I stayed up late last night watching one of the greatest cinematic classics featuring a futuristic dystopia. ‘Escape From New York’ was a campy cult action movie when it first dropped. It was directed by JOHN CARPENTER whose claim to fame was the thriller ‘Halloween’.
In this film CARPENTER tells the story of a famous war hero turned criminal named Snake Plisken who is sent onto the prison colony of Manhattan island to rescue the president of the United States. In a scene that is so eerily omniscient of September 11th, 2001 the president’s plane has been hijacked and crashed into a skyscraper by nuclear arms anti-proliferation terrorists. Just prior to the crash the president is evacuated from the plane via an indestructible pod. Once the pod has landed the president is captured by the gang leader who runs the prison colony, the Duke of New York.
‘Escape From New York’ is fun and farcical. The movie was made in 1980 and they imagined that twenty years in the future we would still be using cassette tapes for audio recordings. The cellular phones and short wave radios were all fucking ginormous and even the government computers in the future had advanced little farther than the ENIAC machines of our grandparent’s recollection.
Despite the look of the movie being hokey and remarkably low budget for even an early 80’s flick this shit is one of my favorite joints of all time. First of all, JOHN CARPENTER is one of the GOAT filmmakers along with KUBRICK, LUCAS, SPIELBERG and my nigga JOHN STAGLIANO (peep the Buttman in Budapest series).
Secondly, this movie has a lineup of sick ass actors. KURT RUSSELL plays the lead role of Snake Plisken. FYI, RUSSELL is one of the best B movie actors in the game. He’s elevated B movies to A- minus status.
Black Moses makes an appearance as well. Before ISAAC HAYES assumed the role of the chef on South Park he played the fuck out of the Duke of New York.
When we were going all 1980’s teen wood crazy I neglected to mention my brunette babysitter ADRIENNE BARBIEU. She’s up in this piece with the tittays just as big and beautiful as ever. Wait until you see how ol’ girl gets merc’ked by the Duke. She literally has her wig peeled. This is a JOHN CARPENTER joint so you know he has to put a little something gruesome into his flicks. Just like I have to talk about sneakers and doodee.
The third important factor I love about this film was CARPENTER’s attention to NYC details. He captured a nice feel for some of New York’s long gone landmarks. Namely the Twin Towers and the old Madison Square Garden that was up by Lincoln Center.
Lastly, CARPENTER killed shit with his funky theme song. You can’t tell me this shit ain’t hardbody.
‘Escape From New York’ title track
Has anyone sampled this shit already? My nigga JOELL ORTIZ needs to get up on that joint and spit some escape from New York firestarter lyrics. And you need to NetFlix ‘Escape From New York’ so you have some good shit to hold you down on a wind-chilled weeknight.
I’ll send my DVD copy to the first person who tells me the real name of the actor who played the taxi dude that drives Snake around NYC.
Cappadonna.
Stagliano and Kubrick in the same sentence?
This film is cool, even though most people associate Snake Plissken with a certain video game.
Ernest Borgnine
^”JOHN CARPENTER is one of the GOAT filmmakers”
CO-SIGN
“The Thing”
“They Live”
“Big Trouble In Little China”
“Escape From NY”
“Assault On Precinct 13” (the original)
Mother fucking “Halloween” bitch!
The above make up for all the b s jernts Carpenter dropped.
“Nigeria Says:
November 26th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Cappadonna.”
^ HAHA… true story, about three-to-five years ago, my high school buddy and I found some online interview with Cappadonna talking about how he was driving taxicabs down in Baltimore and he threw out his cell # for his fans to get at him. We called Cappadonna and caught him driving around downtown and wound up talking to him for about 5 minutes before he got another fare.
^”This film is cool, even though most people associate Snake Plissken with a certain video game. ”
You mean “Metal Gear”? I’ve played many times but never associated the name with the game.
>You mean “Metal Gear”? I’ve played many times but never associated the name with the game.>
solid snake used to also go by iroquois pliskin in the game.
dp: tell me you’ve fucked w/at least the 1st metal gear solid. instant fucking vintage.
Ernest Borgnine’s birth name was Ermes Effron Borgnino.
You know how I feel about this flick already…this was one of the illest flicks that us cold war kids saw next to Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, Dune and the other joints that warped our little minds. Of course the remake has been greenlit but the script is in limbo due to the WGA strike.
Who’s gonna be Snake? Don’t tell me The Duke is gonna be a fight between Ving Rhames and Michael Clark Duncan cuz if that’s the case MCD needs to get some damn facial hair.
One.
^”Apocalypse Now”
My. Favorite. Movie. Of. All. Time
They just re-released the documentary “Hearts Of Darkness” behind the making of Apocalypse. Just peeped it this weekend via Netflix. To anyone who has been affected by Apocaplypse, please peep this.
1. Harvey Keitel was originally cast to play Willard (Sheen’s role). He was fired after week 1.
2. Orson Wells was set to direct this first in the 1930’s, shit fell apart and he went on to direct “Citizen Kane” as his first flick.
3. George Lucas was originally set to direct this version.
4. Martin Sheen was actually drunk in the scene where Willard is drunk alone in his hotel room. All of Sheen’s actions in that scene were a result of his real intoxication. When Sheen punched the mirror (which was real glass), he really did cut his hand as shown in the film. While drunk, Sheen also began sobbing and tried to attack Francis Ford Coppola (who was egging him on to wyle out since Sheen was in the middle of a divorce with his wife). Coppola was joking about how Sheen’s wife was out fucking everyone in Hollywood, including Woody Allen. Lol.
Please peep this.
i still can’t forgive that motherfucker for ghosts of mars. ughhhhh. his ep on the first season of masters of horror was killer and gave me some hope for his future.
Don’t sleep on John Leslie either.
^ Grandmaster…Cappa was hackin’ that’s the “throw your dick on the crap table” of cab rides. You stick out your finger and pay whoever stops to ride you somewhere. If they filmed hacks that joint would be better than Taxi Cab Confessions.
The whole character of Snake from the games is based on the O.G. Pliskin.
word… i just heard a preview of big doe rehab, cappa’s spittin nicer than ever, they had him trading bars with ghost… i’m just waitin for dec 4th now (nahh i mean the end of this week when that shitll leak)