Escape from New York

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John Carpenter's Escape from New York
theatrical poster
Directed by	John Carpenter
Produced by	Larry J. Franco Debra Hill
Written by	John Carpenter Nick Castle
Starring	Kurt Russell Lee Van Cleef Ernest Borgnine Donald Pleasence Isaac Hayes Harry Dean Stanton Adrienne Barbeau Season Hubley
Music by	John Carpenter Alan Howarth
Cinematography	Dean Cundey Jim Lucas
Editing by	Todd Ramsay
Distributed by	AVCO Embassy Pictures
Release date(s)	July 10, 1981
Running time	99 min.
Language	English
Budget	$7,000,000 (est.)
Followed by	Escape from L.A
Official website
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

John Carpenter's Escape from New York is a 1981 science fiction action film directed and scored by John Carpenter. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Nick Castle. Set in the near future where crime in the United States is so bad that Manhattan Island in New York City has become a maximum security prison. Ex-soldier, now legendary fugitive "Snake" Plissken (Kurt Russell) is given 22 hours to find the President of the United States (Donald Pleasence) who has been captured by inmates after his plane crashed on the island.

Carpenter originally wrote the film in the mid-1970s as a reaction to the Watergate scandal but no studio wanted to make it because it was deemed too dark and violent. After the success of Halloween, he had enough clout to get the film made and shot most of it in St. Louis, Missouri where a significant portion of the city had been burned out in 1976 during a massive urban fire on a total budget of around USD $7 million.

The film was commercial hit, grossing over $50 million worldwide. It has since developed its own cult following, particularly around the anti-hero Plissken. A sequel followed, Escape from L.A. and a remake has been tentatively announced on March 13, 2007 in Variety magazine with actor Gerard Butler to play Plissken.

Contents 1 Tagline 2 Plot 3 Production 4 Reaction 4.1 Box office 4.2 DVD releases 5 Remake 6 Trivia 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Tagline

The year is 1997. The Big Apple is the world's largest maximum-security prison. Breaking out is impossible. Breaking IN is INSANE.

[edit] Plot

The movie is set in a dystopian then-future 1997 where Manhattan Island has been converted into a maximum security prison. The entire island is surrounded by a containment wall and inside, the city is a degrading ruin where the inmates have created their own world from which they can never leave. A crisis arises when Air Force One is hijacked by leftist terrorists opposed to the President's police state regime and crash the plane into the city. The President (Donald Pleasance) manages to escape the doomed plane in an escape pod, but he is soon captured by the inmates.

Leaving his bunker on Liberty Island, Police Commissioner Robert Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) goes to the prison island to negotiate the President's release, but the inmates refuse to give him up. Hauk's next option lies in a newly arrived prisoner, "Snake" Plissken (Kurt Russell), a decorated Special Forces combat pilot who was captured after robbing the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland. Hauk offers Snake a deal — go in and rescue the President and more importantly, retrieve a cassette tape that contains the secret to nuclear fusion technology before the important "Hartford Summit" commences in 24 hours. If successful, he'll receive a full pardon. Snake reluctantly accepts the deal, but to secure his help, Hauk has him secretly injected with micro-explosives that will kill him in 22 hours. When he learns he has been tricked, Snake threatens to kill Hauk when he gets back.

Snake sneaks into the city with a glider which he lands atop the World Trade Center. He soon locates the wreckage of Air Force One and the President's escape pod, but the leader himself is gone. The President was wearing a life-monitor bracelet at the time of the crash and Snake tracks the signal down to a movie theater where he meets Cabbie (Ernest Borgnine). Cabbie knows of Snake's criminal exploits which has made him a legend in the underground and offers to help him. Snake ignores him and heads to the theater basement. Locating the signal, Snake finds the bracelet presently on the wrist of an inebriated bum who declares he's the "new" President.

Snake leaves to search the streets, but is soon attacked by the "Crazies" — insane sewer-dwelling cannibals. Cabbie later comes to Snake's rescue and takes him to see Brain (Harry Dean Stanton), a wise inmate who has made the New York Public Library his personal fortress. Brain is revealed to be Harold Helman, a former partner of Snake's who double crossed him. Brain tries to redeem himself by telling Snake that the "Duke of New York" (Isaac Hayes) has the President, and that he plans a big walk-out across the 59th Street Bridge with the President as a human shield. The Duke unexpectedly arrives to get a diagram of the land mines that guard the bridge and Snake forces Brain and his girlfriend Maggie (Adrienne Barbeau) to lead him back to the Duke's compound. After stealing a car and dodging the Duke's thugs, Snake finds the President is being held in a subway car, but his rescue fails and Snake is captured.

