Posted on 11/17/2008 5:10:15 PM PST by doug from upland
THE RUNNING MAN (1987)
Last edited 5 May 1998
The Running Man - TITLES
Based on the novel "The Running Man" by Richard Bachman (Stephen King pen name)
Screenplay by Steven E. deDouza
Directed by Paul Michael Glaser
INTRODUCTION
By 2017 the world economy has collapsed. Food, natural resources and oil are in short supply. A police state, divided into paramilitary zones, rules with an iron hand. Television is controlled by the state and a sadistic game show called "The Running Man" has become the most popular program in history. All art, music and communications are censored. No dissent is tolerated and yet a small resistance movement has managed to survive underground. When high-tech gladiators are not enough to suppress the people's yearning for freedom......more direct methods become necessary.
HELICOPTER OVER CITY AT NIGHT
Over Military-Radio: Yankee-nine-niner. What are your co-ordinates?
Ben: Zero-two-zero, flight level one-five. We're above release point echo-bravo-one.
Over Military-Radio: Move in and check it out.
Ben: Roger. Moving in. Food riot in progress. Approximately fifteen-hundred civilians. No weapons evident.
Over Military-Radio: Proceed with plan alpha. Eliminate anything moving.
Ben: I said the crowd is unarmed! There are lots of women and children down there! All they want is food for-gods-sake!
Over Military-Radio: As you were Richards. Proceed with plan alpha. All rioters must be eliminated.
Ben: The hell with you I will not fire on helpless people! Abort mission. We return back to base.
Over Military-Radio: Lieutenant Saunders do you copy?
Saunders: Affirmative
Over Military-Radio: Take Command. Detain Richards and proceed as ordered
MILITARY PERSONAL IN HELICOPTER ATTACK BEN
Military Passengers: What the f*ck are you doing!?! Get him! God damn it! We're losing it, tipping over!
Saunders: I got it! I got control! They said detain him, don't drop him.
Military Passenger: Richards, your going to fry for this.
Another Military Passenger: And I'll see you in hell.
BEN KNOCKED OUT BY BUTT OF GUN
Yes, I spelled Arnold’s name wrong. I don’t care.
My fave Ah-nuld movie. It even has two future governors acting in it (Ah-nuld and Jesse Ventura)!
For many years, this was my favorite movie. It was eclipsed by THE PATRIOT and then by NATIONAL TREASURE.
Great trivia. Has any other movie ever had two future governors?
In 196, at UCSB, the campus was in turmoil because Gov. Reagan was cutting benefits. A few doors away from my room in San Miguel Hall, a guy screamed, “The governor’s been shot!” We all went running down to his room. What did we see? An old Western, and Reagan’s character had been shot.
Trivia question for you. What other movie featured both future governors?
There are many, many great quotes from that film.
“That’s all right; keep it.”
“I had the shirt for it but you f’d it up.”
That would be Predator (1987)
Predator!
“I get airsick, carsick, seasick. I’ll throw up all over you.”
“Go ahead, it won’t kill this shirt.”
Seriously...
Barring truly extreme reductions in fuel availability, food riots are highly improbable.
Calories are cheap and readily available by any historical standard. It would take the decimation of our infrastructure to bring about this kind of situation.
I think that was, “It won’t show in this shirt.”
Photo shops will get much better also.
Preditor
My typo/ meant Predator. Great movie for a B sci-fi.
Haha. I just watched this movie recently. A classic by Stephen King (aka Richard Bachmann).
Richard Dawson was brilliant in this movie.
Predator.
I guess we need to take you out back and beat you with a 2x4 for spelling Arnold’s name wrong. “I don’t care,” just doesn’t cut it.
:-)
Government mandated carbon taxes would do it. Fuel and feedstock prices too high to run tractors and harvesters, too high to pump irrigation water, too high to make urea-based fertlizers, too high to process food, too high to deliver food to market, too high to refrigerate food at the store or at home. Government-caused shortages and starvation as a matter of policy. Just like the 1932 Ukraine famine.
I never realized that “Starsky” directed this movie.
But the question stands: Is that really achievable or probable?
This isn't the Ukraine in the 30’s.
We have an intelligent, resourceful and inventive agricultural base. And we still have a good deal of feedback into the system of governance.
I cannot see energy prices sustained so high as to produce that kind of food scarcity.
You'd have to have agents of the State going from farm to farm searching for and seizing home biodiesel production and that is absolutely improbable at the current time.
Especially in Bakersfield!! The crops grow themselves!
Up until a few years ago Rhodesia/Zimbabwe had "an intelligent, resourceful and inventive agricultural base", and people there would not have imagined food shortages.
The collapse happened extremely fast, and was fueled by the need of the government to take the assets of the productive in order to continue to buy the support of the unproductive.
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