![]() ![]() “She was a wonderful lady and it was different working with her,” he says fondly. also marks the first time Carpenter collaborated on a score with Shirley Walker, a fellow giant in genre film and television responsible for the music in Batman: The Animated Series and many others. I'm always impressed by that.”Įscape From L.A. And their professionalism, all of them were professionals. I mean, it was just so many, like Stacy Keach. ![]() “And Cliff Robertson was fun to work with. “She's amazing on the screen,” Carpenter continues. ![]() Grier was cast to play the trans character Hershe Las Palmas, whom Plissken had formerly known in his criminal past as Jack "Carjack" Malone. “I'd always wanted to work with Pam Grier,” he enthuses. with him, the movie afforded Carpenter the chance to bring some new faces into his circle that he had yet to make a movie with. “He became a close friend.”ĭespite a lot of returning collaborators who worked on Escape From L.A. “And then, it was working with Peter Fonda,” Carpenter adds of what else that scene blessed him with. “I wanted to pull off the surfing scene, where I was asking myself how the hell are we going to do this? But the Walt Disney people solved it.” He’s referring to Buena Vista Visual Effects, the now defunct visual effects house on the film, along with CG Supervisor David Jones who executed that sequence. “I just loved doing the surfing,” Carpenter says now of the sequence. “But it all comes back to the surfing,” he laughs.Ĭarpenter is of course alluding to Escape From L.A.’s infamous scene with Plisskin and the hippie Pipeline (Peter Fonda) hanging 10 on a tsunami wave through Wilshire Canyon. kind of taps into what we're going through now, or had been going through in this country,” Carpenter says, alluding to the Trump administration’s immigrant policies. “I just like the under vibe-I just made that up, under vibe- of this thing. Because of that and the fun of the experience, Carpenters says the film remains a favorite on his resume. The director even managed to slip in some political subtext about right wing conservative autocracies and capitalism run amuck. With plenty of violence promised and the ticking clock of Plissken being infected with the potentially fatal Plutoxin 7 virus also in play, Carpenter, Hill and Russell hit just about every action genre in Plisskin’s big adventure. When Cuervo Jones (Georges Corraface), a Communist revolutionary on the island, threatens to wipe out the ruling class and capitalism with a global EMP, President Adam (Cliff Robertson) offers the yet-again-arrested Plissken a full pardon to handle the problem. And in the wake of a devastating 1999 earthquake in Southern California, Los Angeles is now an island prison for the worst of society. The final screenplay for Escape From L.A., which also included the work of producer Debra Hill, was basically a repository for all the fun things Carpenter and Russell wanted to do in a movie together, and with Plissken. “And then I’d say, ‘You write that.' And he does.” “We’d sit in a room and we would talk out a scene and act out some of it,” he explains. “I manipulated him.”Ĭarpenter remembers the two hunkering down to put their ideas to paper together. “I used his passion to do the movie to get him to write more,” Carpenter confesses. Very aware of Russell’s under the radar skills as a writer, Carpenter admits he nudged his friend into co-writing the script with him to get it made. The friends bandied back and forth for years with potential sequel ideas to no avail. As it turns out, Carpenter’s instincts were right as Russell’s snarling and surprising turn as Snake became a box office success and a cult movie icon. But Carpenter’s commitment to Russell came from their great working relationship, and subsequent friendship, from making the Elvis (1979) biopic. In fact, Bronson was the studio choice for Snake Plissken. from Paramount Home Entertainment on 4KHD for the first time ever, John Carpenter got on a Zoom with IGN to reflect on why the film remains one of his favorites to this day.įor some Carpenter context, Escape From New York and the Plissken character were born of the writer/director’s reaction to Nixon-era political shenanigans and the popularity of Charles Bronson vigilante hits like Death Wish (1974) and its sequels. With this week’s release of Escape From L.A. Both films sealed Plissken’s cinematic legacy as one of film’s grumpiest antiheroes, the biker bad boy equivalent to Clint Eastwood’s Spaghetti Western Man With No Name. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |