my next guest directed a film called halloween that became the most successful
independent production in motion picture history his latest film about to open
is called the thing please welcome john carpenter
you know uh uh civilians all the time hear claims about motion pictures that made more money did
more money one weekend did more money in a half an hour but this one the most successful
independent production in history give us an idea what that means
the movie cost 300 000 to make and it made 70 million
300 000 to make yeah you can pretty much do that in your basement three hundred thousand
pretty cheap cheap film right cheap and 70 million dollars worldwide today yeah
good heavens now do you get a lot of that no not a lot of it now a little bit of it yeah uh you you
prefer doing an independent film i would guess huh well i just started making uh stupid films
with big studios with universal and i kind of like it it's fun yeah they treating you well because i
read that you mentioned that sometimes a motion picture company or a big one would be kind of
not the most fun to work with i was worried when i went in because i thought maybe they'd take
away control of the movie from me i think that's what every director wants his control of his film
they were wonderful and so far things are going oh really now the thing which we're
going to see some footage of this is uh pretty bizarre stuff here pretty strange
now is this uh it's different from halloween and halloween too huh yes uh the thing is about uh
actually about a monster from outer space and um we tried to make the king of the monster movies
and um roboteen did the uh special effects and i think you're going to see a scene from that
and it'll be self-explanatory this is pretty scary huh yeah i guess so and it's called the
thing and we'll see a minute in a few seconds of that watch the monitors here
so
oh
uh
damn it children
so then it's the story of a boy and his dog
oh my now that uh wow now uh first of all you could hear the audience kind of oohing and eyeing
you you kind of you know a film is good by the way the noises the audience makes pretty much in
this kind of film if the audience is uh winging on i know i'm all right do you when you make for
instance when this film was completed did you just put it in theaters or do you screen it and
test the reaction of the audience part of making a film for me is uh when i finish my first cut i
show it to an audience and see their reaction i'll go back and change it and then show it again and
the audience is a big part of the film what is the reaction you're after in in this particular film
well it's much the same as getting on a roller coaster uh there's a big build up to the first uh
time you go over the edge and when you do there's no stopping it yeah now i noticed uh
paul looked away and people were gasping that's a favorable response as far as you're concerned
honestly in this kind of film you're dealing with something that the whole audience knows
isn't real at all uh you know that there's no such thing as a monster from others but at least
we haven't seen one in the paper and i want the audience to believe it yeah when they see this
oh my lord look at that that's real yeah now uh do you have children no no assume you did maybe
an eight-year-old child would you send your eight-year-old child to see this film i would
evaluate my eight-year-old and i would i would ask myself is is the eight-year-old impressionable
and could they realize this is a fantasy film it's really not very harmful but it's frightening
yeah and if i thought so sure sure hmm if i was an eight-year-old kid i'd want to see this movie
immediately oh yeah i would no matter what my parents said i'd go right out and see it
i would imagine kids will be lining up around the equator to see this one
this is now how do you do that stuff when you saw the uh all of those gruesome things what exactly
were we looking at was it animation was it that's mechanical special effects makeup and basically
those are objects that are built and operated like puppets with hydraulics and people's hands moving
things like this and all done on camera yeah and so what we were looking at actually did take place
and uh do you now is it we had a gentleman on uh john dykstra a couple of weeks ago he said
that the problem with doing special effects of any kind is once you've done them in a film
people get to be blase about them that's right so you have to keep topping yourself
is this the first time ever for some of these effects i think so i don't think you'll ever see
effects like this in a movie i know i know there hasn't been a monster movie like this
where the monster constantly changes form it never looks like any one thing it's constantly in motion
and it's pretty hard to pull off but i think we've done all right uh you worked with kurt russell
in this film he worked with him before and this is he's had an interesting career uh going from
i guess he was with the disney organization as a kid or a younger person than he is now
he did a lot of disney films in the 60s and i met him on elvis we did a tv movie
and he played elvis presley and he walked in and he didn't look like elvis presley i thought well
if this guy can do it hell i can do it too and um we work together and escape from new york and
finally the thing and i think he's a brilliant actor and he's also a real close friend yeah
people talk about you and compare you to hitchcock is that a legitimate comparison and you're uh well
i'm very flattered by that i i really am i think more influenced by a director uh howard hawks i
don't know if you're familiar with him he did uh he did the first version of the thing from
another world i admire his work a lot now the thing itself what are we talking about here
um what what exactly is the thing well the thing is an alien organism that has been buried in the
ice in antarctica for a hundred thousand years and what it does is imitate other life forms perfectly
so that for instance in the audience here um the problem might be that several of them or all of
them could be the thing yeah i've had that feeling occasionally but uh we're what are we doing we're
pausing here i guess we'll come back unless something catastrophic takes place here in the
studio we'll be right back mr john carpenter thank you very much good luck to you on the thing i have
a hunch it will do quite well uh also my thanks to hank williams jr and elaine busler our announcer
mr bill wendell paul shaffer and the band ladies and gentlemen you the studio audience tomorrow
night allen ginsburg will be here sports specials producer bud greenspan will have viewer mail
plus the bird lady of queens arlene thomas and do's and don'ts with frank and fred good night