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What scares me is what scares you. We’re all afraid of the same things. That’s why horror is such a powerful genre. All you have to do is ask yourself what frightens you and you’ll know what frightens me.

John Carpenter

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John Carpenter
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 16
Actor
Composer
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Film Score Composer
Screenwriter
Writer
Carthage
New York
John Howard Carpenter
Afraid
Asks
Powerful
Things
Frightens
Scares
Scare
Genre
Horror

More quotes by John Carpenter

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I've gone through various periods with superheroes. They work in the right hands, but they don't work in other hands. It's tricky. But any movie is tricky. It's impossible to say, 'This is what you do in any situation.
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We've got the prettiest girls in the world here in Los Angeles and there's a great music scene. And I learned what I learned about cinema here in Los Angeles so it's always been really important to me as a city to live in and I love making movies about it.
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Fears are all psychological. Being afraid of death, loss of a loved one and disfigurement are all powered by your mind, and that's very powerful stuff.
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It [horror genre] never dies. It just keeps getting re­invented and it always will. Horror is a universal language we're all afraid. We're born afraid, we're all afraid of things: death, disfigurement, loss of a loved one. Everything that I'm afraid of, you're afraid of and vice versa. So everybody feels fear and suspense.
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When you have no money, you need invention.
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As a filmmaker, it's about surviving and lasting. So many talented people that I've known in my life - directors and writers - just haven't made it and haven't had a chance.
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Movies are pieces of film stuck together in a certain rhythm, an absolute beat, like a musical composition. The rhythm you create affects the audience.
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Horror found me. I got into the movie business to make westerns.
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Horror stories have always worked on film. It's where they work. That's where vampires and ghosts and UFOs are real. They're not particularly real in life, but they're real on the screen. It's the communal aspect of movie-watching.
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A lot of it [success] is luck. That's a huge part of it that no one wants to talk about. You just got to be in the right place at the right time.
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I don't watch my films. I've seen 'em enough after cutting them and putting the music on. I don't ever want to see them again.
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I just aim for basketball season to start. I don't really care about anything else in life.
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There are a lot of movies that I don't care about, especially not remakes.
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I never got in this business, in cinema, to make horror movies. They arrived on my doorstep and I got typecast. Which was fine, I enjoy it, but I got into this business to make westerns. And the kind of westerns I used to see, they died. So that didn't work out.
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Child pornography is taboo. There are really no such things as snuff films. That's a legend. But movies are like pieces of dreams, and we don't need to go into those dreams. Those dreams are beyond. Child pornography - it's horrible. Human suffering is a horrible thing in real life.
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One could make money and get a career going with a low-budget horror film about killers attacking on holidays. It is always flattering to have somebody copy you.
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It's a very good time for horror. This business certainly has changed, but there's still room for serious horror films. Look at 28 Days Later, that's not a tongue-in-cheek picture.
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I'm always involved with casting my movies. I have final word on it.
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I made a decision back in 1978 that, in a trade off for money when I directed Halloween, I would have my name above the title in order to basically brand these movies my own.
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Horror has been a genre since the beginning of cinema, all the way back to the days of silent films. I don't think it will ever go away because it's so universal. Humor doesn't always travel to other countries, but horror does.
John Carpenter