They Live's Keith David Remembers the Greatest Fight Scene of His Career

It takes a great cinematic social satire to withstand the sands of time. As is often the case when a script is skewing a particular time, place or regime, it has a tendency to not age well unless there's a timeless quality built into the filmmaker's approach.

A rare example of a film that continues to have plenty to say — bubblegum, or not — is John Carpenter's 1988 sci-fi satire, They Live. Adapted from Ray Nelson's 1963 sci-fi, short story, "Eight O'Clock in the Morning," Carpenter rewrote the premise to take place smack in the middle of Reagan-era politics, lampooning the commercialized excess of the time to be the actual work of a covert alien takeover of humanity. 

With They Live now streaming on Peacock and the political season in full swing, what better time to look back at the classic film that remains one of the director's very best films? And what better person to do so with than They Live co-star Keith David, who played Frank Armitage, reminiscing about the film in an original SYFY WIRE interview celebrating its 30th anniversary. 

Why Keith David thinks John Carpenter's They Live has aged so well

Everything about They Live, from its star WWF & WCW wrestler Roddy Piper to the '80s era clothing and cheap sunglasses, are very much a product of the era in which it was filmed (on the mean streets of Los Angeles). This wasn't a slick representation of sci-fi futurism, rather, this was Carpenter turning his razor sharp spotlight on the crass, free market culture of America, comparing Reaganomics to a hostile takeover of the populace by aliens looking to exploit Earth for its needs. 

They Live was David's second film for Carpenter. Seven years before, the director had cast the well-respected theater actor to play Childs in his paranoia horror thriller The Thing. They Live was their professional reunion. 

The classic film that inspired They Live's fight between Roddy Piper and Keith David

David plays Frank Armitage, a salt of the earth construction worker who befriends Los Angeles newcomer, Nada (Piper). When Nada accidentally discovers a pervasive alien plot to subjugate humanity, Frank doesn't believe him and thinks he's nuts. It comes to major blows in one of the most memorable fight scenes in action movie history. 

David said the fight scene between his character and Nada was fashioned after another seminal fight scene in the 1952 John Ford Western, The Quiet Man. "The fight had a story within itself. It had a beginning, middle and an end," said David.

Frequent Carpenter collaborator and They Live producer Larry Franco remembered that the original script only marked the scene with the words: "They fight." Carpenter left Franco with five empty pages that he warned would be a huge sequence, but it still needed to be planned and developed by stunt coordinator, Jeff Imada. When it was actually shot, the fight took three days to complete. 

"It was some of the most fun I've ever had, ever. It was so well choreographed and so well crafted by Jeff Imada," David said. "And Roddy, he taught me so much about how to sell it. I hit him a couple times but he never hit me."

Watch They Live, now streaming on Peacock.