Later, the Duke gathers his people and announces the walk-out to thunderous applause. But first, he offers the dramatic death of Snake Plissken. Snake is shoved into an arena to fight with a power-house brute (played by professional wrestler Ox Baker). Meanwhile, Brain and Maggie trick the Duke's men, gain access to the President and kill the guards that have been assigned to him. They free the President, acquire the important cassette and quickly flee to escape New York with Snake's glider. Meanwhile, Snake defeats his opponent and impresses the crowd. The Duke is furious, but not nearly as so as when he learns the President has escaped with Brain. He rounds up his men to chase the President down.

In the confusion, Snake slips away and manages to catch up with Brain, Maggie and the President at the WTC, but during their attempted get-away, a gang of Crazies push Snake's glider off the building. Snake and the others soon find Cabbie and Snake takes the wheel of his cab, heading for the 59th Street Bridge. The Duke gives chase in his Cadillac. As they drive over the bridge, Snake hits a land mine and the cab is destroyed. Cabbie is also killed, but Snake tells the others they have to keep moving. Eventually, Brain steps on a mine and is killed as well. Maggie stays behind to mourn her lost lover and face the Duke herself in a suicidal last stand while Snake and the President keep running.

When the Duke arrives he runs Maggie over and crashes his car. Snake and the President soon reach the containment wall where guards lower a rope. As Snake waits to be lifted, the Duke attacks him. But, when the Duke turns to grab the rope he is gunned down by the President who exults in getting revenge on his captor. Snake is then lifted to safety and the implanted mini-explosives deactivated.

As the President prepares for a televised speech, he thanks Snake for saving him, but doesn't show much emotion for those who died during the rescue. Snake begins to leave passing Hauk on the way out. Hauk asks Snake if he still wants to kill him where Snake replies that he's tired and may do it later. The President's speech commences and he offers the content of the pre-recorded cassette to the summit. To the President's embarrassment, the tape has been switched for a cassette of Cabbie's favorite swing music. As Snake leaves the prison, he tears apart the all-important nuclear fusion tape which he'd switched earlier.

[edit] Production

Carpenter originally wrote the screenplay for Escape from New York in 1976 during the time of the Watergate scandal. Carpenter told Starlog magazine, "The whole feeling of the nation was one of real cynicism about the President. I wrote the screenplay and no studio wanted to make it"^{[citation needed]} because, according to Carpenter, "it was too violent, too scary, too weird."^[1] He has also been inspired by the film Death Wish which was very popular at the time. However, he didn't agree with the film's philosophy but liked how it conveyed "the sense of New York as a kind of jungle, and I wanted to make an SF film along these lines."^[2]

Carpenter had just made Dark Star but no one wanted to hire him as a director so he figured that he would make it in Hollywood as a screenwriter. The filmmaker went on to do other films with the intention of making Escape later. After the smash success of Halloween, the small studio of Avco-Embassy signed him and producer Debra Hill to a two-picture deal. The first film from this contract was The Fog. Initially, the second film that he was going to make to finish the contract out was The Philadelphia Experiment but because of script-writing problems, Carpenter junked it for this project. However, Carpenter felt that something was missing and remembers, "This was basically a straight action film. And at one point, I realized it really doesn't have this kind of crazy humor that people from New York would expect to see."^{[citation needed]} He brought in Nick Castle, a friend from his film school days at University of Southern California. Castle invented the Cabbie character and came up with the film's ending. While many sources write that the film's production budget was $7 million, John Carpenter himself says the budget was more around $5.5 million.

The film's setting proved to be a potential problem for Carpenter. How could he create a decaying, semi-destroyed version of New York City on only a budget of $7 million? The film’s production designer, Joe Alves was looking for an old bridge to double for one in New York and went with Carpenter to St. Louis to inspect a bridge and walk the streets. The bridge portrayed as the "59th St. Bridge" is actually the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, famous for its 22 degree bend in the middle of the bridge (The bridge connects Missouri to Illinois and is now a bicycle-pedestrian bridge.). While there, they noticed all the old buildings "that exist in New York now, and have that seedy, run-down quality that we’re looking for," Alves said at the time.^[3] East St. Louis, Illinois (essentially a large ghetto across the river from the decidedly more wealthy St. Louis proper) had been burned out in 1976 during a massive urban fire. Carpenter and his crew convinced the city to shut off the electricity to ten blocks at a time at night and shot most of the movie in the summer of 1979 and 1980. They even found an exact replica of New York's Grand Central Station that was deserted and unused. It was a tough, demanding shoot for the filmmaker as he told Starlog, "We'd finish shooting at about 6 am and I'd just be going to sleep at 7 when the Sun would be coming up. I'd wake up around 5 or 6 pm, depending on whether or not we had dailies, and by the time I got going, the Sun would be setting. So for about two and a half months I never saw daylight, which was really strange."^{[citation needed]} In addition to shooting on location in St. Louis, Carpenter also shot parts of the film in Los Angeles (shooting interior scenes on a soundstage and the final scenes at the Sepulveda Dam, in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California.), New York and Atlanta (to utilize their futuristic-looking rapid transit system).

