John Carpenter had three notable collaborations with actor Kurt Russell: Escape From New York, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China*. All three movies are masterpieces and all three movies are very different takes on John Carpenter’s central vision of masculinity. The central aspect of Carpenter’s worldview is The Work; this is nothing particularly interesting in itself in the world of cinema, putting him alongside, say, Michael Mann and as an ancestor to Carpenter’s hero Howard Hawks. What separates him from practically everyone else is his exasperation at being defined by work.
(*Neither Elvis nor Escape From LA are masterpieces, and Elvis is not notable.)
All three of the main men of these movies – Snake Plissken in EFNY, RJ Macready in The Thing, and Jack Burton of BTILC – are in their respective movies because of the work they do, and none of them particularly care about said work. Their jobs are things they all clock in and out of to make a living. The fun of comparing the movies is that EFNY is caricature, The Thing is realism, and BTILC is parody. With Carpenter’s vision, this becomes present in the movies from the bottom up; in script, in set design, in costume, and most of all, in Russell’s magnificent performances.
Snake Plissken is a comic book character come to life. His existence and world are exaggerated parodies of personal fears and anxieties; the New York of the film is right in line with Frank Miller’s vision of Gotham five years later in The Dark Knight Returns, and indeed one can imagine a conflicting, chaos-inducing media in the world outside the prison city. Snake himself is a few larger-than-life visual choices tied together; urban camouflage pants to indicate he was a soldier, a black tank top to downplay that and show he’s not actually in the military anymore, and most of all, an eyepatch to show he’s had some shit happen.
Russell plays Snake as a twelve-year-old boy’s idea of cool; distant, detached, and with a growly voice (this would go on to influence my beloved Metal Gear Solid). Snake is a deeply internal man, watching what happens around him and calculating. Russell and Carpenter agreed that, when others go rushing in, Snake generally hangs back to figure out what’s going on before running. Snake is an unabashed fantasy of being slightly selfish and operating in a world that will allow that.
His ‘job’ is, oddly enough, the only one that not only affects the plot but drives it – land in New York and rescue the president. He’s actively coerced into it, naturally; when I say he’s making a living doing this, I mean that he’ll literally be killed if he fails. Still, he attempts to get out of it multiple times, and naturally, he makes the whole thing pointless the moment he gets his freedom. Although that may also be part of the one nuance of the story – Snake is also a little outraged by the fact that cool, funny people he’s met over the film have had their lives callously thrown away, and his act is a bit of revenge for them as much as it an act of personal spite.
Macready, on the other hand, is a real person. He has no backstory – though he is implied to be a Vietnam veteran – but we can see how much he hates having to work and hates having to work here, in the snow, of all places; his first goal after finishing up is getting to his room and having a drink. He’s also just as calculating and internal as Snake – he amuses himself by playing chess, the most Normal symbol of particularly intellectual stimulation – an active need to plan and strategise, as opposed to the relative passivity of books.
Mac also lacks the superheroism of Snake; his action throughout the film is a mixture of gut instinct and fast thinking as opposed to both giving and receiving silly amounts of violence. When seeing the Thing for the first time, his first move is to tell someone to get the flamethrower, which is both fucking cool and also much more within the realm of real-world plausibility. This is also reflected in the costume; the only way you can dress as Mac for Halloween is if you have something like the flamethrower, or at least that big hat.
Jack is a much sillier, broader take on these same ideas, down to Russell using a silly John Wayne impression. The basis of most comedy is just doing the wrong thing, and Jack is, unlike the other two, a loud blowhard trying too hard to impress you with his knowledge. Famously, the basic joke of the movie is that Jack thinks he’s the hero when he’s actually the comedy sidekick; at his core, though, is a very traditional Carpenter hero; a blue collar truck driver who stumbles upon a larger conspiracy.
You see all these ideas in different forms across almost all his movies; I love looking at Halloween from this perspective because Laurie Strode brings that blue collar well-I-need-money-to-live attitude to being a babysitter, and They Live takes these ideas to an explicitly political territory as he asks who is making us work, why they’re making us work, and what consequences there are for it. These three films are particularly potent, expressing these ideas in particularly vivid ways.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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Year of the Month
We've seen this all before, and we'll see it all again.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Happy Endings, Season Two, Episode One, “Blax, Snake, Home”
“I thought the worst day of your life was the day you got that haircut that you currently have right now.”
