John Carpenter is out talking about the cast of GHOSTS OF MARS as well as his place in Hollywood.
While talking to Ian Spelling's syndicated Inside Trek & Sci Fi column, Carpenter described the coming movie's appeal for him, saying, "I'd wanted to make a Mars movie since the '80s. I'd picked up a book that was about what it might be like landing there and living there, and I started thinking, 'Well, what if we set it in the future a little bit more, after there are colonies there?' Then I thought, 'Oh, wait a minute. I can make this a Western. I can make Mars a frontier.' And that's how it evolved.
"It's a space Western, but they all are."
Carpenter sounds very excited about the film's cast, starting with its star, Natasha Henstridge, saying, "Natasha is fabulous, and you can't photograph her in a bad way - every angle in the world works, because she's so pretty. But she's also a really good actress, terribly underrated.
"Ice Cube plays a desperado, and he loves gangsters, so it was perfect. I've also got Pam Grier, who plays a commander, and she always gives me great performances. I love her."
He adds, "You have to go by feel on the performance element. You just get actors you like, actors that you think will work in the parts, and go with it. Clea Duvall, who plays our rookie cop, is another one. She's a terrific actress, and I wish she had more to do in this - it's a bit of a thankless role. And I'd never worked before with Joanna Cassidy. She's got great timing."
Carpenter also addresses that he's been ghettoized as a auteur of genre material, taking that as a positive, saying, "I am ghettoized, but I've made a career out of it. That's not bad. I really enjoy these kinds of films... The only place where fantasy and the supernatural and sci-fi really live is in the movies and in literature, too.
"Part of the fun is that, the more realistically we depict fantasy, sci-fi and horror on the screen, the more real they seem. And the other part is that you lose yourself emotionally in film, whatever the emotion is, whether it's laughing or crying or being scared.
"So I love these movies, and I still love making them."
LOGIN
REGISTER
RSS
HOME
