John Carpenter.

When Somebody Who Makes Movies for a Living – Either as an Actor, Writer, Producer or Director – Lives to Be a Certain Age, You Have to Admire Them. It Is an Act of Courage to Make a Film – a Courage for Which You Are Not Prepared in the Rest of Life. It Is Very Hard and Very Destructive. but We Do It Because We Love It. Regardless of How Bitter I Was a Few Years Ago Because of My Experiences at the Studios, I’m Still Making Films.

Film Buffs Who Don’t Live in Hollywood Have a Fantasy About What It’s Like to Be a Director. Movies and the People Who Make Movies Have Such Glamor Associated with Them. but the Truth Is, It’s Not Like That. It’s Very Different. It’s Hard Work. If You Were Suddenly Catapulted into That Situation – Without Any Training – You Would Say After It Was Over: Oh, God! You’re Kidding! You Mean, This Is What It’s Like? This Is What They Put You Through? Yes, as a Matter of Fact, It Is Like This – and It’s Often Worse. People Have Tried to Describe the Film Business, but It’s Impossible to Describe Because It’s so Crazy. You Must Know Your Craft Inside Out and Then Pick up the Rules as You Go Along.

I Don’t Want to Be in the Mainstream. I Don’t Want to Be a Part of the Demographics. I Want to Be an Individual. I Wear Each of My Films as a Badge of Pride. That’s Why I Cherish All My Bad Reviews. If the Critics Start Liking My Movies, Then I’m in Deep Trouble.

Monsters in Movies Are Us, Always Us, One Way or the Other. They’re Us with Hats On. the Zombies in George A. Romero’s Movies Are Us. They’re Hungry. Monsters Are Us, the Dangerous Parts of Us. the Part That Wants to Destroy. the Part of Us with the Reptile Brain. the Part of Us That’s Vicious and Cruel. We Express These in Our Stories as These Monsters Out There.

Jeff Bridges Is the Greatest, as an Actor and a Person. He’s the Best Actor of His Generation, Bar None.

I Can Play Just About Any Keyboard but I Can’t Read or Write a Note.

I Can Remember at USC in the Late Sixties When Everybody Was Making Socially Relevant Films. Good God, They’d Have Given Anything If You Made a Film About Vietnam, About American Injustices. That’s the Kind of Thing They Wanted. They Looked Down on You and Felt You Were Naive If You Cared About Hollywood Films. but I Wasn’t Caught up in That. I Went Back to My Roots.

I Arrived in L.A. the Most Naive Human Being on the Face of the Earth. When I Got off the Plane at LAX, I Got a Map of Los Angeles, Looked up USC, and Decided to Walk. It Only Looked Like It Was a Couple of Blocks Away. After About 15 Blocks of Carting My Luggage Down Some Endless Street, I Looked at the Map Again. It Took Me a While to Figure Out the Scope of Los Angeles. If I’d Continued Walking That Day, I Would Still Be Walking. I Was a Real Country Boy.

The Trick with Shooting a Low-budget Film Is to Shoot as Little Footage as Possible and Extend the Scenes for as Long as One Can.

If I Had Three Wishes, One of Them Would Be Send Me Back to the ’40S and the Studio System and Let Me Direct Movies. Because I Would Have Been Happiest There. I Feel I Am a Little Bit Out of Time. I Have Much More of a Kinship for Older-style Films, and Very Few Films That Are Made Now Interest Me at All. I Get up and Walk Out on Them.

With the Kinds of Movies Being Made by Studios Today, There Are Very Few Low-budget Films, and Those Are Entrusted to Young Geniuses, Not Old Guys Like Myself.

The Biggest Lesson That I Learned from Film School Was to Try to Get and Maintain, If Possible, Final Cut. Creative Control Is the Essence of Having the Ability to Make Your Own Movie, and Not Someone Else’s.

I Got to Work Within the Studio System, and Make All Those Movies the Way I Wanted Them, and I’m Very Proud of That. It Was a Fight, Though, Because the Studios Don’t Ever Want to Give Control to the Filmmakers. It’s All Changed Now. a Lot of Directors Today Don’t Even Care About the Final Cut to Begin With. Hell, They Just Want a Job.

At the Beginning, I Was Doing the Music Out of Necessity, Because We Had No Money. at Some Point, I Realized That the Scores Became Another Voice, Another Way I Could Further What I Was Doing as a Filmmaker. It Became an Extension of Directing. Composing Was a Lot of Extra Work, but I Kept Going as Long as I Could Stand It. Kind of Like Directing.

I’ve Never Had Any Illusions About My Musical Abilities. I’ve Got Very Basic Musical Chops, That’s Okay – I’ve Proudly Stretched Them as Far as I Possibly Could.

Critics Have Always Shit Upon My Stuff – Always, Even the Early Stuff. And, Frankly, I Just Didn’t Care. I Just Did the Movies I Wanted to Make.

I Don’t Revisit My Own Movies, I Don’t Do That. It’s Ugh. I See Too Many Mistakes When I Look at My Own Films.

I’m Open to Directing, but I Don’t Want to Work as Hard as I Worked on Escape from L.A. and Ghosts of Mars. I Worked Very Hard in Those Movies. I Almost Killed Myself, and I Didn’t Want to Work That Hard Again.

There’s so Much of What We’ve Turned into as a Country That Just Makes Me Heartsick. This Return of Racism and Xenophobia. Oh God – That’s Just Awful, Awful Stuff. I Grew up in the South and I Know Jim Crow South Really Well. and I Know That Never Ended. I Know That No Matter What Law You Passed, in the Hearts of Many Southerners – Not All, but Many – Those Sentiments Remain. but Now It’s Been Brought Back by Trump, and It’s Horrible.

Nigel Kneale Is a Brilliant Writer, but by the Time I Met Him, He Was Pretty Irascible, and Mean. He Was a Mean Character.