Okay, that opening scene was unexpected.
“Should we order a movie?”
“Oh, now a brother can’t twirl?”
“That’s my version of an apology, and it was pretty heartfelt!”
“I’m not really afraid of dogs. I was afraid of what would happen to a dog if you got one.”
“Okay, we’re gonna quit while you’re behind.”
“You mind if I have a sip of your fax machine?”
“Yeah. Better chance of being black than professional.”
“I just need to go… work on my resume.”
“What about the flue, Al?”
“Snakes don’t get the flu.”
“You want to tell me about the motorcycle you bought last year?”
“Mmm? What? Run you a bubblebath?”
“You’re a lawyer and a dentist?”
“I like cleaning teeth. Sue me.”
“Sometimes I like to hang out with the brothers!”
“Why are you talking like that?”
“Because I was just hanging out with the brothers and sometimes it takes a while to wear off.”
“Crap! Damn it, I am White Darryl.”
“Give me the ground ice cream.”
“I don’t see skin colour or eye shape.”
“Gay Brad, you do not pound Brad Brad.”
“I can’t DVR those at home any more because my DVR’s filled with episodes of the The View.”
So this is the show kicked up to a new standard, and I’m surprised to find it’s basically 30 Rock with a much smaller scope of references as well as a much higher energy – it’s operating at 7/10 energy, more consistent than the first season. But it has the same basic feel of absurdist action and straightforward sitcom structure, which I like as something new.
Ahh, now we’re getting somewhere.
Although a lot of my favorite lines have been taken already.
“You know those stupid barefoot webbed running socks? They weren’t bad for your calves, they were bad for my ability to want to have sex with you.”
“Yo, Brad, if I hook you up with a partially-used Borders gift card, you think you could give me a ride to small claims court?”
Brad getting along better with Max’s group of Revenge Gays is a perfect touch given their personalities. And that reminds me…
“Ladies and gays, welcome to my new home!”
“Excuse me, but Max is the only gay aqui.”
“I don’t know, a lot of people think you’re on the low.”
“Hmm?”
In Time – It’s a’ight.
Justin Timberlake is highly charismatic, but he’s not much of an actor. Which is why he was great in the a small part in The Social Network but can’t keep our attention in this. The science-fiction high concept isn’t fully thought out, either. I like the idea of literalizing the concept of living “day to day,” but that swings wildly between Timberlake (and his mom) being the absolutely most destitute people in Dayton and perfectly average residents. The movie needs them to be more like the latter, but then individual moments of drama require them to be the other. (Also I don’t think there is supposed to be a romantic vibe between Timberlake and Olivia Wilde as his mother, but there is, which I think is again down to JT’s limitation as an actor. Kartheiser avoids this with Seyfried by being entirely sexless, same as always.) Also it has my absolute least favorite trope in action movies, where the ingenue falls in love with her kidnapper. (Ameliorated somewhat here because Seyfriend was into him before he kidnapped her.)
There are some things the film does really well. The costume and production design is top notch. Seyfried (excellent as always) looks great in that dark red bob. The cars look really cool also. And there some nice scenes here and there, such as the bank robbery (although if it were that easy, you’d think somebody would have done it before now). It’s a reasonably enjoyable movie, especially now that we’ve got our phones to distract us during the boring parts. But it’s a disappointment from writer-director of Gattaca retuning to a high-concept retrofuturist sci-fi thriller.
In Time is my go-to example for a high concept gone wrong. By the time we get to the bank robbery the movie has stopped coming up with interesting ways a world where literal life can be traded or stolen and just makes time a one-to-one for money. “It’s a reasonably enjoyable movie, especially now that we’ve got our phones to distract us during the boring parts,” is a perfect casual burn and definitely applies here.
