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- It cost $12k to have the train roll by for the opening shot. A technical snafu required them to do it a second time.
- The film was released in Europe as Invasion Los Angeles.
- Carpenter mentions the various bumps and troubles they had while filming in downtown Los Angeles, and Piper adds “like paying the gangs off.” The director agrees but adds no details.
- The two met for the first time at Wrestlemania III in Pontiac, MI on March 29, 1987.
Aug 9, 2017 · Nada (Roddy Piper), for his part, is technically homeless, but wants and finds work. In general he seems to float a little apart from the despondently indigent population so visible in the film...
- It’S Partly Based on A Comic Book
- John Carpenter Wrote The Screenplay Under A Pseudonym
- The Lead Character Has No Name
- The Poster Tagline Was Unusually Long
- Carpenter Cast Piper After Watching Him at Wrestlemania
- WWF Boss Vince Mcmahon Did Not Approve of Piper Making The Film
- Carpenter Wrote The Role of Frank Specifically For Keith David
- Piper and David’s Fight Scene Took A Month to Rehearse
- The Sunglasses Are Named ‘Hoffman Lenses’ After The Inventor of LSD
- Carpenter Is mentioned by Name in The Film
They Live is officially credited as an adaptation of Eight O’Clock In The Morning, a 1963 short story by science fiction writer Ray Nelson. However, not too long before Carpenter’s film hit screens in 1988, Nelson published a new take on his story in comic book form. Entitled Nada, this short form graphic adaptation of Eight O’Clock In The Morning ...
As director, producer, screenwriter, editor and composer, John Carpenter has always worn a lot of hats on his movies. For this reason, he has often chosen to employ pseudonyms for certain roles on his films, usually in a way that nods to his key influences on that particular work. While Carpenter was the screenwriter on They Live, he credits the sc...
In Eight O’Clock In The Morning and Nada, the lead protagonist’s name is George Nada. The credits of They Live list Roddy Piper’s character simply as Nada – but this name is never used in the film. Piper never introduces himself to anyone, nor does anyone ask him his name at any point; even Keith David’s Frank, his closest friend in the film, refer...
Given that They Live is an offbeat blend of tough action movie, hard-edged science fiction and socially conscious political satire, it presented a bit of a challenge to the marketing people. Perhaps it was this difficulty that resulted in the film’s original posters bearing a rather cumbersome tagline. The original US posters read, “You see them on...
When it came to casting Nada, it’s thought that John Carpenter had written the role with his go-to leading man Kurt Russell in mind. Russell had worked with Carpenter four times up to that point: on the TV movie Elvis, and on the feature films Escape From New York, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China. However, whether it was because Carpente...
Vince McMahon, owner of the WWF (as the WWE was then known), did not take kindly to Piper’s decision to take the lead role in They Live. McMahon tried hard to talk Piper out of it, offering to find him another movie role which would pay the same. When Piper refused, this resulted in him leaving the WWF for a time. Piper stated years later that McMa...
John Carpenter gave Keith David his first major film role opposite Kurt Russell in 1982’s The Thing. Having been impressed with the actor, Carpenter wrote the character of Frank in They Live with David in mind. Much as with Piper’s casting as Nada, Carpenter was keen to get an actor who would truly convince as a tough guy. The director explained he...
If there’s one scene everyone remembers from They Live, it’s the epic back alley punch-up between Roddy Piper’s Nada and Keith David’s Frank. While the characters are friends, Nada is unable to convince Frank to take a look through the sunglasses that show the world as it really is – and so, a mighty battle ensues. The fight lasts five minutes and ...
The sunglasses which break the alien signal and allow the wearer to see the real world are referred to as Hoffman Lenses. This appears to be a nod to Dr Albert Hoffman, the Swiss scientist best known for creating the psychedelic drug LSD. Piper’s Nada likens the experience of wearing the glasses to taking a drug: “wearing these glasses makes you hi...
At the climax of They Live, when – SPOILER WARNING – the alien signal has been broken, all the aliens are exposed in their true form. During this darkly comedic ending, we see numerous figures on television revealed as aliens, among them a movie critic. The alien critic is condemning movie violence, remarking to a second critic whose face isn’t sho...
Director John Carpenter, according to his official website, filmed They Live “on locations that bore the closest possible resemblances to the settings in the film; no studio set was used to...
Dec 11, 2020 · This explains what happened to all the zombified homeless people lurking outside the church, and why they butcher anyone who tries to leave. Being dead does not prohibit the slime from possessing its hosts either, for several of the scientists’ mangled corpses are converted into zombies as well.
Jul 4, 2017 · They Live. “It figures it would be somethin’ like this,” says the hero of John Carpenter’s They Live. Nada, a homeless man named after the Spanish word for “nothing,” has just discovered an alien conspiracy.
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During these walks, the huge amount of homeless people he encountered did not manage to go unnoticed by him: It was a really scummy building and a scummy area and I just started to think that all the homeless people lying on the floor and hanging around the Port Authority, and a lot of New Yorkers in general, were a different species.
