Fox's Death

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I THINK MERCY SAYS"A COP WRACKED(KILLED)FOX"

[Ranchgal]

I always heard her say "cop grabbed him"

[vermin76]

sounded like cop grabbed fox.how did mercy get out of the station with so many cops around.wearing a pink top aint exactly camoflage unless youre turning round and saying i,m here come get me.my opinion is the cop who killed fox would have got away with it.lets look at it this way.......fox was a gang member,cops wanted all gangs put out of business so killing fox to them would probably have been like..."ah well another member out of business and while he,s dead we wont have to worry about which cell he,s going in."bearing in mind the cops were understaffed compaired to the gangs.about his parents i dont think they,d have been notified at all.as soon as they found out he was in a gang they would have closed the case and a big cover up would have occured.

[Ranchgal]

Well she had stolen the blue jacket to put over the pink top, and she didn't look like a gang member, and wasn't wearing colors---so while some may have looked AT her, I really don't think they were looking FOR her very hard--as she really doesn't look like she is going to mug anyone or cause much trouble.
they have to have probable cause, and a girl walking around, wouldn't do it.

I do have to take issue about the notification---actually--his being a probable minor-gang or no gang--they would have made every effort to contact his parents immediately upon identification---that is the only issue that would have caused delays.
IF fox didn't have ID on him, and they had to either look for id through the juvinile system, supposing he had been in trouble before---OR they have to wait for someone to report him missing, and then put the two together.

But once he was killed--and it was by a city train---you can bet they were looking for someone to turn his body over to ASAP.
Not that they would be overly sympathetic to his being in a gang--but once he was dead--it gets taken away from the street cops and goes homicide--and they would have notified parents/relatives as soon as they could---too much overhanging paperwork otherwise.

[LATEM]

Does anybody know what exactly was the conflict between Waites and Hill? Also, did Waites ever talked about what was it he did not agree with?

[Harley]

Okay, would they even be able to identify Fox after he was run over by the train? I'm thinking he'll be the equivalent of roadkill at this point, and would he have any ID on him for the police to go by? He would probably be labeled a John Doe and be disposed of as soon as possible to make paperwork go a lot smoother. Eventually the other Warriors and his family would probably catch on after they don't hear from him.

[Johan]

Fox jumpt of the movie so he hav to die.

Your saying he would have had a chance of making it through the movie if the actor who played him didn't quit?

Maby was fox one of them hwo make all the way home in the movie,
But fox jumped of in the midel of the movie.
And that's why he died in the movie. (I think)

[blocker]

You also have to think that in real life, that station would have been closed down for most of the night & next day while they investigated and what not.

I mean, how long do you figure the four of them were running from/fighting with the Furies before Swan got back to the station, an hour at most???

They wouldn't have even gotten Fox scraped off the tracks by then

just remember how fast the train was going when it would have hit Fox. I mean is was hardly pulling out of that staion, plus it was heading into another tunnel, so chances are they may not have found fox for a long time (maybe the smell would give it away, or the MTA guys doing maintenance on the line migyt have found him).

[Harley]

Would there be anyone wondering about Fox? According to the write up on ign.com Fox was an orphan:

Fox:
A walking encyclopedia of street knowledge, Fox was orphaned at a young age and was forced to fend for himself and survive out on the streets. He knows NYC like the back of his hand - from the back alleys of Chinatown to the less than friendly hideaways of East Harlem.

So is this info about Fox part of his original character or something made up by the game designers? In any case it would seem that no one would come around looking foe Fox's family to tell them about his death, and the Warriors would go on believing he got nabbed by the cops.

[fist fighter]

I would have thought Swan would have told them but, Walter Hill was probably so mad he wanted as little of The Fox in as possible.

Even him talking while they are discussing the meeting is cut out

Pity he left when he did as i would love to know what was planned for the character..... Yes i know i've said that before!

was Walter mad about him leaving the movie??? and why did he leave that always puzzles me

[Ranchgal]

they called it artistic differences: in other words it wasn't working out the way the director thought it would or the actor thought it would.
translation-WH thought TW would be more of presence in the movie than he turned out to have, and TW thought he would have more of a role than he ended up with, because he seemed to have very little screen presence in the movie, and Michael Beck was demonstrating GREAT chemistry, so they re did the movie script to capitalize on MB's presence, and TW got ticked and quit.

You can read it on the Original Script pages when they get it all posted, or you can usually find a OS on ebay for sale.

[Dave Mack]

Wow, this thread has made me think realistically about this scene for the first time. I grew up in NYC and I know firsthand (from being in a station where someone had jumped, fallen under a train...) that when Swan came back there would have been at LEAST one ambulance outside the station with WAY more cops and the train would have been shut down. Even if the cop who threw him onto the tracks wanted to keep it quiet, the motorman who ran him over would have, 1) Been traumatized. 2) Would have to make a report....
They wouldn't have just pulled the train out, they would HAVE to go under it and make sure that he was dead as people have survived being run over believe it or not. That requires track workers with equipment etc...

Swan would not have been able to just stroll back in...

d

[GonzoNYC]

Good points, Dave. I always thought it was risky going back to the station alone. Could have been a lot more Furies about as well.

[CleonsChoice]

Wow, this thread has made me think realistically about this scene for the first time. I grew up in NYC and I know firsthand (from being in a station where someone had jumped, fallen under a train...

You'll run into lots of trouble if you try to start looking at this film realistically...I mean if you want to stir up discussion on the lack of police coverage on Fox's death, than we should probably also pick on the film's blantant discontinuities with regards to the MTA--Hoyt-Schermerhorn doubles for nearly every station interior in the film--and the overall lack of normal civilians throughout the film.

Dave, as a fellow longtime NYC resident, you know as well as I that there is no way, even at the most ungodly hour, that stations such as 96th Street (72nd St./Hoyt-Schermerhorn in the film) and Union Square (Hoyt-Schermerhorn in the film) would ever be as deserted as they are in Hill's vision of the "neon underground."

I think one of the reasons why The Warriors is so great is because it's meant to be a fantasy, a vision of NY that is not based in reality. Because many trappings of its production year (1978) (i.e. afro haircuts, posters for films like Foul Play, etc.) remain in the film, it's easy to lose sight of this. With a greater production budget, Hill probably would have been more overt in visualizing his intent of setting the film "sometime in the future."

That's why the initial backlash against the film was patently unfair--it was judged by people (most of whom had not actually watched the film) as a violent, lifelike tale of rampaging gangs. Nothing could be further from the truth. The gangs we see are committing violence against other gangs, most notably the Warriors. As we know, there's hardly any blood in the film and characters like Cowboy and Vermin survive baseball bat beatings and being tossed midget-style into a bathroom mirror--like in a comic book or a cartoon. In the case of Fox, I guess even Hill could not deny that a subway car will always win the battle between train and man. And, it is telling that the one onscreen death in the film (Fox) was a scene that was not in the original script and was improvised by Hill to make up for the unplanned departure of Thomas G. Waites from the production.

Finally, if we had a more consciously "realistic" film we would never have had the wonderfully diverse gang we all know and love--the film's collection of whites, blacks, and Latinos in one gang would have been highly unlikely in the real Coney Island in 1978 (and lots of other places, for that matter). It has been said that Hill originally wanted his Warriors to be an all-black outfit.

[Dave Mack]

I know, I know....