Dan McCoy, Bluesky:
You know there was once a famous carpenter with long hair and some crazy ideas that turned out to be wise teachings. His name was John Carpenter and he taught us it's more fun to be stoned and play video games than work.
Adam Nayman, New Yorker:
The novelist Jonathan Lethem once proposed that the centerpiece sequence of Carpenter’s They Live (1988)—in which an ornery drifter, played by the W.W.F. star Roddy (Rowdy) Piper, dons a pair of magical sunglasses and perceives a campaign of subliminal subjugation waged by mind-controlling aliens—should be preserved in a time capsule as the apex of neo-B-movie artistry.
David Sims, The Atlantic:
[John] Carpenter’s vision [for Halloween] was so frightening because it was delivered with so much control. He didn’t need a double-digit body count to communicate the message that got under people’s skin: Suburban life, despite all of its comfortable trappings, offers only the thinnest veneer of safety.
More:
- An oral history of The Thing for its 40th anniversary
- The New Yorker interviews John Carpenter about his legacy, the Halloween reboot and the NBA