FIRST GODDAMN WEEK OF WINTER

THE THING

Dave MacDowell

JOHN CARPENTER: LIVE RETROSPECTIVE

"I'm a director of horror movies. I love horror movies. Horror movies will live forever." 

After thirty years, John Carpenter is finally getting his due. And he's having fun again.

For those who have followed the trials and tribulations of the cult director, everyone knows that he's a man who has consistently proven to be ahead of the times. One of his most celebrated films, Halloween, was met with critical dismissal and audience disinterest upon its initial release, but which saw a total reversal on both of those fronts over the coming months. It was "the little indie film that could," as the dearly departed co-producer/co-writer Debra Hill once put it, and it would go on to become one of the most respected horror films of all time and spawn a franchise comprising eleven films, with two more entries on their way. A similar fate would befall The Thing, perhaps the director's most respected film, which would not only have its own reversal in the minds of critics and hearts of audiences, but nearly derail Carpenter's career, putting him on a different path of safer studio fare (Christine, Starman) to show audiences he was capable of telling less icky, mean-spirited stories.

But the 2010s have shown that Carpenter's impact hasn't just been on audiences, for whom he's provided decades of nightmares, but on a legion of filmmakers who have grown up under his tutelage. Adam Wingard with The Guest. Jim Mickle with Cold in July. Jeff Nichols with Midnight Special. David Robert Mitchell with It Follows. And this list is endless, as new films are announced all the time that cite Carpenter as their inspiration. None of these filmmakers hide their love and respect for a man who, for much of his career, received too little of both. The current iteration of Hollywood, which so far has remade four of Carpenter's best efforts, with more on the way, and where Halloween and Vampires have been sequelled into mediocrity, is the same land where Carpenter can't find funding for his own projects. To film fans, that can be especially aggravating. But as he's so far proven during his John Carpenter: Live Retrospective tour, he has gotten the last laugh, night after night. Because try as producers might to keep re-purposing Carpenter films through remakes or sequels in a blind effort to achieve mastery through affiliation, they will never even begin to touch the majesty of seeing him perform his most famous themes as part of a six-piece band (which includes his son Cody Carpenter, Daniel Davies, John Konesky, Scott Seiver, and John Spiker).

In July of 2016, I got my chance.

Much like Carpenter's filmmaking style, musical style, and much like the man himself, John Carpenter: Live Retrospective featured zero bullshit. There was no opening act, and no intermission. There were no pyrotechnics, no surprise guests, no gimmicks. The presentation was simplistic, to the point, and somewhat dorky (said in the lovingest way possible). During performances of his film themes, a large screen behind the band played a muted montage of the appropriate title. And for cuts from his two Lost Themes albums, that screen either displayed abstract light shows, or nothing at all. During The Fog, the stage filled with...you guessed it...fog. For They Live, the band paused after the song's intro to slip on some Ray-Bans. During Big Trouble in Little China, which Carpenter introduced as being a search for "the girl with green eyes," the lights illuminated solid green. And for every single one of these tracks, film themes or otherwise, Carpenter was chewing gum and dancing adorably behind his keyboard. He was beckoning to the crowd for rhythmic hand claps, the devil horns, and during Big Trouble in Little China's "Porkchop Express," the hand gesture shown off by several of its characters, known as the "Buddha finger." And the crowd, who waited with bated breath for the most recognizable horror theme of all time, lost their minds as the band launched into the main titles for Halloween, which they followed up with In the Mouth of Madness, likely the closest thing to rock 'n roll the director has ever scored. Even cuts from the surprise album "Lost Themes II," which is quite different from its predecessor, demanded new evaluation when presented so intimately and enthusiastically by its musical personnel. "Distant Dream" alone proved this.

In a night filled with surprises, the band chose to end the show with an unexpected choice: a track from Christine, a less celebrated title with a less celebrated soundtrack. But as the band performed, you could see why: because they enjoy the hell out of themselves as they play it--more than any other song in their set list.

Some film tracks, such as The Fog, are as you remember them. But so many others, now with the use of a full band, sound electrifyingly new. Never have the main titles from Escape From New York, confined so long to merely synthesizer, sounded so full and tremendous and utterly bad-ass. And with scenes from the film playing out on screen featuring Harry Dean Stanton's Brain and Donald Pleasence's President of the United States, the crowd was reminded that they don't just love Carpenter's films, and they don't just love his music, but they love his music because of his films, and they love his films because of his music.

Seeing John Carpenter embark on a tour during which honors his own legacy--one so often disregarded unless it's being exploited--offered another stark reminder: in this world of endless sequels, remakes, and loving cinema homages, there will only ever be one John Carpenter. The John Carpenter: Live Retrospective tour has come to an end, but a second tour that promoted his movie themes, was immediately announced. Will Carpenter and co. tour again? Never say never. If they do, and you haven't yet had the pleasure, don't miss out. (Or, of course, you can pick up a Blu-ray of the tour from Storm King Productions.)

