At some point in his career, John Carpenter lost the ability to give a single f*ck about anything. It’s his superpower, in that it frees him creatively to do — well, whatever he wants to do. That being said, sometimes Carpenter’s creative gambits can take a turn for the ludicrous, as with the director’s late-period sequel Escape from L.A.
Escape from L.A. was actually Carpenter’s third movie with star Kurt Russell: They met when Russell played Elvis in Carpenter’s underrated TV biopic of the rock ‘n’ roll king, then reunited for the ‘80s cult classic Escape from New York (1981). But his experience with the Halloween sequels — he famously hated Halloween II, and called it an “abomination” — made Carpenter skittish about doing another Escape movie. But Russell loved playing eyepatch-wearing badass Snake Plissken, and he and Debra Hill leaned on the director until he agreed to revisit Snake in a new movie. All three of them arecredited as screenwriters, while Russell and Hill produced the movie.
