How to shoot a film, "they live" Bashny.Net

Previous post about the shooting: Lethal Weapon, Dirty Dancing, Gladiator, Predator, Rambo

Homeless workers are points that show the true reality, and discovers that the Earth is ruled by aliens who have changed or bribed "the powerful" and that control of people by using hidden messages like "Obey" and "Do not hesitate to superiors." When the aliens realize that the hero can distinguish them from people they declare to hunt him. However, he manages to kill two aliens, disguised as police officers, and to seize their weapons. Hiding from pursuers, the hero comes to the bank and saw that it was full of aliens. First he stolbeneet, but then realizes that in his hand gun, and says happily: "I have come to chew gum and watering goats ... And I ended chewing gum." The guard-stranger immediately shoots him, and the hero opens fire back.





Hollywood of the 1980s gave us a lot of exciting, but "empty" tapes, offering viewers leave his mind in the locker room and enjoy the spectacle, without delving into its essence - in the absence of a significant nature. But there were at that time and provocative paintings, forcing and worry and wonder. One of them came out in 1988, and she entered the history of cinema as an exciting fantasy thriller and as caustic political satire. Its creator was directed by John Carpenter, and called it "they live».

Reading John Carpenter's filmography, it is difficult to believe that he took "them." "Assault on Precinct 13", "Halloween", "fog", "Something", "The Man with the Stars," "Christine," "Big Trouble in Little China" ... According to the director himself, he was always interested in human and not political history - especially those where the central character has to be heroic in a very unusual situation for him. Exceptions to this rule may be considered "Escape From New York", inspired by the revelations of the Watergate scandal, but politics in this picture is clearly in second place, and satire "Escape" it is difficult to classify.



In the second half of 1980, however, Carpenter was not the same as at the beginning of the decade. His love affair with the glory was short-lived. He achieved financial success with his early hits ("Halloween", "fog", "Escape From New York"), but "something" came under the rink, "ET" and "The Man with the Stars" was better received by critics than viewers . The catastrophic failure of the 1986 big-budget "Big Trouble" ($ 11 million charges in the United States against 20 million budget) to shut the door Carpenter many Hollywood.

Left without a job, the director has once again started to watch television, and as a professional was amazed that virtually every TV frame - not just advertising - was built so that the audience something to sell or the "Provisional Government". It was so obvious that just asks a target for ridicule.



Carpenter also infuriated rampant "Reaganomics" - factories closed, finance companies grew rich and the poor (especially ex-workers) in all their troubles were offered only themselves to blame: "We had to learn to manipulate the numbers, and not to the car!" And because of the Carpenter -this failure of his films he became poor - of course, Hollywood criteria and not by the standards of ordinary people - that these reproaches touched him to the quick, and he decided to remove the low-budget film about a homeless worker who is aware of "the real situation" and announces war on him. "Do you think the losers" losers "? So here's a "loser" with a rifle! »

What is the "true situation" recognizes the hero? The answer to this question gave Carpenter published in 1963 a fantastic story of Ray Nelson (childhood friend of Philip K. Dick) "Eight o'clock in the morning." The protagonist of this work, George Nada (nada in Spanish means "nothing"), after a session of hypnosis in a variety of degree came to himself that realized that the Earth is ruled by aliens, reptiles, "zombie" humanity via television signals and street posters orders like "Obey," "Work" and "Marry and multiply!". No one else but George did not see how things actually, but in the final of the story he was able to pass an order on TV "Wake up!", And then people finally noticed that they are surrounded by monstrous invaders.



For Carpenter, it was an ideal starting material. On the one hand, a satirical and metaphorical "hitting" on TV and on the social elite, and on the other hand, the usual for the director fi thriller about a character who by coincidence had to be a hero. Of course, much of the film adaptation of "Eight hours of the morning," it was necessary to process, but the idea of ​​Nelson was so strong and expressive that bring it to mind was only a matter of artistic technique.

By turning the story into a script, Carpenter slightly increased the number of actors added action scenes and made the hero of an elderly inhabitant of a small flat in muscular homeless laborer (a lot of people lost their jobs in the factories, in the 1980s were forced to wander around the country in search of work ). He also introduced the story sunglasses designed earth rebels and showing the "true reality" in black and white colors. The director wanted to contrast the bright colors of "showcases of capitalism" hidden from the people to the real world, which is luxuriously decorated pages of a fashion magazine - is only a short, barking like a black-and-white team in large print: "Obey!»



As the final version of the script have been used not only ideas of Nelson and Carpenter, and offers participants the shooting, the director considered immodest to attribute all the credit for himself and pointed in the credits that the writer - "Frank Armitage." Name this fictional character was borrowed from the story of HP Lovecraft "The Dunwich Horror", where one of the characters was Dr. Henry Armitage. A hint of Lovecraft was not accidental. The classic American horror wrote about "the secret of the gods" who are forgotten by most people, but still have great power and that such creatures - terrible, hidden from the people, but almost omnipotent - ruled the world in the "Aliens among us».

One of those who, together with director hone the script, was the leading man. A natural candidate for the role of John Nada was Kurt Russell Carpenter's favorite actor, but the director did not want to play a glamorous homeless were a producer, a child star in a movie. What he needed was someone, though courageous and attractive, but "chew destiny", and Carpenter had found their hero in the "event" of professional wrestling - all in the name of a famous American wrestler Roddy Piper (real name - Roderick Tooms).



