Page "Escape from New York" Paragraph 29

The film's setting proved to be a potential problem for Carpenter, who needed to create a decaying, semi-destroyed version of New York City on only a shoe-string budget.

He and the film's production designer Joe Alves rejected shooting on location in New York City because it would be too hard to make it look like a destroyed city.

Carpenter suggested shooting on a movie back lot but Alves nixed that idea " because the texture of a real street is not like a back lot.

" They sent Barry Bernardi, their location manager ( and associate producer ), " on a sort of all-expense-paid trip across the country looking for the worst city in America ," producer Debra Hill remembers.