{"id":4377,"date":"2013-05-20T13:21:24","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T20:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=4377"},"modified":"2013-05-21T14:05:16","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T21:05:16","slug":"giving-the-finger-to-ronald-reagan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2013\/05\/20\/giving-the-finger-to-ronald-reagan\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Giving the Finger&#8221; to Ronald Reagan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"carpenter-they-live-was-about-giving-the-finger-to-reagan\/#\/2\" target=\"_blank\"><em>from The LA Times Hero Complex<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<h1>John Carpenter: \u2018They Live\u2019 was about \u2018giving the finger to\u00a0Reagan\u2019<\/h1>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rKEtft8TGEo\" height=\"360\" width=\"480\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Hero Complex Film Festival kicked off Friday evening with a 25th anniversary screening of \u201cThey Live,\u201d a 35th anniversary screening of \u201cHalloween\u201d and an onstage conversation with the filmmaker behind both movies, John Carpenter.<\/p>\n<p>Carpenter discussed his motivation in making \u201cThey Live,\u201d a campy but subversive sci-fi flick that starred professional wrestler \u201cRowdy\u201d Roddy Piper as the film\u2019s blue-collar hero Nada, who discovers an alien conspiracy to mind-control the people of Earth using invisible messages. Carpenter called \u201cThey Live\u201d his most political film and said it was his response to consumerism and class disparity in the 1980s.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy the end of the \u201970s there was a backlash against everything in the \u201960s, and that\u2019s what the \u201980s were, and Ronald Reagan became president, and Reagonomics came in,\u201d Carpenter told the sold-out theater at the Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood. \u201cSo a lot of the ideals that I grew up with were under assault, and something called a yuppie came into existence, and they just wanted money. And so by the late \u201980s, I\u2019d had enough, and I decided I had to make a statement, as stupid and banal as it is, but I made one, and that\u2019s \u2018They Live.\u2019 \u2026 I just love that it was giving the finger to Reagan when nobody else would.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"carpenter-they-live-was-about-giving-the-finger-to-reagan\/#\/2\" target=\"_blank\">click to continue reading at LATimes.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from The LA Times Hero Complex John Carpenter: \u2018They Live\u2019 was about \u2018giving the finger to\u00a0Reagan\u2019 The Hero Complex Film Festival kicked off Friday evening with a 25th anniversary screening of \u201cThey Live,\u201d a 35th anniversary screening of \u201cHalloween\u201d and an onstage conversation with the filmmaker behind both movies, John Carpenter. Carpenter discussed his motivation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art","category-mirth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}