John Carpenter’s philosophy on making films: “Movies are not intellectual”
The approach John Carpenter takes to making his films is undeniably visceral in nature. With several impactful contributions to the realms of horror, action and science fiction, Carpenter has never shied away from putting forth his vision of how cinema ought to be: direct and entertaining.
With Halloween and The Fog, the New York-born filmmaker shone a new light on the horror movie genre, as did he in the action world with fantastic efforts in the shape of Escape from New York and Assault on Precinct 13. Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing is arguably one of the best and most innovative science fiction movies to find its way onto the big screen.
Given Carpenter’s filmography, it’s unsurprising to learn that his philosophy behind making movies lies in entertainment rather than in the sense of over-intellectualisation. During an interview with the BFI, Carpenter was once asked to offer his thoughts on the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and the French New Wave.
The director’s opinion was clear. He responded: “I have a feeling that Truffaut and Godard, a lot of European filmmakers… their movies are texturally inferior somehow, there’s something missing in them, just in terms of a visceral approach to a movie. And I can’t figure out whether it’s intentional, or whether they haven’t the technicians, or what. But there is a distance from the screen to the audience.”
For Carpenter, “movies are not intellectual” but are rather emotional. The ideas that the likes of Godard and Truffaut posit in their respective films ought to be reserved for literature and other artistic mediums to handle. “An audience should cry or laugh or get scared,” Carpenter noted. “I think the audience should project into the film, into a character, into a situation, and react.”
When an audience has to sit down and analyse a given movie, then the movie has “failed” in the eyes of the legendary filmmaker. “So in terms of extending the genres, philosophical ideas, I’m not as interested in that as I am in getting the audience to react, really to project into the film, and come away having had an experience,” he said.
Whether Carpenter is right in his assertion depends on the given audience member, but he clearly has a point to make. The medium of cinema indeed makes us laugh, cry and experience fear. It occasionally makes us think, too, but to have that as the sole motive for films leaves the medium lacking in actual enjoyment, relegating it to mere philosophy, which, for Carpenter, should be left to philosophy itself.
