MAC & WINDOWS IN JOHN CARPENTER'S THE THING

Photofade of Windows & Mac in THE THING

Before the age of home computers, John Carpenter's THE THING had two characters within a group of a dozen poor souls trapped in an icy compound. One guy's named MAC (short for MacCready, but he's almost only referred to as Mac) and there's WINDOWS...

Alan's awesome book

Whether this means anything symbolically relevant, MAC, played by Kurt Russell, is an industrious loner who winds up destroying a computer pouring bourbon in the console after losing an automated chess match while Windows, played by Thomas G. Waites, is a techie who ultimately goes bonkers... And both have beards.

Waites, also a co-star in THE WARRIORS, personally shared that he overheard a conversation between a group of rowdies on a subway, and one guy was referred to as Windows... So Waites changed the communication officer's name, which was originally Sanders in the script and the Alan Dean Foster novelization.

Mac Laptop

It's a mere coincidence that these now iconic monikers, from a film with advanced and awesome special effects, became the two most important elements of the technological age only a few years later.

ALAN DEAN FOSTER ON HOW HIS NOVELIZATION STANDS OUT...

Most notably, the final scene differs from the one that was used in the film. And I was able to get even gorier than the picture. Another very underrated film and much truer to John W. Campbell's original story WHO GOES THERE? than the 1950's version.