DISCUSSION WITH A MAKER OF VAMPIRES

IT WAS SAID TIRED, SICK AND EVEN FINISHED. JOHN
CARPENTER PUTS FINE AT THE RUMOURS WITH " VAMPIRES ",
HIS FILM MOST TONIC FOR A LONG TIME.

INTERVIEW GERARD DELORME & BRILLIANT ALEXANDRE

Twenty years after the Night of the masks [ Halloween ], John Carpenter is in great form and faithful to itself: always independent, ambiguous and grouser. And if it continues to operate in its kind of predilection, the fantastic thriller, it affirms more than ever its attachment with a traditional Hollywood tradition incarnée by Howard Hawks. Its second film, Attack, resembled a mixture of Rio Bravo and Night of thealive ones. Today, Vampires lorgne seriously on the side of the wild bunch...

PREMIÈRE / Of all your films, Vampires is that which resembles one western more.
JOHN CARPENTER / I thought of Sam Peckinpah while turning it. Peckinpah was always one of my preferred scenario writers. When I planned to make a film of vampires, I wanted absolutely to avoid the folk imagery. I am a fan of the films of Hammer but not of recent films like Entretien with a vampire or Dracula de Coppola which are filled of Gothic stereotypes with castles, fog and bats. I did not see myself making a film in costumes. At this point in time came out the novel of John Steakley, whose action proceeds in American South-west. That recalled me To the borders of the paddle. Kathryn Bigelow did an excellent work while transposing the vampires at the time contemporary. I started to imagine film on the basis of this idea.Then I thought of the wild Horde because, in this film, Peckinpah does not put the goods on a side and the malicious ones of the other; they are confused. Michael Mann also did that in Heat a little. Its idea, it is that the cops and the robbers resemble each other. It is thus not new, it is a tendency common to all dark, police films or westerns.

Here, the enemies are not Indians but vampires. One does not imagine today a western with malicious Indians.
Not! Take Danse with the Wolves. I am the only person whom I know to have hated this film. People have if fear of being incorrect... Why the Indians couldn't be the malicious ones? Notice, between us, I must acknowledge that, me either, I could not give roles of malicious to the Indians! It was easier to make Assaut because the members of the gang [ the enemies ] were all representative of various ethnos groups. If I had shown only one race, me would have been crucifié. Moreover, I almost did not give them faces; they was shades. The public accepted. You cannot show a ethnique group in a way which can be perceived like negative. It is impossible.

Jack Crow, the hunter of vampires, points out your preceding heroes: John Nada [ Invasion Los Angeles ], Snake Plissken [ New York 1997 ] or Napoleon Wilson [ Attack ].
It is the same person each time. It is me idealized. I did not finish any yet with this character, there remains about it still one or two possible alternatives. I believe that, in this way, each realizer can discover things on itself.

How the character of Crow Jack did shape between script and its incarnation by James Woods?
Before proposing the project to me, the producers had thought of Patrick Swayze. I did not see it at all in the role and I tried to imagine what would resemble a killer of vampires. The character left my subconscious. There is at his place a major ambivalence compared to the statute human being and that to be alive. It is also morally ambivalent. It has a kind of lassitude and hardness. I sent script to James Woods and it accepted the role. It resembles to the character, and it sharpened it much. When it slaps the girl, it is its idea.

In Vampires, Jack Crow always has a cigar with the mouth. The use of the tobacco is never free in your films...
In Attack, I was used for myself about it to make a wink with the Port of the anguish, of Howard Hawks. Generally, the cigarette is used to establish a link. Or it expresses an anxiety in the hero.

In current films, as from the moment when a character smokes, it is classified side of the malicious ones. It became a code.
It is a contemporary American stereotype. We cross one period which is redefining what is acceptable or not. That changes all the time. We are strange people. There is even a new law which prohibits to smoke in the bars in Los Angeles. That becomes hard.

In Vampires, there is more sex and of blood that usually.
You find? Such an amount of better. I wanted that the film is strong and harder than than the public waited. The vampires are there and they will suck you blood. They should be cut out of pieces to kill them, of agreement? Once the finished film, I was accustomed so much to that that that did not shock me any more.

It is claimed that you had problems of budget?
There was a problem on an outside which turned to the nightmare. One was to turn in a North-South directed street whereas the sun goes from is in west. The buildings were enough raised and made shades which went in a direction the morning and the another afternoon. Each time that one tried to turn in sequences, the plans were not connected. It was necessary to plan to turn certain sequences only the morning and others the afternoon. One lost three days because of that That reflected oneself on the budget. One exceeded a little but there were 20 million. It was relatively comfortable.