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High Adventure in the Future
By Steve Swires
STARLOG Number 41, December 1980



In the wake of The Fog, more projects have been announced as being John Carpenter's "next film" than for anyone this side of Bo Derek. However, in spite of what you may have read elsewhere, Carpenter's next film will not be The Fan...or The Prometheus Crisis...or Diablo...or a remake of The Thing...Instead, he will continue his successful association with Avco Embassy Pictures by directing a $7 million science-fiction adventure called Escape From New York, based on a script he originally wrote in 1974.

"It was the first professional screenplay I ever wrote," Carpenter reveals from his Los Angeles office, explaining why he's decided to resurrect such an old project. "It was always a movie I wanted to make, but it was very big and I wasn't quite sure when the time would be to do it. At the moment, I have several projects in development, which means other people are writing them and they can be accepted or rejected by the producers or the studios, but they're still in development. Meanwhile, a commitment with Avco came up, and I was going to do a picture for them. However, it wasn't working out, so I suggested we do Escape instead."

Carpenter describes his new film as "a very tough and violent high adventure in the future. The year is 1997. The crime rate has increased enormously, resulting in a big war between the criminals and the United States Police Force, which is the size of the Army except it's all S.W.A.T. teams. The police win the war, but it is very costly and takes several cities with it. America becomes a police state, and Manhattan Island is evacuated and turned into a maximum-security prison that's walled off from the rest of the world. Every prisoner in the country is thrown in there and allowed to live the way they want, so it's basically hell on Earth. The government turns off the electricity, sterilizes the criminals and drops food into Central Park once a month, but otherwise leaves them on their own.

"The story concerns a rescue mission. A plane carrying the President is hijacked to New York, where it's landing inside the prison. The criminals hold him hostage, so the government has to send someone in to get him out. They send in the world's greatest criminal - Snake Plissken. The film is about what he runs into in Manhattan."

Projecting the Future

The year 1997 might seem an unlikely target date for such sweeping social changes, but Carpenter feels it's reasonable projection. "When I first wrote the script, I set it in 1982," he recalls, "but I've since realized I was being premature, so I moved it ahead 17 years from today. Go back 17 years, to 1963, and think how the world has changed. It's been subtle but significant. I know, because I grew up during that time. That's the kind of perpective I want. Things aren't too different, but they are different. It's enough distance so that some of the outlandishly fantastic stuff I'll have happening could be possible, though it won't be a fantasy like Star Wars."

Among the promised "fantastic stuff" will be "all sorts of futuristic devices and gadgets. For instance, the prison will be patrolled with infrared cameras, radar and computers. There'll also be a computer-controlled jet glider, which Snake uses to get into the prison by landing on the top of World Trade Center. There are screens inside the glider which show geometric designs of the streets below. I love gimmics like that. I also plan to 'class up' some of the weapons used in Vietnam and some of the present-day automatic weapons to make them very deadly, but not to the extent of being lasers or ray guns, which I think would be a little to far out."

Gimmics like those require complex special effects, a contingency for which Carpenter has already planned. "I've spoken with Jim Danforth and John Dykstra," he dicloses, "buy, unfortunately, Dansforth is involved with another film so he may not be able to help us. They're my first choices, because they can handle all sorts of effects."

Such grandiose plans make Carpenter's largest budget ever a nescessity, but as far as he's concerned, Avco Embassy is still getting a bargain. "In realistic terms, in today's market, $7 million is considered to be a medium budget," he admitts, "but this could cost $30 million if I went all the way with it. Obviously, I'm cutting some corners in certain areas, and I have some tricks in mind, so I'm going to apply the same techniques I've used in low-budget filmmaking as much as I can. Unfortunately, all the money won't be going on the screen, because it's a union picture and I have to play by the rules. People know who I am now, so I can't shoot non-union picture anymore.

"What I usually did before was to say: I think I can make Halloween for $300,000, and then wrote a script to fit that. This time I wrote the script first and budgeted it afterwards. I told Avco: "If you want this film, you're not going to get me for a certain amount of money. You'll have to do it for what it will cost.' And I must admitt, they came through. This is the first time in years that they've invested this much money in a movie, so they have a lot of faith in it."

Their faith is reciprocated in the confidence with which Carpenter faces his newest creative challenge. "The Fog" was the hardest movie I've ever made," he believes, "and it cost a million dollars. Escape will be 10 times more difficult then The Fog, and I have almost 10 times the budget, so I figure it will be just about as hard. However, I'm not worried and I don't feel I'm under tremendous pressure. What I do!!!! fell is a little surprised, because I didn't know I was going to do this one next. It's just sort of a happy accident."

