Released in 1987, Paul Michael Glaser running man He is remembered as one of the great action films that helped establish Arnold Schwarzenegger as one of the biggest stars in the world. It showcases some of the best individual lines in an actor’s filmography, has a legacy as a very different kind of Stephen King adaptation, and can even be grounded in its insight into its depiction of the relationship between the media and audience. Turning 35 this year, there’s plenty of greatness to look at — though so sorry for screenwriter Stephen E. D. Souza about the film that he’s hoping fans can fix it with some post-production editing.
I recently had an interview with D’Souza in memory of running manOur anniversary is coming up in November, and during our conversation he brought up a last-minute change to the film that he felt made the end result worse. While discussing the details of the world predicted by the movie, I noticed that Richard Dawson’s Damon Killian movie at one point used essentially Deep Fake, and the screenwriter explained that the sequence in which it was used was not only different when entering the editing room, but much better.
The sequence in the running man who changed at the last moment
In the third act of the film as it exists, the heroes played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Conchita Alonso manage to escape the terrible trials of running man Presenting the game, and doing so forces evil Damon Killian to put Plan B into action: Computer graphics are used to put digital masks of heroes on two people with identical body types, and Jesse Ventura’s Captain Freedom is filmed killing them. However, the main difference in the movie as it was originally written is that the audience was supposed to believe that Schwarzenegger and Alonso’s characters were actually killed. Stephen D’Souza told me,
As written and illustrated, the audience didn’t know they had switched it. We were going to fake our audience… They come to the show’s host, “What are we going to do?” And the [Killian] He says, ‘Okay, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. It’s time.’ And we don’t know what it is. And then we see the sequence where Arnold and Maria are trapped, and if you look at the movie again, you’ll see that Jesse Ventura beats Arnold’s crap, then kills the girl. And the audition audience went “No!” Then after Arnold defeated Hell, he’s back Arnold after the death of the girl, defeated the living hell out of Jesse Ventura, and at the last second, Jesse Ventura threw him to the nails. Arnold died. ‘Thank you very much! Good night, folks!’ Then we go into the studio and they say, “Boy, that trick worked!” and you see they cheated.
beginning running manThe third act was originally designed to trick the audience into thinking that the movie had actually orchestrated the untimely deaths of the two protagonists, before revealing the nature of the stunt and showing that the characters were alive and kicking. It’s not hard to imagine the shock value the movie would have had if it had been cut this way.
Why has the Proto-Deep Fake sequence changed in The Man Who Runs
Why did the movie change? Stephen D’Souza blames a producer who was polite enough not to be named. This individual analyzed the comments and took a screening test running man, and decided that the above hoax was too confusing for an audience that he deemed not smart enough to understand what was going on. According to de Souza, these reactions not only came from a very small percentage of the audience, but came from individuals of an age group that the flick wasn’t really targeting:
We had a stupid producer who was in that movie who said, after beta testing, “You have to change that.” He says: ‘Our audience is very stupid. They do not understand. ‘what are you talking about?’ [The test screening] It was in Palm Springs. We should have at least 600 people in the audience, if not more, and maybe more than twenty cards saying, “I don’t understand how they put a different face on a man.” And I say, “Those are 20 cards, and they’re all: ‘Why did you attend the movie?'” Came with the grandson. ”
What particularly irritated Stephen D’Souza about the change was hearing the reaction of test audiences who were watching the original clip of running man. Based on what he saw, the whole audience seemed to think the movie really had the nerve to kill Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Conchita Alonso 20 minutes before the remaining running time.
The director explained that he did his best to try to convince the producer not to make the change, but his efforts were unsuccessful. Now, 35 years later, he wants fans with access to the HD versions of the movie to create a proper trailer that implements the original intent:
I remember begging this guy, “Would you bet money on the Super Bowl rerun?” I can never forget, to this day, how crazy the audience was – they couldn’t believe it. Do you remember in Die Hard 2 when the plane crashed, the audience couldn’t believe we killed all these innocents? Same reaction: Maria Conchita Alonso and then Arnold, back to back, and then you find out you’ve been pranked. So if you have a Blu-ray, you can put this back in the correct order.
Make a new edit for running man It might not be the easiest thing, as fans can only work with the footage in the movie, and as Stephen D’Souza points out, there are moments of obvious additional dialogue substitution (also known as ADR) introduced to make the theatrical cut version of the events make sense. However, it is clear that de Sousa would greatly appreciate the work done:
You can even tell in the dialogue, when they changed the face, that dialogue was later recorded. Because the dialogue was like, ‘I told you it was going to work, Kylian. Look, it’s just like him. They bought it baby! Instead they had to change it. If you look at the scene, you’ll see that you don’t see the product, you see the back of his head. You can see that you’re on The wrong face when people talk. And that was so stupid. It bothers me to this day. And I think it really affected how successful the movie was.
While we wait for a skilled fan to do some editing work with her running manDo yourself a favor and plan your 35th Anniversary Honor for the upcoming blockbuster movie. It’s currently available to stream with a fuboTV subscription (Opens in a new tab)and you can rent it and/or buy it digitally google apps (Opens in a new tab)And the Amazon (Opens in a new tab)، (Opens in a new tab)And the apple (Opens in a new tab). As Stephen D’Souza noted, it’s also available on Blu-ray (a must-have for anyone trying to build the ultimate Stephen King set) It’s one of the best Arnold Schwarzenegger films of the ’80s – which says a hell of a lot. – It deserves to be celebrated.
