John Carpenter Tribute at the Aero Theater: "Escape from New York" & "Escape from LA"

The Famed Director Discusses the Adventures of Snake Plissken

After "Escape From New York" ended and the end credits were all done, John Carpenter again made his entrance to the front of the theater to another thunderous standing ovation. The discussion was led by a critic from the website Bloody Disgusting, and he started off with the genesis of the project. Carpenter quickly acknowledged the crowd by saying:

"Thank you for coming out to see the movie tonight, but I gotta tell ya, this is the worst fucking print of any movie I have ever seen. There's practically no color in the film! It's all pink!"

The audience laughed loudly in complete agreement. Movie prints don't get much worse than what we saw before Carpenter appeared.

The director talked about writing the script back in the early 1970's when there was a great sense of cynicism in the country about our President, and also in response to the hostage crisis in Iran at that time. John also admitted that he was inspired by two of his favorite movies back then, "Dirty Harry" and "Death Wish" (this would explain Kurt Russell's delivery of his dialogue in both movies). Those two movies involved two men who were driven to the brink emotionally, and who take it upon themselves to take vengeance on those who have wronged them. Like those characters, Snake Plissken gets the job done, and this brought a lot of satisfaction to audiences that have been exposed to the movie as no one else seemed to be accomplishing anything.

Carpenter said that he initially wanted Dirty Harry himself, Clint Eastwood, to play the role of Snake Plissken. For one reason or another, it did not work out. In fact, Carpenter had shopped this screenplay around to several studios, and they had all rejected it. Fortunately, he had a multiple picture deal at the time with Avco Embassy which had also produced another movie of his, "The Fog." Ironically, the studio wanted Charles Bronson (the star of "Death Wish") for the title role. Somehow, everything came together when former child star Kurt Russell came on board to play Snake Plissken. Kurt portrayed Snake as a very asexual human being who cares about nothing more than staying alive. In the process, he created one of the most memorable anti-heroes the movie world has ever seen.