John Carpenter nearly quit directing after making Memoirs of an Invisible Man

John Carpenter is viewed by a lot of movie fans as an underrated filmmaker. He never seemed to reach the heights of filmmakers like Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese within the Hollywood system despite his resume sporting some genre-defining films like Halloween and The Thing. His movies hadn’t really become colossal box-office successes, and they had a tendency to develop a following after their initial releases. IndieWire has just reported on the horror icon’s miserable time making the 90s film, Memoirs of an Invisible Man. His time on the movie was so grueling he nearly quit filmmaking altogether.

The reason behind it solely belongs to a certain difficult actor. One who has had a long-standing reputation for having diva-like behavior. “Chevy Chase, Sam Neill — who I love and had a longtime friendship with — and Warner Bros., I worked for them, and it was pleasant,” Carpenter explained. Then, he confessed, “No, it wasn’t pleasant at all. I’m lying to you. It was a horror show. I really wanted to quit the business after that movie. God, I don’t want to talk about why, but let’s just say there were personalities on that film. He shall not be named who needs to be killed. No, no, no, that’s terrible. He needs to be set on fire. No, no, no. Anyway, it’s all fine. I survived it.”

For those who are not able to follow, let’s just say Carpenter would end up working with Sam Neill again on In the Mouth of Madness after enjoying collaborating with him on this film. He described Neill as a “terrific actor. I love working with him.” He elaborated, “He comes prepared. He knows what he’s going to do. He reacts to other actors who are there. I mean, he’s just a dream come true.”

Carpenter took the movie as a work-for-hire job after the film’s star, Chevy Chase, had gotten the original director, Ivan Reitman, to depart from the project. The writer of the movie, William Goldman, revealed that Chase was adamant about changing up his image and showing more dramatic chops in the movie. Reitman is a celebrated comedy director, which caused creative differences on the set. Carpenter took the job, and the resulting film retains a comic tone mixed with more noir-like moments.