The actor who made John Carpenter want to quit Hollywood: “That was my worst”
To an outsider, working in Hollywood seems to consist almost entirely of glitz, glamour, and red-carpet events. However, making movies is still a job, and sometimes, that job can get pretty difficult. For example, as with any other job, actors and directors aren’t always going to like every one of their co-workers. Sometimes, in fact, they downright hate the people they’re forced into making a film with – and sometimes, as John Carpenter admitted, they meet someone so difficult and hateful that it makes them want to quit Hollywood entirely.
The early 1990s were a frustrating time for Carpenter, whose viability in Hollywood had begun to decline a few years earlier. In 1986, he released Big Trouble in Little China, a big-budget action comedy that became a cult classic but tanked at the box office upon release. He subsequently struggled to get movies financed with the major studios after this, so he moved into the low-budget arena with Prince of Darkness and They Live in ’87 and ’88. Once again, both these films developed dedicated fanbases as time passed but were critically dismissed and performed middlingly upon initial release.
Over the next four years, Carpenter struggled and was unsuccessful in getting several movies off the ground, including a new version of Dracula and a Cher movie entitled Pincushion. When Memoirs of an Invisible Man came his way, though, a big-budget studio comedy-drama, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to subject himself to studio filmmaking again. “When you have lots of money and lots of time, it’s really gruelling,” he mused. “I enjoy being an independent, and it’s not possible to be one in this situation. But then I thought, ‘Why not?’ I hadn’t done a movie for a long time.”
In truth, Carpenter should have listened to his instincts because Memoirs of an Invisible Man was a complete disaster. The film’s star was Saturday Night Live and National Lampoon’s Vacation funnyman Chevy Chase, a bankable star notorious for being difficult to work with. Naturally, he lived up to his reputation.
To Carpenter’s surprise, the troubles mostly centred around Chase’s desire to become a serious actor. He saw Invisible Man as a way to show the world he was more than just a comedy star. The studio, on the other hand, effectively wanted what Carpenter dubbed “Invisible Vacation.” This put Carpenter and Chase at odds with the suits from day one, making the production “the stuff of nightmares.”
To his credit, Carpenter said he tried to help facilitate Chase’s growth as an actor, and he told The Guardian, “He did a couple of really good scenes, and he really pulled ’em off…I believed he could do a film in which he balances. We could have some humour in it, but I had him play the dark side because it’s a darker film.”
However, despite Carpenter trying to work with Chase to fulfil his quest for legitimacy, the comedian still made the production a tense affair. He would reportedly refuse to wear the complicated special effects makeup that was integral for the special-effects team to make him invisible, or sometimes take it off before he was supposed to, and this regularly scuppered entire days of shooting.
In 2023, Carpenter told Variety, “Let’s just say there were personalities on that film — he shall not be named — who needs to be killed. No, no, no, that’s terrible. He needs to be set on fire. No, no, no. Anyway, it’s all fine. I survived it.”
During an appearance on Charles Band’s Full Moon Freakshow podcast, though, Carpenter removed any doubt about who he was suggesting needed to be burned alive. When asked to name the worst person he’d ever worked with, he immediately replied, “Chevy Chase. I wanted to quit the business after working with him.” He added, “I took it all in and just internalised it. But that was my worst.”
