Post by pinkhamster on May 6, 2010 2:46:18 GMT -5
Hey, guys. I'm in the middle of listening to this episode (my second one after hearing the Geoff Johns rant which I enjoyed greatly), and finding it interesting, but wanted to stop and address something I disagreed with strongly: the "John Carpenter as the Will Eisner of film" analogy.
The true Will Eisner of film came a lot earlier, and his name was Walt Disney. Decades before John Carpenter made a film, Walt Disney was putting out films which trumpeted his name above the far more obscure names of the people who actually wrote, designed the characters, and animated the material for which he took the lion's share of credit. They even have very similar signatures:
Carpenter's actions seem more a case of doing favors for less successful filmmaker friends who were fully credited on the posters and DVD boxes (while making bucks for producing sequels he would have been bored directing himself) as opposed to Eisner and Disney, who hired nameless employees to crank out work under their signatures. As far as I can recall and according to the posters for the films I could find online, the Halloween sequels were not billed as "John Carpenter's Halloween II" or "John Carpenter's Halloween III" as seemed to be implied in that section of the podcast. The "John Carpenter's" thing only appears as part of the title on the films he directs as far as I can tell, with the "Vampires" sequel having "John Carpenter Presents" on the video box, but that makes sense, because without that on there it would just be the extremely generic title "Vampires" which would offer no readily identifiable link to the previous movie.
So, basically, that's what I wanted to say on that... Again, enjoying the listening. Kudos on that remarkable theme tune!
The true Will Eisner of film came a lot earlier, and his name was Walt Disney. Decades before John Carpenter made a film, Walt Disney was putting out films which trumpeted his name above the far more obscure names of the people who actually wrote, designed the characters, and animated the material for which he took the lion's share of credit. They even have very similar signatures:
Carpenter's actions seem more a case of doing favors for less successful filmmaker friends who were fully credited on the posters and DVD boxes (while making bucks for producing sequels he would have been bored directing himself) as opposed to Eisner and Disney, who hired nameless employees to crank out work under their signatures. As far as I can recall and according to the posters for the films I could find online, the Halloween sequels were not billed as "John Carpenter's Halloween II" or "John Carpenter's Halloween III" as seemed to be implied in that section of the podcast. The "John Carpenter's" thing only appears as part of the title on the films he directs as far as I can tell, with the "Vampires" sequel having "John Carpenter Presents" on the video box, but that makes sense, because without that on there it would just be the extremely generic title "Vampires" which would offer no readily identifiable link to the previous movie.
So, basically, that's what I wanted to say on that... Again, enjoying the listening. Kudos on that remarkable theme tune!