Miami Blues – Alec Baldwin (just after Red October came out – RIP Sam Neill) is a somewhat sociopathic criminal just out of prison who comes to Miami to go on a spree. Fred Ward is the homicide detective chasing him, and not really doing a good job of it. Jennifer Jason Leigh is a college student and sex worker who becomes Baldwin’s wife without realizing what he’s up to, in part because she’s not very smart. This revels a bit too much in violence to suit my tastes, and the plot has all sorts of ridiculous elements (like Ward really not wanting any help with things, at all). Baldwin is pretty okay as our thuggish if occasionally charming crook, Ward a bit disengaged as the cop. Leigh, however, is excellent as a character who feels like she would belong at home in a Demme film. Which makes some sense as Demme is a producer and was offered the directing job to follow Married to the Mob. Alas, George Armitage is not Demme. And the DP is Tak Fujimoto (Demme’s frequent collaborator) and out of the multitude of movies and TV shows I have seen set in Miami, this one captures my memory of that city as I saw it in the early 90s (the last time I was there) better than anything else.
Spider-Noir, “Tread Lightly” – As the situation grows more complex and Ben finds himself and his secretary in the crosshairs of Silverman, he makes a fateful but incorrect decision. The second episode is either more sure footed than the first, or we know better what to expect. There is one great scene where Ben, already channeling Bogey, channels the bookstore scene in The Big Sleep. Cage is having the time of his life.
Elementary, “For All You Know” – Holmes is a suspect in a murder that happened when he was at the depths of his addiction. He didn’t do it, of course, but he cannot get past his failure to help someone who needed help, and that is far more important than the (mildly interesting mystery). Plus he needs to track down a fellow addict for help, and there is a great closing scene where Sherlock tries to convince the man to get help, but the man is pretty sure that he’s the one who will be giving the help when Sherlock falls off the wagon. Guests include Michael Weston as the addict and Richard Brooks as one of the cops who thinks Holmes is a suspect.
Miami Blues the novel is shaggy and violent and weird, the adaptation does great work paring this down into a movie while still keeping the off-kilter edge. I like Baldwin a lot in this, he’s in his manic comic mode at points and having a ball, but you’re right Leigh is the heart of the movie.
Armitage and Demme had a long collaborative relationship, and I wasn’t surprised that the latter’s sensibility seeped into this film. I really like the film, and I think it did, as in L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, do what was necessary to adapt the book into a more conventional cinematic format, but Hoke loses some definition in the translation. The subsequent novels in the series tend to focus on him a bit more, and his somewhat reluctant demeanor goes into some rather sad places as the series progresses–and if his publisher didn’t want Willeford to develop it into a series, he would have ended Mosely’s arc in a really dark, and totally subversive direction.
Must echo the other endorsements, I dunno if Baldwin was ever better; his usual magnetism is combined with a real live-wire energy that’s largely absent even from his best work on screen.
Project Hail Mary — The flashbacks keep fucking with the momentum and without someone as good as Gosling to cover for things the increasing superheroism of Grace would get even more distracting. Rocky is great though! Interesting that a story that can conceive of and realize a non-anthropocentric alien so well not only blips over the genocide of another alien species (perhaps they have it coming, but still) but uses their corpses for fuel. Perhaps this is in line with a movie that despite the planetary stakes is all about the individual, in terms of Gosling’s emotions and his friendship with Rocky (boo fucking hoo at him being Shanghaied by the way, get on the fucking ship nerd) and this really makes it lesser compared to the team efforts of The Wandering Earth and of course THE CORE. Mrs. Miller noted the latter also has THE TUCC as villain/general dick and that makes things much more interesting, never leave THE TUCC on the table.
The Empire Strikes Back — family movie night! General appreciation for Yoda being a dick, he really is hilarious when he’s introduced. My anti-Jedi leanings have me on team Luke over his annoying mentors — perhaps Vader would not be able to use Luke’s friends as bait if Luke was still with them instead of fucking off to Dagobah, hmm? You created this mess! And this is the movie that really starts it all with our galactic special family, this is great in terms of Vader and his motivations and actions but less so with Luke, who has no idea what’s up and who is not told about it, of course he’s going to disregard vague shit. Yoda tells him that trying to rescue his friends will undo what they are fighting for and this is a powerful argument and one that echoes in a lot of war movies — don’t let the personal undo the greater work. But “the greater work” is generally some larger plan or action, here Luke is being told not to help his friends so he can work on himself. That’s selfish as shit! And it only makes sense because Luke is Special. Well, not uniquely Special — “there is another,” Yoda says, a checked-out teacher already thinking about his next class. And this winds up making everyone wrong, because the Luke-Leia connection at the end of the movie is created by Luke’s impatience and failure and need for help, that last because he makes the extremely boss move of suicide rather than Dark Side. Enough of the classroom, real-world experience! Luke does not, and then he does and he grows as a result. The stupid Jedi only see one path and freak out when anyone goes off it, that’s why they’re ghosts in a swamp.
