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Every film is a product of its time.
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And every successful film tells you something
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about the time it was made.
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It's successful because it resonates
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with stories and images that people need to see
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at that particular point.
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"Alien" is a radical break
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with science fiction.
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This is not the notion of the alien
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that we were building toward in something
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like "Close Encounters."
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"Star Wars" comes out,
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we have a fun space adventure.
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And then "Alien" comes out, and people embrace it.
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And then just a couple of years later, "E.T."
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and John Carpenter's "The Thing" come out,
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and audiences resoundingly are like, no, thank you.
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We want our aliens to be nice and squishy
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and cool and eat candy.
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I think there's a special status that comes to some films
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that lodge in the audience's collective imagination,
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and I think "Alien" is certainly one of those films.
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Tolkien talked about the cauldron of stories,
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and certainly, "Alien" is an example
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of a story drawing from a real global set of myths.
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If you look at a somatics experiment, what you're going
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to see is sand that vibrates in a shape,
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and the shape changes based on the different vibrations.
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A myth is like something that vibrated from something
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deeper that you can't see.
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You see a major curse in the form
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of the alien, who is very much a fury,
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responding to an imbalance.
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We're looking at a story where there
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is a piece of material prop that is now completely
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alive in our imaginations.
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It lives in our dreams.
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It lives in our cultural conversation.
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It's one of the biggest cultural dreams we've ever had.
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I met Dan at USC.
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He was a real standout.
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You couldn't miss him.
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He was a wild man, unbounded by conventional reality.
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You couldn't call him an iconoclast, because he
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didn't have icons to break.
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He could be very offensive, and was frequently
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offensive on purpose.
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He was hot, you know, emotionally hot, emotionally
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responsive, very angry.
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He was born and raised in rural Missouri and had no television.
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They didn't even have a telephone till he was 10.
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They lived in the middle of nowhere on 24 acres.
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And yet he knew all these things.
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They didn't even have a library in the town.
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His mother used to send off for boxes of books,
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and they would come, and he would read them,
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and then they'd send them back.
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Dan was always sneaking science fiction.
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His mother always wanted him to read good literature.
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And his mother would always say, you
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haven't got any of that science fiction in your backpack,
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have you?
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You're not taking that science fiction to school.
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His father owned a curio shop, it was called Odd Acres.
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There was a sort of screwy Louie room, you know,
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where things were sort of off kilter,
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and everything looks like it's leaning.
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That was growing up in Odd Acres.
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One time his father faked a UFO landing.
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And Dan helped him, and then he had the press out there,
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you know?
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By direction of the President of the United States,
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stay in your homes.
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I repeat, stay in your homes.
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Because in one moment of history-making violence,
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nature, mad, rampant, roared its most awesome creation.
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There's a lot of bugs there.
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And he was always very frightened, in a way,
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by the sudden appearance of bugs,
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like a stick insect and cicadas, massive invasions
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in southern Missouri, they would have hundreds of thousands
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of them come out of the ground and swarm over everything
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and then vanish and die.
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So these things really gave him the creeps.
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And he wanted to creep everybody else out too.
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But he was quite an artist.
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And when he was thinking of his monsters,
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he would sketch them out.
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Before "Alien," Dan had written a screenplay called
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"They Bite."
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It was "Alien" before "Alien."
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And it involved a cicada-like creature,
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but instead of being 13 years underground,
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it was several million years underground,
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and gradually picks off the people in the encampment one
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by one.
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It's a version of an alien creature
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evolving, needing an evolution, and being
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destructive in that evolution.
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O'Bannon has this great line, says,
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"I didn't steal from anybody.
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I stole from everybody."
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And one of the places that he happily
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admitted that he stole from was a 1951 EC Comic
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called "Seeds of Jupiter."
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There's just eight pages.
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It starts on an aircraft carrier,
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and this orb crashes onto the aircraft carrier, breaks apart,
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small orb, and it's got like, 50 seeds.
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And there are three Navy guys on the ship,
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and they're wondering what it is.
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One of them's called Peach Pit, and he likes to put peach pits
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in his mouth, and the other two guys
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sort of trick him into putting one of these seeds
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into his mouth.
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And then they slap the guy on the back, it's all good fun
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and he swallows.
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He gets terribly sick.
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He's dehydrated.
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It's emergency surgery.
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He's going die.
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The Navy surgeon takes a scalpel,
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cuts open his chest, everybody shocked,
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and out pops this hideous, scaly, disgusting mini octopus.
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And then it literally scamper across the deck
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and plunges into the sea.
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And they go, well, we're never going to see that again.
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Guaranteeing that they'll be seeing that again.
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The origin of "Death Rattle" was
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in a farmhouse in Minnesota.
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The story itself is some sort of astronaut
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coming across an object.
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It's the kind of statuary that you might see in a temple
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in some ancient civilization.
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In the process of sending it back, he drops it,
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he breaks it, and he releases something
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that's about to change his life in a very horrible way.
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He is attacked by this thing that gets into his body.
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He is effectively raped.
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His eyes are gouged out and something goes into his head.
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And from that point on, he becomes
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a receptacle for something that's taking him over.
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Something is transforming a person
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into something very, very different,
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very unfortunate, shall we say.
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As a healthy young kid growing up in the Midwest in the 1950s
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and '60s, there were things going on in the world
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that didn't quite make sense.
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Television was very safe and cleaned up,
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so I clamored for things that I wasn't
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getting from my civilization, from my culture.
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Dan O'Bannon drew upon his experiences
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as a person from the Midwest, reading comic books at the drug
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store, like I did, and brought that kind of sensibility
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and that outlook on the world to this major science
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fiction horror epic.
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The Midwest may seem tranquil and civilized and so forth,
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but the fact is, you never know who's next door.
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You never know who's going to roll into town, you know,
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when the wheels are going to come off.
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It's like we're all, you know, one cough, one kiss,
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one scratch away from global disaster.
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The influence of Lovecraft on Dan
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was considerable.
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The eggs lying dormant on the planetoid
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is comparable to the cicada's million
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year life cycle, isn't it?
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Creatures coming out of the ground after being
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dormant for millions of years is superbly
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Lovecraftian, completely.
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I think that's a pretty straight line between the two.
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Lovecraft, in his own day,
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was a pioneer of science fiction.
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More specifically, his brand of horror fiction, which he
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called weird fiction.
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He felt that the essence of horror is the unknown,
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and what is most unknown, it is what
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is out there in the depths of space,
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and what has happened in the far distant past.
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Many of the features of "Alien" have a lot
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to do with Lovecraft's short novel,
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"At the Mountains of Madness."
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This is a novel he wrote in 1931.
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And it's something that he'd wanted
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to write for a long time, because he
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had been fascinated with the Antarctic since he was a boy.
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An expedition from Massachusetts goes down there,
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and come upon fossilized remains of alien entities, which
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this expedition labels The Old Ones.
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It's been dead a long time.
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Fossilized.
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In the course of this novel,
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they become unfrozen and come to life.
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They cannot be defined by normal human or terrestrial biology.
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I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer
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of protein polysaccharides.
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Has funny habit of shedding his cells
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and replacing them with polarized silicon.
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In fact, the explorers find this immense city
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that The Old Ones built hundreds of millions
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of years ago in the Antarctic, full
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of very bizarre architecture.
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There are these alien creatures that
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are virtually indestructible.
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They simply cannot die.
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How do we kill it, Ash?
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There's gotta be a way of killing it.
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How?
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How do we do it?
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You can't.
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Classical science is based on the idea
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that matter is dead and inert.
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And this is true throughout Western consciousness,
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from Prometheus and Pandora to Adam and Eve.
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Space is empty and quiet.
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Is it?
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That's a perspective that we have.
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And I think "Alien" is very much the nightmare
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to that perspective.
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And you see this in the Coptic jars where they move.
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And you see this when you get out into the depths of space
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where it's supposed to be quiet and dead,
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and instead, you find the boogeyman.
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I cannot think of a film out there that comes
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anywhere close to "Alien" capturing that overall
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Lovecraftian atmosphere.
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That planetoid where the ship lands
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is a prototypical instance of what Lovecraft
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called the fear of the unknown.
