10 Things You Didn't Know About John Carpenter
What would John Carpenter's Top Gun have looked like?
While John Carpenter might not be held in the same high regard as contemporaries Spielberg, Scorsese and Coppola, hes unquestionably left a lasting impact with his work. From 1974 to 1988 he produced an insane number of instant classics like Halloween, The Thing, Starman and Big Trouble In Little China. His simple, direct style of filmmaking and characterisation has been oft-imitated (The Purge, It Follows, The Guest) but nobody can do it quite like he does. His work has been cited by filmmakers like Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Neil Marshall and even Scorsese himself, and his work as a composer has also been influential to various musicians like Portishead and Gunship. Recent years have seen many of his films being given inferior remakes - like Rob Zombies Halloween and The Fog - which only served to highlight his brilliance even further. The director has been semi-retired from filmmaking since 2001, yet his influence only seems to grow by the year. While theres already plenty of trivia about Carpenters movies (Michael Myers mask is a William Shatner mask painted white etc), there are still plenty of lesser known facts about the man who elevated the horror genre into the realm of high art.