Are the astrophage intelligent, or are they basically space viruses? If the latter, you can argue that it’s no different than stopping any other disease. There is room for discussion, but the movie leaves that out. (Kind of glad that so far this space is not as in love with the movie as most, even if my criticisms are different than everyone else’s._
Gosling says “It’s a cell!” when figuring out what the astrophage is, so I am saying non-virus! And yes, it’s definitely an “us or them” situation so nuke the fuckers, but it is a tad ghoulish to use them in their own destruction, and in any case this is first contact! Like you say, I think the movie doesn’t want to think this stuff through.
The Man in the Iron Mask
1939 version; Swashbuckler Summer #4. A well-constructed, well-paced, gleefully loose adaptation that James Whale makes even more distinct with some indelible Gothic visuals: Philippe’s dungeon “kingdom,” the sadistic, parodic nightmare Louis traps him in, is some unforgettable horror, especially with Philippe thrashing in the iron mask, which dehumanizes and solemnizes him. (You can tell Whale already knew what that kind of grotesque facial exaggeration could do for both horror and sympathy, with Frankenstein in his rearview mirror.) This definitely has a bit of Zenda grafted onto it via the Philippe/Maria Theresa relationship, but I’ll admit to being charmed by that. The Musketeers are mostly relevant here as a believable source for Philippe’s goodness and fencing skills, since they collectively raised him in an almost Seven Dwarfs-like setup, so the dramatic weight of their deaths at the end doesn’t quite land, but I don’t care, because this is a total pleasure anyway. Good stuff.
Scaramouche
Swashbuckler Summer #5. This feels like it’s going to be partly one lighthearted man’s political awakening, as his passionately democratic, manifesto-writing friend is killed by order of the Crown (right on the edge of the French Revolution) and he must eventually network with the friend’s supporters to train for his revenge, but he stays narrowly focused on the personal the whole time, even when he’s literally forced into being in the National Assembly, and at the end, all the political stuff just evaporates and we’re back to who’s related to whom and who can marry whom. I don’t expect swashbucklers to be politically aware and I don’t mind them either barely addressing the larger world or doing so only as it affects the personal plot, and I’m going to watch The Scarlet Pimpernel next weekend, which is all about rescuing French nobles from the guillotine, but this just fell into the uncanny valley for me: too much about the larger scope of action for me to then blow it all off at the end. And the half-sister/half-brother fake-out is unnecessary, and the love triangle would have worked better without it.
Still: this is gorgeous, the commedia dell’arte bits are extremely entertaining, the climactic fight scene in the theater is superb and varied and makes terrific use of its setting, and Mel Ferrer brings exactly the right energy to it all as a hateable but plausibly human antagonist (having him actually fall for Aline is a nice touch). And Lénore hooking up with Napoleon at the end is a really effective sight gag.
Battleship
Watched over a phone call with a friend, since We Hate Movies is doing an episode on it. This is a catastrophe, and it’s certainly a waste of the considerable amount of acting talent floating around in it: at least Skarsgård gets to bow out early, and Neeson clearly only had to put in a few days’ worth of work. This looks like shit. It’s plotted like shit. It doesn’t make sense as an adaptation of Battleship (“Balance of Terror” is a better Battleship adaptation!), which could be fine because that’s an absurd thing to have exist anyway, but it’s also not even a good Navy movie or a good alien invasion movie. It’s not even an acceptably mediocre version of any of these things. It was 2012: had Hollywood already started forgetting how to make a dumb-but-satisfying popcorn movie?