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It is a place completely uncharted by human expeditions.
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No big budget studio wanted to put a lot of money
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into making a pure Lovecraft film,
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and so people like O'Bannon and John Carpenter and others
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had to sort of use Lovecraftian elements
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covertly to infuse Lovecraftian themes
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into works that were not explicitly
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based on any of the stories.
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"Alien" didn't come out of a creative vacuum.
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It drew on a whole heritage of American science fiction.
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You could make the argument that "Alien"
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certainly borrows from "It, The Terror from Beyond Space"
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from 1958.
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A crew of 10 goes to Mars to recover the lone survivor
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of a previous expedition.
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The rest of his crew has been wiped out.
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Today, of all my crew,
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I, Colonel Edward Carothers of the United States Space
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Command, am the only one alive.
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They obviously think he did it.
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He says, no, an alien did it.
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What are you thinking about?
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Those nine bodies you left down there?
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Yes.
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But I didn't kill them.
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Spoiler, it was an alien.
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The alien stows away on the ship and starts picking
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the crew off one by one.
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It's hiding in the air ducts.
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Bullets, grenades, nothing stops it.
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What do we do now?
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And it's killed by an air lock.
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"The Thing" from 1951
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00:16:47,548 --> 00:16:49,783
is very present with the idea of this creature
264
00:16:49,884 --> 00:16:52,586
that kind of hatches, that mimics,
265
00:16:52,686 --> 00:16:56,757
that is in a working environment.
266
00:16:56,858 --> 00:17:00,195
You can go to the 60s and look at "Planet of the Vampires,"
267
00:17:00,295 --> 00:17:03,597
where they find this giant alien corpse.
268
00:17:03,697 --> 00:17:05,599
Doesn't look like any ship I've ever seen.
269
00:17:05,699 --> 00:17:07,969
Do you think it belongs to the Orients?
270
00:17:08,069 --> 00:17:09,369
I doubt it.
271
00:17:09,469 --> 00:17:10,404
I doubt if the Orients ever built any spaceships.
272
00:17:10,504 --> 00:17:11,572
If they...
273
00:17:11,672 --> 00:17:12,106
- ...we would have... - Look, Mark.
274
00:17:16,610 --> 00:17:19,080
One of the films that "Alien" draws quite heavily from
275
00:17:19,180 --> 00:17:24,319
is a 1966 film produced by Roger Corman called "Queen of Blood."
276
00:17:24,418 --> 00:17:24,986
Listen.
277
00:17:30,024 --> 00:17:32,693
We've been picking up these signals now for three days.
278
00:17:32,793 --> 00:17:36,097
An alien distress signal is received by Earth.
279
00:17:36,197 --> 00:17:39,600
Astronauts go out to find the source of the signal.
280
00:17:39,700 --> 00:17:41,602
They land on a planetoid.
281
00:17:41,702 --> 00:17:44,172
There's this strange sandstorm.
282
00:17:44,272 --> 00:17:46,274
They go into an alien vessel.
283
00:17:46,373 --> 00:17:49,576
They find a dead alien sitting in a chair,
284
00:17:49,676 --> 00:17:52,847
encounter an alien who they're bringing back to Earth,
285
00:17:52,947 --> 00:17:55,283
and the alien begins individually
286
00:17:55,382 --> 00:17:58,785
attacking members of the crew.
287
00:17:58,887 --> 00:18:03,157
And at the end of the film, the humans are left quite literally
288
00:18:03,258 --> 00:18:06,027
holding a tray of her eggs.
289
00:18:06,127 --> 00:18:10,298
Is this the beginning of the end for humanity?
290
00:18:14,002 --> 00:18:16,004
John Carpenter roped in Dan O'Bannon
291
00:18:16,104 --> 00:18:18,472
to helping him make the student science fiction
292
00:18:18,572 --> 00:18:19,908
film called "Dark Star."
293
00:18:20,008 --> 00:18:22,509
And it was about the crew of a spaceship...
294
00:18:22,609 --> 00:18:23,811
this might sound familiar...
295
00:18:23,912 --> 00:18:25,712
who then is assailed by an alien who
296
00:18:25,813 --> 00:18:27,648
sort of stows away on the ship.
297
00:18:27,748 --> 00:18:29,317
"Dark Star," that's
298
00:18:29,416 --> 00:18:32,486
the comic version of "Alien."
299
00:18:32,586 --> 00:18:34,088
One makes you laugh, and the other one's
300
00:18:34,188 --> 00:18:36,057
going to eat you alive.
301
00:18:36,157 --> 00:18:38,092
Carpenter wanted sole directing credit,
302
00:18:38,192 --> 00:18:41,495
and O'Bannon felt he'd done enough to get cowriting credit.
303
00:18:41,595 --> 00:18:43,630
So they had this kind of big falling out.
304
00:18:43,730 --> 00:18:46,034
And O'Bannon's first thought is that, well,
305
00:18:46,134 --> 00:18:47,634
I can go and do this on my own.
306
00:18:47,734 --> 00:18:52,373
I will write a story, a science fiction story
307
00:18:52,472 --> 00:18:53,774
that will beat "Dark Star."
308
00:18:53,875 --> 00:18:55,376
Wouldn't you consider another course of action?
309
00:18:55,475 --> 00:18:58,545
For example, just waiting around a while so we can disarm you?
310
00:18:58,645 --> 00:18:59,746
No.
311
00:18:59,847 --> 00:19:00,949
Because I'm not going to do a comedy,
312
00:19:01,049 --> 00:19:02,482
I'm going to do it as a horror movie.
313
00:19:02,582 --> 00:19:05,119
The ship will automatically destruct
314
00:19:05,219 --> 00:19:10,325
in T-minus five minutes.
315
00:19:10,425 --> 00:19:13,593
You bitch!
316
00:19:13,694 --> 00:19:16,097
A lot of things bother me about "Dark Star."
317
00:19:16,197 --> 00:19:20,467
We had an alien in it, which was a beach ball.
318
00:19:20,567 --> 00:19:22,837
It was our second try on that alien.
319
00:19:22,937 --> 00:19:27,008
I went away from "Dark Star" really wanting to do
320
00:19:27,108 --> 00:19:29,043
an alien that looked real.
321
00:19:33,414 --> 00:19:36,717
Jodorowsky saw "Dark Star," which is how he
322
00:19:36,818 --> 00:19:39,153
found out about Dan O'Bannon.
323
00:19:39,253 --> 00:19:43,391
Nobody in Hollywood was impressed with Jodorowsky.
324
00:19:43,490 --> 00:19:45,059
So he said, well, to hell with you.
325
00:19:45,159 --> 00:19:50,497
So he found Dan and said, come work on "Dune" with me.
326
00:19:50,597 --> 00:19:54,768
If you want to look to the first magic,
327
00:19:54,869 --> 00:20:00,008
I think you have to go back to Jodorowsky.
328
00:20:00,108 --> 00:20:01,541
Jodorowsky was his guru.
329
00:20:01,641 --> 00:20:02,910
He adored him.
330
00:20:03,011 --> 00:20:05,013
I've never met him and I adore him.
331
00:20:05,113 --> 00:20:07,949
Not only is there a synchronicity that connects
332
00:20:08,049 --> 00:20:11,685
"Dune" and "Alien," there's almost an archetypal
333
00:20:11,785 --> 00:20:14,255
counterbalance between the two.
334
00:20:14,355 --> 00:20:18,092
If "Dune" is the Tower of Babel, "Alien" is exactly what
335
00:20:18,192 --> 00:20:19,659
brings down that tower.
336
00:20:19,760 --> 00:20:22,063
In the same way that "Alien" is the response to Prometheus
337
00:20:22,163 --> 00:20:24,132
trying to steal fire from the heavens,
338
00:20:24,232 --> 00:20:27,168
the movie "Alien" is also a response, energetically,
339
00:20:27,268 --> 00:20:32,106
archetypally, to the Tower of Babel project that was "Dune."
