John Carpenter is a great director, but his power harmed They Live and We Live with it to this day.
The old saying goes, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” And this applies very well to film directors. Stanley Kubrick’s later films are among his weakest. I once thought Martin Scorsese escaped this when, in his middle career, he used his power to make exceptional off-brand films like Kundun and Bringing Out the Dead. But his recent work is so self-indulgent that I wish he would simply stop making films.
Fight Scene
I watch They Live every year or so. I like it a lot. But that’s really just because I like its politics. And the truth is that I know a lot of people with horrible politics who think the film justifies them. Whatever. The only problem I’ve had with the film as narrative art is that ridiculously long fight scene in the middle.
Last week, I went through all the special features on the Shout Factory Blu-ray of the film. It includes a recent interview with John Carpenter. Here’s a transcript:
Carpenter: A lot of people said at the time this is excessive, the fight was excessive, but I loved it!
Interviewer: Was there ever any concern when you finished the scene in terms of shortening it?
Carpenter: Fuck no!
But the fight scene in They Live is six and a half minutes long. That’s seven percent of the run time (credits included) of the entire film!
And here we are, four decades on, with a solid film that grinds to a halt right before the third act starts. I guess that’s what the fast-forward button is for. The truth is, no fight is even necessary but it works well enough to propel the action. But six and a half minutes? That’s a director’s blind hubris.
Collaboration Is Necessary
This is why directors shouldn’t have too much power. The fight scene works well on its own. True, it isn’t realistic or gritty — the way the film is. It’s very much a pro-wrestling kind of fight — including a piledriver. It doesn’t go too far. The problem is that the fight stops the film just as it moves into high gear.
Carpenter understands this. I’m sure he even sees it today. But his ego stops him from admitting that the fight scene is too long in the content of the film. So instead of admitting the error, he doubles down. But if he’d had a powerful enough producer, he could have been saved the public embarrassment. Larry Franco is a fine producer, but he owes his career to Carpenter. He wasn’t going to stand up to the man.
This is not to say that producers should be all-powerful. Indeed, powerful producers have destroyed many a great work. Blade Runner and Dark City come to mind as examples of producers fatally harming films because of their convictions that audiences are stupid. Clearly, there needs to be a balance.
Have you noticed that most directors’ cuts of films are longer than the release cuts — often much longer. This is ego. But it isn’t always the case. Scott’s Blade Runner cut was actually a couple of minutes shorter. And that’s while adding the unicorn dream scene! Dark City is longer, but it is in service of keeping the story mysterious.
John Carpenter Forgot About Us — Briefly
I like John Carpenter as a director. And a big reason for that is that he’s good to the audience. But this is an example of how even the best directors can fall into this trap of fluffing themselves and not working for the good of the whole film. Too bad we will never get a Franco cut of They Live “with four and a half minutes you don’t have to sit through”!
They Live (1988) poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.