Set List

Escape From New York (Main Title)

Assault on Precinct 13 (Main Title)

Vortex (from Lost Themes)

Mystery (from Lost Themes)

The Fog (Main Title)

They Live (Coming To L.A.)

The Thing (Main Theme - Desolation) (Ennio Morricone cover)

Distant Dream (from Lost Themes II)

Big Trouble in Little China (Pork Chop Express)

Wraith (from Lost Themes II)

Night (Daniel Davies solo; from Lost Themes)

Halloween (Main Title)

In the Mouth of Madness (Main Title)

Encore:

Prince of Darkness (Darkness Begins)

Virtual Survivor (from Lost Themes II)

Purgatory (from Lost Themes)

Christine: Christine Attacks (Plymouth Fury)

THINGS

THAT THING WANTED TO BE US

OUTPOST 31

FILMOGRAPHY

THE THINGS

I am being Blair. I escape out the back as the world comes in through the front.

I am being Copper. I am rising from the dead.

I am being Childs. I am guarding the main entrance.

The names don't matter. They are placeholders, nothing more; all biomass is interchangeable. What matters is that these are all that is left of me. The world has burned everything else.

I see myself through the window, loping through the storm, wearing Blair.  MacReady has told me to burn Blair if he comes back alone, but MacReady still thinks I am one of him. I am not: I am being Blair, and I am at the door. I am being Childs, and I let myself in. I take brief communion, tendrils writhing forth from my faces, intertwining: I am BlairChilds, exchanging news of the world.

The world has found me out. It has discovered my burrow beneath the tool shed, the half-finished lifeboat cannibalized from the viscera of dead helicopters. The world is busy destroying my means of escape. Then it will come back for me.

There is only one option left. I disintegrate. Being Blair, I go to share the plan with Copper and to feed on the rotting biomass once called Clarke; so many changes in so short a time have dangerously depleted my reserves. Being Childs, I have already consumed what was left of Fuchs and am replenished for the next phase.  I sling the flamethrower onto my back and head outside, into the long Antarctic night.

I will go into the storm, and never come back.

 

Read the rest.

‘THE STANDOFF AT SPARROW CREEK’ AND THE PARANOID THRILLER

Distrust peaked during the 1970s across a variety of arenas: domestically, societally, and politically. Multiple facets of life had been disrupted by the scathing publication of the Pentagon Papers regarding the Vietnam War, the Watergate Scandal, the ongoing Cold War, fallout from the Tate-LaBianca murders by the Manson Family, and the list goes on. Trust in the individual and the institution was at an all-time low, and art on the screen began imitating life on the street and in the home. 

The Standoff at Sparrow Creek is a modern production, but it’s cut, utterly, from the 1970s paranoid thriller. And there’s been no better era in which to resurrect the sub-genre than right now: current trust in the government is at the lowest it’s ever been. And it’s not just the White House we can’t trust, but the very news media that reports on it -- peppered with the president’s constant slogans of “Fake News!” and “Witch Hunt!” -- as well as the people who subscribe to their reality of choice and sell it as truth to someone who might not know any better. We live in an age where the news media you consume determines the philosophies and ideologies you align with, but it also determines that the people who watch those other kinds of news media already have a preconceived notion of you: if you’re a hard-right conservative, you watch Fox News and read the Wall Street Journal; if you’re a hard-left liberal “snowflake,” you watch MSNBC and read the New York Times – these are the new “rules.”

The Standoff at Sparrow Creek was likely inspired by the 2016 Bundy standoff, which saw a family-led militia taking control of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for 40 days over a dispute regarding a million-dollar payment to the government. Militia culture had been prevalent in U.S. culture at least since the Clinton Administration, although there seemed to be a spike during the Obama era due in part to the disinformation campaign accented with the constant proclamations of “they’re coming for your guns!” (Raise your hand if you still have your guns.) (You should be raising your hand.) Doomsday Preppers, though not militia-based, shares the same militia mindset, which is that the government and/or civilized order is going to collapse, and once that happens, it’s very man for himself. 

Interestingly, The Standoff at Sparrow Creek plays twice with the concept of paranoia. That the men have joined a militia at all, choosing a dilapidated warehouse as a home-base cache for their firearms, explosives, bottled water, and CB radio, is the first touch of this. The second, which embodies the main conflict, is that one of their numbers has attacked a nearby police funeral, killing several attendees, and it’s a race against time to out the shooter among them and turn him over to authorities before they all go down in a hail of gunfire. 

