Escape From New York

Time to go to film school. Dr. Joe Fortunato joins us Fridays at this time. Some good entertainment, some background stories on some terrific movies and just information in general. I love this movie that he's going to jump into us for us today, I should say. So Joe, kind of take it from there, my friend. Good morning, and thanks for joining us again, Joe. Good morning, Ray. Good morning, everybody. And, yeah, we do have another great movie today. In fact, I think this film qualifies as a cult classic. I know a lot of times fans of movies don't really like that designation, but I think this one fits the bill. It's the 45th anniversary of John Carpenter's Escape from New York, which was released in July of 1981, believe it or not. This was one of my favorite movies as a young guy, and I haven't seen it quite a while, so this, I think, requires a new viewing for me as well. But a lot of fun stuff. As I mentioned, it was directed by John Carpenter, written by John Carpenter and Nick Castle. The writer Nick Castle also played a pianist in the film. He's uncredited, and he previously played Michael Myers in a couple of shots. in Halloween. So an uncredited on-screen actor as well as writer, Nick Castle. The movie stars, of course, Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgne, Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrian Barbeau. That's a great cast right there. A lot of people love Kurt Russell and this kind of put him on the map as a bigger movie star. In fact, he chose this movie to kind of get away from his previous Disney image. You know, he had done a lot of Disney movies as a young actor. Entertainment Weekly ranked this movie number one on their, quote, Guilty Pleasures Testosterone Edition list. I'm going to have to check out that list. I'm curious to see what's all on there. But kind of a curious or a dubious or interesting designation for sure. If you don't know the premise, it's a dystopia in 1997, so one of those movies where the future is already in our past, a soldier turned bank robber. is tasked with rescuing the U.S. president after he crashes into Manhattan. Well, why is that special? You ask, well, Manhattan has been turned into a giant maximum security prison, the whole island of Manhattan. So it's a pretty tense, very interesting concept. It had a very low at the time budget of $6 million, almost $7 million. That budget was the largest that John Carpenter had ever worked with up to that point. And as I mentioned, Kurt Russell stated that he kind of wanted to shake off his Disney image. So he took on the role of Snake Pliskin, which I think is one of the greatest character names of all time, Snake Pliskin. He said that this is his favorite of all of his films, and the Snake Pliskin is his favorite of all of his characters. So kind of interesting with a story and career like Kurt Russell. John Carpenter originally wrote this film.

between 1974 and 1976 as a reaction to the Watergate scandal. So there's sort of an undercurrent political tinge to it as well. No studio wanted to make it. They thought it was too dark and too violent. That sort of changed after he had success with Halloween in 1978. He couldn't quite write his ticket, but he certainly doors open for him after that as well. Kurt Russell apparently turned down the role of Buck Rogers in Buck Rogers in the 25th century, which was the pilot film from 1979 that went on to become the series, when John Carpenter pitched the idea of Snake Pliskin to him a couple of years earlier making him or when he was directing him in the TV movie. Elvis. So let me just re-say that again. I was kind of muddy there. John Carpenter was directing him in the movie Elvis, and that's when he mentioned Snake Pliskin to him. And Kurt Russell loved the idea, and he bailed on playing Buck Rogers, which could have been a very interesting role for him. You know, when you talk and Joe mentioned, Kurt Russell wanted to do this to kind of break out of those computer wore tennis shoes, things with Disney and everything. But I remember being a movie fan in the early 80s for this movie and shaking my head and saying, Kurt Russell, he's going to play this type of character. But to Joe's point, he really knocked it out of the ballpark, Joe, with Snake Pliskin. Yeah, and he really took ownership of the character. The Snake Pliskin eyepatch, which is a very defining look of the character. That was suggested by Kurt Russell. He decided to wear the eye patch at the last second before shooting started, and he didn't tell John Carpenter beforehand. But Carpenter liked the look of the character, so they kept it. In fact, Kurt Russell found it necessary to remove the eye patch between takes because wearing it gave him... affected his depth perception, so he couldn't see very well with the iPads, John, but nonetheless, he did a great job with it. The opening narration and the computer's voice in the first prison scene is done by an uncredited Jamie Lee Curtis, which is kind of cool, of course, knowing that Jamie Lee Curtis was John Carpenter's muse, if you will, in Halloween just before that film. The model of the city said, the model of Manhattan, was repainted and reused later for a little movie called Lade Runner a few years later. So another kind of interesting tidbit about the film. A lot of casting stories here. Studio executives wanted Tommy Lee Jay Jones for the role of Snake Pliskin. They didn't think Kurt Russell was right, kind of like you said, Ray, based on his prior work. They also wanted to look at Charles Bronson for that role. John Carpenter refused saying that he was too old. Other people that were kind of approached to play Snake Pliskin were Nick Nolte and Jeff Bridges. Chris Christopherson was considered a possible candidate, but he was not approached even because of the failure of his movie Heaven's Gate, which is a story for another time. And then finally, Patrick Swayze was considered for the role.

of Snake Pliskin as well. So a lot of interesting casting choices. Warren Oates, who we just talked about a couple of weeks ago when we discussed Stripes, was originally set to play the brain, but he took ill and he couldn't do it, so he recommended his friend Harry Dean Stanton for the part. And sadly, Warren Oates would die later that year by a premature heart attack. And finally, you know, I mentioned all those tough guys, but like I said, Carpenter dismissed some of them as just being too old like Bronson or just not right for the part. And then finally, in terms of casting, Nick Castle wrote the part of Cavy for Mickey Rooney. Now, he didn't get that role, but that would have been kind of an interesting late in life role for Mickey Rooney as well. Yeah, and of course, Cabby was, what, Ernest Borgman, right? Yeah, correct. Yeah, good stuff. Escape from New York. Joe, let me ask you this, and I can't remember, because it was real success. Did they ever do a follow-up because oftentimes you'll see a successful, did they ever do like Escape from New York, too? Did they ever do anything like that? No, but they did do escape from Los Angeles or escape from L.A. So, yeah, that's a sequel. And it came out, you know, kind of a few years later. It was later than a normal sequel. It wasn't just a year or so after that. It's a great movie, yeah, for sure. And like Joe said, he tapped my interest for sure. I'm going to go back. I think I'm going to put it on this weekend and watch it because I remember loving this thing in the early 1980. Joe and a little tidbit with me, it was one of the very first, I remember this, VHS tape rentals when I went to the rental place to rent it on VHS, Escape from New York. Those are good times, weren't they? They were. All right. What do you got going on in your website or for your appearances? What do you have going on? Well, I've got a couple of things coming up in a few months, so they're not right away, but you'll definitely want to start saving the dates. Go to my website, jofortunato.net. And you'll see some of the events on the events page. And we'll be going to Gilles again to do a Fortunato Film School. We're going to be doing Rocky, which is the 50th anniversary of Rocky this year. That's November 7th. I'll also be doing a lecture at the Green Branch Library in October, October 24th, talking about the history and the legacy of the universal monsters, you know, Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, all that kind of stuff. So in time for Halloween, that'll be happening. Save those dates. Go to my website, joe fortunato.net and check them out. All right, Joe, good stuff this morning. Great movie. Good pick, my friend, and we'll do this again next Friday. Thanks for the time, Joe. Okay, I look forward to it. See you then. For more interviews on 93.5-1590 WAKR, tune in to the Ray Horner Morning Show Monday through Fridays between 6 and 9 o'clock and listen for more interviews at wakr.net and our WAKR app.