Last year was a fairly big year for John Carpenter. No, the legendary director didn’t have a new film hit theaters. Instead, his greatest creation, “Halloween,” was remade/rebooted/sequel-ized and went on to be one of the biggest hits of the year, earning a whopping $254 million worldwide. And because of that, Carpenter found himself in the public eye, yet again, giving some of the best interviews of 2018, and reminding everyone of his greatness. Now, it appears 2019 is going to be another banner year for the filmmaker, thanks to the Director’s Fortnight sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival.
Variety is reporting that John Carpenter is being honored with the coveted Carrosse d’Or, aka the Golden Coach award, at this year’s Director’s Fortnight. In a letter, the French Directors’ Guild said the award will be presented to Carpenter because the filmmaker is “a creative genius of raw, fantastic and spectacular emotions.”
READ MORE: The Essentials: The Films Of John Carpenter [Full Retrospective]
In addition to the incredible “Halloween,” Carpenter’s ‘80s filmography is second-to-none, with films like “The Thing,” “Escape from New York,” “Big Trouble in Little China,” “Starman,” and “They Live.” He is also responsible for creating the template for all slasher horror films, as well as the action-movie-tough-guy that current actors like Dwayne Johnson have been profiting off of for decades after.
The letter from the French Directors’ Guild also commended his films saying his work “enhances the irresistible delight of staging. In each of them, the work on space, on what is off-screen, on the visible and on the invisible, is constantly renewed and regenerated in order to redefine fear – a fear that is always prone to trigger emotions in characters and actors who have now become iconic.”
Carpenter joins some elite company, as previous honorees of the Golden Coach include Martin Scorsese (who was honored in 2018), Werner Herzog, Jia Zhangke, Jane Campion, Jim Jarmusch, Clint Eastwood, and Agnes Varda.
The 2019 Cannes Film Festival begins on May 14. The Director’s Fortnight begins on May 15.