From Pharr Out! #1, the Interview with Mike McQuay, the ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK
novelist.
by Kim August
Planning his ESCAPE...
McQuay initially
sparked my curiousity via his novelization of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. Landing the
job was easy, seeing it through was something else entirely.
“I’d gone to work for Bantam in 1979 on a series of books called Matthew
Swaine. They’re detective stories set in a city kind of like Dallas about 50
years from now in a city that is bankrupt. Goods and services are done on a
one-on-one basis. You have to pay the firemen to come put out the fire and the
like. It’s about a private eye in that time, kind of Chandleresque, but maybe
more of a cyberpunky style.
"I think I invented Cyberpunk years
before Bill Gibson did. I just didn’t have the guts to follow it through! In one
of the Swaine books, I have him actually going into a living computer and
becoming a part of it. The gritty and deteriorating conditions were all a
product of this and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.
“So I was was writing these
Swaine books and my editor called me and said she had suggested me for this
movie project that they thought the Swaine style might translate very nicely to
this story. And I got involved at that point I got the script, it was an old
script.So I looked at a very early script which was quite different from the
movie that was actually made. And I said ‘Well, yeah this could be fun,'" the author recalls. “So they sent the Swaine books out to
Los Angeles for the final decision, and bascially they thought the style that my
detective fiction was written in was perfect, so I got the job. I just wrote it
in a modified Swaine style. I also worked from later scripts, they were still
filming while I was still writing.”
McQuay's encounters with Snake
All Snake fans
know that his bank job and subsequent arrest never made the final cut of the
film, but it is in Mike's book. “I was really surprised to find the movie
starting at Chapter Five. I like the opening that was not included, because it
showed Snake having a little bit of compassion and that’s the part that they cut
from the movie. There’s obviously the difference between books and movies,” he says. “It’s pretty evident in the novelization that
Plissken is a protagonist in every sense of the word. In the movie he’s just a
typical anti-hero that you just can’t do in a book because nobody would want to
sympathize with that character for very long. And the difference between the
book and the movie comes down to the McGuffin. The tape in the movie, he took
the tape that could save the world and destroyed it. Giving the president
Bandstand Boogie. And in the book that song...” he says with
hints of laughter. “I couldn’t use “Bandstand Boogie”. I mean what would
you put down in the book: ta-da, dada... tadadadat... So I thought of
“Satisfaction” by the ROLLING STONES which was perfect. And they said “No way
can we get the rights to this! The royalties would be out of hand, so I should
write a song. I wrote this song called “Night Music”. I sent it in and my editor
Fred Klein, he wrote a song called “Getting Even”.
And I liked my song
better than his song. He said ‘No, I write all the songs for the trade shows. I
write all the songs for the songs, I write all those, I’m great at this.’ he
said ‘I tell you what I’m going to go an uninvolved source and it was his
secretary. So “Getting Even” appears instead of “Night Music” or “Bandstand
Boogie.”
We were talking about why Plissken and
ESCAPE remains popular and Mike has his own theory. “I discovered
something really simple when I was in my ten years as a Science Fiction writer.
Science Fiction celebrates the triumph of the individual over his society, and
mainstream fiction celebrates the fact the we’re all the same, we’re all alike.
If that’s the case and my theory is correct; then it’s seems to me that Plissken
is the ultimate anti-establishment hero. He’s the fourteen year old that thumbs
his nose at everybody. If you look at a lot of Science Fiction you’ll find that
this is a basic theme. I think Snake Plissken represents that really well for an
audience. Science Fiction readers, at least those I see at conventions, don’t
see themselves as part of the mainstream. I see the loners, and I see that a lot
of the hardcore fans function well around themselves, but not in society as a
whole. And I think that’s Plissken.”
Mike kept
tabs on the ESCAPE fandom which at the time of this interview consisted of SNAKE
BIT magazine (which is still in existence). So what was it like to see how other
people use his interpretation of Snake. “I’ve read some other stories and
I think it’s fine. For me, this is a real joy because I wrote the book more
emotionally than they did the movie. Whenver I see other writers interpreting
the characters, they always interpret Snake emotionally also. A lot of stories
I’ve seen write him the way I wrote the character, so to me that is flattering.
I think it’s fun. It’s cool that people are still keeping it going.”
Author’s Note: Mike McQuay passed away about six months after this interview
was conducted.
Snake Bit the Snake fanzine mentioned during this piece
is still available please email me for the contact address.
“I’d gone to work for Bantam in 1979 on a series of books called Matthew
Swaine. They’re detective stories set in a city kind of like Dallas about 50
years from now in a city that is bankrupt. Goods and services are done on a
one-on-one basis. You have to pay the firemen to come put out the fire and the
like. It’s about a private eye in that time, kind of Chandleresque, but maybe
more of a cyberpunky style. 
