Editing Escape from New York (section)

===Pre-production===
Carpenter had just made ''[[Dark Star (film)|Dark Star]]'', but no one wanted to hire him as a director, so he assumed he would make it in Hollywood as a screenwriter. The filmmaker went on to do other films with the intention of making ''Escape'' later. After the success of ''[[Halloween (1978 film)|Halloween]]'', Avco-Embassy signed producer Debra Hill and him to a two-picture deal. The first film from this contract was ''[[The Fog]]''. Initially, the second film he was going to make to finish the contract was ''[[The Philadelphia Experiment (movie)|The Philadelphia Experiment]]'', but because of script-writing problems, Carpenter rejected it in favor of this project. However, Carpenter felt something was missing and recalls, "This was basically a straight [[action film]]. And at one point, I realized it really doesn't have this kind of crazy humor that people from New York would expect to see."<ref name="Swires, Steve">{{cite magazine|last=Swires |first=Steve |title=John Carpenter |magazine=[[Starlog]] |date=July 1981 |number=48 }}</ref> He brought in Nick Castle, a friend from his film-school days at [[University of Southern California]], who played "[[Michael Myers (Halloween)|The Shape]]" in ''Halloween''. Castle invented the Cabbie character and came up with the film's ending.<ref>{{cite news|title=Launch of a giddy fantasy a director reaches for the stars with computer aid |last=Ryan |first=Desmond |newspaper=[[The Philadelphia Inquirer]] |date=July 14, 1984 |page=D01}}</ref>

The film's setting proved to be a potential problem for Carpenter, who needed to create a decaying, semi-destroyed version of New York City on a shoestring budget. The film's production designer [[Joe Alves]] and he rejected shooting on location in New York City because it would be too hard to make it look like a destroyed city. Carpenter suggested shooting on a movie back lot, but Alves nixed that idea "because the texture of a real street is not like a back lot."<ref name="Beeler, Michael">{{cite news | last = Beeler
 | first = Michael | title = ''Escape from N.Y.'': Filming the Original | publisher = [[Cinefantastique]]
 }}</ref> They sent Barry Bernardi, their location manager (and associate producer), "on a sort of all-expense-paid trip across the country looking for the worst city in America," producer Debra Hill remembers.<ref name="Beeler, Michael"/>

Bernardi suggested [[East St. Louis, Illinois]], because it was filled with old buildings "that exist in New York now, and [that] have that seedy run-down quality" that the team was looking for.<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Maronie |first=Samuel J. |title=From ''Forbidden Planet'' to ''Escape from New York'': A candid conversation with SFX & production designer Joe Alves |magazine=[[Starlog]] |number=46 |date=May 1981 |url=http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/pages/press/starlog8105.html |access-date=March 10, 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070317172834/http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/pages/press/starlog8105.html |archive-date=March 17, 2007 }}</ref> East St. Louis, sitting across the Mississippi River from the more prosperous [[St. Louis, Missouri]], had entire neighborhoods burned out in 1976 during a massive urban fire. Hill said in an interview, "block after block was burnt-out rubble. In some places, there was absolutely nothing, so that you could see three and four blocks away."<ref name="Beeler, Michael"/> Also, Alves found an old bridge to serve as the "69th St. Bridge". The filmmaker purchased the [[Chain of Rocks Bridge|Old Chain of Rocks Bridge]] for one dollar from the government and then gave it back to them, for the same amount, once production was completed, "so that they wouldn't have any liability," Hill remembers.<ref name="Beeler, Michael"/> Locations across the river in St. Louis were used, including [[Union Station (St. Louis)|Union Station]] and the [[Fox Theatre (St. Louis)|Fox Theatre]], both of which have since been renovated,<ref>{{cite news|title=Show Me the movies|work=St. Louis Post-Dispatch|date=April 17, 2005|author=Williams, Joe|page=C1}}</ref> as well as the building that would eventually become the [[Saint Louis Brewery#Downtown|Schlafly Tap Room microbrewery]].