these are the opening title cards to the
film the running man the 1987 dystopian
film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
up until recently it would have seemed
unlikely that a 30 year old Arnold
Schwarzenegger b-side would resurface in
the popular imagination yet now that
Americans are about to watch Donald
Trump be sworn in as president in the
United States a future where the media
manipulates citizens with fake news a
reality show host that gives orders and
military and a populace too distracted
by their screens to care about social
injustice doesn't seem that futuristic
at all I watch the picture again about
six months ago and of course we've come
full circle now with a reality show
president
set in Los Angeles circa 2017 and based
off a Stephen King's novel of the same
name the running man tells the story of
America and the aftermath of an economic
collapse the only thing uniting the poor
and ultra rich is a fascination with a
reality show called the running man
where convicted criminals are pitted
against roided-out gladiators
the show's producers and the US military
apparatus are well aware that the TV
series is the only thing distracting
Americans from their poverty and lack of
civil rights shorts Integra plays Ben
Richards a policeman in prison for
rebelling against the state and falsely
portrayed by the media as a murderous
lunatic and suck he is forced to compete
on the running man 30 years after it's
released this film is incredibly
unsettling to watch in the run-up to
Trump's inauguration still at the time
of its release
Schwarzenegger Saad is nothing more than
fiction the movie is reality it's just a
story and I just never can forget that
although to him it was nothing more than
an entertaining action movie it's
uncanny how much it managed to predict
motherboard caught up with the Running
Man original screenwriter Stephen E
D'Souza this was an early design for Ben
Richards they obviously know at this
point is going to be Arnold
Schwarzenegger but it's kind of a Conan
desk we've all you know seen the various
versions of 1984 we've seen the dystopic
you know visions of the future going
back to brave the world the Running Man
is probably a distillation of every
horrible dystopia you would not want to
live in laid out in the future and an
extrapolation of some some things that
were going on in society that I said
well let's take these two a preposterous
example never knowing that I'd get to
2017 and go this is an awful lot like
something I typed in the aftermath of
the Boston bombing Americans saw how
easy it was for the government to
totally suspend civil rights in a
to door pursuit of an alleged criminal
something which happens in the film
after Schwarzenegger escapes from a
labor camp we have to work out to bring
his emergency police are engaged in a
door-to-door search for Benjamin a
Richards in the film the media apparatus
manipulates the truth to frame
undesirables for crimes they've never
committed fake news was a leading issue
post-election and in the running man is
uncannily prescient and as we saw over
the course of the most recent election
cycle using media to spread politically
convenient lies has never been more in
vogue I'm not going to give you a
question
you are fake news go ahead well if there
was something I wanted the audience to
take away from the picture when it came
out it would be a certain skepticism
about what they see in the media there
is a lot of underhanded behavior in the
course of the movie you know these are
things that the trends were already in
place at this time in the 1980s and you
know what was like a little gentle elbow
and the ribs a little ironic wink is now
like a red flag that's on fire then
there's the bizarre coincidence for a
game show host is literally giving
orders to the military and now Trump the
one-time host of reality show The
Apprentice is now commander-in-chief of
our armed forces
country is being bloodsucker at one
point Killian Richard Arthur's part says
get me the president Asian and the
president-elect as a nation and the
blurring of reality programming and the
reality we live in is getting the line
is getting pleasure and pleasure all the
time and the fact that a reality show
host is going to become the president
and in the movie we have a rally host
who apparently is a key and if not the
key figure in a toast future you know
dystopia yet Trump is not alone in his
move from the silver screen to the
political arena Schwarzenegger and his
co-star Jesse Ventura both were elected
state governors after their stints in
Hollywood and bringing everything more
strangely full-circle
Schwarzenegger has recently replaced
Trump as the reality show host of The
Apprentice Connie he terminated hasta
LaVista baby for better or worse the
running man is more relevant now than
ever but as creators never intended to
predict the future instead they thought
they had produced an absurd heightened
vision of unreality so while the running
man didn't get everything right about
2017 it did manage to capture the
strangest development 30 years in
advance giving us unsuspecting audience
as a glimpse of a future where the line
between reality and fiction becomes
increasingly undiscernible
I think the takeaway GSG we should have
been paying attention when this movie
came out baby would be in the situation
right now is there going to be a sequel
to this movie yes and you're living it
the sequel is reality every one of these
two different drafts of this movie so
now that politics and entertainment have
become completely merged and given my
connection to the Republican
establishment to my dear friend all
sports a this is going to be
arranged we put in the same bomb-proof
shelter as a decoration independence