The Man in the Iron Mask
1998 version; Swashbuckler Summer #6. Well, at any rate, Hollywood had not yet forgotten how to make popcorn movies in 1998, because for all this movie’s myriad flaws–the needless Dad’tagnan twist and Byrne’s sleepy performance in general, Depardieu’s Porthos being used almost solely for teeth-grinding comic relief, the agonizingly slow beginning–it functions. A young Leo is quite good in his double role here, vulnerable as Philippe and a callow monster as Louis (he’s maybe never better than when both his childishness and his selfishness amplify each other into something twisted, like when his voice breaks as he screams, “Wear it until you love it!” at Philippe, whom he’s consigning to a living hell), and he and Malkovich are probably the best parts of this and manage a real emotional charge in their growing father-son relationship. Decent fight scenes, and I like the way the (non-three) Musketeers’ loyalty to D’Artagnan comes into play in the climax and is something Louis didn’t count on. Not a good movie, but a movie with enough good parts to still entertain me.
Question, does anyone at least say “You sunk my battleship?” You’d think this would be a crucial close-up/trailer moment.
They do not, and you should know that I complained about this at length.
As you should.
Mean Streets – Now we’d look at a movie like this and say, well, he’s ripping off Scorsese. But Scorsese had no Scorsese to rip off! Pretty impressive. This is largely flashes of what he’d do better later, but the flashes have a gritty appeal to them all their own, like a bar fight with a long handheld shot as one character tries to maneuver the room without getting backed into a wall because he knows that’s the point he’ll really get his ass kicked.
I lost count of how many horizontal surfaces are leaped in the quest to punch somebody at seven.
MEAN STREETS is significantly enlivened by it’s understanding of urban Italian American male bonding rituals, communal notions of respect being held in codes of honor, and the conflict those values face in a broader culture of individual self actualization. It’s one of the great films about late coming-of-age in the American experience, and I think it would be just as powerful without the directorial pyrotechnics, although they are still a large part of the film’s appeal.
I had a similar response to this one, appreciation while also feeling like it was tough to really gauge having seen so many of the subsequent iterations on the theme. Would be interesting to see it again sometime though and see if I can take less baggage in.
(Coincidentally seeing a 50th anniversary screening of Taxi Driver tonight, which I’ve only seen once before)
The bar fight feels like it could have been filmed by John Cassavetes, Scorsese’s mentor, who inspired Scorsese to make Mean Streets, by saying to him, after he watched Boxcar Bertha (which Scorsese made for Corman), “Marty, you’ve just spent a whole year of your life making a piece of shit. It’s a good picture, but you’re better than the people who make this kind of movie. Don’t get hooked into the exploitation market, just try and do something different.”
I imagine Cassavettes was a tough hang at times. But his brutal honesty worked! Especially since Boxcar Bertha is better than the average Corman picture.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood – Most rewatchable movie of all time? Well, it’s up there. Fun to see this again after reading Chaos’ hypothesis that Bugliosi’s versions of events is contradictory and doesn’t account for other evidence re: the Tate/LaBianca murders and a likely botched drug deal. (I believe that Manson had formed a crazy hippie cult but he was nevertheless a criminal first and foremost.) The Spahn ranch scene is a masterpiece of tension and horror, with little details that build up the “What the hell is this?” sense of unease in the audience and Cliff. It is hilarious that anyone wanted to cancel this movie watching in 2026; you think Q.T. is being mean to these hippies, huh? You wanna know what those hippies actually DID? We have so much more going on now lol.
Into The Woods – Original Broadway cast pro-shot. Still an incredible feat of staging and narrative and the Narrator getting killed is still a brilliant and blackly funny bit of “after the first death” logic – the rules of the story are no longer in place. Lapine does a great job of choosing the “right” close-ups and cuts given the amount of performers on stage and likely limited camera set-up. (Rob Marshall, eat your heart out.)
The version with Bernadette Peters, right? I would say this even if I didn’t work in public media: Great Performances knows how to film Broadway shows. My wife’s family recorded this off of the TV and she cherished the tape for years. And we watched it with friends early during our dating period. (I think she wanted to establish I liked Sondheim before going any further.)
FWIW, I saw the show on Broadway with most of the original cast but minus Bernadette, who was by that point replaced by Nancy Dussault (a sitcom actress best known as the wife on The Ted Knight Show). She was good enough, but Bernadette is Bernadette. (Years later, we saw a revival in Central Park, with Chip Zien as the old man, briefly reprising his happy dance from the original, and Donna Murphy as the Witch, possibly the only actress for the role in Bernadette’s league and presaging her role in Tangled as basically the same character.)
