They Live [Paperback]

Deep Focusis a series of film books with a fresh approach. Take the smartest, liveliest writers in contemporary letters and let them loose on the most vital and popular corners of cinema history: midnight movies, the New Hollywood of the sixties and seventies, film noir, screwball comedies, international cult classics, and more. Passionate and idiosyncratic, each volume ofDeep Focusis long-form criticism that’s relentlessly provocative and entertaining.

Kicking off the series is Jonathan Lethem’s take onThey Live, John Carpenter’s 1988 classic amalgam of deliberate B-movie, sci-fi, horror, anti-Yuppie agitprop. Lethem exfoliates Carpenter’s paranoid satire in a series of penetrating, free-associational forays into the context of a story that peels the human masks off the ghoulish overlords of capitalism. His field of reference spans classic Hollywood cinema and science fiction, as well as popular music and contemporary art and theory. Taking into consideration the work of Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, James Brown, Fredric Jameson, Shepard Fairey, Philip K. Dick, Alfred Hitchcock, and Edgar Allan Poe, not to mention the role of wrestlers—includingThey Livestar “Rowdy” Roddy Piper—in contemporary culture, Lethem’sThey Liveprovides a wholly original perspective on Carpenter’s subversive classic.

Praise forThey Live

Apparently, author Lethem was the only other person than me to takeThey Liveas brilliant, stinging social commentary. He explains why in this great book.” — Sam Stowe,California Literary Review

Who would have thought that one of the cleverest, most accessibly in-depth film books released this year would be a smart-ass novelist exploring a cheesy-cheeky ‘80s sci-fi flick wherein a former wrestler combats an alien occupation via magic sunglasses? . . . [Jonathan Lethem] is able to seriously dissel³$