororities on the Western Kentucky campus as well as on a tour of the U.S. Army bases in Germany. He formed the rock trio Coupe de Villes with his buddies at USC and they made an album and played wrap parties.<\/p>\n He also kept soaking up contemporary influences, listening to Warren Zevon<\/a>\u2019s \u201cWerewolves of London\u201d while location scouting for \u201cHalloween.\u201d Peter Fonda later introduced Carpenter to Zevon and he wanted the director to adapt the song into a film that never happened (starring Fonda as the werewolf, but \u201cthis time he gets the girl,\u201d Carpenter recalls). In the \u201980s he blasted Metallica with his two boys and he still loves Devo.<\/p>\n It\u2019s incredibly rare for a film director to score their own films, rarer still for one to spend decades on stage as a performing musician. The requisite personalities would seem diametrical.<\/p>\n \u201cMy dad was a performing musician, so it was just part of the family,\u201d Carpenter says. However, until 2016, when Carpenter first toured with his music, he was consumed with stage fright. \u201cI had an incident when I was in a play in high school,\u201d he says. \u201cI went up and I forgot my lines. Shame descended upon me and I had a tough time. I was scared all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n The director credits his touring drummer, Scott Seiver, for helping him beat it.<\/p>\n \u201cYour adrenaline carries you to another planet when that thing starts,\u201d he sighs with pleasure. \u201cYou hear a wall of screaming people. It\u2019s a big time.\u201d<\/p>\n He pushes back against the idea that directors \u201chide behind the camera.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe pressure, that\u2019s the biggest thing,\u201d Carpenter says. \u201cYou put yourself under pressure from the studio, you\u2019re carrying all this money, crew, you want to be on time.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/68180da\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/6303x4204+0+0\/resize\/320x213!\/format\/webp\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8f%2Fa6%2F85e6dba747fcbcb71292702b88a2%2F1525755-et-director-john-carpenter-jja-0002.jpg)
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