Escape from New York

Escape from New York is a 1981 science fiction action film directed and scored by John Carpenter. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Nick Castle.

Trivia

• Certain matte paintings were rendered by James Cameron, who was at that time a special effects artist with Roger Corman's New World Pictures.
• When Snake is piloting the glider into the city, there are three screens on the control panel displaying wireframe animations of the landing target on the WTC and surrounding buildings. What appears on those screens was not done on computer. Carpenter wanted "high-tech" looking computer graphics, which were very expensive at the time (even for such a simple animation). To get the animation he wanted, the effects crew filmed the miniature model set of New York City they used for other scenes under blacklight with reflective tape placed along every edge of the model buildings. Only the tape shows up and appears to be a 3D wireframe animation.
• Most of the movie was filmed in St. Louis, Missouri.
• Avco-Embassy Pictures, the studio behind the film, preferred either Charles Bronson or Tommy Lee Jones to play the role of "Snake" Plissken to director/co-writer John Carpenter's choice of Kurt Russell, who at the time was trying to overcome his "lightweight" screen image gained through his appearance in several Disney comedies.
• While many sources write that the film's production budget was $7 million, John Carpenter himself says the budget was more around $5.5 million.
• The film grossed $25.2 million in American theaters in the summer of 1981, with same amount grossed in foreign markets, making an over $50 million mega box-office hit in ratio to John Carpenter's production budget of $5.5-7 million.
• After the smash success of Halloween, the small studio of Avco-Embassy signed filmmaker John Carpenter and producer Debra Hill to a two-picture deal. The first film from this contract was 1980s The Fog and this film finished out the contract.
• Initially, the second film that Carpenter was going to make to finish the contract out was The Philadelphia Experiment but because of script-writing problems, Carpenter junked it for this project, which its initial script-draft he had penned back in the 1970s, and the studio greenlighted it.
• The final scenes were filmed at the Sepulveda Dam, in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California.
• The Duke's Cadillac Fleetwood with the fender-mounted chandeliers is a direct influence in the art car community.
• John Carpenter and Kurt Russell teamed up again for the belated sequel, Escape from L.A. (1996) set in 2013. Another sequel has also been proposed (it was Escape from Earth), but will not likely materialize due to the poor box office performance of ...L.A.
• Escape From New York is a legendary pizza parlor on Portland, OR's artistic 23rd St. It features huge wall murals with a New York City theme and pizzas (whole or by the slice) with slices over a foot in length. It's popular among Portlanders and tourists from all walks of life.
• Jamie Lee Curtis has an uncredited part as the voice-over of the computer in the intro.