my thoughts about the warriors

For me, the highlight of the Fort Hamilton Comic Con was a screening of the 1979 cult classic, The Warriors. Maybe it's my experience taking Keith's cinema history class (and blogging about each session), but I feel I must comment.

Before you go on, as with any of my discussions of movies, there is a risk of spoilers. For those unfamiliar, here's the premise: A gang leader, Cyrus, has invited representatives of 100 gangs to a huge meeting in the Bronx. There, he gets shot and the shooter manages to implicate The Warriors. Now they have to make their way back to their home turf in Coney Island while the police and every gang in the city are gunning for them. I'd seen most of this movie in pieces over the years, but I'd never seen the whole thing.

In a few ways, The Warriors was the perfect film for this menu. It is a comic book of a movie. Many of the gangs have themes -- some quite ridiculous. For example, The Baseball Furies dress in baseball uniforms (and face paint) and use baseball bats as weapons. Unless I misunderstood, there was a gang of mimes. The Grammercy Riffs seemed almost paramilitary in their approach. This comic book feel was accentuated by transitions using comic book-like panels and written narration. Of course, I don't know if the film was chosen for these reasons or if it was simply that they were able to get one of the stars to come for a Q&A.

The story itself isn't really all that great, or even compelling. For the most part it's pretty straightforward. They fight. They run. They get separated. They fight. They run. They reconnect. Yadda yadda yadda. And yet I enjoyed watching it. I guess I really wanted to know how they managed to get back to Coney Island. Of course, I also enjoyed the fact that the subway system is a constant companion. Around the time of this film I was a huge New York subway system buff, and it was fun to see the vintage subway cars. And -- special treat -- they kept referring to the Miassimo Vignelli schematic subway maps. Those were phased out in 1978, and by the time the movie came out they had been replaced with the John Tauranac design (a variation of which is still used today). Of course, the filming was done in 1978, and it was a few years before the maps had been replaced on all the trains.

The movie presents what seems like a depressing view of New York by today's standards. But I remember the New York of the late 1970s -- when Union Square Park was a cesspit of druggies, drunks and used condoms. So the New York portrayed in the movie wasn't really that far off. If you discount the wacky gangs. But the opening scene indicates that the movie takes place "sometime in the future," which I guess makes it a dystopia of sorts. I kept thinking of Escape from New York, but honestly I don't know how similar this was to that, since I never saw Escape.

The OCD side of me did get hung up on a couple things. Notably the geography was all off. Also, the narration at the beginning started with "Over two milleniums ago" which had me screaming in my head "That's 'millenia'!" But a reasonable person can put aside such iobjections and just watch the damn movie.

I actually loved the ending. At least, I did after I had time to think about it. I spent most of the movie trying to figure out why Luther shot Cyrus. Was he working for the police (who understandably didn't want a 100,000-strong supergang)? Did he think he could do better running things? Revenge? I figured we'd find out at the end. But I was initially disappointed by Luther's explanation: "No reason. I just like doing things like that." And it's totally believable because of David Patrick Kelly's psychotic demeanor. His was the best performance in the movie, and it's only a shame that his role was so small. At any rate, while I was initially disappointed, I came around to really appreciating that revelation. In a city overrun with violent gangs, where so much of the infrastructure appeared dismal and bleak, the nihilistic explanation made perfect sense. And it was better than any rational explanation would have been.

Now, having said that the city is overrun by violent gangs, I should note that that's somewhat misleading. In some ways a lot of the violence is sanitized. Deadly force is less common than I would expect, and gang members are often shown as being satisfied to merely beat up their opponents and walk away. This is a departure from the book which is much more violent. In a sense that's necessary. It's enough of a challenge to get an audience to sympathize with a violent street gang. If the Warriors had been portrayed in the movie the way the Dominators (their analog in the book) are, it would be pretty much impossible. So they don't actually kill. And they don't commit gang rape. These Warriors are the cuddly version of the Dominators.

The screening was followed by a Q&A with David Harris, who had played Cochise. I stayed for a little bit of it, but soon found that I wasn't really interested in hearing what he had to say. Not that I think he cared. There was enough of a crowd to make him feel appreciated. Ironically, more people than the six or so of us who had watched the movie.