340
00:20:32,206 --> 00:20:34,976
When "Dune" collapsed in Paris,
341
00:20:35,076 --> 00:20:38,846
Dan came back and actually crashed on the couch
342
00:20:38,946 --> 00:20:42,016
in the house I was living in with a bunch of people
343
00:20:42,116 --> 00:20:43,550
because he didn't have anywhere to go.
344
00:20:43,650 --> 00:20:45,386
And it... he...
345
00:20:45,486 --> 00:20:47,422
he was completely at a loss.
346
00:20:47,522 --> 00:20:51,459
Eventually, he... we said, you got to go.
347
00:20:51,558 --> 00:20:55,129
So somehow, he wound up on Ron Shusett's couch.
348
00:20:55,229 --> 00:20:59,100
I went back to storage, got my typewriter out, took it over
349
00:20:59,200 --> 00:21:02,736
to Ronnie Shusett's living room, and over the days and nights
350
00:21:02,837 --> 00:21:06,340
of the next three months, Ron keeping me
351
00:21:06,441 --> 00:21:08,376
alive by feeding me hot dogs.
352
00:21:08,476 --> 00:21:09,609
We were both starving.
353
00:21:09,709 --> 00:21:11,979
My wife was supporting us.
354
00:21:12,080 --> 00:21:14,614
We had two rooms, that's all we had.
355
00:21:14,714 --> 00:21:16,017
He made up a board game
356
00:21:16,117 --> 00:21:19,753
called Poverty, sort of the opposite of Monopoly.
357
00:21:19,854 --> 00:21:22,789
You've got to land on enough spaces to pay the rent.
358
00:21:22,890 --> 00:21:25,860
You're out on the street if you can't afford to stay.
359
00:21:25,960 --> 00:21:28,863
It's absolutely a scream.
360
00:21:28,963 --> 00:21:34,001
In 1971, Dan was working on a story he called "Memory."
361
00:21:34,102 --> 00:21:38,072
It's basically the first 30 pages of "Alien."
362
00:21:38,172 --> 00:21:39,507
- I - had this opening.
363
00:21:39,606 --> 00:21:41,109
I didn't know where it was gonna go.
364
00:21:41,209 --> 00:21:44,312
I wanted to do a scary movie on a spaceship with a small number
365
00:21:44,412 --> 00:21:45,712
of astronauts.
366
00:21:45,813 --> 00:21:48,216
They're receiving a signal in an alien language.
367
00:21:48,316 --> 00:21:49,584
They go down to investigate.
368
00:21:49,683 --> 00:21:52,120
Their ship breaks down.
369
00:21:52,220 --> 00:21:53,588
Dan called it "Memory,"
370
00:21:53,687 --> 00:21:55,957
because some influence in the planet
371
00:21:56,057 --> 00:21:59,659
gradually made them lose their memory.
372
00:21:59,759 --> 00:22:01,129
But that's where this story ends.
373
00:22:04,664 --> 00:22:06,134
He says, OK, I'm going
374
00:22:06,234 --> 00:22:09,170
to give you the first act I've got to this original horror
375
00:22:09,270 --> 00:22:10,538
movie I wrote.
376
00:22:10,637 --> 00:22:12,772
I can't get past page 29.
377
00:22:12,874 --> 00:22:14,375
Maybe you can help me do that.
378
00:22:14,475 --> 00:22:15,977
So I read it.
379
00:22:16,077 --> 00:22:18,980
29 pages was almost exactly like you saw in the final finished
380
00:22:19,080 --> 00:22:20,680
product of the "Alien" movie.
381
00:22:20,780 --> 00:22:22,850
It was fantastic.
382
00:22:22,950 --> 00:22:25,953
Dan said, there's a key to everything.
383
00:22:26,053 --> 00:22:29,290
The key is how does the alien get on board?
384
00:22:29,390 --> 00:22:33,995
His concept was always it would come out of your stomach.
385
00:22:34,095 --> 00:22:36,497
Dan had a very bad case of Crohn's
386
00:22:36,597 --> 00:22:39,534
disease, which basically appeared while he
387
00:22:39,634 --> 00:22:41,602
was filming "Dark Star."
388
00:22:41,701 --> 00:22:44,438
So he was, what, 24, 25?
389
00:22:44,539 --> 00:22:47,041
And it eventually killed him.
390
00:22:47,141 --> 00:22:50,378
But it was an intestinal disorder
391
00:22:50,478 --> 00:22:53,581
that sometimes felt like it was devouring him, I think.
392
00:22:53,680 --> 00:22:55,016
Linda and I would sometimes have to take him
393
00:22:55,116 --> 00:22:57,985
to the emergency center in the middle of the night
394
00:22:58,085 --> 00:22:59,520
when the pain was so great.
395
00:22:59,620 --> 00:23:02,023
And at the same time, he'd been having conversations
396
00:23:02,123 --> 00:23:06,561
with Ron Shusett about wasps that procreate by planting
397
00:23:06,661 --> 00:23:09,096
that eggs into other insects.
398
00:23:09,197 --> 00:23:11,532
It was kind of all these things sort of come together and were
399
00:23:11,632 --> 00:23:13,100
being sown into the script.
400
00:23:13,201 --> 00:23:15,336
Ron in a way was really fascinated
401
00:23:15,436 --> 00:23:21,842
with the idea of human beings being a host for...
402
00:23:21,943 --> 00:23:25,546
for an embryo, that human beings were
403
00:23:25,646 --> 00:23:27,181
the nutrition for an embryo.
404
00:23:29,550 --> 00:23:31,352
He didn't have it in the script at all
405
00:23:31,452 --> 00:23:33,387
that it would implant something in his stomach
406
00:23:33,487 --> 00:23:34,522
and it would grow there.
407
00:23:34,622 --> 00:23:36,123
So I went to sleep.
408
00:23:36,224 --> 00:23:38,725
And I'm aware... it wasn't dreaming.
409
00:23:38,826 --> 00:23:40,061
It was something else.
410
00:23:40,161 --> 00:23:43,231
It was when your mind is in the subconscious.
411
00:23:43,331 --> 00:23:46,067
I was wrestling with a property in my sleep.
412
00:23:46,167 --> 00:23:48,135
I woke him up, I went right into his studio and I said,
413
00:23:48,236 --> 00:23:48,703
I have it.
414
00:23:48,803 --> 00:23:49,470
I have it.
415
00:23:49,570 --> 00:23:50,338
He said, what?
416
00:23:50,438 --> 00:23:51,305
You have the answer?
417
00:23:51,405 --> 00:23:52,073
I said, I have the answer.
418
00:23:52,173 --> 00:23:52,640
The alien fucks.
419
00:23:52,739 --> 00:23:53,908
He said, what?
420
00:23:54,008 --> 00:23:55,443
What are you talking about?
421
00:23:55,543 --> 00:23:59,280
I said, jumps on his face, it's a little creature then,
422
00:23:59,380 --> 00:24:03,317
little baby squid-like, sticks a tube down his throat,
423
00:24:03,417 --> 00:24:06,786
starts feeding him air, but he's implanting his seed.
424
00:24:06,887 --> 00:24:08,256
And it's going to grow inside him
425
00:24:08,356 --> 00:24:10,524
and burst out of his chest in the middle of the movie.
426
00:24:23,237 --> 00:24:24,739
There are over a million
427
00:24:24,839 --> 00:24:27,375
species of parasitic wasps.
428
00:24:27,475 --> 00:24:31,512
That means that of all the animals in the animal kingdom,
429
00:24:31,612 --> 00:24:36,450
the number one form of animal is a parasitic wasp.
430
00:24:36,550 --> 00:24:43,224
There are wasps that like to make caterpillars their host.
431
00:24:43,324 --> 00:24:46,694
They can also release chemicals that control
432
00:24:46,793 --> 00:24:48,663
the behavior of their host.
433
00:24:48,763 --> 00:24:51,265
And everything it eats is going to feed
434
00:24:51,365 --> 00:24:56,103
these larvae that are growing inside of its body cavity.
435
00:24:56,203 --> 00:24:58,472
On the outside, they look completely normal.
436
00:24:58,572 --> 00:25:03,577
So John Hurt having breakfast, that's a caterpillar with
437
00:25:03,678 --> 00:25:05,246
wasps inside of it.
