The movie John Carpenter wrote for John Wayne: “I made him an old riverboat rat”
From the haunting opening shot of Halloween to the revolutionary practical effects in The Thing, John Carpenter established himself as a seasoned veteran of the horror genre, becoming known for his hand-crafted scores and gnarly action sequences. Over the years, he has come to be known as a cult classic director, defined by his low-budget productions yet innovative visual style, creating high production value through his entrepreneurial approach.
From his use of steadicam, minimalist lighting and synthesised scores, the director had an indelible impact on both independent and horror filmmaking, inspiring future generations of directors like Jordan Peele and Bong Joon-Ho.
But while he has frequently collaborated with the likes of Kurt Russell and Jamie Lee Curtis, there was one partnership that almost happened, with Carpenter writing an entire movie for one actor that never saw the light of the day.
If you like boring movies that repeat the same formula over and over again, then the work of John Wayne is probably for you. If you’re a fan of westerns, overly aggressive cowboys and horses then films like The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Stagecoach are perfectly up your street, with Wayne starring in perhaps too many films of the creed throughout the course of his career and building a reputation on his ability to do one thing very well.
For many, Wayne is a cultural icon, resembling a specific era of masculinity and American ideals and becoming one of the most revered Hollywood stars of all time. While his work won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, his work had a huge impact on cinema as a whole, influencing the likes of Clint Eastwood and Quentin Tarantino.
However, there may have been one project that could have been the cherry on top of his career, with Carpenter revealing that he wrote a film for John Wayne, explaining, “I had a script for him, called Blood River. I wrote the first draft of that back in 1971, and Batjac, Wayne’s company, got hold of it in ’75 or ’76. They optioned it and hired me to do a rewrite. I worked on it, and never quite found out what was going on there. Maybe Wayne didn’t want to do any more westerns. I worked with Michael Wayne and Tom Kane, and they would do things like take out some of the harder action stuff, making it easier on him”.
After a lifetime of starring in westerns, with the actor racking up a filmography of over 140 films, perhaps Wayne was simply fed up with pulling on his cowboy boots and wanted to hang up the act. When asked about the character that Carpenter had written for Wayne, he said, “I made him an old riverboat rat – an old man with an old hat – but he’s actually a US Marshall, incognito, searching out these men. The other hero of our story meets up with him and they go down the river. It’s like Huckleberry Finn”.
While Carpenter revealed that Wayne did in fact read the script, it sounds as though he ultimately wasn’t interested, and the concept didn’t entice him enough to return to the screen, remaining as another project in the Hollywood graveyard.
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