Whether he’s making movies, composing little musical stings for a streaming service, or abandoning movies altogether so he can just chill out and play video games, John Carpenter is, simply, the best. Now, thanks to the Cannes Film Festival, he’ll actually be getting a prestigious award that says as much. That comes from Variety, which says Carpenter will be the recipient of the 2019 Carrosse d’Or Award (that’s Golden Coach for you brutish Americans) at the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight event, with the French Director’s Guild referring to Carpenter as “a creative genius of raw, fantastic, and spectacular emotions.”
In its statement, the Guild offered this high-minded praise of Carpenter’s work (including Halloween and Escape From New York):
[Each of Carpenter’s films] 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.
Previous Golden Coach recipients have included Werner Herzog, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Jane Campion, Jim Jarmusch, and Alain Resnais. They’re fine, but they’re no John Carpenter.