438
00:25:05,346 --> 00:25:08,449
And then once those wasps are ready,
439
00:25:08,549 --> 00:25:11,052
they just blast their way out of their host.
440
00:25:11,152 --> 00:25:13,754
And if that's lethal to the host, fine.
441
00:25:13,888 --> 00:25:15,990
It doesn't matter.
442
00:25:16,090 --> 00:25:20,895
Ridley Scott liked to show film footage of one species of wasp
443
00:25:20,995 --> 00:25:24,632
in particular to his crew, and this is something
444
00:25:24,732 --> 00:25:26,133
known as the wood wasp.
445
00:25:26,233 --> 00:25:29,070
These wasps have to basically find a way
446
00:25:29,170 --> 00:25:33,007
to stick their wasp bags inside of beetle larvae that
447
00:25:33,107 --> 00:25:36,544
can be deep inside of wood.
448
00:25:36,644 --> 00:25:39,113
So there are all these alien things
449
00:25:39,213 --> 00:25:41,082
that parasites are doing all around us,
450
00:25:41,182 --> 00:25:44,118
and scientists are trying to make sense of that in the way
451
00:25:44,218 --> 00:25:47,455
that the crew Nostromo was trying to make sense of it
452
00:25:47,555 --> 00:25:49,390
with the alien.
453
00:25:49,490 --> 00:25:50,591
That's amazing.
454
00:25:50,691 --> 00:25:53,427
What is it?
455
00:25:53,527 --> 00:25:54,729
Why, yes, it is.
456
00:25:54,830 --> 00:25:59,200
Um, I don't know yet.
457
00:25:59,300 --> 00:26:02,136
Getting inside something else
458
00:26:02,236 --> 00:26:07,875
and feeding on it from within is a really great way
459
00:26:07,975 --> 00:26:11,345
to survive and evolve.
460
00:26:11,445 --> 00:26:16,951
The alien is just fitting into this fundamental basic pattern
461
00:26:17,051 --> 00:26:20,856
that you find on life, probably the most successful way
462
00:26:20,955 --> 00:26:22,056
to be alive on Earth.
463
00:26:45,379 --> 00:26:48,149
Giger really came from Dan O'Bannon.
464
00:26:48,249 --> 00:26:51,085
Dan suggested him on a stroke of genius.
465
00:26:51,185 --> 00:26:53,287
Giger consolidates every monster
466
00:26:53,387 --> 00:26:56,924
from every mythology around the world into a single creature.
467
00:26:57,024 --> 00:26:58,659
He embodies the mythic other.
468
00:26:58,759 --> 00:27:00,161
Jodorowsky rescue
469
00:27:00,261 --> 00:27:02,963
went to an opening of some of Giger's artwork in Paris
470
00:27:03,063 --> 00:27:05,366
and brought the book back.
471
00:27:05,466 --> 00:27:10,371
Dan looked at it and was just knocked dead by the artwork.
472
00:27:10,471 --> 00:27:13,574
They were fantastic, sexual, mechanical,
473
00:27:13,674 --> 00:27:18,479
biological amalgamation that was completely new.
474
00:27:18,579 --> 00:27:21,081
It does express Giger's own admiration
475
00:27:21,182 --> 00:27:26,520
for Lovecraft as a pioneer in envisioning creatures
476
00:27:26,620 --> 00:27:29,123
far beyond human conception.
477
00:27:29,223 --> 00:27:32,593
I think Dan and Giger met at the Lovecraft
478
00:27:32,693 --> 00:27:38,098
level, that sort of creeping horror and unnamed horror
479
00:27:38,199 --> 00:27:42,470
that you are free yourself to define.
480
00:27:42,570 --> 00:27:45,773
Dan and Giger both had similar interests
481
00:27:45,874 --> 00:27:47,475
in the "Necronomicon."
482
00:27:47,575 --> 00:27:50,344
While Giger was doing paintings on that theme,
483
00:27:50,444 --> 00:27:53,581
Dan was also writing his version of the "Necronomicon,"
484
00:27:53,681 --> 00:27:54,582
which I still have.
485
00:27:54,682 --> 00:27:55,483
Its unpublished.
486
00:27:55,583 --> 00:27:58,719
It's a... a printed work.
487
00:27:58,820 --> 00:28:00,554
Giger was a mystic.
488
00:28:00,654 --> 00:28:04,525
He had his own mythology, his own cosmology.
489
00:28:04,625 --> 00:28:07,829
He took like a bee from different flowers
490
00:28:07,929 --> 00:28:14,735
to feed his own imagination and make his own honey with it.
491
00:28:14,836 --> 00:28:18,105
He's the mythology of the future.
492
00:28:18,205 --> 00:28:23,544
Of course, there is an Egyptian touch to "Alien."
493
00:28:23,644 --> 00:28:27,214
Hans, his favorite culture was Egypt.
494
00:28:27,314 --> 00:28:30,117
When he was five years old, he went with his sister
495
00:28:30,217 --> 00:28:31,887
to the museum.
496
00:28:31,987 --> 00:28:33,621
In the cellar, there was this mummy,
497
00:28:33,721 --> 00:28:38,392
an Egyptian mummy, and Hans, he was quite afraid of it.
498
00:28:38,492 --> 00:28:40,896
He was so deeply impressed by the black bones
499
00:28:40,996 --> 00:28:42,363
and the black skin.
500
00:28:42,463 --> 00:28:45,599
From then on, he went almost every Sunday.
501
00:28:45,699 --> 00:28:50,337
He was absolutely fascinated by the pyramids.
502
00:28:50,437 --> 00:28:51,840
In early storyboards,
503
00:28:51,940 --> 00:28:55,543
you can actually see that the derelict was a pyramid.
504
00:28:55,643 --> 00:28:59,113
And then later, Ridley Scott envisions this kind
505
00:28:59,213 --> 00:29:03,117
of ritual area of ruins.
506
00:29:03,217 --> 00:29:05,653
This ship is an emblem, is a remnant
507
00:29:05,753 --> 00:29:09,024
of a formerly great culture, an ancient civilization
508
00:29:09,123 --> 00:29:11,559
that's been long lost to time.
509
00:29:11,659 --> 00:29:13,862
That tells us that we should think of the spaceship,
510
00:29:13,962 --> 00:29:16,230
the derelict, as a temple.
511
00:29:16,330 --> 00:29:18,732
I think the derelict is a crescent moon, and ultimately,
512
00:29:18,833 --> 00:29:21,268
a symbol of death.
513
00:29:21,368 --> 00:29:23,270
You see crescents all throughout the story.
514
00:29:26,373 --> 00:29:29,143
In the original screenplay, the pods
515
00:29:29,243 --> 00:29:33,314
were in a kind of pyramid structure called the temple.
516
00:29:33,414 --> 00:29:37,986
That was removed because of budget considerations
517
00:29:38,085 --> 00:29:40,688
in the production.
518
00:29:40,788 --> 00:29:43,390
Three stages of the alien, you know,
519
00:29:43,490 --> 00:29:48,128
where the hole was put into a pyramid, and on top of it all,
520
00:29:48,228 --> 00:29:51,432
is Nut, the Egyptian goddess of the night
521
00:29:51,532 --> 00:29:54,501
sky with stars in her belly.
522
00:29:54,602 --> 00:29:57,771
And I think that was really beautiful.
523
00:29:57,872 --> 00:30:01,709
You see being born from her the heavens.
524
00:30:01,810 --> 00:30:04,445
And in many ways, this becomes an image
525
00:30:04,545 --> 00:30:07,214
of the alien giving birth to this species
526
00:30:07,314 --> 00:30:09,617
that could devour the heavens.
527
00:30:09,717 --> 00:30:14,990
Nut represents the duad itself, the realm of the dead,
528
00:30:15,090 --> 00:30:17,558
the realm of night, the realm of the stars.
529
00:30:17,658 --> 00:30:19,360
This is where the Sun goes every night.
530
00:30:19,460 --> 00:30:22,363
This is where the soul goes between life and death.
531
00:30:22,463 --> 00:30:25,100
We are in the aliens domain in this whole story.