When it came to shooting in New York City, Carpenter managed to convince the city officials to gain access to Liberty Island. He said, "We were the first film company in history allowed to shoot on Liberty Island, at the Statue of Liberty, at night. They let us have the whole island to ourselves. We were lucky. It wasn’t easy to get that initial permission. They'd had a bombing three months earlier, and were worried about trouble."^[4]

Carpenter was interested in creating two distinct looks for the movie: "One is the police state, high tech, lots of neon, a United States dominated by underground computers; that was easy to shoot compared to the Manhattan Island prison sequences, which had few lights, mainly torch lights, like feudal England."^[5]

Avco-Embassy Pictures preferred either Charles Bronson or Tommy Lee Jones to play the role of "Snake" Plissken to director/co-writer John Carpenter's choice of Kurt Russell, who at the time was trying to overcome his "lightweight" screen image gained through his appearance in several Disney comedies. Carpenter refused to cast Bronson on the grounds that he was too old. At the time, Russell described his character as "a mercenary, and his style of fighting is a combination of Bruce Lee, the Exterminator and Darth Vader, with Eastwood’s vocal-ness."^[6] All that matters to Snake, according to the actor, is "the next 60 seconds. Living for exactly that next minute is all there is."^{[citation needed]} British actor Donald Pleasence plays the President of the United States without putting on an American accent. The United States Constitution requires that the President be a "natural-born citizen of the United States" (essentially, a citizen by birth and not naturalization). Pleasence came up with an explanation for how the character came to be both born in the United States and have an English accent, but Carpenter said that film audiences would not care and would just accept what was depicted.

Certain matte paintings were rendered by James Cameron, who was at that time a special effects artist with Roger Corman's New World Pictures. When Snake is piloting the glider into the city, there are three screens on the control panel displaying wireframe animations of the landing target on the WTC and surrounding buildings. What appears on those screens was not done on computer. Carpenter wanted "high-tech" looking computer graphics, which were very expensive at the time (even for such a simple animation). To get the animation he wanted, the effects crew filmed the miniature model set of New York City they used for other scenes under blacklight with reflective tape placed along every edge of the model buildings. Only the tape shows up and appears to be a 3D wireframe animation.

[edit] Reaction

[edit] Box office

The film grossed $25.2 million in American theaters in the summer of 1981, with same amount grossed in foreign markets, making an over $50 million mega box-office hit in ratio to John Carpenter's production budget of $5.5-7 million.

[edit] DVD releases

Escape From New York has been released twice on DVD, both by MGM. One is the bare bones edition containing just the theatrical trailer. The other version is the Collector's Edition, a two-disc set features a newly remastered transfer with a new 5.1 audio track, two commentaries, one by John Carpenter and Kurt Russell and the other by Debra Hill and Joe Alves, a making-of featurette, a comic book, and a 10 minute deleted opening sequence.

The cover art on the DVD release for Escape From New York features Snake Plissken in front of New York City engulfed in flames. Snake is holding a gun in his right hand, and his left biceps is exposed. On his arm is a snake tattoo, but in the movie, a different snake tattoo only appears on his stomach while his left arm is conspicuously blank. He also holds a much different gun; a rifle as opposed to a silenced Ingram MAC-10.

[edit] Remake

According to a March 12, 2007 article in Variety magazine, Gerard Butler is close to signing a deal where he will play Snake Plissken in a remake of Carpenter's movie.^[7] Neal Moritz will produce and Ken Nolan will write the screenplay which will combine an origin story for Plissken with the story from the 1981 movie. Although, Carpenter has hinted that the film might be a prequel.^[8] An article in the Hollywood Reporter revealed that New Line Cinema has acquired the rights to the film from co-rights holder StudioCanal who will control the European rights and Carpenter who will serve as an executive producer and is quoted as saying, "Snake is one of my fondest creations. Kurt Russell did an incredible job, and it would be fun to see someone else try."^[9] Russell has recently commented on the remake and his thoughts on the casting of Butler as Plissken: "I will say that when I was told who was going to play Snake Plissken, my initial reaction was 'Oh, man!' [Russell winces]. I do think that character was quintessentially one thing. And that is, American."^[10]

