A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, September 18, 2022

They Live (John Carpenter, 1988)











 Cast: Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster, George “Buck” Flower, Peter Jason, Raymond St. Jacques, Jason Robards III. Screenplay: John Carpenter, based on a story by Ray Nelson. Cinematography: Gary B. Kibbe. Art direction: William J. Durrell Jr., Daniel A. Lomino. Film editing: Gib Jaffe, Frank E. Jimenez. Music: John Carpenter, Alan Howarth. 

Roddy Piper never made the leap from the wrestling ring to action movies with the success of, say, The Rock or John Cena. He might have, if They Live had been a bigger hit initially, but after debuting at No. 1, it faded in popularity, partly because the critics tore it to pieces. Now, of course, it’s joined the ranks of cult movie favorites, and even the critics are willing to admit it was underrated at the time. Still, it’s easy to pick out Piper as one of its weaknesses. He delivers his lines, even the oft-quoted “I’m here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum”, as if he’s not quite sure why he’s saying them. And he doesn’t have the self-effacing wit that makes Cena and Dwayne Johnson such fun to watch. But there’s so much going on around Piper that it doesn’t really matter. A product of the Reagan era, or rather a reaction against it, They Live is an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian fable that may be even more relevant today. In fact, artist Mitch O'Connell created a billboard with an image of Donald Trump as one of the film’s skull-faced aliens. They Live isn’t a completely satisfactory movie: The fight between the characters played by Piper and Keith David goes on way too long. Would anyone really suffer such punishment rather than put on a pair of sunglasses? The sci-fi element and the violence undercut the political message more than reinforcing it. But John Carpenter (who used a pseudonym as its screenwriter) brings the message home again at the end, including a sly dig at himself and fellow cult-movie legend George Romero.