532
00:30:29,804 --> 00:30:34,141
The first I saw of the "Alien" script was an early version.
533
00:30:34,241 --> 00:30:36,410
Dan O'Bannon brought it to me.
534
00:30:36,510 --> 00:30:41,049
And as I recall, the original title was "Star Beast."
535
00:30:41,148 --> 00:30:46,654
I liked the script, and I wanted to make it, but I said to Dan,
536
00:30:46,754 --> 00:30:49,991
this really requires a bigger budget
537
00:30:50,091 --> 00:30:52,292
than what I'm able to spend.
538
00:30:52,393 --> 00:30:55,063
Why don't you shop it around and see
539
00:30:55,162 --> 00:30:57,364
if you can get a big budget.
540
00:30:57,464 --> 00:31:01,301
If you can't get the big budget, come back to me
541
00:31:01,402 --> 00:31:05,006
and I will buy the script and make the picture.
542
00:31:05,106 --> 00:31:06,607
And a guy called Mark
543
00:31:06,707 --> 00:31:10,045
Hager got this script into the pile at Walter Hill's office.
544
00:31:10,145 --> 00:31:13,781
And it must have been a day when Walter Hill was at a loose end.
545
00:31:13,882 --> 00:31:15,817
He happened upon "Star Beast."
546
00:31:15,917 --> 00:31:17,718
Now, he thought "Star beast" was one of the worst
547
00:31:17,819 --> 00:31:19,420
scripts he'd ever read.
548
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:21,022
He just thought it was awful.
549
00:31:21,122 --> 00:31:28,063
But he stopped, page whatever, 30, whatever it was, and went,
550
00:31:28,163 --> 00:31:29,530
what the hell?
551
00:31:29,630 --> 00:31:34,535
When Brandywine showed interest and optioned "Alien,"
552
00:31:34,635 --> 00:31:38,539
Dan was, of course, being a pest and insistent that they
553
00:31:38,639 --> 00:31:41,642
use Giger for the creature.
554
00:31:41,742 --> 00:31:49,450
This is the letter to Geiger from Dan dated July 1, 1977.
555
00:31:49,550 --> 00:31:52,720
"Dear Giger, this week I've moved into offices
556
00:31:52,821 --> 00:31:54,788
of Brandywine Productions where we
557
00:31:54,889 --> 00:31:57,624
are beginning to make the design decisions for our film.
558
00:31:57,725 --> 00:32:00,227
The producers, Gordon Carroll and David Giler,
559
00:32:00,327 --> 00:32:02,262
and the director, Walter Hill, are
560
00:32:02,362 --> 00:32:04,264
as excited as I am about the possibilities
561
00:32:04,364 --> 00:32:07,668
of your lending your unique talents to our picture.
562
00:32:07,768 --> 00:32:10,205
Look over the enclosed description of the designs we
563
00:32:10,304 --> 00:32:12,439
need, then let us know how much you would
564
00:32:12,539 --> 00:32:14,608
ask for the paintings involved.
565
00:32:14,708 --> 00:32:18,479
When we agree, we send you a check for $1,000 as an advance
566
00:32:18,579 --> 00:32:20,882
against future payments.
567
00:32:20,982 --> 00:32:25,186
Yeah, well, Brandywine didn't want to pay the $1,000,
568
00:32:25,285 --> 00:32:30,158
so Dan sent him a personal check for $1,000.
569
00:32:30,257 --> 00:32:33,027
The face hugger, that was my first thing
570
00:32:33,128 --> 00:32:35,596
I did for Dan O'Bannon.
571
00:32:35,696 --> 00:32:39,500
He gave me explanation and drawings,
572
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:43,037
and he said that he's jumping on a big egg,
573
00:32:43,138 --> 00:32:45,672
this egg is about that, so.
574
00:32:45,773 --> 00:32:48,943
And I thought that must be quite a big monster, so I
575
00:32:49,043 --> 00:32:52,679
did an enormous facehugger.
576
00:32:52,780 --> 00:32:55,783
And then he was jumping, I thought
577
00:32:55,884 --> 00:33:00,889
he could jump when his tail is like, it's curved like a spring
578
00:33:00,989 --> 00:33:04,725
of the Jack in the box.
579
00:33:04,826 --> 00:33:06,261
And from those sketches,
580
00:33:06,360 --> 00:33:08,462
he went ahead and did the paintings.
581
00:33:08,562 --> 00:33:12,466
And that's why the paintings say Dan O'Bannon's Alien,
582
00:33:12,566 --> 00:33:14,735
because Dan paid for them.
583
00:33:14,836 --> 00:33:18,106
Fox hierarchy come in to see some of the designs,
584
00:33:18,206 --> 00:33:19,540
and they fired him.
585
00:33:19,640 --> 00:33:21,910
Gordon Carroll finally said, this guy is just sick.
586
00:33:22,010 --> 00:33:23,011
Get him off our lot.
587
00:33:23,111 --> 00:33:24,212
Send him back to Switzerland.
588
00:33:24,311 --> 00:33:25,980
We're having none of it.
589
00:33:26,080 --> 00:33:27,816
So Giger was gone.
590
00:33:27,916 --> 00:33:30,819
Fox is full speed ahead with Brandywine.
591
00:33:30,919 --> 00:33:32,821
They're in preproduction Walter Hill is going to direct
592
00:33:32,921 --> 00:33:34,655
the film, and all of a sudden, the studio
593
00:33:34,755 --> 00:33:37,424
gets a call from Walter Hill, basically, where he says, yeah,
594
00:33:37,524 --> 00:33:38,492
I'm not going to...
595
00:33:38,592 --> 00:33:40,460
I'm not going to make this movie.
596
00:33:40,561 --> 00:33:41,996
I never really believed in it.
597
00:33:42,096 --> 00:33:44,098
I don't think it's that great, and I got another picture
598
00:33:44,199 --> 00:33:45,266
I'm going to do here.
599
00:33:45,365 --> 00:33:47,202
So good luck.
600
00:33:47,302 --> 00:33:48,535
I'm out.
601
00:33:48,635 --> 00:33:51,738
And that other picture was "Southern Comfort."
602
00:33:51,840 --> 00:33:53,174
Not a bad movie.
603
00:33:53,274 --> 00:33:54,508
Not "Alien."
604
00:33:54,608 --> 00:33:57,111
I read the script, and I thought, well, this is
605
00:33:57,212 --> 00:34:00,447
very solid, very interesting.
606
00:34:00,547 --> 00:34:02,884
It's not really an actor's script.
607
00:34:02,984 --> 00:34:05,253
There was no one else attached, and they're
608
00:34:05,352 --> 00:34:09,723
asking me to get involved in what was then
609
00:34:09,824 --> 00:34:13,393
a budgeted film for $2 million.
610
00:34:13,493 --> 00:34:17,564
$2 million sounds like an Ed Wood movie.
611
00:34:17,664 --> 00:34:20,534
So I turned it down.
612
00:34:20,634 --> 00:34:24,738
Ridley and I had just finished off the do list.
613
00:34:24,839 --> 00:34:26,440
There was this thing between Ridley
614
00:34:26,540 --> 00:34:29,376
and I about sci-fi, and that I was the sci-fi fanatic.
615
00:34:29,476 --> 00:34:31,645
And all the films that I used to show him,
616
00:34:31,745 --> 00:34:35,515
he would completely disparage and say,
617
00:34:35,616 --> 00:34:37,584
no, that's a pile of shit.
618
00:34:37,684 --> 00:34:39,921
He had the script through the door called the "Alien,"
619
00:34:40,021 --> 00:34:42,522
and I tried to say, well, let me read it, et cetera,
620
00:34:42,623 --> 00:34:44,926
and for some reason or other, this time,
621
00:34:45,026 --> 00:34:48,196
he said, no, no, no, no, I'll read it first.
622
00:34:48,296 --> 00:34:49,663
And so he was in the next door office
623
00:34:49,763 --> 00:34:53,467
where we made commercials, and I remember him
624
00:34:53,567 --> 00:34:56,804
sitting there going, fuck me.