[edit] Trivia

• William Gibson credits the character Snake Plissken as an inspiration for his character "Armitage" in the novel Neuromancer. In that novel, Armitage forces the protagonist to cooperate in a manner similar to the way Snake's cooperation is coerced ^[11].
• In the Korean dub of the film, Snake Plissken was called "Cobra", while in the Italian version, he was called "Hyena".
• The Duke's Cadillac Fleetwood with the fender-mounted chandeliers is a direct influence in the art car community.
• Escape From New York is a legendary pizza parlor on Portland, OR's artistic 23rd Avenue. It features huge wall murals with a New York City theme and pizzas (whole or by the slice) with slices over a foot in length. It's popular among Portlanders and tourists from all walks of life. They also opened a similar parlor in San Francisco, which has expanded into five locations.
• Jamie Lee Curtis has an uncredited part as the voice-over narrator in the intro, as well as providing a computer voice. Producer Debra Hill is also credited as a computer voice. IMDb entry
• The woman in the diner "Chock Full O'Nuts" is played by Season Hubley. Besides being the sister of actor Whip Hubley, she was Kurt Russell's then-wife. Also, her name in the novel was "Maureen."
• Snake Plissken was the inspiration for Solid Snake, hero of the Metal Gear series, and the plot was also the inspiration for Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (sneak into an indomitable fortress to rescue a VIP and an important tape/cartridge that determines the fate of the world). Furthermore, in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Solid Snake goes by the alias of Iroquois Pliskin. Metal Gear also uses the same font in its logo for the first game as Escape From New York. There are several other references to Escape from New York in the Metal Gear series. Foxdie, the nanomachine virus that was secretly injected into Solid Snake before his mission - so that he could spread it among the terrorist group Foxhound - is reminiscent of the deadly shots administered to Pliskin as an incentive for him to save the President. Otacon, the scientist ally of Solid Snake is based on Brain. In every Metal Gear Solid game, there is a part where the main character is left with nothing after being knocked out and tortured, very similar to how Snake Plisskin escaped from The Duke. A mined area is also a trend in the Metal Gear series. In a trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4, of a fairly jokey atmosphere has Solid Snake sit down in a deck chair much like Snake Plissken does in Escape from New York and L.A. Also, Lee Van Cleef, who starred in the film, serves as the basis of the MGS villain Revolver Ocelot, for his portrayal of "Angel Eyes" in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
• Although the official movie poster depicts the broken head of the Statue of Liberty lying in the street, the statue was shown to be intact in the film.
• The song on the cassette tape that is played at the end of the movie is "Bandstand Boogie" by Les Elgart.
• Rock band Motley Crue said in their 2001 book "The Dirt" that when they were living together in the early 80s, they would watch Escape from New York over and over, and that it was the inspiration for their image at the time.
• The Duke's arena, where Snake battles Slag (real-life wrestling champ Ox Baker) to the death, was filmed at the famous Shrine Auditorium, located near John Carpenter's movie-making alma matter, USC.
• The young scientist, Cronenberg, is named after fellow motion-picture director David Cronenberg.
• Bill Bartell was the pilot in the glider sequence at the start of the movie. He sold the glider to the production company, and then flew it. The glider used had the designation N2927B and was a Romanian made IS28-B2.

[edit] References

1. ^ Yakir, Dan. "'Escape' Gives Us Liberty", New York Times, October 4, 1980. Retrieved on 2007-03-10.
2. ^ Maronie, Samuel J.. "On the Set with Escape from New York", Starlog, April 1981. Retrieved on 2007-03-10.
3. ^ Maronie, Samuel J.. "From Forbidden Planet to Escape from New York: A candid conversation with SFX & production designer Joe Alves", Starlog, May 1981. Retrieved on 2007-03-10.
4. ^ Osborne, Robert. "On Location", Hollywood Reporter, October 24, 1980. Retrieved on 2007-03-10.
5. ^ Osborne, Robert. "On Location", Hollywood Reporter, October 24, 1980. Retrieved on 2007-03-10.
6. ^ Hogan, Richard. "Kurt Russell Rides a New Wave in 'Escape' Film", Circus magazine, 1980. Retrieved on 2007-03-10.
7. ^ Fleming, Michael. "Butler has 'Escape' plan", Variety, March 12, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-03-16.
8. ^ Epstein, Daniel Robert. "John Carpenter", SuicideGirls.com, March 20, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-03-23.
9. ^ Kit, Borys. "New Line cuffs 'Escape' redo", Hollywood Reporter, March 16, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-03-16.
10. ^ Nashawaty, Chris. "Remake the Snake?", Entertainment Weekly, March 20, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-03-23.
11. ^ Larry McCaffery, "An Interview with William Gibson conducted by Larry McCaffery"

[edit] External links

• The Escape From New York & L.A. Page - A Tribute to Snake Plissken
• Escape from New York at the Internet Movie Database
• Escape from New York at theofficialjohncarpenter.com
• Escape from New York credits and reviews