While learning to fire a Smith & Wesson revolver took some practice, Maggie’s killer instinct came naturally to Barbeau, who exhibits a sly grin of pleasure in the film each time she pulls the trigger and eliminates another threat. Knowing that I look like I know what I’m doing in a performance is something I always try to bring to each role.” And that was helpful because props are very important to me. “So Dick Warlock, who was Kurt’s stunt double in the film, showed me what to do. “I don’t think I had ever shot a gun on screen before, and certainly not in my real life,” she says. Working with firearms was a new experience for the actress, but one she took to rather quickly with a bit of instruction from the film’s stunt department.
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK MOVIE
Of course, visually it was remarkable, but I didn’t think, ‘Oh my god, this movie is breaking new ground!’ or anything like that.” “At the time, it just felt like a really good role in a really fun film, with a bunch of truly great actors. That’s a creative balancing act that many filmmakers found difficult before ‘Halloween’ in 1978.”īarbeau says she approached “Escape from New York” simply as a chance to play an interesting character, not as a trendsetting action masterpiece that would continue to influence new filmmakers four decades later. Of course, credit also goes to John Carpenter for making so many of his female leads both caring and strong. “It’s a credit to Barbeau’s performance that she managed to make Maggie sympathetic to an audience, therefore creating a greater impact when she’s denied her dream in the film’s violent climax. “She brought both vulnerability and strength to a part that saw her using her femininity to get what she needed, which was an escape from the island prison,” Walsh explains. 26, Carpenter wrote the role of Maggie specifically with Barbeau in mind. But then again, I’ve always played strong women, whether on television, in movies, or on stage.”Īccording to author John Walsh, whose book “Escape from New York: The Official Story of the Film” will be published by Titan Books on Oct. Strong, assertive, take-no-prisoners types of women, so it never crossed my mind that Maggie was unique. They were the kind of characters Lauren Bacall and Katharine Hepburn often played.
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK TV
“I first worked with John on the TV movie ‘Someone’s Watching Me’ in 1978, so I knew from the beginning that the type of women’s roles he wrote were the Howard Hawks women, as he called them. “I never thought of her that way,” Barbeau tells Variety. Barbeau, however, didn’t view Maggie as a trailblazing character when she made the film. Apart from Pam Grier’s groundbreaking work in the 1970s and Sigourney Weaver’s influential role as Ellen Ripley in “Alien,” there simply were not a lot of significant action parts for women in features at the time. When the film arrived in theaters, the concept of a female action hero was still quite new. Other than Snake Plissken, she’s perhaps the deadliest and most physically capable character in the entire movie, which made her an instant favorite with genre fans.
In “Escape from New York,” Barbeau plays Maggie, a tough-as-nails femme fatale with an itchy trigger finger and a hidden knife tucked away in her stiletto boot.
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