625
00:34:56,905 --> 00:34:58,772
I got a call a few weeks later,
626
00:34:58,873 --> 00:35:02,010
and they said, well, the budget's up to $10 million,
627
00:35:02,110 --> 00:35:06,147
and a director named Ridley Scott is going to direct it.
628
00:35:06,247 --> 00:35:08,283
I said, sold.
629
00:35:08,383 --> 00:35:10,852
I got a phone call from Ridley saying,
630
00:35:10,952 --> 00:35:14,122
get your backside down to Shepperton now.
631
00:35:14,222 --> 00:35:17,058
So I drove straight down there.
632
00:35:17,158 --> 00:35:21,461
When Brandywine brought Ridley on was when Dan
633
00:35:21,561 --> 00:35:24,198
really got an ally in a lot of what
634
00:35:24,299 --> 00:35:27,668
he wanted for "Alien" to be.
635
00:35:27,768 --> 00:35:30,737
Very, very rare occurrence when the writer can
636
00:35:30,838 --> 00:35:32,773
have that amount of influence.
637
00:35:32,874 --> 00:35:33,975
We thought he was gonna
638
00:35:34,075 --> 00:35:35,475
be the wrong director for it, and he
639
00:35:35,575 --> 00:35:37,644
turned out to be the greatest visual stylist
640
00:35:37,744 --> 00:35:39,380
since Kubrick's prime.
641
00:35:39,479 --> 00:35:40,915
And he's such a visual guy
642
00:35:41,015 --> 00:35:43,051
that the first thing he did was kind of to break it down
643
00:35:43,151 --> 00:35:46,054
into storyboards, draws his own storyboard, extraordinary
644
00:35:46,154 --> 00:35:48,089
artist, these fantastic images.
645
00:35:48,189 --> 00:35:51,558
But what it doesn't really have is a clear idea of the alien.
646
00:35:51,658 --> 00:35:53,361
It's not quite there.
647
00:35:53,460 --> 00:35:55,762
O'Bannon says look, I've got this book.
648
00:35:55,863 --> 00:35:57,332
When Dan showed Ridley
649
00:35:57,432 --> 00:36:00,467
the "Necronomicon," Ridley instantly said,
650
00:36:00,567 --> 00:36:02,469
yes, this is it.
651
00:36:02,569 --> 00:36:06,207
I was shown the book, Necro...
652
00:36:06,307 --> 00:36:07,774
Nomicom.
653
00:36:07,875 --> 00:36:11,611
"Necronomicon," OK, in Los Angeles, in fact, by O'Bannon.
654
00:36:11,712 --> 00:36:12,713
He brought it in.
655
00:36:12,814 --> 00:36:14,581
And I nearly fell off the desk.
656
00:36:14,681 --> 00:36:16,616
Said, that's it.
657
00:36:16,717 --> 00:36:18,485
And why look further?
658
00:36:18,585 --> 00:36:20,121
And so that's how I saw it.
659
00:36:20,221 --> 00:36:21,655
It was as simple as that.
660
00:36:21,755 --> 00:36:24,791
I've never been so certain about anything in my life.
661
00:36:24,892 --> 00:36:27,527
There were many arguments at that stage.
662
00:36:27,627 --> 00:36:29,397
Fox were really quite troubled.
663
00:36:29,496 --> 00:36:34,335
But it was an early sign of how strong Scott was on that film
664
00:36:34,435 --> 00:36:36,804
that he won so many battles.
665
00:36:36,904 --> 00:36:39,273
And the most fundamental and important one
666
00:36:39,374 --> 00:36:42,276
was he got Giger back on.
667
00:36:42,377 --> 00:36:43,744
And I just thought it was stunning,
668
00:36:43,845 --> 00:36:47,081
and I just stuck to my guns saying, no.
669
00:36:47,181 --> 00:36:48,548
No, that's it.
670
00:36:48,648 --> 00:36:50,985
They said, let's bring him in and talk some concepts.
671
00:36:51,085 --> 00:36:52,186
I said, no.
672
00:36:52,286 --> 00:36:53,087
You can't do that.
673
00:36:53,187 --> 00:36:54,288
That's it.
674
00:36:54,389 --> 00:36:55,857
We want to be shooting by so and so.
675
00:36:55,957 --> 00:36:57,191
That's it.
676
00:36:57,291 --> 00:36:59,793
Just to get this right is gonna be incredibly difficult.
677
00:36:59,894 --> 00:37:02,529
This is beautiful, not just threatening.
678
00:37:02,629 --> 00:37:04,966
And also has very sexual connotations.
679
00:37:05,066 --> 00:37:08,369
So in everything, it's like a rather beautiful
680
00:37:08,469 --> 00:37:12,273
humanoid biomechanoid insect.
681
00:37:12,373 --> 00:37:15,009
Giger talks about intentionally drawing imagery
682
00:37:15,109 --> 00:37:17,011
from his own dreams, that means coming
683
00:37:17,111 --> 00:37:18,745
from a place where he didn't have
684
00:37:18,846 --> 00:37:21,149
agency over what came to him.
685
00:37:21,249 --> 00:37:26,753
When he painted, he was in this sort of trance.
686
00:37:26,854 --> 00:37:31,959
He was possessed, like a seer, a blind seer.
687
00:37:35,695 --> 00:37:40,068
Would go like that, and like in a Polaroid,
688
00:37:40,168 --> 00:37:44,972
an image would appear and take shape.
689
00:37:45,073 --> 00:37:48,242
Giger's images existed in a universe
690
00:37:48,342 --> 00:37:50,344
of their own in Switzerland.
691
00:37:50,445 --> 00:37:55,049
And they really found their place in space, the xenomorph
692
00:37:55,149 --> 00:37:57,885
and the space jockey.
693
00:37:57,985 --> 00:38:01,355
Giger's images really found a home in "Alien."
694
00:38:01,456 --> 00:38:03,424
Part of what you're seeing with the character of "Alien"
695
00:38:03,524 --> 00:38:07,594
is this gorgeous synchrony, this incredible synthesis
696
00:38:07,694 --> 00:38:10,064
of multiple mythological characters,
697
00:38:10,164 --> 00:38:13,034
Sekhmet, Pazuzu, Kali.
698
00:38:13,134 --> 00:38:15,735
You can see the medieval dragon,
699
00:38:15,837 --> 00:38:21,175
the Renaissance demons, the work of Heironymous Bosch.
700
00:38:21,275 --> 00:38:23,845
And it's a synthesis that wasn't done consciously.
701
00:38:23,945 --> 00:38:26,514
It was a synthesis that happened in the cauldron of stories
702
00:38:26,613 --> 00:38:28,983
that was Giger's imagination.
703
00:38:29,083 --> 00:38:31,651
This is a character with which all three of these artists
704
00:38:31,751 --> 00:38:33,054
identified.
705
00:38:33,154 --> 00:38:34,788
And because they all resonated with this pattern,
706
00:38:34,889 --> 00:38:36,824
they were drawn together, this coming
707
00:38:36,924 --> 00:38:39,726
from a much deeper place.
708
00:38:39,827 --> 00:38:43,498
Such a brilliant choice that in the end,
709
00:38:43,598 --> 00:38:47,001
you could say separates "Alien" from anything else was you've
710
00:38:47,101 --> 00:38:49,871
got this extraordinary artist with this sort
711
00:38:49,971 --> 00:38:53,141
of mind-blowing imagery, and you inject it
712
00:38:53,241 --> 00:38:54,175
straight into the film.
713
00:38:59,514 --> 00:39:02,517
In the hands of perhaps an aficionados who
714
00:39:02,617 --> 00:39:05,319
loved horror movies and science fiction,
715
00:39:05,419 --> 00:39:08,956
it might have turned out to be a completely different movie.
716
00:39:09,056 --> 00:39:10,657
The triptych of Dan
717
00:39:10,757 --> 00:39:13,793
O'Bannon, Ridley Scott, and Hans Rudi Giger
718
00:39:13,895 --> 00:39:17,365
was the gift from the gods.
719
00:39:17,465 --> 00:39:18,566
They were on the same wavelength.
