Carpenter is an old-style supporter of his stars and his stories. ‘I think Paramount saw him as someone who knows how to make movies that are bigger than life without going overboard on the budget.,' says Debra Hill whose job was to ensure that ‘Escape from L.A.' came in exactly on the $50 million button.

Which it did. Carpenter does not seem pleased with himself. That, it seems, was the job and he did it. He is a gruff charmer and allows others to deal with the nonsense. Action directors and special talent?

‘It's all about knowing how much bam-bam you want.'

The director responsible for movies like ‘The Fog' (1980) and ‘Starman' (1984) lights yet another cigarette and is clearly not keen on the philosophy of film. He's had some recent celluloid crashes but accepts them:

‘It's easier to deal with failure when you're older. When you're young failure is devastating. You punish yourself. But as you get older you realise that a lot of what happens is out of your control.

‘I was thinking about Howard Hawks and what he went though after the failure of ‘'Land of the Pharaohs'' and I realised that maybe I've mellowed. Who knows, maybe I've just grown up.

‘After you have seen everything that can happen to you once or twice you get a perspective on yourself.'

Divorced from actress Adrienne Barbeau he married producer Sandra King five years ago he says he is a settled man -- but haunted by the past. Mainly by ‘Halloween'. He says the film does not contain the graphic violence for which it is regularly condemned. ‘What's important about the film is that there is much less violence than what you think you see. I get blamed for al the imitations of ‘'Halloween' and I don't think that's fair.

‘I don't know if it will ever end. The film was so successful it gave film distributors a new time to show movies. Halloween had been a dead period -- no pun. Now, they have a reason to get kids out to see movies.

‘I love the holiday. I love the idea of getting dressed up in masks and scaring people. As long as people want to see these kinds of films I'll make them although I won't direct another ‘'Halloween''. I have never been in a hurry to get out of that genre.I'm confident that horror films will be around longer than I will.'

What he would like to do is escape to the past:' If I had three wishes one of them would be:'' Send me back to the 1940s and the studio system and let me direct movies.''

‘In those days everything was geared to moviemaking not all the hassles we have today. I would love to have been under contract to a studio where you would be doing a Bogart picture one minute, a Western the next.

‘Those were genre movies and those are the kind of movies I love. They're the ones that last.'

As do the cult movies like ‘Escape from L. A.' Carpenter is old enough and wise enough to know that he will not be escaping anywhere else with Kurt Russell unless this outing makes adequate financial dividends as well as fans.

That is part of the joke. ‘You know that everything that's in the movie we already have in L.A. Mudslides, fire, drive-by shootings, floods, earthquakes; the movie's sort of a black comedy.

‘It's all already happened -- we're just in denial about it.'

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