Carpenter: Thrifty Hollywood Maverick
By Aljean Harmetz
John Carpenter's $13.7 million science-horror movie, THE THING, is $50,870 under budget. Mr. Carpenter-who is called, with a certain amount of seriousness "J.C." by his cast and crew-savors even such a narrow victory over the system.
Mr. Carpenter is a self-described "maverick," who has publicly characterized Hollywood as a place where "people lie, cheat and steal." THE THING, based on the same short story that became Howard Hawk's 1952 THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, is being produced and financed by Universal, an efficient remnant of the old studio system. Universal's image is the menacing black tower that holds the offices of its black-suited, black-tied executives. Mr. Carpenter, who wears faded Levis and a modified Prince Valiant haircut, made HALLOWEEN for $300,000 and THE FOG for $1.5 million outside the major studio hierarchy. He reacted to the idea of Universal with all the anxiety of a mouse trying to bell a cat.
"I was afraid that I'd be lost in a giant factory, that people would try to wrest the control away from me," he says. So far, Universal has given him "complete creative freedom." He pauses a second, runs his hand across his walrus mustache, then adds cautiously, "This place is notorious for interfering at the last minute during the editing process."
Encouraged to Spend:
The most surprising thing he has discovered at Universal is that "they encourage you to spend a lot of money." "They never say that, of course." He continued. "The Studio wants desperately to lower the cost. But it's a departmentalized dinosaur. It has no flexibility. There's an art department, a transportation department, a camera department. The responsibility is spread out so thin that no one knows what the others are doing." As an example, green beds-metal structures with wooden catwalks that are used to hang lights-were put on each of the sets of THE THING. "We didn't order them. We didn't want them. We were told it was studio policy, and our movie was charged for them."
Since THE THING was, at one point, the only movie in preparation at Universal, the working time of tailors and drivers and others who had nothing to do with the film was also charged to it. Contrary to custom, Mr. Carpenter and Stuart Cohen the young co-producer pored over time cards and got the excess charges removed. They got the green beds removed also. "A lot of stars and directors don't care," says Mr. Carpenter. "They say, 'It's Universal's money. They're a big company. To hell with them.'"
Mr. Carpenter's version of THE THING-in which an alien life form that crashed to earth 100,000 years ago in the Artic can imitate any earth life and essentially become the entire population of the world in two weeks-was written by William Lancaster and stars Kurt Russell. Like every movie made at Universal, an amount of money equivalent to 25 percent of the picture's cost was tacked on for studio overhead. "The overhead supposedly gets you a few things for free like a sound transfer room, but without an operator," says Mr. Carpenter. "We sniffed around and found Universal's HEARTLAND special effects facility and managed to get it included in our overhead. It would have been incredibly expensive to rent."
No Interest in Trappings:
"John saved us approximately $1 million," says David Foster, whose TURMAN-FOSTER company is producing THE THING. "He's not interested in trappings, fancy offices, limousines or fancy clothes." Mr. Foster, a former press agent, finds more to lover at Universal than Mr. Carpenter does. "If you need a lens, wacko, a car brings it up in 20 minutes. If you want to see an old film, it's available in an hour," Mr. Foster says, explaining the advantages of working at a big studio.
Since he was 8 years old and made "Gorgon the Space Monster" with an 8-millimeter camera, the 33-yer-old Mr. Carpenter has rarely had a camera out of his hand or movies out of his head. While attending the University of southern California film school, he was obsessed by the fact that George Lucas had turned a prize-winning science-fiction short, THX 1138, into a feature film. Five "brutalizing, devastating" years later, what Mr. Carpenter calls his "weird little" $60,000 science-fiction movie DARK STAR limped into a few theaters.
Two years after that, HALLOWEEN-a stylish, scary, but relatively bloodless horror movie that Mr. Carpenter directed, was co-author of, and for which he composed the music-became the industry's largest-grossing independent movie, selling more than $80 million worth of tickets. Even then Mr. Carpenter chose the creative control of doing THE FOG and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK at the small AVCO-EMBASSY instead of at one of the more important studios that beckoned to him.
Already Owned by Universal:
He has finally come in from the cold to Universal because THE THING was already a Universal property. "Scared to death" by the Howard Hawks movie when he was 5 years old, Mr. Carpenter paid tribute to Hawks' production by having his homicidal maniac in HALLOWEEN stalk his babysitter victims in houses where THE THING was being shown on television.
Mr. Cohen and Mr. Carpenter first discussed the idea of remaking the movie in 1976, but Mr. Cohen couldn't sell the unknown Mr. Carpenter to the studio. Three screenwriters and one director later, the project was dry-docked until ALIEN released to huge success in May 1979. Mr. Carpenter considers ALIEN and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS to be rip-offs of the 1938 short story that was the genesis of THE THING, John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" By July 1979, HALLOWEEN and THE FOG had made Mr. Carpenter a hot property.
It is exactly that recent necklace of success-the $8.5 million ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is AVCO'S largest moneymaker; HALLOWEEN II, of which he was co-writer and producer but not the director, had an immense opening at the box-office-that is choking Mr. Carpenter now. "The basic reality of working in a big studio," he says, "is that the work is extremely expensive and extremely complex and you must produce a movie that makes money. That's quite a burden. Each success makes me carry a heavier load to the next movie, makes the fear of failing more crushing. But every big star, every director, has failed at doing that and I'm going to fail miserably sometime. Making money for the people who financed me and for myself can't be the essence any more. Now I want to make great movies."