720
00:39:18,665 --> 00:39:20,101
And they were all thinking about this
721
00:39:20,201 --> 00:39:25,072
is more than a science fiction adventure into the future.
722
00:39:25,173 --> 00:39:27,575
This was just as much an exploration
723
00:39:27,674 --> 00:39:30,178
of the ancient past, of the repressed
724
00:39:30,278 --> 00:39:33,713
and forgotten that the alien represents.
725
00:39:33,814 --> 00:39:35,950
When a story comes from multiple people,
726
00:39:36,050 --> 00:39:38,718
and beyond the agency of multiple people,
727
00:39:38,819 --> 00:39:41,788
it has a special existence.
728
00:39:41,889 --> 00:39:42,957
It is a symbiosis.
729
00:39:43,057 --> 00:39:46,460
"Alien" is a symbiosis of a few people
730
00:39:46,561 --> 00:39:48,229
who had that sensibility.
731
00:39:48,329 --> 00:39:50,598
If Dan had gone off and been in charge,
732
00:39:50,697 --> 00:39:51,933
it would have been a different film.
733
00:39:52,033 --> 00:39:54,268
It would have had more of the "Dark Star."
734
00:39:54,368 --> 00:39:57,638
Ron Cobb would have been pure sci-fi, all perfectly done,
735
00:39:57,737 --> 00:40:01,775
more Star Trekky in a way, or "2001."
736
00:40:01,876 --> 00:40:06,681
I came on board and made everything look grungy and real
737
00:40:06,780 --> 00:40:09,250
and like a space truck, you know?
738
00:40:09,350 --> 00:40:12,119
"Alien", I would say we got the sets right.
739
00:40:12,220 --> 00:40:14,589
The audience didn't ever question
740
00:40:14,689 --> 00:40:17,458
that we just found some old space craft
741
00:40:17,558 --> 00:40:19,994
and gone in and filmed in it.
742
00:40:20,094 --> 00:40:22,430
That was different to the world that had gone before.
743
00:40:22,530 --> 00:40:26,100
There was "Robby the Robot," there was "Barbarella."
744
00:40:26,200 --> 00:40:29,437
It's both very tangible, and a completely different world
745
00:40:29,537 --> 00:40:30,770
at the same time.
746
00:40:30,871 --> 00:40:32,974
There's something almost perennial about the way
747
00:40:33,074 --> 00:40:35,343
that yes, those ships are a completely different
748
00:40:35,443 --> 00:40:37,744
environment from what we're used to now
749
00:40:37,845 --> 00:40:40,648
and what we would have seen 1,000 years ago,
750
00:40:40,747 --> 00:40:41,949
but human beings haven't changed,
751
00:40:42,049 --> 00:40:44,318
and they still behave in the same way.
752
00:40:44,418 --> 00:40:47,321
I place the hub of the wheel at Ridley,
753
00:40:47,421 --> 00:40:51,192
because he's a visionary, and he knew what to do with this film
754
00:40:51,292 --> 00:40:53,694
and how to marshal all these different elements
755
00:40:53,793 --> 00:40:55,630
into "Alien."
756
00:40:55,730 --> 00:40:57,898
He was running the camera,
757
00:40:57,999 --> 00:41:00,301
during a lot of the lighting, everything
758
00:41:00,401 --> 00:41:02,436
was going on at once, and he was just
759
00:41:02,536 --> 00:41:05,673
conducting it so splendidly.
760
00:41:05,772 --> 00:41:08,509
Ridley shot, yeah, a good 80% of the film,
761
00:41:08,609 --> 00:41:09,910
and it was a panel vision camera.
762
00:41:10,011 --> 00:41:11,245
I mean, these aren't light.
763
00:41:11,345 --> 00:41:15,349
He wanted... he wanted anamorphic on purpose.
764
00:41:15,449 --> 00:41:18,953
We were contained in a space, and that wide-angle lens
765
00:41:19,053 --> 00:41:22,156
made it seem much more claustrophobic.
766
00:41:22,256 --> 00:41:24,158
The costume designer who worked with Ridley
767
00:41:24,258 --> 00:41:25,626
said to me once, you know, Ridley's
768
00:41:25,726 --> 00:41:28,095
got a camera for a head.
769
00:41:28,195 --> 00:41:33,868
He knows where to put the camera automatically.
770
00:41:33,968 --> 00:41:36,737
When your hand-held, your breathing with the actors,
771
00:41:36,837 --> 00:41:40,341
you're just part of what you're filming.
772
00:41:40,441 --> 00:41:43,077
You're not distanced.
773
00:41:43,177 --> 00:41:47,782
I think that's one of the best operated films ever seen.
774
00:41:47,882 --> 00:41:49,350
It's not wobbly cam.
775
00:41:49,450 --> 00:41:51,852
It was very beautifully photographed.
776
00:41:57,291 --> 00:41:58,959
There's a great opening sequences where
777
00:41:59,060 --> 00:42:01,395
the camera drifts through the empty Nostromo,
778
00:42:01,495 --> 00:42:06,100
and he had this wonderful sense of movement in the frame.
779
00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:08,102
Even though they're all in their cryo chambers,
780
00:42:08,202 --> 00:42:10,806
there's a strange sense of life about the vessel.
781
00:42:10,905 --> 00:42:13,607
It's all kind of presaging what's coming.
782
00:42:13,708 --> 00:42:17,178
But it's a haunted quality that flutter in the frame.
783
00:42:17,278 --> 00:42:18,446
And he talks a lot about the fact
784
00:42:18,546 --> 00:42:20,448
that he never let the camera sit still,
785
00:42:20,548 --> 00:42:25,353
that it has to keep moving, because you want the audience
786
00:42:25,453 --> 00:42:26,754
on edge the whole time.
787
00:42:26,854 --> 00:42:29,357
You never let the film settle down.
788
00:42:29,457 --> 00:42:31,659
And even around the scenes where they're kind of just
789
00:42:31,759 --> 00:42:34,095
having these kind of rather sort of squabbling sequences
790
00:42:34,195 --> 00:42:38,032
between the crew, just normal ship stuff,
791
00:42:38,132 --> 00:42:40,868
this there's slight air of agitation about how he frames
792
00:42:40,968 --> 00:42:42,670
and how he moves the camera.
793
00:42:42,770 --> 00:42:44,138
He's getting the heartbeat
794
00:42:44,238 --> 00:42:48,376
of the film, this kind of growing throb that it has.
795
00:42:48,476 --> 00:42:52,279
The reason he wanted the ship in one path
796
00:42:52,380 --> 00:42:56,183
was he wanted to film like the Mary Celeste at the opening.
797
00:42:56,283 --> 00:42:58,986
He was tracking around the ship, and there
798
00:42:59,086 --> 00:43:00,921
were eerie little things going on,
799
00:43:01,021 --> 00:43:03,224
the pecking birds that I put in there for Ridley,
800
00:43:03,324 --> 00:43:05,459
and everyone said, you can't do that.
801
00:43:05,559 --> 00:43:07,027
I thought it's a great idea.
802
00:43:07,128 --> 00:43:09,463
The annoying thing, yeah, that was a Ridley realism,
803
00:43:09,563 --> 00:43:11,298
the little nodding... the little nodding things.
804
00:43:11,399 --> 00:43:13,467
He had a thing about that for whatever reason
805
00:43:13,567 --> 00:43:14,301
back from childhood.
806
00:43:14,402 --> 00:43:15,603
I loved it.
807
00:43:15,703 --> 00:43:17,304
They were in all the cars in England.
808
00:43:17,405 --> 00:43:19,006
Everyone had these blooming things that were nodding.
809
00:43:19,106 --> 00:43:20,374
And they always was a joke.
810
00:43:20,474 --> 00:43:22,844
You know, America had dice hanging and stuff,
811
00:43:22,943 --> 00:43:25,814
but England had these nodding birds.
812
00:43:25,913 --> 00:43:27,548
It's perpetual motion.
813
00:43:27,648 --> 00:43:32,353
How do you illustrate that this thing is just carrying on,
814
00:43:32,453 --> 00:43:35,656
and there's no human beings on it?
