Thankfully, after much needed rejuvenation (and a 2005 stint directing an episode of Showtime's Masters of Horror series, which reinvigorated his filmmaking yen), Carpenter decided to return to features with a small-scale psychological horror tale. That film, entitled The Ward (on VOD now and in theaters July 8), follows a young amnesiac (Amber Heard) committed to a mental institution in the 1960s who begins to suspect that she and her fellow patients (Lyndsey Fonseca, Mamie Gummer, Danielle Panabaker, and Laura-Leigh) are being haunted.
Movieline sat down in Los Angeles for a frank and convivial chat with the 63-year-old Carpenter, who chain-smoked between stories and laughs about his return to filmmaking, the stress of making big budget films versus indies like The Ward, the community of horror legends and up-and-comers known collectively as the Masters of Horror (including Carpenter's old friend David Cronenberg, who now "considers himself an artist"), his open attitude toward people remaking his movies, and the upcoming horror Western he's scripting based on a 19th century family of bloodthirsty serial killers known as the Bloody Benders.
First off, even though it isn't one of your originals as composer, I really liked The Ward's score -- tinkly, haunting, childlike. I've been humming it ever since.
Wasn't he good? Mark Kilian, a South African guy.
How did you find him?
He was one of a number of composers that I listened to, and he just had something. A unique sound. Boy, he's talented -- and collaborative.
How much did you work together on that score? What kinds of notes did you send him?
Oh, you know... in the main titles when the girl is singing, bring it lower. Tiny little things.
At times it was reminiscent of a giallo score, even.
Like Claudio Simonetti, who I just met! And I met the beautiful Asia [Argento]. Asia comes in with that Eli Roth. I don't know about that guy. The guy's got all this Hollywood hair, slicked back. Just grinning. Beautiful girl on his arm. [Laughs] She's very sweet. Her dad is a close friend of mine.
Are you pretty close knit, all of you Masters of Horror?
Some of us are very close. Some of us are real fast friends. Dario [Argento] is probably my best friend. But he and I go back a ways. George Romero is a very close friends. Tobe Hooper I've known for years. We just sit and insult each other, tell jokes about each other.
Do you guys ever consult creatively with one another?
No. We don't need to talk about that. We talk about girls!
I always wondered what goes on at those Masters of Horror dinners...
It's at the Hamburger Hamlet, and we have these strange visitors -- people who aren't horror but want to be. Oh, it's fun though. Now, David Cronenberg used to be horror, but now he considers himself an artist, so he's a little bit above us, which was shocking to me. Because David and I used to be friends in the old days, and now, I don't know. I'm a little low class for him. It's really weird. So I quickly made an exit. "I don't want to bother you. Sorry!" I was like, "Hey David, how you doin'?" Wow, you're kidding me. You take yourself really seriously.
But you all came up around the same time...
We did, we did. But we're all bums. He's still a bum, even though he gets good reviews!
You sound like you say that with love.
I do.
Talking about The Ward, I know fans of yours are also wondering this: Why did it take ten years to see a new feature from you?
I got burned out after my last film, in 2001. Burned out from year after year of doing them back to back, and then doing the music. I was tired. I had given up my personal life and given up my health -- given up a lot of things, because of my love of movies, and I'd stopped loving cinema.
It became work.
It became a grind, and I said to myself, "What am I doing this for?" But years later, after I'd had enough rest and done some other things, this Masters of Horror TV series that we did for Showtime brought me back. It was no pressure, I went for about a week or so to Vancouver and I was back on the floor again with actors, and it was great! Just fun. I was like, "I'm home again." So I thought I'd try something small, and this was perfect.
So why take on The Ward?
I've done an all-male cast, but this is almost an all female cast, and that was really appealing. It's also a movie about acting, as opposed to special effects. And special effects, no matter how cool they look, are really tedious. Acting is much more interesting -- and I like actors. Didn't in the beginning, but I've grown to really love them.
Have you changed in the way that you work with them?
I understand them now. I understand what they do much more than I ever did. I was scared back then. Terrified.
In what way? You're the director, the one in control of the set and the creative vision...
Well, not when you're young and you're starting out. They know so much, or she's so beautiful, or he's been in all these great movies. Then I realized, wait a minute here. So actors can be, unless you get stuck with somebody bad, which happens...
Were you looking at a variety of different kinds of stories and projects when you decided on The Ward?
It was the first one that came up. There were a couple of others that came and went, for various reasons, but it was the first one that made sense. And, the people who put up the money said, "Let's do it!" That's always a good sign.
How did you find Amber Heard? Were you familiar with her work beforehand?