This Canadian in the ring posing as a Scot, a boy ran away from home and wandered for several years before began to earn as a wrestler. If he had not joined up in show business, he could become a real Nada, and so Carpenter's biography liked this aspect of wrestling, that's when they became friends, he offered the role of Piper. That, in turn, just decided to hang pants on a nail and focus on just started her acting career. His boss from the WWE, however, was very unhappy that Piper will play in the film that the Federation does not control and is not producing, but Roddy therefore agreed to withdraw from Carpenter, he wanted to get out from under the heel of the McMahon clan.

The role of the black worker named Frank, who is friends with Nada and helps him when he finds out the truth and starts to fight with aliens, Carpenter wrote specifically for China, David, with whom he enjoyed working on the set of "Something". The director believed that David is charismatic enough to seem like an equal partner and friend Nada, not the "black henchman."



Finally, a small but important role plot Holly Thompson received mostly television actress Meg Foster. Her gaze was so piercing that seemed alien, and it was important for the image of a woman who works in television and voluntarily cooperated with the newcomers, although she is not an alien.



Collecting money for the staging of "Alien", Carpenter faced with the fact that not all investors have realized that, in fact, make such a terrible aliens in the film. "They buy businesses of the earth, - once remarked Representative Universal. - But we already are sold each day. What's wrong with that? "Of course, the director immediately wrote these words in the script and put them into the mouth of one of the people traitors. And to the audience potsinichnee not the same question arose, Carpenter made the aliens in the film say that they treat the Earth as the "civilized world" treats "third world", and that soon they will use all our resources, provoke global warming and cast Earthlings in the lurch.

As a result, investors are now paid independent, and the director had to settle for $ 3 million, that for 1987 was very modest sum. But Carpenter was not going to overwhelm viewers grandiose special effects. He was much more interesting show usually remain behind the scenes the contrast between the life of the rich and the homeless in Los Angeles. And if the "rich" picture scenes were filmed in the area where he lived, the director, for the filming of the town hired a director of homeless most of these urban poor and took them where they usually huddled. Roddy Piper later told me that in these scenes feel as if returned to his youth, and sometimes it was difficult to determine where it ends and the hero begins his memories of life on the street.



If the scenes in the camp of homeless people have been emotionally difficult for Piper, then shooting a fight with Keith David proved difficult physically. Initially, the episode in which George is trying to get Frank to wear dark glasses, was conceived as a short, 20-second scene. But Piper wanted to show himself as a wrestler (for him it would be strange to star in an action movie, and the whole movie skirmish with the enemy), and David was ready to join him, and stretched out a friendly match for five minutes, becoming one of the longest and amusing brawls in Hollywood history. Rehearsals this scene took three weeks, and some blows it had suffered in the "full contact." Fortunately for both actors, Piper knew how to beat the beautiful, but not too painful, and Keith David, never practice martial arts, was not professionally delivered shock.

In the choreography of the fight scenes and other pictures posted Jeff Imada - stuntman, martial artist and close friend of Brandon Lee. "Aliens Among Us" was one of the first paintings in which Imad, the next action-choreographer of "Fight Club" and "The Bourne Supremacy", not only to perform tricks, but also directed their formulation. Imada also played in the film, most aliens in their "true form", both men and women (of course, if the frame had a few aliens, then Imad was just one of them).



In the story of Nelson, as already mentioned, the aliens looked like lizards - about the same as in the TV series «V» (also known as "Victoria"). Carpenter, however, would not go away from the anthropoid. He was important to emphasize the similarities between the aliens and humans - particularly members of the elite. Therefore, newcomers from "Aliens" looked like "ghouls" - that is, people who have died and expand, but then returned to the living. And all thanks to the life-giving power of glamor! Such is a clear allusion to what makes people - if not with their bodies, then their souls - life according to the laws "wolf" of capitalism.

When the November 4, 1988 "Aliens Among Us" reached the US release, the film started from first place, but quickly slid down. For fans of the then militant and fiction, he was impressive enough, but for connoisseurs of political cinema - not deep enough, and critics have disagreed about whether to consider a picture of achievement or failure.



However, the tape still paid off at the box (total fees - $ 13 million), and soon became a cult hit. Yes, Carpenter has not provided the public thinking deep analysis of what is happening in America and Western countries. But frankness and visual expressiveness "Aliens" - especially the posters to "manage" slogans - gave the American "leftists" symbols and images, around which it was possible to build an anti-capitalist propaganda and antimediynuyu.

Also, the picture presented to the public for ice Nada gum and goats (to be exact literalist about gum and nadiranii asses) that healed his own life as a humorous meme. These words were one of the additions to the script Roddy Piper and they were born long before the work on the film. The fact that television broadcasts wrestling Peiper was a fragment in which he "interviewed" in other wrestlers (usually he just bullied, "pumping up" the audience before the fight). Scenarios of this fragment wrestler himself wrote, because everywhere he carried with him a notebook in which he recorded coming into his mind teasers, insults and bright frazochki. "I came to chew gum ..." I was one of those phrases that Piper did not have time to use in the TV show, and Carpenter borrowed it for the film.

Why it was necessary to him? Then, that "they live" ridicule not only the American elite, but also the American movie heroes. Nada begins the film as a law-abiding, in what does not interfere with people - far less radically inclined than his new friend Frank. But as soon as he puts on the glasses, the film like a switch flips and Nada begins to run with the weapon, killing the police (even alien, but still ...) and utter pathos frazochki who would hesitate to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Is this plausible? Of course not. But that's the focus. Picturing the situation is not so different from the real, "Aliens Among Us" offer is clearly implausible solution ("Now comes a simple guy, and save all!") And allow viewers a giggle over the Nada and perceive the picture as a deliberately cartoon fighter, while others - laughed seriously think about what to do with the "goats", when they will not leave people even gum ... After all, even Hollywood movies to please audiences of all political views!

via