“An offer from the devil”: the John Carpenter project Harry Dean Stanton turned down
It’s often appeared that Harry Dean Stanton served as something of a lone wolf actor, a man who lived by his own rules at all times. With that in mind, one might have thought that Stanton would have avoided appearing in several movies for the same director, but he had a noticeable collaboration with John Carpenter.
The American cinema legends had first worked together on Carpenter’s 1981 science fiction action movie Escape From New York, with Stanton taking on the role of Harold ‘Brain’ Hellman, a wily and hardened former associate of Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken, who serves as the right-hand man to the ‘Duke’ of Manhattan island.
Two years later, Stanton turned up for Carpenter once again, so clearly working with one another was something they both enjoyed. The actor took on a role in the director’s 1983 adaptation of Stephen King’s novel Christine, playing Detective Rudy Junkins, who looks into the strange case of a supernatural car killing a number of people and influencing its new owner.
Carpenter had once spoken of his love for Stanton as an actor, noting, “He was an accomplished character actor and a unique man. He would come absolutely prepared for his part and ad-lib things that weren’t in the script but which were hilarious… He did that, especially on Escape from New York; he made that character his own.”
Still, even though Carpenter and Stanton clearly had a love for one another, Stanton was not prepared to take on every role that Carpenter offered to him. In an interview with Film Comment, he once spoke of the time he had to turn the director down concerning a proposed TV series.
“I’ve had many opportunities that I’ve passed on,” Stanton noted. “I did Christine, you remember that one? John Carpenter called me after and said: ‘I want you to do a series with the Mary Tyler Moore people.’ (I think it was that company.) And they offered me a whole career as a leading man, playing a private investigator.”
The exact basis of the TV series has not been fully confirmed, but it was clear that Carpenter was keen on getting Stanton involved. In fact, Carpenter and the show’s producers had offered Stanton a massive role in the production and suggested that it would bring him a huge fortune.
Stanton explained, “They told me: ‘You can direct, you can produce, take part in the casting, all of it.’ [Carpenter] said: ‘You’ll be richer and more famous and have more pussy on camera and off than you’ve ever had in your life.’ That was the way they worded it.” In no uncertain terms, Carpenter offered Stanton the world, but there was still a big problem for the actor.
At the time, Stanton was more religious, and he thought that taking on the project would be aligned with sin. He explained, “At that stage of my Christian background—which is gone now—I thought that it was an offer from the devil! So I’ve really turned down success in a lot of ways.”
Looking back on Stanton’s career, it’s clear that he only ever took on the projects he really wanted to. Even when a huge offer came in from Carpenter, all the money in the world couldn’t stop him from living life in his own way.
