Nate Anderson 🏳️‍🌈💙💛

John Carpenter on the politics of "Escape from New York" (1981) & "Escape From LA" (1996) & who he considers to be the real enemy of America: “Most science fiction and action movies since the 80s take the point of view that the hero is usually on the side of the right wing, whether he takes the law into his own hands or not. All of these films basically have the same general idea, look at 'True Lies' (1994) by James Cameron as an example. Who were the bad guys? Cliché Persians. The enemy we fear is always the other, either from the outside, like the aliens coming down to Earth, or from the inside. In 'Escape From LA' (1996) what I really say is that what we have to watch out for is not the enemy from outer space, the enemy are the Republicans and they’re taking over the world. But that’s just because I’m from the old days, when we used to smoke dope and hate the government. In my film we have a Muslim who’s heroic, she’s ki||ed, but she’s a nice person. The biggest villain is the right wing white president. In horror movies, you always boil it down to a conflict between external and internal. You’ve got a tribe of people sitting around a camp fire and the medicine man is saying, we have all got to be afraid of whatever is out there beyond the darkness, it’s that other tribe down the river, they’re evil, they’re demons, we have to ki|| them. Now what I did on 'Escape From LA' was to create a fictional America of the future in which the country has become a theocracy and the morally guilty are deported to Los Angeles. The idea came from inverting the idea of the first movie, 'Escape from New York' (1981). New York was a prison and the rest of the country was free. In this movie the rest of the country is like Russia during the 50s, it’s walled off, and the only free place is Los Angeles. Then I’m sneaking in all sorts of references to what we want to call politically correct. There’s a movement now in America to restrict a lot of our freedoms in order to have order, we’re ready to get rid of all our freedoms, we want to be told what to do and we want the rules really clear cut. But I come from a place of arrested development as an adolescent. My whole being is, never tell me what to do. I hate being told what to do. It’s just an absolute questioning and hatred of authority.” (John Carpenter and Debra Hill's interview with Elisa Leonelli, 1996) P.S: On this day, 30 years ago, "Escape From LA" (1996) was released in the USA & Canada.