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AWESOME-tober-fest 2015: Starlog’s pop culture history of invisibility (1992)

Posted in magazine, movies, pop culture, Starlog, TV shows with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2015, Invisible Man, magazines, movies, pop culture, Starlog, TV shows on October 15, 2015 by Paxton

In issue 177 of Starlog magazine, which showcases an interview with John Carpenter about his upcoming Memoirs of an Invisible Man, there is an article by Michael Wolff on the pop culture history of invisibility. It’s written as if invisibility exists and is recounting the many different ways one would make oneself invisible. And throughout the article Wolff peppers in movies and TV shows that featured some form of invisibility.

Here’s the article, click to make the images BIGGER.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

AWESOME-tober-fest 2015: Interview with John Carpenter about Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)

Posted in magazine, monsters, movies, pop culture, Starlog with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2015, Halloween, holiday, Invisible Man, magazines, movies, Starlog on October 14, 2015 by Paxton

Issue 177 of Starlog magazine featured a cover story on the soon to be released Chevy Chase movie, Memoirs of an Invisible Man (which I reviewed yesterday).

The featured story is an in-depth interview with the movie’s director, John Carpenter. He had just come off a hiatus of several years to direct this big budget studio movie. Being an indie staple, Carpenter had never really done a large studio movie before. In the article, he discusses why he took the job and a little bit about the history of the project.

Talking about the movie, Carpenter mentions that this project had been around since 1986 and that it’s based on a book by HF Saint. Obviously, the part about the novel is true, as I’ve reviewed that novel this month, however, the book wasn’t actually published until 1987. And while studios today will buy up book rights before books are published, it was not done at that time. However, Carpenter could just be off in his memory by a year, not a big deal.

Carpenter also mentions that Chevy Chase himself bought the rights to the book and the first drafts of the movie were written by the great William Goldman with Ivan Reitman attached to direct. However, Carpenter said that after everything was “set to go” Chase decided he didn’t want to do a “Stooge” comedy. He wanted more of an adventure movie. Which seems odd to me because the book is NOT a comedy. I guess Goldman/Reitman assumed that’s what they’d be doing with Chevy Chase attached and adapted the book that way. I tell you what, I’d love to see a Goldman/Reitman/Chase invisible man comedy movie. I’d be 100% on board for that. But that iteration of the movie fell apart and is sadly placed on top of the giant pile labeled “movies we’ll never see”. After Goldman and Reitman left Richard Donner came on to direct and did some work but eventually he left as well. It was then Chevy Chase that brought Carpenter on to the project as director.

So this movie has an interesting back story. Clearly, it was a passion/vanity project for Chase. He controlled nearly every aspect of production. Carpenter’s interview is very informative with lots of “inside Hollywood” info.

Below is the full story. Click the images to make them BIGGER.