Yup, that’s the one. Nice! I’ve only seen a clip of Murphy as the Witch but the interpretation with her on stilts, like a spider, was pretty unnerving and an interesting choice. There’s a rumor that Murphy actually sang some of the higher notes on “Stay With Me” for Streep in the movie but I haven’t found any substantiation.
I don’t remember the stilts, just the performance. (That was a mildly odd production, as is often the case with The Public Theater’s works in Central Park.)
If you lay the narrative of the Manson family out in a chronological narrative, it really appears that the plan was to deflect attention from an earlier drug murder, and not, as Bugliosi claimed in court, to provoke a race war. Such a realization, I feel, downplays the mystique that Manson holds in the cultural mindset, as it becomes apparent that his hold over the community was more tenuous at the time of the massacres than widely portrayed in the media. This is easily the most over-hyped crime story in my lifetime.
Manson was a fascist who thought that the “anything goes” attitude of the hippies made them perfect victims for his type of mindfuckery. My problem with Q.T. is that, yeah, Sharon Tate shouldn’t have died, but the way that he turns history into his own fantasy strikes me as, well, kind of weird.
I would have more of a problem with it if the desire wasn’t so pure, a magic trick – I can bring Sharon back to life – and Tate’s sister wasn’t so moved and effusive about the movie.
Live Music – long-time favourites Super Furry Animals playing an outdoor show in the gardens of a museum! I last saw them over 20 years ago so this was a nostalgic treat, they have so many great songs and put on an excellent show. They had a bunch of support acts but I headed there fairly late due to other commitments and only caught Baxter “son of Ian” Dury, who was also a lot of fun, charismatic and odd.
World Cup – Belgium gave Spain a good match but they’re a hard team to beat. Quite enjoyed this one as a neutral. Only caught part of England vs Norway due to the above live music, the second half was such a slog that I couldn’t be bothered to watch an extra 30 minutes (on my phone, in an overheated Airbnb room) so missed the winning goal, although I’ll try to pay more attention for the semifinal I guess.
Twin Peaks, S2 E16 “The Condemned Woman” – so ends Josie Packard, in deeply weird fashion – still not a fan of any of that plot, but that final scene definitely delivers a jolt of Lynchian oddness that the show has been lacking. Also, hello Billy Zane, and the surprisingly important Pine Weasel subplot. This is not a terrible episode, I think maybe the next one is pretty hard work but then maybe we’re back onto solid-ish ground?
Wooooooo live music! Or as they say in Wales, wwwwwwwwww lwv mwswc!
What did we play?
My wife is part of a text-based multifandom horror RPG, and she plays her character from our dormant Strahd campaign there. So for a special event, I am bringing my character into the game. It’s been ages since I did this, and I am very much looking forward to it. (The actual Barovia game is probably over, sadly.)
A little bit of Dredge, a Lovecraftian fishing game where it’s dangerous to stay out on the waters too late at night because Things will bump into your boat and slither into your hold, corrupting anything you’ve already caught. This is atmospheric and has good mechanics (it’s hard to make a non-annoying fishing minigame, let alone a full game, so this wisely keeps things simple and puts more weight on the vibes instead), but I’ve been feeling too pressed for time lately to play a lot.
I thought this one sounded right up my street but really struggled to get into it (probably not helped that I was on Game Pass at the time so it was easy enough to just give up when I started to get frustrated with it and not felt like I really owed it anything).
It is a bit meditative, so I don’t know that I’m serving it well by chopping it up into such short play sessions. I remember liking it a lot when I gave it more time before, but it’s so vibe-dependent that I can see it not standing up well to any early frustrations.
X-Men – Marvel MaXimum Collection on Nintendo Switch
Made it to the third level. This starts curiously low-energy for a Konami arcade title of its vintage, though at least the third stage does shake up the look and feel a bit. Doesn’t help that I’m playing it on my own, and that I haven’t yet find a character that feels right. I’ve tried Nightcrawler and Cyclops, but they’re no Donatello. Or Homer Simpson. Or the cowboys from Sunset Riders. Or the Ninjas from Mystic Warriors. In any event, I’m sure I’ll beat fairly soon, but I’d like to at least try the other characters before I’m done.
I’ve been putting off beating Mina the Hollower for like three weeks, so I should do that soon.
