John Carpenter: I’m just a broken-down horror director

John Carpenter says he’s a “broken-down horror director” trying to get through life.

The ‘Halloween’ filmmaker, who has not made a movie since his snake-pit thriller ‘The Ward’ from 2010, confessed he hates talking about his past work and now focuses on watching wrestling, basketball, his love of helicopters and playing video games.

He told the New Yorker magazine in a wide-ranging, rare interview: "Look, I’m just a broken-down horror director trying to get along in this world, OK? That’s all I’m trying to do, navigate the shoals.”

He admitted he still finds a lot of activities “fun” including meeting fans “because they’re always so nice”.

John, 74, added when asked if he liked revisiting his career: “Talking about my own movies? God, no. I hate it. I don’t want to do that. They speak for themselves.

“I am unable to watch most of my own movies. I become immediately very critical of what I see.

“I say to myself, ‘Why did I do that? I know better. Come on.' You know, ‘I made a mistake there, I was too lazy, too this, too that.'

“Anyway, I don’t wanna talk to you about that. Those things are feelings I have inside. I’m not going to tell you what I think.”

He added he was “always kind of working on stuff” but said: “I don’t have anything to announce.”

Opening up about why he has stopped making films, he said: “It was just a culmination. On ‘Ghosts of Mars’ I was exhausted. That was the big thing.

“I remember seeing a behind-the-scenes (featurette), and it showed me on set working, sitting in the scoring session. God, I’d aged.

“Tired and ancient. And I thought, ‘I can’t do this anymore’. It was too rough. For me, it became not worth it.

“And I didn’t want to say that about movies. Movies are my first love, my life. But, anyway, why am I telling you all this? This is not something I want to talk about.”

He went on about looking back: “I don’t look at things like I pulled something off. I don’t see it that way. I love everything I did. I love all the movies that I made, but I also love stopping and relaxing, too – watching basketball, for instance, or playing video games.”

John, who agreed to serve as a composer and executive producer for David Gordon Green’s new cycle of ‘Halloween’ sequels, including this autumn’s ‘Halloween Ends’, added about his dislike of film criticism: “One minute you’re a genius, and then another minute you’re a bum. Well, both things are not true.”