Sol Yurick on Trying to Find Any Trace of His Novel, The Warriors, on the Big Screen

It was 1976—or 1977, I don’t remember exactly—when I got an offer from a small, independent filmmaker to make a movie out of my novel, The Warriors. He told me that he had always loved the book and had long wanted to produce it. He said he could do it almost exactly as it had been written. I was excited. However, at the very last moment, in fact the day before signing, my agent received an offer for the rights to the novel offered by a Hollywood producer, Lawrence Gordon. The movie would be directed by Walter Hill. I agreed to the more lucrative offer. I would get more money but more important, perhaps my book would be republished.

What I didn’t know was that, at the time, a kind of collective madness had seized Hollywood; a number of gang movies were scheduled to be made at the same time by different studios. As it would turn out, the first to make it to the screen would be The Warriors.

After the signing, months went by; I heard nothing. Then one spring day I read in the newspapers that Lawrence Gordon and Walter Hill had come to New York to film the movie. The newspaper article happened to mention the name of the hotel where Gordon was staying. I wanted to see some of the filming. On an impulse, I telephoned the hotel and asked for Gordon’s room. I introduced myself, giving my name. He was puzzled; he didn’t know who I was.

I told him I was the author of The Warriors. Immediately, to my surprise, Gordon went into what seemed like a canned rap to the outraged author who feels that his sacred work of art is about to be philistinized. Even worse, the author might ask for some part in the production of the movie. Gordon said that this was to be an action movie, an adventure story, and that a movie was different from a novel. What this spiel reflected was the traditional conflict between writers on the one hand and actors, directors, producers, and studios on the other.

All of which I already knew. I knew what the industry was about. I kept trying to interrupt, attempting to say that all I wanted was to see the filming. Finally Gordon told me where the next day’s filming would take place . . . in Riverside Park, at night. The scene to be filmed was the grand meeting of the gangs.

When I got to the location that night, there were hundreds of young men and some women. I was overwhelmed and thought that here was my imagination concretized, industrialized, and populated with living people.

I introduced myself to Walter Hill. He immediately went into the same rap Gordon had given me. Once again, trying to deal with this industry-wide anxiety, I kept trying to interrupt. When we got that straightened out, Hill told me where to stand and watch. What I was seeing were the moments when the leader was trying to unify the gangs (Ismael Rivera in my book; Cyrus in the film . . . someone had done their xenophobic homework). He makes his speech. The police break up the grand, revolutionary meeting. The actor was awful, the dialogue lame; Hill had no idea how the street kids really talked.

I was fascinated by the difference between what I had tried to do in the book and the way the film tried to deal with the problem of the grand assemblage of gang representatives. In the book I dealt with the technology of a single man trying to reach hundreds of people in a large, open space. In the book, the message is spoken in a normal way and relayed from gang to gang. As it is relayed, the message gradually entropizes (think of the game of telephone). In the movie the problem was solved by a grand speech to the assembled multitude in which all can hear the speech-maker clearly.

Months passed; I heard nothing of the course of the production from anyone associated with the film. All I could do was wait to be informed of the opening. I did hear from a friend who was in the industry: he told me that there had been a preview in San Francisco and it was badly received. Perhaps it would never reach the screen.

Then six months later, suddenly, I began to see posters on the subway stations. I saw coming attractions on television. But no one had thought to inform me of the opening directly.

Paramount was distributing the film; I decided to call their publicity office. I introduced myself, told them I was the author of the book. They asked if I wanted to go to the premiere. Again, apparently no one had thought of informing me. I got three tickets; for myself, my wife, and my daughter.

The premiere was held in one of the big theaters in Times Square (this was before the theaters were split into smaller ones). When I arrived I saw Walter Hill in the lobby; he was trembling. His last film had been a flop: his reputation was riding on this one.

I looked for my novel on the screen. I found the skeleton of it intact. Its revolutionary content was missing.

I looked for my novel on the screen. I found the skeleton of it intact. Its revolutionary content was missing; no Fourth of July. The first three minutes—the gathering of the fighting-gang bands into an army of revolt—showed what cinematic compression at its best could do; almost perfect. “Almost perfect?” Not totally. For me, the most thrilling moment came when my name, as author of the book upon which the film was based, came shooting out of the subway tunnel darkness, filling the screen.

In the movie the Warriors were racially mixed; almost an impossibility. My warriors had all been black. The hero of the movie story was white. (I have to admit that I doubt the movie would have been as popular—back then in 1979, the date of its release—if the protagonist were black.) The ending promises the potentiality of happiness . . . if the protagonist and the woman, who may become his girlfriend, change their ways. The movie, whose action was more balletic than real, was much less violent than my novel; the casual, random killing of a bystanding man and the gang rape had been excised (well, how could you relate to a gang that did such things). I thought, on the whole, that the movie was trashy, although beautifully filmed.

I noticed one thing that was at first a little puzzling: a sheriff appears for a few frames. There was a scene in the book in which the hero, Hinton, in his flight from the Bronx to Brooklyn, wanders through an arcade (long since demolished) in the Forty-second Street subway station. There he sees a kind of automated sheriff. For a quarter you could stage a gunfight with him. The sheriff, would, in his prerecorded voice, tell you to get out of town or he would kill you. In the book, Hinton takes on the sheriff. In the movie, you see the sheriff but nothing comes of it. The apparition is puzzling. Walter Hill had obviously filmed my scene but had cut almost all of it out. I was also annoyed that the subway stations where Hill filmed the action were out of sequence or simply unused. Small complaint.

