STARMAN
STELLAR VISION
LEGENDARY DIRECTOR JOHN CARPENTER LOOKS BACK ON STARMAN, 40 YEARS LATER
WORDS: JAMES CLARKE
THERE’S SOME SHARED WISDOM THAT says that a classic story is one that’s never quite finished with what it has to say to us. That’s a fair definition of John Carpenter’s filmography, and certainly of Starman, which recently celebrated its 40th anniversary. It was a film that tapped into a sustained moment in the ’70s and ’80s when the real world of American space exploration fused with moviemakers’ imaginations.
“When I was a kid, I loved SF and horror movies,” Carpenter tells SFX. “Science fiction books, literature, short stories: I just fell in love with that stuff.” He adds emphatically, with a smile, “That was my stuff.” A key entry in the “stuff ” that fired Carpenter’s imagination was the 1953 movie It Came From Outer Space.
A graduate of USC Film School in Los Angeles, Carpenter got to work as a filmmaker with his cherished genres of science fiction and horror in Dark Star and then with Halloween.
He followed these two entries with The Fog, Escape From New York, The Thing, Christine and Big Trouble in Little China. Among this dazzling run of flinty, visceral and kinetic genre movies was the gentler entry, Starman, released in December 1984.
Charles Martin Smith as scientist Mark Shermin.
The stars on set with director John Carpenter.
Jenny (Karen Allen) shows the Starman around town.
COLUMBIA/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK, GETTY, COLLECTION CHRISTOPHEL/AL AMY. STOCK IMAGES: GUNTUR SEPTYAN/GETTY