I moved to LA in the 70s to work with Weather Report, a jazz band I’d been touring with. We spoke to him to find out how it all came together.ĪLAN’S WORK ON STAR TREK GOT HIM THE JOB ON ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK It’s also been influential for a new wave of filmmakers looking to bring retro charm to their work – think Drive, or the throbbing synth menace of It Follows – so it’s strangely fitting that Howarth has decided to revisit the score by taking it out on the road for the first time. The soundtrack made terrific use of synthesisers at a time when Hollywood scores were chiefly an orchestral beast, albeit with a few noteworthy exceptions (see Goblin’s indelibly creepy work on Suspiriaor Tangerine Dream’s pulse-jacking score for Sorcerer) and set the template for a decade’s worth of hard-boiled crime thrillers churned out by Hollywood. Quirky, thrilling and tough, it’s as vivid a nightmare vision of the city-as-hellscape as anything this side of Taxi Driver.Ĭrucial to its impact was its pulsating score, composed by Carpenter and sound designer Alan Howarth, who went on to work with the director on other films including They Live, Big Trouble in Little China and Prince of Darkness. Written in response to the Watergate scandal, John Carpenter’s film follows the attempts of its hard-bitten antihero, Snake Plissken, to rescue the US President from Manhattan, which in the dystopian future of 1988 has been turned into a giant maximum security prison. Thirty four years ago, Escape From New York burst on to the screen.
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