Tag Archives: garth franklin

Everyone On Scorsese

Nine years. 108 episodes. 126 filmmakers. Lots of minutes.

It’s been a brilliant run, but it had to end at some point, and nine years feels like the right number. It’s a lot without dipping into double figures, which feels too many.

That said, there’s an important caveat: this is not necessarily the end of the show. What’s ending is Hyphenates as a monthly series. We’re leaving the door wide open for future episodes, standalone shows that may drop at any moment. You may hear one later this year. Or you might not hear it for a good couple of years. And we don’t even know what format it will take, who will be hosting, how it will sound. Your best bet is to remain subscribed, with an eye on our social media accounts, so you don’t miss out when we suddenly get, say, Quentin Tarantino on to talk about the films of Paul Anthony Nelson. (Watch Trench now on Amazon Prime!)

And we can’t imagine all of you have heard every single episode from our past, so feel free to click on the Index tab up the top of the page and browse our archives. See if there’s a filmmaker or guest you want to catch up. We’ve talked to a lot of cool people about a lot of other cool people, so there’s lots of gold in there.

But for now, let’s focus on this month’s episode. You may have noticed that our usually-militant one-hour running time has been blowing out a bit lately. We parted a bit too hard for our 100th episode, and it was hard to maintain the discipline in the months that followed. But for our last show, we really let it fly, with the show clocking in at an epic 222 minutes. That’s 3 hours and 42 minutes.

But fear not, because it’s not just three voices for all that time. We decided to end with a look at the films of Martin Scorsese, one of the few filmmakers who you could legitimately claim every film is somebody’s favourite. And although we didn’t find the person who wanted to spruik Boxcar Bertha above all others, we covered almost every one of his films, without giving any direction or influence to our guests.

A whole bunch of our alumni returned to talk about their favourite Scorsese thing, be it a film, a scene, a shot, or something entirely different. For this episode, we’re joined by Ian Barr, Michael Ian Black, David Caesar, Sarah Caldwell, Thomas Caldwell, Mel Campbell, Tom Clift, Perri Cummings, Guy Davis, Glenn Dunks, Tim Egan, Marc Fennell, Abe Forsythe, Garth Franklin, Rhys Graham, Richard Gray, Giles Hardie, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Zak Hepburn, Jon Hewitt, Tegan Higginbotham, Blake Howard, Cerise Howard, Hayley Inch, Briony Kidd, Maria Lewis, Alicia Malone, Shannon Marinko, So Mayer, Pollyanna McIntosh, Drew McWeeny, Simon Miraudo, Anthony Morris, Rhys Muldoon, Josh Nelson, Jennifer Reeder, Eloise Ross, Stephen A Russell, Jeremy Smith, Rohan Spong, Kriv Stenders, Chris Taylor, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Christos Tsiolkas, George Viscas, Andrew Kevin Walker, Sarah Ward, Scott Weinberg, Emma Westwood, and Cate Wolfe.

And, of course, Paul returns, joining Rochelle and Lee for the entire show to help see Hi4H off.

We hope you enjoy this episode. We hope you enjoyed the show. And we’ll see you when we see you.

Franklin On Carpenter

 

“I like to think that if all the filmmakers of that American New Wave were a giant school class, and Coppola was the captain of the football team, and Spielberg was the good lookin' rebel in the leather jacket hanging out with the bikers, and the drama majors are Altman and Cassavetes… and then you had Carpenter who is like the Ally Sheedy of this Breakfast Club, he's the outsider who's tucked away, probably getting a blow job behind the shed, but ends up coming up with some of the craziest, weirdest things.”

The other day, we were visited by a man who wanted to tell us the good news about a dude named JC. This JC had long hair, a legion of devoted followers, and he managed to change the world. And he was just a humble Carpenter, too!

Dark Horizons editor Garth Franklin was our guest this month, and he quickly decided on the great John Carpenter as his filmmaker of the month, a choice that definitely delighted us here at Hi4H Central.

Watching all of a filmmaker's works in one hit can be revelatory. You can look at Halloween or Big Trouble In Little China or Starman and know they're all John Carpenter films, but until you see them all in one go, it's difficult to fathom just how adept he was at every genre he turned his hand to. It's also fascinating to see exactly what interests Carpenter, and how these themes echo across all of his works.

That's what we dig into in this month's episode. First, as always, we also look at some key new release films, including Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, Lenny Abrahamson's Room, and Ryan Coogler's Creed.

We also take a look at something that's been on our minds in the month where we lost both David Bowie and Alan Rickman: how we define the legacies of beloved actors when we primarily know them through their imitation, rather than themselves?