I wasn't until I started looking at her work. I was sent all of it, and I thought, these are interesting choices she's made. What's going on here? So we had a meeting and I said, "I see." She loves playing really strong, conflicted female characters. Very interesting. And here she's this model-beautiful girl, but she's got a lot going on inside.
You filmed The Ward in 2009; was there a reason we're only seeing it now in 2011?
Well, we cut it and we finished it last fall, it premiered in Toronto, and several distributors started negotiating with it. I said, fine. It's a small film; this is a low-budget movie and it's not going to compete with a big film. It's not got a lot of effects, you know. It's not that kind of movie. It's a movie that's going to find its own place, which is perfect for me.
Did this feel like, in a way, coming full circle for you?
Oh, yeah. It's familiar, it's great. And also, big movies are no fun. It's fun to make them, but you'd be surprised, on a big film you usually have these imposed deadlines that are impossible. "Well, we're going to give you X millions to make this -- but you have to have it on August 3rd." Oy! It's not good for the film, sometimes.
What was the last of your films that you felt that sort of pressure on?
Escape from L.A. Big time. Wasn't anybody's fault, that's just the business. You have to deal with it. Of course, I don't ever deal with that stuff very well. But hey, I can't complain about a thing.
How do you see the horror genre having changed over the years, especially as you're coming back into it at this point in time?
It's changed. It's like it always has been, in some ways. There are a few really good horror movies made each year, but mostly they're shit. Most all of them are bad. Most are derivative. Most don't try anything new. Now they pick up whatever style has just been popular and they just use it. People like to associate horror now with torture movies because of the popularity of Saw... I thought Saw was a good movie, I really enjoyed Saw. It was fun, it had a great twist ending...
What did you think of it by the time we got to Saw VII?
You know, I got a little bored with it. It's the same thing over and over, but it's OK. People want to see that. It's like Jackass. Let's see people -- and in Jackass they're willing! They're willing to be tortured and made fun of and have cruel things done to them, and they think it's cool. People nowadays, I think because of the internet and the culture, have become more cruel than when I was young. Look at the bullying. Look at what it does to people. Look at cyberbullying.
Does that then make the way that horror movies are consumed vastly different?
Oh, yeah. They're consumed like a lot of entertainment, it's just disposable. What you try to do is fight through that somehow, try to get the audience's attention in a more direct way. The really good movies do it. The Social Network was a terrific movie -- not a horror film, but boy, that did it. I don't care about what happened, but I started to care. Wow, look at this! Look at the issues we're dealing with in this!
What do you feel is the counterpoint to that in this film?
It's about the mystery of the main character and her identity. We're all afraid of the mentally ill, because of the part of us that's that way. Because we all know that, in our darkest, quietest hours, we all have a door in our brains that we don't want to open. We all have impulses from when we were young. We're all human beings, and human beings have these crazy impulses sometimes. That's what scares us about crazy people. We call them that, but whatever you want to call them; we're trying to be nice to them now. People who are different.
And setting that in the '60s in a mental institution --
I had to do that because you cannot lock someone up against their will now for longer than 72 hours, then if they don't want to stay, they don't stay.
It was also a time of extreme experimental mental health measures that seem so unsafe now, which lend themselves to a horror set-up.
LSD! I was a teenager! I remember it.
LSD seems a tad less humane than, say, electro-shock therapy.
Electro-shock therapy has been around for a long time, and it's pretty rough. They still do it, it can still be beneficial. But it's nothing like we did in the movie, it doesn't work like that. It happens like that [snaps fingers], and it's over. Kaboom! It's done.
Now, they're remaking, essentially, one of your classics, They Live, adapting a new film from the story that it was based on.
Eight O'Clock in the Morning! It's a good little short story that I based my movie on. They're going to maybe change it, of course, and that's fine. They're giving me a paycheck! They give me money to do nothing. This is a profession that I can get behind. I'm not kidding, it's fabulous! I've wanted a job like that all my life.
Are any of your films so dear to you that you might object to someone remaking them?
They're never going to be able to remake a movie like I made it first. They'll live on. My movies will live on. God bless you, you can have them. Go for it! It's a different vision with a different director, and that's just fine with me.
I love that attitude. Now, you've got a new film in the works; tell me about The Benders.
Go online and look up the Benders -- holy God! They were a family of German immigrants in the 1870s who murdered people along the road, travelers, and took all their money, their horses, their gold teeth, slit their throats, hit them over the head, kept them under the house, and buried them. It's just incredible. [The script] has this amazing female character who's the come-on, she was out there sexually luring them in there, and nobody knows what happened to the Benders. There are a lot of theories and we use one in the story. We're working on it now, and it could be great. We're in the scripting process. Could be good.
John Carpenter's The Ward is currently on VOD and hits theaters July 8.