The Standoff at Sparrow Creek plays out like a clever combination of Quentin Tarantino’s first low-fi feature, Reservoir Dogs -- about a group of robbers whose diamond heist goes wrong and leads to belief of an undercover cop among them -- and John Carpenter’s The Thing -- about a group of men marooned by the elements and forced to locate the shape-shifting alien lifeform hiding behind one of their faces. There’s very little trust among the men of The Standoff at Sparrow Creek, not helped by their overly radical philosophies, their former professional ties to the police, and the fact that some of them are just friggin’ weird. Take a group of men already paranoid enough to join a militia, insert a reason for them to suspect each other, and you’ve got yourself a situation that’s rife with conflict and wholly removes predictability from the table. 

Director Henry Dunham presents The Standoff at Sparrow Creek as realistically as possible, bringing together a parliament of personalities to embody the different kinds of people who would be attracted to joining a militia: a former cop disillusioned with the system, a man whose daughter suffered a vicious attack and for whom the government provided no justice, and a young man so detached that he keeps a manifesto of anger scrawled between the printed lines of Catcher in the Rye.  (A weird mystique has always hung over this particular novel, likely due to it being found in the homes of John Hinkley, Mark David Chapman, and Robert John Bardo.) Certain members of the militia are more eccentric than others, while some are more bloodthirsty. One of them, which the film subtly suggests is the leader, comes off as more of a crime boss than a redneck good ol’ boy with a burly beard. What unites them is the belief that not only do they have the right to assemble arms and prepare for conflict, but that it’s their duty to do so. “We always knew this was going to happen,” says one of the more unhinged members of the militia regarding the massacre at the police funeral, which visibly sets some of the other members at unease. Their similar philosophies has brought them together, but their unique dedications to their philosophies is going to be what tears them apart.

 A conceit of the paranoid thriller is the isolation of the main protagonist, who is forced to act alone to shed light on the truth of the conspiracy afoot. Francis Ford Coppola did this masterfully with 1974’s The Conversation, about a CIA surveillance expert who becomes convinced he’s the one being surveilled. 1976’s infamous Marathon Man, directed by John Schlesinger, permanently bequeathed to the world two mainstays: fear of the dentist, and “Is it safe?” Next came the game-changing, real-life All The President’s Men, about journalistic duo Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein chasing down leads and consorting with shadowy men in parking garages to irrefutably prove President Nixon’s ties to the Watergate Hotel break-in; however, the reporters are soon the ones being investigated, themselves followed and their home phones bugged. 1977 was an ideal time for Philip Kaufman to remake Invasion Of The Body Snatchers; the amassing pod people were perfect metaphors for so many things that the American people felt were threatening their society: the Soviets, gay culture, the sexual revolution, the hippie movement (the film is set in San Francisco), all worsening the ongoing alienation caused by urbanization. The list of paranoid thrillers continues, with George A. Romero’s The Crazies, Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green, Sidney Lumet’s Serpico, James Bridges’s The China Syndrome, and Franklin J. Schaffner’s bizarre Nazi tale The Boys From Brazil.

 

Following its birth in the ‘70s, the paranoid thriller has never gone away, and has since been explored in every genre. In the ‘80s, we had Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (one of the all-time best), George Lucas’s THX 1138, and Richard Badham’s Wargames. In the ‘90s came Oliver Stone’s JFK, Richard Donner’s Conspiracy Theory, and even comedy satires like Peter Weir’s The Truman Show and the All The President’s Men spoof Dick, directed by The Craft’s Andrew Fleming. The 2000s gave us Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity, a redo of The Manchurian Candidate by Jonathan Demme, Chan-wook Park’s wicked Oldboy, and the most unnerving sequence in Steven Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds involving an unhinged Tim Robbins. Echoes of this continued in the 2010’s with Martin Scorsese’s underrated Shutter Island and Dan Trachtenberg’s Ten Cloverfield Lane. And let’s not forget the juggernaut that dominated the ‘90s before returning just a couple years ago – the pop culture phenomenon heavily inspired by All The President’s Men and The Andromeda Strain known as The X-Files.  

Mistrust is part of human nature. We exist in a cloud of paranoia where there’s plenty of reason not to put trust in anything or anyone. On personal levels, we’ve been betrayed by those we love. On professional levels, especially for those of us still existing in work landscapes that haven’t quite bounced back from the 2008 recession, the threat of being unceremoniously laid off feels constant. And as for the government, forget it: we can only see so many clips of the president saying something incriminating, only for him to later on swear he never said it, before we totally give up on putting our faith in him, his administration, or in the loyal congregation who reject reality just to believe him. In the age of “fake news,” disinformation campaigns across social media, and the ensuing threat of video manipulation techniques known as “deep fakes” (Google it if you’re not familiar, and be terrified), there’s never been less trust to go around. If the 1970s were any indication, we’ll soon be inundated by films in which the principle cast exists entirely in their own self-made isolation, grasping their guns, peering out of their fortified homes between the slats of their window shades, and asking….“Is it safe?”

 

[Reprinted from The Daily Grindhouse.]

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