Outro music: score from Halloween (1978), composed by John Carpenter

It's a jam-packed episode, and a hell of a way to kick of 2016. Stream or download from our website, listen via Stitcher Smart Radio, or subscribe on iTunes!

Hell Is For Hyphenates – January 2016

Dark Horizons creator and editor Garth Franklin joins the show, as we look at some of the key films of this month, including THE HATEFUL EIGHT, ROOM and CREED. In the wake of the deaths of David Bowie and Alan Rickman, they then examine how we mourn beloved film icons, and how their legacies interact with their defining performances. Then, Garth takes us through the career and filmography of one of the horror cinema’s most important directors, John Carpenter.

The John Carpenter Cheat Sheet

John Carpenter Directs

Want to become an instant expert in our filmmaker of the month without committing yourself to an entire filmography? Then you need the Hell Is For Hyphenates Cheat Sheet: we program you a double that will not only make for a great evening's viewing, but bring you suitably up-to-speed before our next episode lands…

JC Films

HALLOWEEN (1978) and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986)

It has to be Halloween. It just has to. Not only is it a work of terrifying brilliance, but it's also one of the most important films ever made: after 1960's Psycho and 1974's Black Christmas, Carpenter's Halloween firmly established the concept of the slasher film and changed the entire genre of horror forever. When you've finished that, follow it up with Big Trouble In Little China, the fantasy comedy that's really unlike any other film you've seen. Watching this back-to-back with Halloween is not only a hell of a fun evening's viewing, but also the best way to demonstrate Carpenter's impressive range.

Substitutions: If you can't get or have already seen Halloween, seek out his seminal horror-thriller The Thing (1982). If you can't get or have already seen Big Trouble In Little China, seek out his first feature film, the science fiction comedy Dark Star (1974).

The Hidden Gem: Want to see something a bit off the beaten path? A Carpenter film people don't talk about as much as the others? Then you need 1978's Someone's Watching Me!. This TV movie was filmed between Assault On Precinct 13 and Halloween, but aired after Halloween's release. It's an incredible thriller, a throwback to classic Hitchcock films (particularly Rear Window), and features one of the best characters ever in a Carpenter film: Lauren Hutton's amazing Leigh Michaels. If you can find it, watch it.

The next episode of Hell Is For Hyphenates, featuring Garth Franklin talking John Carpenter, will be released on the morning of January 31 (AEST).

Our Next Hyphenate Garth Franklin

Garth Franklin
Dark Horizons founder and our next Hyphenate, Garth Franklin (left)

If you've ever wanted to look up some news about a film, be it a piece of casting info or movement on a long-awaited sequel, the odds are better than not that you made your way to Dark Horizons. And that means you've certainly read the work of Garth Franklin, the site's Sydney-based founder and editor-in-chief, and our first guest of 2016.

Created in January 1997, the now-19-year-old Dark Horizons is now legally able to drink, drive and vote in Australia. But more importantly, it was one of the first real places on the internet to get film news from, and it remains one of the few must-read movie sites anywhere on the web. That's a helluva run, and it's a testament to Garth that the site continues from strength to strength.

Given Garth is someone who writes about every franchise, every release, every film from Hollywood and around the world, we were very curious to find out which filmmaker he would he want to discuss on our show.

The answer? None other than one of cinema's true masters of horror, John Carpenter!

Directed by John Carpenter

Although John Carpenter's work is too diverse to refer to him as simply a horror filmmaker, you can't actually talk about modern horror without talking about Carpenter. After his first film, the seminal science fiction comedy Dark Star (1974) and his second, the legendary action thriller Assault On Precinct 13 (1976), Carpenter cemented his place in pop culture with the terrifying Halloween (1978), the film widely credited with bringing the slasher sub-genre into the mainstream.

As if his first three films hadn't done it already (and they had), Carpenter - who, we note, celebrates his 68th birthday tomorrow! - proved himself adept at any genre he turned his hand to, from the action sci-fi of Escape From New York (1981), to the science fiction romance of Starman (1984), to the high-comedy fantasy of Big Trouble In Little China (1986). If his filmography included only half the classics they do, he'd still be lauded as one of modern cinema's most influential visionaries.

But which of these Carpenters is the one that won over Garth? Was it the horror Carpenter, the science fiction Carpenter, or the comedy Carpenter? Or perhaps all of them combined?

We look forward to finding out on January 31, when the first Hell Is For Hyphenates of 2016 is released!

John Carpenter
Our next filmmaker of the month, John Carpenter