One Of The Hardest Projects Of John Carpenter's Career Was A 3-Hour Long TV Show
John Carpenter is one of the best to ever do it. The legendary filmmaker is pretty much retired from making movies these days, instead preferring to release music, sit on his couch, play video games, and just chill. And while we'd all like to see Carpenter return to direct one more banger, he's earned the right to take it easy. Very few filmmakers can boast a career with as many classics as Carpenter — "Halloween," "The Fog," "Escape From New York," "They Live," "The Thing," "In The Mouth of Madness," — the list goes on and on and on. Carpenter has had his ups and downs over the years, occasionally clashing with anyone who didn't see eye to eye with his unique vision. As he told Variety, "The great thing about this stuff early on was I really did have final cut on all these movies and no one was judging me, or bugging me, or saying strange stuff. That's what made it so smooth."
While he avoided people bugging him on his early films, there was one specific early project that gave the acclaimed filmmaker some headaches. But it wasn't one of his classic horror movies. Instead, it was his three-hour TV movie "Elvis."
It was unreal
Carpenter's "Elvis" premiered in 1979 on ABC, and it would end up being a fortuitous film for the director for one specific reason: it marked the first time he would work with Kurt Russell, who played the King in the film. Russell would go on to be a kind of muse for Carpenter, appearing in "Escape From New York," "The Thing," "Big Trouble in Little China," and "Escape From L.A." But it was on "Elvis" that they first met, and according to Carpenter, "Elvis" was no walk in the park. In the same Variety interview quoted above, Carpenter said:
"The hardest thing I've ever done was 'Elvis,' a three-hour TV show. We had 88 speaking parts and 100 and some odd locations in 30 days. Holy Toledo! I was too dumb and young to realize how tough that is. That was a baptism of fire. Hurry up, let's shoot! It was unreal."
In a previous interview with Film Comment, Carpenter stated: "'Elvis' was the first thing that came along that I had any feeling for, personally-because I did have a feeling for Elvis, I liked him very much, cared about him. So it seemed like a pretty good package when it arrived. After it was over I was disappointed in some of my work, and I was disappointed that I didn't have more participation in the editing."
"Elvis" isn't what I'd call one of Carpenter's best movies (although Russell does make a great Elivs), but it is an interesting experiment from the filmmaker. The three-hour cut is what aired on TV, and it proved so successful that a feature-length cut was released theatrically in Europe and Australia. While Carpenter would go on to do better things, "Elvis" still allowed the director to show off his chops — and resulted in the beginning of a beautiful partnership with Russell.