THE GETAWAY

The space is tonight's home to Escape From L.A., the follow-up to the 1981 future shocker Escape From New York; and just as the original film introduced Plissken on his way to the prison island of Manhattan, tongiht's scene has him taking another stroll down the halls of injustice. This time, though, Sanke is bound for L.A., which by 2013 has been jarred loose from the mainland by--get this, seismology buffs--a 9.6 earthquake and is now a deportation pit for anyone labeled socially undesirabel by the right-wing theocaracy of the new moral Americal.

"Abortion doctrs, teenage runaways, single mothers, prostitutes, atheists--they're all sent over," says director John Carpenter, enjoying a smoke between takes. While Russell's character more than qulifies (he hasn't earned the moniker by being a choirboy), his talents are being used to recover a doomsday device stolen by teh President's civilly disobedient daughter and passed on to some inviaion-minded radicals let by the Che Guevarian Cuervo Jones (George Corraface). Snake's mission, again, is literally to do or die.

Nearing the end of a lean-and-mean 70-night shoot, Carpenter is fussing over one of the film's first scenes, with Russell, suited up in black leather and six-shooters, clanging along a stretch of steel-floored corridor take after take. If he looks slightly ragged a few hours into the process, that only enhances Snake's desperado image. But then the action stops, and Russell pauses so wardrom can fit him with a pair of biker gloves. "It takes five people just to get dressed," he says, laughing and gently fluffing his hair around the eye-patch strap. Even while shooting Escape From L.A., you can't escape L.A. completely.

A 15-years-later sequel, unleashed in a hotly competitive summer, needs Russell's drawing power as much as he needed the original. After years of being dismissed as a fresh-faced Disney boy (The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes), Russell, now 45, oblisterated that image with Escape From New York. And though he hans't had trouble finding action-movie work (Tombstone, StarGate, Executive Decision), he always planned to revisit the role of the rebel with the patch--and he wasn't talking about Captain Ron.

The same nostalgic eyarning also gnawed at Carpenter and orginal Escape producer Debra Hill. The director had met Russell when they worked together on the 1979 TV biopic Elvis, and Carpenter fought to cast him as Sanke, rather than Tommy Lee Jones, the preferred choice of his bosses at Avco Embassy Pictures. (Carpenter later put Russell in 1982's The Thing and 1986's Big Trouble in Little China.) He saw something of a Western antihero in Russell, and Snake Plissken was as close to a traditional gunslinger as he'd ever created. "No matter what anybody tells you, this is cowboy noir," says Carpetner, 48. In 1987, Hill and Carpenter commisioned a sequel script by Coleman Luck (The Equalizer) in which L.A. was a lunatic asylum. It ended with the surprise revelation that the Snake Plissken seen in the original was a clone. "It did't do what we wanted to do," says Carpenter, "and I got disheartened. So until Kurt came back and said, 'Let's do it,' we just kind of let it sit."

Approaching the material seven years later, a major earthquake, and one riot later, they realized L.A. was ripe for an apocalyptic adventure. "From the outside, it's clear what L.A. is about: earthquakes, riots, mud slides, fires," Carpenter says "It's disasterville." Hill, Russell, and Carpenter offered their completed script to Paramount, which gambled on the $50 million sequel (more than seven times the original's cost), including $10 million for Russell.

Actress A.J. Langer (My So-Called Life), who plays the President's sexpot daugher, Utopia, has no trouble recalling where she was when Escape From New York opened fifteen years ago. "Second grade at Topeka Elementary in the Valley," she ways with a grin. And she wasn't teaching.

This, of course, is precisely the sort of problem Russell, Carpenter, and Hill have faced in trying to sell the sequel to audiences. The original was a cult classic in the truest sense--classic to some moviegoers, a blip on the radar for others, especially those who were too young to see the R-rated flick in 1981. Production designer Lawrence Paull (Blade Runner) recalls the crew getting blank stares on location. "People would say, 'What are you doing'" he says. "'Escape From L.A.' 'Escape From...?' 'You know, Snake Plissken?' 'Oh, Snake Plissken!''"

"The first lesson we learned from Paramount," says Carpenter, "was when they said: 'You know, there are some people who are going to see this because they've seen the old one. That's fine. Don'd make a movie for 'em.' That was good advice." The next good idea was to shoot in Los Angeles, where he could just zip down the freeway and find some locations tailor-made--or tailor-splayed--by the 1994 earthquake. Since Sunset Boulevard looked too pristine, Paull re-created teh strip with 29,000 tons of rubble in a local landfill.

In keeping with Carpenter's hippie-camp sensibility, the cast is more B-list wacky than A-list slick: Peter Fonda (Easy Rider) as teh toxically tanned surfer dude, Pipeline; Steve Buscemi (Living in Oblivion) as Map to the Stars Eddie, Snake's oily guide; Cliff Robertson--more like Pat Robertson--as the most conservative President in history; and Pam Grier as Hersh Las Palmas, a pistol-packing transsexual. What does one wear to audition for a hellish gender bender? "Oh, a black thermal shirt," Grier says coyly "And black leggings. With a sock in them."

In early February the production piles into the Coliseum, where Snake shoots some high-stakes hoops for the amusement of Cuervo (think American Gladiators meets teh NBA under the Thunderdome). Carpenter and Hill managed to secure the site only after intense negotiations with Coliseum management, which had just lost football's Radiers and didn't view hosting the apocalypse as any great consolation. The crew is less than thrilled about working on the night of the big Lakers-Bulls game. Then, during a break, the game suddenly appears up on the Coliseum's enormous video screen, courtesy of the director and producer.

"We were killing ourselves busting ass," says Carpenter, justifying the perk. Besides, he adds, "Magic had just come back."

Whether Russell's character will make a comeback after his stint on the court seems to be a dicey proposition; Cuervo and his armed Angeleno minions can't wait for him to toss up a brick. Fret not, says Carpenter. He, Russell, and Hill have already plotted a third installment in the Escape series. But now that Russell has trashed both Sodom and Gomorrah, what could possibly be left? Vegas? Cleveland?

"There's only one other place to flee from," Carpenter says, mock-appalled that the answer isn't perfectly obvious. "Earth."

--by Tom Russo