On Living With Snake [Snakebit 2/Nov/1988/US] By Mike McQuay

As a property, Escape From New York has had an interesting endurance rate over the last six years or so. Its continuing popularity has always been a source of interest to me [both economically and artistically] and something that I've always wanted to examine close up. So when Judi [Raish] and Linda [Ojard] flattered me by asking me to write a piece for Snakebit, it struck me that it might be the perfect time to take a look at the phenomenon through my own involvement in it, through my skewered view, as it were.

If the dynamics of the film and book business working in concert [dis-concert] is of no interest to you, I suggest you tear out this page and use it taped to your window to keep out that little aggravating ray of sunshine that always comes in and hits you in the eye. Thanks. The rest of us will proceed. I may even have a couple of things to tell you about your favorite eye-patched hero that you didn't know.

My first association with the project that would eventually become Escape came during the summer of 1980. My editor at Bantam at the time was a lady named Karen Haas, who had just purchased one of the novels that turned out to be a series about a future private eye named Matt Swain. Karen asked me if I'd be interested in a novelization job of an unnamed film [the first thing you learn in the book business is that nobody tells you anything unless they have to] that was being done by "the guy who made Halloween." Being basically easy and agreeable little shit, I said sure. At which time she told me that fifteen other people were also up for it and thank you very much.

I never heard anything else until about four months later. I got a call from a man in LA, who asked me if I was still interested in the novelization. I said, again, sure and he gave me the job on the spot and told the title was Escape From New York. He also gave me the second rule of the book business - they need it right away. No matter that they sat on the property for five extra months while bumping percentage points from a quarter to a half and back again. They have to have the book rights away - six weeks tops, not even enough time for the contract to get written and a check made, which is rule #3 - the writer is always the last one paid.

Fine. I enjoy pressure [and money]. I said, "Sure. Send me a script." They were happy to oblige, and, in the delivery, cut another week and half off my already brief schedule.

Three things struck me upon receipt of the red-bound manuscript: one, it had a 1974 completion script that had probably been written totally ten more times since this edition; two, the script bore a strong resemblance to a film Carpenter had already made [more on this later]; and, three, the story had an anti-hero as its protagonist - usually no, no in the book business.

I rejected the script, knowing it wouldn't resemble the film that was still being shot [this was October, 1980]. They promised me another from the middleman in LA [I never spoke with Carpenter or any of his people], and while waiting for the new script, I set about trying to figure out how to expand a 120 page script into a 300 page novel. I did it by killing two birds with one stone.

I'd learned enough in script #1 to know that they'd really done nothing to expand the motivations or backgrounds of the characters [in the first script the film opens with Snake's robbing the Federal Reserve in Colorado, then being caught after a long, drawn out chase sequence where he tries to escape on his specially equipped motorcycle that expanded the Snake imagery - bet you didn't know that!], so I decided to give him good, solid motivations and set them out in the book, which served the purpose of building sympathy for him with the book reader. I finished out the process by taking Carpenter's McGuffin, the tape, and making it a harmful instead of helpful thing. In so doing, the government is not only stuck with responsibility for the ways things are [instead of out-of-control crime], but it also makes Snake a humane hero instead of a cad. And in the book, I think that's the way he should be. [Why you ask - because in a book you identify with the protagonist in ways that you don't in a film, and nobody wants to identify for any amount of time with an asshole; plus, you spend more time with a book hour-wise than you do with a film and consequently have to like the characters better]. All the extra characterization and motivation would more compensate for the extra pages.

I'd found out from Karen that I was hired because they'd read my first Swain book, so that took care of my next problem - style. I used a modified Swain style, changing from first to third person on Escape, and I think it was a good decision.

I'd also found out the story behind the film. Apparently, Escape was the first script Carpenter wrote after his film school experience. He'd been unable to sell it [probably because of natural anti-s/f bias and the cost of the production], so it simply languished. Later, he had the opportunity to revive the script as an urban drama that was eventually called, Assault on Precinct 13.

If you've never seen this film, take a look. In many ways it's superior to Escape, predating it by several years. The same situations and characters are duplicated in both films with minor changes. Carpenter does similar music in both films. The Snake Plissken character has several of the same lines in both films. Two of the actors, Frank Doubleday and Charles Cyphers from Escape play nearly identical roles in Assault.

In another week and a half another script arrived. This one was, as I suspected, very dissimilar from the first. By now, I already had a pretty good feel for Snake and his world [once I had adequately explained it to myself] and I dove in.

I spent four or five weeks in the actual writing, finishing in November of 1980. It was a relatively simple write because the story was simplistic. In fact, I found myself complicating it just for fun with subliminal subplots and by starting scenes well ahead of the action in the film. The only real problem I had was with the aforementioned McGuffin. In the film, the tape is music-only Bandstand Boogie, and believe it or not, music-only does not translate very well to the printed page. Ta ta ta ta-da, Ta ta ta ta da-da da... you get the message. So, it became necessary to change the McGuffin music. Simple enough to me - I just used the words for Satisfaction by the Stones. It fit perfectly. My new editor [I'd been kicked up to the movie tie-in department], Fred Klein, did not agree.

