I re-watched a documentary on the making of "Halloween." The movie is closing in on 40 years (next year).
It's funny how close success and failure is. When Carpenter showed this movie to his alma mater at University of Southern California, a student asked why he would make this type of schlock. Carpenter's answer was to walk out of the Q&A.
He thought he had a failure on his hands. With a budget of $300,000 or with Donald Pleasance's salary of $25,000 (should've taken the points) $325k, it was a small gamble but a gamble nonetheless for Moustapha Akkad, the producer who gave them the money.
This is what I miss about the old ways of making movies and DON'T miss about the old ways of making movies.
So, given a small pitch idea of a babysitter murder, he was given a miniscule budget to make a movie. Gambling on Carpenter, who had one low-budget credit to his name. Who went on to beat the odds, because of word of mouth. THESE DAYS, forget it. Your movie doesn't have time to grow. But there are more opportunities for people to give you money to make movies.
What I gathered from this gamble, as I hope most of you will also see...there was a fine line between success and failure. Had TWO acclaimed critics not given it a good review, none would've seen it (power of the press back then). Instead, it grew and grew and grew...and it's a classic today. And they had no idea. In fact, Carpenter admits to not knowing it was getting a ground swell of interest. Movies are really like that.
If you watch it today, it's been so diluted by all the movies that ripped it off. But you still see the techniques that are far beyond its time. Personally, to me, it's not that great a story, but the template is what makes it classic.
No comments:
Post a Comment