 "Incredible idea"

The picture Carpenter thought he was going to do next was based on what he considers "an incredible idea. I worked on the script for about six month, but eventually I realized I couldn't lick the ending. Alfred Hitchcook had the same problem when he was going to make The Wreck of the Mary Deare, in which a ship was found with one man on board and everybody else gone. The mystery was what happened to them. He found there was no ending as powerful as the setup, which is what happened to me. I had a terrific set-up about a Navy experiment that took place in 1943, which was so unbelievable eerie there was nothing I could with it after that. I've told anybody else, and if you look around a bookstore you can find out what it was. I'm hesitant to say anything more, because even thought I never finished the script, I think Avco wants to do it with somebody else."

Carpenter is less hesitant to discuss the reasons he's no longer associated with two other movies he was supposed to direct, The Fan and The Prometheus Crisis. "I was going to do The Fan for the Robert Stigwood Organization," he says, "but they wanted me right away and I was busy with The Fog, so I couldn't do it. They asked me again a few months later because they'd changed director, but I re-read the script and turned it down. I felt it wasn't the right thing to do after I'd done something similar in Someone's Watching Me, which was also about a man stalking a woman. I don't want to make another one of those for a while.

"For The Prometheus Crisis, I made a pay-or-play deal with the producers and then wrote the script. I began to lose faith in them because at a certain point in our contract some of my salery was to be placed in escrow, but the date came and went and the money wasn't there. In that case, I had the option not to continue with the project. The producers said they only needed another two weeks to raise it, but the trouble was they'd been saying it for about six months while they used their money to take out big ads in Variety!!!! with my name in them. Finally, I decided that for my own career and peace of mind I had to decline to go forward with it. They still own my screenplay, though, and they're still trying to get it going. Frankly, I hope they succed, because it's actually not a bas script. It was a haunted house movie set in a nuclear plant; I would have loved to have done it."

Of Westerns & Monsters

Carpenter should have better luck with two more pending projects, the first of which is a Gothic Western called El Diablo. "I've finished the screenplay and turned it in to EMI, where the reactions is very good. I think they want to move forward with it, so if they give me a 'go' I'll do it after Escape. I just love Westerns."

He also love Howard Hawk's The Thing, so it's appropriate that he's been tapped to direct the proposed remake. "It's still in develpment at Universal, "he reports, "where it's being written by Bill Lancaster (Burt's son), who also wrote The Bad News Bears. I've read the first 40 pages, and it's mind-bogglingly good. It's not based on Hawk's film, but rather on John W. Campbell's original short story, 'Who Goes There?', which is totally different. It could be the scariest monster movie of all time, which is what appealed to me about it.

Other people were involved with it originally, among them Tobe Hooper, but things didn't work out, so the producers offered it to me. To do it the way I want will be very expensive, because I want to shoot in the artic. Also, the creature will be a great deal bigger then James Arness was, and in certain scenes it'll be even bigger than a room. I won't have a go ahead until the script is finished and Universal approves it and budgets it, so it's still a ways down the road yet."

Meanwhile, Carpenter has more than enough to keep himself busy directing Escape From New York for a planned spring 1981 release. At the time of this interview (early May), the only people definitely committed to the picture are Kurt Russell, who played the title role in Carpenter's Elvis Tv movie, as Snake Plissken, cinematographer Dean Cundey, who also shoot Halloween and The Fog, and producer Debra Hill. Principal photography is supposed to begin in August, and although some shooting will be done in New York, most of the movie will be made in California.

"The requirements of the film are such that to do all of it in New York would be rediculous, "Carpenter insists. "It all takes place at night, all the lights are out except for tourches, the streets are deserted, the building windows are broken out and there are wrecked planes and burning cars. It would be absurd to try to stage that in Manhattan, because it would add months to the schedule."

Those kinds of obstacles migh faze a lesser filmmaker, but John Carpenter simply takes them in his stride. In fact, he has no ambition to ever move beyond this type of genre work into more serious, dramatic, issue-oriented films. "I don't care about issues at all," he emphasizes. "My approach to film is purely as escapist entertainment-action-adventure fantasies with life-and-death situations. Those are the kind of movies I like to see, and they're the kind I like to make. I think I'm better at them, and other directors are better at issue films. As Clint Eastwood said in Magnum Force: 'A man's got to know his own limitations. 'Every time I start thinking I'm a great artist, I stop and realize I can do these films and have fun making them, but I've got to know my own limitations.

Critics compare me to Hitchcook, but I know that's bullshit. If I start taking myself seriously that's bullshit too. I'm just out to make a good film. I've made six films. I try my best with each one of them, and then go on to the next one. If people don't like it, I will have failed, but there are worse things in life then failing. Death and taxes are much worse."