Snake Charmers

Sunday, August 11, 1996

Kurt Russell and John Carpenter resurrect their favorite
anti-hero in ‘Escape From L.A.’By Michael Horowitz

Summer Bruin Staff

Before there was the sequel, there was the concept.

In the years after the cult success of "Escape from New York,"
John Carpenter and Kurt Russell realized only one city could be the
logical successor to their B-movie action flick in the near-future,
demolished Big Apple: The City of Angels. The actor and director
realized that if they were to follow up their hit, they would have
to explore the disaster-stricken world of Southern California and
the deep state of denial they observed.

"It’s the greatest place to live and I wouldn’t want to move,"
smiles Carpenter, "but at the same time I’m told it’s inevitable
that the hammer of God will strike this place one day and devastate
it.

"Yet here I am by the pool," he says, joining the multitudes he
parodies in the just-released "Escape from L.A."

A little over a year ago across the Atlantic, Russell was on a
promotional tour for last year’s hit "Stargate," and he kept
getting asked when and if he was going to make an "Escape" sequel.
"Los Angeles was being hit with every disaster under the sun," says
Russell. "Finally O.J. hit the freeway, and I got together with
John and Debra."

Debra is Debra Hill, longtime Carpenter collaborator and
producer of the original $7 million "Escape From New York." The
three decided to write the project themselves to maintain maximum
creative control after they read a draft written by a hired hand.
Russell says he felt the earlier version lacked the essence of the
first film. "(The writer) did a good job on the script, but it was
like a lot of other movies you’ve seen that have been like ‘Escape
from New York,’ and a lot of movies that have characters that are
derived from Snake Plissken," he says. "It wasn’t quite right. John
and I realized we were going to have to write it, and that was
going to take time."

Actually, when they finally sat down to write it, the three
hammered out the action in under a week. "It was pretty quick. All
together four or five days, and basically we walked in with script,
producer, director, writer and actor. We thought that if we were
satisfied with the script ourselves, that that was going to be the
biggest thing. If we didn’t come up with a script we felt was
strong enough to pursue, we were going to just drop it. But we
did."

The studios bid, and the filmmakers picked Paramount. Now
five-time collaborators Carpenter and Russell are sitting down in
Beverly Hills on a sunny day nothing like the darkness that falls
on the their apocalyptic L.A. Audiences are getting another chance
to see Russell’s Snake Plissken in action; this time he’s sent into
the prison that is L.A. to retrieve a secret government weapon.

While many movies have lifted the concept of the first film, and
many more have copied the anti-hero, Carpenter and Russell are
adamant that no film can truly match their Snake Plissken.

"What none of these other movies have is the attitude of the
hero," says Carpenter. "Most action films are very patriotic,
straightforward and every action hero has a cause. They’re always
defending some poor innocent person. Even if they take the law in
their own hands, they’re the good guys.

"Our guy ­ he’s a psychopath," grins the director. "He
doesn’t care about you."

"He’s truly an underground figure," concurs Russell, who says
that studios have always been concerned with such an unlikable
hero. Not only was Snake a totally socially unredeemable character,
but there was no cause for which he was fighting.

"He didn’t have a wife and children that were burned in a
building at the beginning of the film to justify why he behaves the
way he does," says Russell.

So he and Carpenter took the studio criticisms into account, and
then proceeded to trust their initial conception. "I said, ‘I don’t
know why this is going to work,’ but I read this script and I don’t
dislike this guy,’" says Russell. "He’s got his own code. The way
he’s presented, he doesn’t go out of his way to get in your face,
as a matter of fact, he’ll go out of his way to get away from you.
But it’s when you get in his way that the anger in him comes
out."

For the first film, the duo consented to include a scene where
Snake was brutalized by the cops after a failed heist but cut it
out of the film when they deemed it unnecessary. Fifteen years
later, the studio flinched again when they read the script for
"Escape From L. A."

"It was interesting ­ after the first script, the studio
was really concerned; they wanted to infuse him with humanity,"
says Russell. "John and I said ‘Maybe times are different, we’ll
give this a shot.’

"We got about 10 pages and looked at each other and said, ‘you
know what Snake would say to this?’"

Both writers talk about the character as if he’s alive, and both
have such a grasp for his personality that they’re talking about
the exact same person. So just who’s alter-ego is he?

"I’ve always felt that Snake Plissken is a figment of John
Carpenter’s imagination," says Russell, but then he decides against
it. "An alter-ego which I share. I see it the same way. We always
know how Snake would react to something."

According to Carpenter, Russell’s crucial contribution is in the
performance. "Kurt just has this eerie sense of how to play that
character and how to play a scene," he says. He has the character
down perfectly.

Audiences can also see Russell’s influence in the wardrobe, as
the outfit Snake wears in the first scenes of the new "Escape" is
from the first feature. The black-and-white camouflage outfit had
been sitting in his closet since the early ’80s.

Russell helped design the black-and-white fatigues, which he
says didn’t exist in 1981, and was searching for shirt material
when he came across a stranger walking the street in Europe. "I saw
a guy in France and I bought his shirt from him," he laughs. "I
said ‘what kind of material is that on your shirt?’ and he didn’t
speak a lot of English and I felt the material. It was like Spandex
but different."

Fifty francs later, Russell had the material to show his
wardrobe designer, and Snake had an outfit. After the film he kept
the outfit despite requests from Planet Hollywood and others, and
decided to wear it in the first scenes the new film.

Will audiences get a chance to see him don the same outfit
again?

Russell and Carpenter are fairly oblique. "At the time we did
‘Escape from New York,’ there was no thought of a sequel," says
Russell. "When we did ‘Escape from L.A.’ a sequel still wasn’t a
thought. Now there’s some kidding about ‘Escape from Earth,’ which
would be the logical next step.

"Maybe it takes 15 years to want to do Snake, but we have a
terrific time making these movies. John and I had a blast."

Film: "Escape from L.A.," starring Kurt Russell and directed by
John Carpenter, opened Friday.

Kurt Russell helped write "Escape from L.A." along with John
Carpenter and Debra Hill as a sequel to "Escape from New York."