Because I must have been groaning during the showing, my daughter, Susanna, who was fourteen at the time, assured me that the kids would love it, and so they did. It certainly made her reputation in our neighborhood.

As I was about to leave the theater, one of Paramount’s publicity people brought me to meet a critic for, I think, public television: I can’t remember his name. He didn’t care for the movie. He said, however, that he had heard that The Warriors was based on a Greek classic; perhaps The Odyssey? (How did he know this? The film didn’t indicate the parallel. Had the public relations people mentioned this in their promotional literature?) I mentioned the source, The Anabasis, which he did not know. I quickly told him the story of that failed usurpation-revolution. As I talked, I could see his attitude was changing. Clearly, now that the critic had a great classic parallel—which elevated this sordid, modern-day story—he could give it a good review.

I went home, disappointed. The next day, opening day, I was invited to Paramount’s publicity department. There were a number of journalists there. One of them asked me what I thought about the movie. I disliked it but I didn’t want to say that. I said instead that I found it “interesting.” I was immediately taken aside by one of the publicity people who told me that the word “interesting,” was the kiss of death. I tried to avoid talking to anyone else.

In the meantime, the actors were being interviewed. I detected a kind of party line. All of them denied that the movie was about violence for violence’s sake. Rather, they said, one and all, that it was a movie about family.

A number of things happened next. First, a friend went to see the movie and telephoned me to say that not only was the show sold out, but also the next one; the line went around the block. I also heard that on the night of general release, a movie house somewhere in Kansas was sold out again and again in the midst of a blinding snowstorm. The movie was to push Star Wars out from first place.

I received a phone call from Pauline Kael; she also had heard that the movie and my book were based on a classic; perhaps again Homer? I mentioned The Anabasis. She wanted to know if my book was a reference to the French poet St. John Perse’s Anabase? I told her that although I had read the poem (in reality a few lines, and in English, not French)—a little one-upmanship—I explained my book’s real “source,” telling Ms. Kael the whole story. And, as I told her the tale, I could sense that her excitement was growing; at last, a hook for intellectuals upon which to hang her review in The New Yorker. It was not only a glowing review, but she had also taken the trouble to read my book and mentioned it, glowingly. Later Paramount would take out a full-page ad in The New York Times with the complete New Yorker review, giving the movie the proper cachet.

There were reports that various gangs had begun to copy the style of the Warriors.

But outside the professional-intellectual level, the movie had already captured the imaginations of the kids, including many gang members, in a different way. Many young men, now in their thirties and forties, have told me that seeing the movie (again and again and again) had been a defining moment in their young lives.

And then I heard that fights had broken out among young men waiting to see the movie. Someone, in Los Angeles, I think, had been shot and killed. And there were other “alarming” acts of violence. My phone began to ring (and would continue for the next two weeks . . . night and day); reporters were calling to ask if I, the original creator of the idea, the demiurgos, as it were, felt at all responsible for the death and the violence. Of course I denied this. I hadn’t made the movie.

I have to admit that secretly I felt—a thought I would never express in public—that the violence and the controversy surrounding the movie would help sell the movie, thus generating demand for the reprinting of my book, which it did. The book was not only republished in the United States, England and Japan (a new translation), but also in France (almost banned), Germany, Spain, Italy (printed by three different publishers: I was later to learn that many young Italians felt that, because of the movie, they now understood the United States perfectly), and Portugal.

As far as the media was concerned, the events led it to create a climate of alarm. There were reports that various gangs had begun to copy the style of the Warriors. Graffiti bearing the name of Warriors began to appear (some of the graffiti had of course been spray-painted by the filmmakers). Some theaters refused to show the movie as well as the other gang movies when they were released.

Unbeknownst to me, Paramount called in a number of behavioral scientists to see how they might lessen the impact of those images deemed evocative of violence. But, in fact, what were these? How did they work on the “susceptible” minds of the viewers? While it is true that where, for instance, advertising attempts to manipulate the minds of people, it is not always possible to pick out the one, or set of images, in the context of a movie story, that will lead to an act of violence. Other movies about gangs hadn’t done that. On the other hand, the influence of The Godfather on certain aspects of the real Mafia is legendary. It is only after the fact that social psychologists can “determine” what it was that affected so many young people.

It was clear that nothing could be cut from the movie; it was already too tight to take out anything. It was decided to drop all advertising. It seemed as though the movie had disappeared from the screen, although it was still showing all over the country. Of course the audience numbers dropped.

What is astonishing to me is the durability of the movie. It was released some twenty years ago. There is an Internet Web site devoted to it. New members come online all the time. It has become, in the parlance of media when they can’t understand the why of the development of a social phenomenon, a “cult” movie. It certainly made Walter Hill’s reputation. I have to admit that I didn’t and still don’t understand the phenomenon. There hasn’t been one film made in the United States that I would consider seeing five times, as many who loved the film version of The Warriors did.

The Warriors is not the best of my books. It was out of print and more or less unknown to the lovers of the movie. Yet, without the book, there would be no film. I find that amusing.

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Excerpted from the afterword of The Warriors, copyright © 2003 by Sol Yorick. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved.