Trivia / They Live!

• Acting for Two: Allegedly multiple alien characters were portrayed by stuntman and fight coordinator Jeff Imada.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: The Chew Bubblegum line often gets switched up to "I'm here to kick ass and chew bubblegum". Funnily enough, Roddy Piper himself was guilty of this at WWE's 1994 King of the Ring PPV.
• Creator-Chosen Casting:
  • John Carpenter cast Roddy Piper after seeing him at Wrestlemania III.
    Unlike most Hollywood actors, Roddy has life written all over him.
  • Carpenter created the role of Frank Armitage especially for Keith David, having worked with him on The Thing (1982). He wanted someone "who wouldn't be a traditional sidekick, but could hold his own."
  • Carpenter cast Meg Foster after seeing her in Ticket to Heaven.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: The entire fist fight scene was always intended to be ad-libbed. John Carpenter's shooting script simply said "FIGHT CONTINUES" for six pages, having the two actors do their thing.
• Inspiration for the Work: The idea came from a short story called "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" by Ray Nelson, originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in November 1963, involving an alien invasion in the tradition of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which Nelson, along with artist Bill Wray, adapted into a story called "Nada", published in the Alien Encounters comics anthology in April 1986.
• No Stunt Double: Not only did Roddy Piper and Keith David do their fight scene themselves, but they were really hitting each other except for blows to the face and groin.
• Prop Recycling: The PKE Meter from Ghostbusters (1984) is used as an alien communication device.
• Referenced by...:
  • The plot of Zombie School is kicked off by the protagonist finding a pair of sunglasses which allows him to see the truth; that the students were replaced by zombies after being brainwashed by the faculty.
  • Saints Row IV plot is about an alien invasion and has a mission named "He Lives", which features Keith David (As Himself) in a prominent role, and at one time he has a long fist fight against Roddy Piper (As Himself, too).
• Release Date Change: Originally scheduled for an October 21, 1988 release date, the film was moved to November 4, not only in order to avoid competition with Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, but to capitalize on the November 8 presidential election, in tandem with the film's social commentary.
• Throw It In!:
  • Nada's immortal "Chew Bubblegum and kick ass" line as he enters the bank was an ad-lib by Roddy Piper, who kept a notepad of pro wrestling promo-style one-liners he wrote with him during filming.
  • There's also the very, very long fist fight between Nada and Frank. It was supposed to be cut down, but the creators enjoyed the fight so much, they decided to leave the whole thing in.
  • Apparently, one Universal executive didn't see the horror in aliens controlling the world's businesses, reportedly telling John Carpenter that "we sell out every day!" That line made its way into the finished film, where it was spoken by The Quisling.
• What Could Have Been: The role of John Nada was originally written for Kurt Russell. John Carpenter felt he should cast somebody else after casting Russell in three of his films prior to this one (Escape from New York, The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China). Also considered were Alec Baldwin, Michael Biehn, Jeff Bridges, Bruce Campbell, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Tommy Lee Jones, Michael Keaton, Christopher Lambert, Stephen Lang, Dolph Lundgren, Michael Madsen, Bill Paxton, Ron Perlman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Bruce Willis.
• Word of God: For some reason (see the Clueless Aesop entry on the main page), racists like to use this movie as an allegory for the alleged international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. This prompted an exasperated John Carpenter to come out on Twitter and give them all a telling-off.
  John Carpenter: THEY LIVE is about yuppies and unrestrained capitalism. It has nothing to do with Jewish control of the world, which is slander and a lie.

---