I tried out River City Girls, and it was okay until I got to the first boss and it completely kicked my ass, which made me think I need to learn some strategies or some way to play the game that isn’t just mashing punch and kick buttons.
I like this look at Carpenter and work a lot. To add to the They Live point, the conspiracy of work can only be discovered by someone who is out of work. Assault on Precinct 13 is pure work, as in survival – the pre-existing conditions of the heroes are meaningless, a prisoner and a cop are the same under the circumstances of siege (the Western influence is total, action is what counts). The Fog, in the case of Stevie Wayne, is about the breakdown of work in the face of the inexplicable — Mac and the gang are not focused on their job once Thing shit starts to go down, Stevie stays at the booth until she’s driven out — and Prince of Darkness makes this total, which accounts for its uncanny power. And In The Mouth Of Madness is about the nightmare of you becoming the work, literally.
Thought: Carpenter might have been a good choice for a Parker movie, though I am not sure Carpenter would have been engaged by that.
In terms of mechanics yes but I think Tristan nails why he wouldn’t — Parker IS the work, he disdains the unprofessional even as his independence is very Carpentarian. I think John Carpenter, the writer/director who has created incredible movies, could plan a heist; I think John Carpenter the artist has no interest in heists.
I wonder if Carpenter plays any of the video games that involve heists.
Stevie in The Fog is also a rare case of someone who actually loves their work. Sam Neill (RIP) in In The Mouth Of Madness too, but he obviously pays for that.
I struggle to imagine too many scenarios where I would fully enjoy a job, but “local radio DJ who broadcasts from a fucking lighthouse” is definitely up there.
It is an amazing job! And now I’m thinking on Carpenter the gamer, as per Simon’s post above, and I would lay money that a 2026 remake of this would have Stevie still in the lighthouse but being a Twitch streamer.
This is probably why I deeply related to Carpenter’s films given my times of underemployment/overemployment. The work is always there…
This is great, and I especially like the commentary on Snake’s costuming: I’ve seen the rule that you know a character is truly iconic if you can dress a dog up like them for Halloween and people will recognize what you’re doing, and Snake surely passes that test where, as you point out, Macready wouldn’t (sans flamethrower, anyway). The exaggeration pays off, and it’s also maybe the exaggeration that lets Snake get a kind of bitter moral victory at the end. The same kind of character in the same corrupt world, but played strayed, would probably keep his mouth shut; Snake being bigger-than-life lets him act in a way that will gloriously fuck everything up.
No backstory for MacReady? Are we not all watching the alternate cut made for TV?
https://youtu.be/S0euB529UHA
No we are not!
This clip always cracks me up, with the note obviously being to make the characters more clear in less time, and then the info dump is so dense I have no idea who these people are. Also the commenters riffing on the format for other characters in the film:
“Lars. Former Stormtrooper working for the Norwegians. can’t throw a grenade for shit either. Dead.”
“Matias. Moron Norwegian Pilot who chases Grenades. Dead.”
Year of the Month update!
This July, we’re opening up submissions for your writing on any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 1979.
TBD: James Williams: Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Jul. 10th: Gillian Nelson: Unidentified Flying Oddball
Jul. 17th: Gillian Nelson: Understanding Alcohol Use and Abuse
Jul. 19th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Guards! Guards!
Jul. 21st: Lauren James: Flowers in the Attic
Jul. 24th: Gillian Nelson: Don Bluth
Jul. 28th: John Bruni: All That Jazz
Jul. 29th: Lauren James: Ghost Story
Jul. 31st: Gillian Nelson: Big Thunder Mountain
And for August, send us your pieces on any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 2001!
TBD: James Williams: Millennium Actress
Aug. 2nd: Tristan J. Nankervis: Ocean’s Eleven
Aug. 7th: Gillian Nelson: Recess: School’s Out!
Aug. 14th: Gillian Nelson: The Princess Diaries
Aug. 16th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Mulholland Drive
Aug. 21st: Gillian Nelson: Disney’s California Adventure
Aug. 27th: Cori Domschot: The Mummy Returns
Aug. 28th: Gillian Nelson: Walt Disney Treasures
Of the three movies discussed in full here only one, Big Trouble in Little China even approaches masterpiece territory. That’s by no fault of Russell of course, but it has to be noted and underlined, so that mistake isn’t repeated in the future.