Maggie was Harold "Brain" Hellman's "squeeze" and a prisoner of the New York Penitentiary who helped assist S.D. "Snake" Plissken in his mission to rescue President John Harker.
Biography[]
1997[]
Maggie had been given to Brain by "The Duke of New York" in order to "keep him happy."
After the President crash-landed in the prison, Maggie took Snake and "Cabbie" to the Duke. She then went with Brain when leading Snake to the train yard where the Duke kept the President. There, Snake was ambushed and captured by the Duke.
Maggie later went with Brain to see the Duke, Brain requesting him to leave Snake alive.
Back at their home, Brain figured that Snake entered the prison by landing a glider atop the World Trade Center. The two then went to rescue the President – Maggie shooting some of the Duke's men in the process – and took him to the World Trade Center.
However, as Snake reached them, the glider was pushed from the top of the building. The Duke ambushed them on the ground floor, but they managed to escape and were picked up by Cabbie. Pursued by the Duke, they drove across the 69th Street bridge until Snake accidentally hit a mine, destroying the cab and killing Cabbie. They continued on foot, but Brain mistakenly stepped on a mine and was killed.
Devastated by Brain's death, Maggie stood up, staring at the headlights. Calm and cold, she turned around to Snake and held out her hand, looking at Snake until he pulled out his revolver and threw it to her. She caught it and spun around to the Duke's car while Snake took off running after the President. As the Duke's car sped closer and closer, Maggie stood out in the open with no cover, raising the gun and firing several times. The Duke drove the car directly into Maggie, killing her immediately and leaving her body partially under the car.
Background Information and Notes[]
Trivia[]
- Despite her close relationship with Brain, it is implied that she is attracted to Snake just by the way she looks at him when they first met.
- The character of Maggie was written with Adrienne Barbeau in mind from the very start.
- Adrienne Barbeau and John Carpenter were married at the time the film was released, as were Kurt Russell and Season Hubley.
- Tom Atkins and Adrienne Barbeau also costarred in John Carpenter's The Fog (1980). In both movies, their characters never meet.
- The shot of Maggie's corpse under the Duke's car was added after principal photography was done as John Carpenter felt the audience wouldn't get it that she had been killed by the impact. Carpenter and Adrienne Barbeau filmed the shot in their garage with her under their own car. During a 2011 interview with Terry Gross on her National Public Radio program "Fresh Air," J.J. Abrams said that as a teenager, he was the one who had first suggested to Carpenter that Maggie's death was unclear; Abrams, whose father was a movie producer, got to see an early rough cut of the movie, and when Carpenter asked the small screening audience for notes or suggestions, the then-15-year-old Abrams told him that there needed to be an extra shot of Maggie that established that she was definitely dead.