…stirred a memory of the last time I’d visited Liberty Island, which was several decades earlier. It was during the late summer of 1980…just shy of 45 years ago…Jimmy Carter in the White House!…and I was in the company of John Carpenter, Kurt Russell, Adrien Barbeau, the late Debra Hill, IndieWire‘s Anne Thompson and several Manhattan-based journo colleagues.

[I’ve posted this story once before.] During the late summer of 1980 I was part of a press contingent that was invited to watch the after-dark filming of John Carpenter‘s Escape From New York on Liberty Island.

The gang was out in force — bearded and scruffy Kurt Russell in his Snake Plissken garb, costars Season Hubley (“with” Russell at the time), Adrienne Barbeau (married to Carpenter at the time), producer Debra Hill and several others.

Thompson, working for PMK at the time, had monitored a Carpenter interview about The Fog. (One that I’d written for Films in Review.) I’m certain it was her call to invite me to the Statue of Liberty thing.

Things began with a well-catered yacht party. By the time it ended everyone had half a buzz-on. As ther party wound down some of us were preparing to leave in order to watch Carpenter and Russell shoot a scene under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

Season Hubley, John Carpenter, Kurt Russell during the shooting of Escape From New York. Carpenter looked like a spry 32 year-old at the time — today he looks like he’s pushing 85.

Russell, slightly in his cups or certainly happy, got up and addressed the throng: “We’ve had a great time, we’ve loved having you here…now go home!” And everyone laughed their pants off. It was that kind of mood, that kind of party.

Being ferried back from Liberty Island to Battery Park around 9:30 or 10 pm was magnificent. Manhattan looked like the gleaming mother ship from the finale of Close Encounters. Talk about a breathtaking sight…seared into my memory.

I wrote my piece for The Aquarian, an alternative New Jersey weekly (based in Montclair) that’s still going.

Here’s a little anecdote that will give you an idea what it was like to collaborate with my stuffy editor, whose name was Karen something-or-other. During the yacht party I overheard Barbeau say to Carpenter, “I have some whites for you, honey, if you need some,” and so I put it in the article. Karen scolded me over the phone for including such a potentially litigious anecdote. “Thank God I caught that and took it out!”, she said. “What were you thinking?”

I was thinking, Ms. Tight-Ass, that whites (i.e., Benzedrine or some derivation of) are relatively harmless prescription drugs — pep pills — and that adding this line gave the piece a little inside flavor, directing being a tough job that keeps you up into the wee hours, etc. It’s not like Barbeau said, “I’ve got some fresh heroin, honey, and some brand-new syringes from a local pharmacy.”