By KRYSTA FAURIA Associated Press
While John Carpenter has become synonymous with fictional horror storytelling, the 75-year-old director and composer is dipping his toe into true life terrors with his new show, “John Carpenter’s Suburban Screams.”
The legendary director, known for genre-defining classics including “Halloween” and “The Thing,” sat down with The Associated Press for a wide-ranging interview ahead of the release of the unscripted anthology series, which fittingly hits Peacock on Friday, Oct. 13. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
I know you’ve talked about how film school helped you understand the plumbing of making movies. But it’s interesting because now with education we have so much more access to information thanks to the internet.
Tell me about it. It’s all different now. Oh, everything is different. The technology of the business is different. The business is different. I would be starting over completely green if I had to right now. I learned everything about the camera and editing and sound and all that stuff. All that stuff has changed. It’s all different. The sound now is like, ‘What the hell is that? Where’s the NAGRA?’ At USC, we had a lab where you could do processing. We don’t process any more. It’s all digital.
I’m curious if you had any reluctance at the time about dropping out or if it was like full steam ahead.
No, I knew what I was doing. I just wanted to get out of there, get on with my career.
I have noticed that a lot of recent academic literature has been written about horror movies, even outside of film studies. For so long it was thought of as kind of low brow. Now, scholars are writing about it. And we’re seeing this interest in elevated horror, directors like Jordan Peele.
His movies are pretty da*n good. The UFO movie is great. I loved it. I see horror as a genre that gets reinvented by every generation to fit their generation. You know, I did it with mine. Tobe Hooper and George Romero reinvented it for theirs. It always happens.
So now you are pivoting to real scary stories — things that actually happened. Can you talk a little bit about what prompted you to make this sort of shift in your storytelling?
Well, I’ve never done this before — true stories that involve frightening things. True stories of killers are a staple of television. But what we’re concentrating on in this series are the survivors. You know, we don’t care so much about the perpetrators. The thing about “Dahmer,” the character that I remember the most is Niecy Nash — the character from the survivor’s point of view. And that’s something I haven’t done. I also haven’t done a true-life deal, except for Elvis, which — that doesn’t count. But I also remote directed this series and that’s fantastic. The cast and crew were in Prague, and I’m sitting in my living room. I have a full cup of coffee in my hand saying, “Do this, do that.” That’s fabulous. I cannot wait to do it again that way.