Fred called and told me that Bantam Books nor any combined thirty publishers could afford the royalties it would cost to to get permission to use that song. He suggested that I write one. Better still, he suggested that he write one because he always wrote skits for the reps down at the sales conferences in Florida every summer [rough work if you can get it].

That got me to the typewriter [we still used typewriters back in those days], and I turned out a wonderful little ditty called, Night Music, and sent it to Fred who then informed me that he had written a song called Gettin' Even, that was sung to the tune of Satisfaction [of course]. I argued. Fred disagreed. He turned it over to a higher authority [his secretary] to ask for her unbiased opinion as to which song was better. If there's any doubt as to which song Fred's secretary chose, get a copy of my novelization and try to remember the tune to Satisfaction.

When I finished the thing, my real problems began. Everybody wanted the right to edit, from the filmmaker on down. I went through Carpenter corrections, the LA middleman corrections, then corrections in New York by Fred [he did not edit anything out of his song, though], leaving very little of my initial manuscript. They did things like, cut out all the humor [there's nothing funny about this!] and all the philosophy [what's this shit?!], then, remembering rule #2, they proceeded to send it back to me in late April to tell me I had to hurry and get my galley corrections back in five days or they'd miss pub date in June. They were so rushed this time they told me if I couldn't get them mailed back in time, that I could call them in to somebody in production.

The beauty of every system is that it has been created by humans and has loopholes. I held my manuscript; I held it for too long and then called it in to a sweet young lady in production who was just soooo happy to meet a real writer and would you please be kind enough to put all those nasty deletions right back in that manuscript and oh yes, I'd be glad to do whatever you say and -

Voila! The butchery was done in by my heads-up trench fighting. Every unkind cut was readded to the manuscript, the thing going out exactly as written, humor and all. It was a move worthy of Snake Plissken.

Production was rushed to get it out at film release, so rushed that the first cover was taken from a still of Kurt Russell instead of the cover art, though the cover art was stuck on the second edition.

The opening was fun. We happened to be in New York when the movie premiered there in June of '81. They had a real media blitz and even had stenciled the name of the film all over the streets around Broadway. I stood in the B. Dalton's at 666 Fifth Avenue and watched people buy my book [I also watched one woman pick it up, read the last page, and put it back down - I learned my lesson about hanging around the racks]. It was fun. It also did things for me.

Escape was only my second published novel. I'd written others, but this was rushed out ahead of them because of the timing of the film release. It had an initial printing of 150,000 copies, which is great for science fiction. Within two weeks we were back to press for an additional 50,000. There were a number of overseas editions. In the book's healthy run, it's been through three American covers and four printings, the latest just last year.

As a writer, the impact was tremendous for me. The book sold well and I became more recognizable in a very short time. We had some fun Escape parties for awhile [for a time I feared my eleven year old son would become Snake; he did a great impersonation]. Then, of course, it faded.

One of the very sad things about writing is that if you do it, you usually aren't able to enjoy it once you've done it. I've never reread anything I've ever written. I daresay very few writers have. So, I've never gone back and peeked through the book again to see if it's any good. It was a fun write, but not so spectacularly innovative write since I was basically doing someone else's ideas, ideas that I would have taken in entirely different directions. It went quick; I probably had the money spent even before I got it - but then that's usually a safe bet with me.

I don't think the movie had a very successful run first time around. It did well in the big cities, then died in the heartland. It may have done well oversees, though. But for some reason, for a pretty solid cult, the story still lives and breathes. This publication is proof enough of that. Why? Maybe you guys can answer that better than me. But I'd like to take a shot at it anyway.

Snake's a loner in the Ollie North/Clint Eastwood/John Wayne mold, a singular type of individual who cuts through the bullshit to get something done. In Escape, the tangle of the city could be a metaphor for the endless red tape that seems to entangle our lives anymore, over which we are powerless to act or change anything. But the tangle isn't an obstacle to Snake. He goes in, alone, and faces up to all the pitfalls that society can dig for him. Snake is our revenge against our modern world and the new problems that it brings.

Now, add to this the idea that Snake isn't just a loner, but an outsider as well, someone who'll never fit in, and you begin to see the appeal to s/f fans who think of themselves as outside the general order of the world anyway. Snake is not a representative of society on any level. He is, above all, an individual operating under his own set of rules and ethics totally removed from the conflicting ethics of society. Ollie North may be a sociopath, but he at least knows what he wants out of life and how to get it. Snake isn't crazy like North; his ethics work on a more personal level, one on one. He is the man we'd all like to be, and he don't take shit from noooobody.

It's a simplistic definition, but, I feel, one that's on the mark. We, both unfortunately and otherwise, live with a great deal of control [for it also means protection], it sure is fun to live out Snake's life for just awhile.

I hear that Carpenter's making a sequel. Hmmm. To tell you the truth, I'd love to be connected to it. Only nobody's asked me. After living with Snake all these years, I really think I'd be able to contribute something to the man and his world. Take matches, for instance. Don't you think Snake should be able to light matches on his face?

Just a thought.

Maybe Carpenter knows what he's doing after all.