815
00:43:35,756 --> 00:43:36,991
It just worked to me.
816
00:43:37,091 --> 00:43:40,027
And that quite kind of going around the ship
817
00:43:40,127 --> 00:43:44,064
and the eeriness of it, to me, said a lot.
818
00:43:44,165 --> 00:43:46,400
The little papers rustling.
819
00:43:46,500 --> 00:43:48,002
It's all illogical.
820
00:43:48,102 --> 00:43:50,571
What would make these pages flit around?
821
00:43:50,671 --> 00:43:51,639
Where's the wind coming from?
822
00:43:51,739 --> 00:43:52,640
All that stuff.
823
00:43:52,740 --> 00:43:53,774
Yeah.
824
00:43:53,875 --> 00:43:56,210
It didn't make sense, but it did.
825
00:43:56,310 --> 00:43:57,278
Yeah.
826
00:43:57,378 --> 00:43:58,946
You know, it was like Ridley's vision.
827
00:43:59,046 --> 00:44:01,382
His eye prevails over...
828
00:44:01,482 --> 00:44:04,485
perhaps he'll forgive me saying... the scientific logic
829
00:44:04,585 --> 00:44:07,688
of something, which is hence why we had rain pissing
830
00:44:07,788 --> 00:44:10,758
down when Brett gets killed in that sort of chain
831
00:44:10,859 --> 00:44:11,792
hanging room.
832
00:44:11,893 --> 00:44:13,394
And I had several discussions.
833
00:44:13,494 --> 00:44:15,864
Having worked on "2001," where everything
834
00:44:15,963 --> 00:44:20,434
was meticulous and real, but rain in space?
835
00:44:20,534 --> 00:44:22,736
You know, where... where's it coming from?
836
00:44:22,838 --> 00:44:23,537
He said, I don't care.
837
00:44:23,637 --> 00:44:24,438
It looks great.
838
00:44:24,538 --> 00:44:25,206
It does.
839
00:44:25,306 --> 00:44:26,740
That was it.
840
00:44:26,842 --> 00:44:28,944
A thing that we got from Ben Burtt,
841
00:44:29,043 --> 00:44:32,948
we got this sort of that
842
00:44:33,047 --> 00:44:34,950
kept going throughout the film.
843
00:44:40,387 --> 00:44:41,957
It was almost like a breathing,
844
00:44:42,056 --> 00:44:44,058
a sort of an alien breath, breathing
845
00:44:44,158 --> 00:44:46,126
in, exhaling and inhaling.
846
00:44:46,227 --> 00:44:48,229
And I think it gave a kind of, just a kind
847
00:44:48,329 --> 00:44:50,866
of feeling that something was breathing down your neck
848
00:44:50,966 --> 00:44:52,233
all the time.
849
00:44:52,333 --> 00:44:54,502
Kind of gave you an organic feel to the ship.
850
00:44:57,071 --> 00:44:58,506
And then the computer
851
00:44:58,606 --> 00:45:04,011
chatter that comes on in the helmet, it makes you think,
852
00:45:04,111 --> 00:45:06,780
what's going on here?
853
00:45:06,882 --> 00:45:09,316
Everything that Ridley built up was
854
00:45:09,416 --> 00:45:12,219
building on this fear of the unknown,
855
00:45:12,319 --> 00:45:13,554
of something happening.
856
00:45:13,654 --> 00:45:16,457
Everybody's now waiting for something to happen,
857
00:45:16,557 --> 00:45:17,424
but it doesn't.
858
00:45:17,525 --> 00:45:19,026
When I started working on the film,
859
00:45:19,126 --> 00:45:20,594
I just realized that this...
860
00:45:20,694 --> 00:45:25,566
this film was going to be virtually in slow motion.
861
00:45:25,666 --> 00:45:29,236
Everything was slow, except for these stabs that you've
862
00:45:29,336 --> 00:45:31,539
got at various points.
863
00:45:31,639 --> 00:45:34,375
And you thought, how can I sort of push someone
864
00:45:34,475 --> 00:45:37,378
into a corner from the editing point of view,
865
00:45:37,478 --> 00:45:41,148
and how far do you go before the audience says enough's enough?
866
00:45:48,289 --> 00:45:49,523
There was a lot of, I think,
867
00:45:49,623 --> 00:45:52,293
studio concern about the fact that it
868
00:45:52,393 --> 00:45:56,263
was 45 minutes before anything, in their opinion, happened.
869
00:45:56,363 --> 00:45:59,166
Before the facehugger jumps out of the egg and...
870
00:45:59,266 --> 00:46:03,004
and hits John Hurt on the... on the old visage.
871
00:46:03,103 --> 00:46:04,471
But that was its strength.
872
00:46:04,572 --> 00:46:05,439
Indeed.
873
00:46:05,539 --> 00:46:07,141
That really was its strength, to be
874
00:46:07,241 --> 00:46:09,911
able to hold it back that long before you
875
00:46:10,011 --> 00:46:12,047
really gave it to the audience.
876
00:46:12,146 --> 00:46:15,282
They all found it very hard to cope with that.
877
00:46:15,382 --> 00:46:17,351
Dan O'Bannon had conceptualized very early
878
00:46:17,451 --> 00:46:20,922
on in his script that they wouldn't find the eggs
879
00:46:21,022 --> 00:46:22,991
in the derelict spacecraft.
880
00:46:23,123 --> 00:46:24,859
They would find the space jockey.
881
00:46:30,097 --> 00:46:31,765
Extraordinary vision, and it came from Giger.
882
00:46:31,866 --> 00:46:34,501
It was a Giger picture.
883
00:46:34,602 --> 00:46:36,270
And it did something brilliant in the sense
884
00:46:36,370 --> 00:46:39,975
that it showed you that the universe was extraordinary.
885
00:46:40,075 --> 00:46:41,375
It was haunting.
886
00:46:41,475 --> 00:46:42,710
It was almost certainly benign.
887
00:46:42,811 --> 00:46:45,379
You felt almost sort of a loss when you saw it.
888
00:46:45,479 --> 00:46:47,916
It was a kind of creature ossified to a chair.
889
00:46:48,016 --> 00:46:50,651
You never quite understood what was creature what was chair,
890
00:46:50,751 --> 00:46:52,419
and it was just brilliant.
891
00:46:52,519 --> 00:46:55,556
It's another thing that Scott had to fight for.
892
00:46:55,656 --> 00:46:58,759
Because Fox just went, well, it doesn't have any plot function,
893
00:46:58,860 --> 00:47:00,095
you know?
894
00:47:00,194 --> 00:47:02,262
They just go through the floor and find the eggs.
895
00:47:02,363 --> 00:47:04,465
Ridley said, you can't just have a hole in the ground.
896
00:47:04,565 --> 00:47:07,701
You've got to suggest something.
897
00:47:07,801 --> 00:47:09,603
In the chest of what was then the space
898
00:47:09,703 --> 00:47:12,406
jockey, which we now know to be the engineer, there's a hole.
899
00:47:12,506 --> 00:47:17,478
Bones are bent outward, like he exploded from inside.
900
00:47:17,578 --> 00:47:20,347
So you get an instance of what is a hint,
901
00:47:20,447 --> 00:47:25,552
a tiny little drop of maybe what these... these things do.
902
00:47:25,653 --> 00:47:28,522
And they lower Kane in on like, a wench.
903
00:47:28,622 --> 00:47:30,257
Can you see anything?
904
00:47:30,357 --> 00:47:32,827
I don't... a cave.
905
00:47:32,927 --> 00:47:35,295
A cave of some sort, but I...
906
00:47:38,099 --> 00:47:40,434
I don't know, but it's like the goddamn tropics in here.
907
00:47:42,804 --> 00:47:45,840
And he sees in there this great sort of tableau
908
00:47:45,940 --> 00:47:48,009
that Giger had actually painted.
909
00:47:48,109 --> 00:47:52,814
When we got that onto that set and saw what they had done,
910
00:47:52,914 --> 00:47:55,349
I mean, it was just... it was mind-boggling.
911
00:47:55,449 --> 00:47:57,785
Everything was actual size.
912
00:47:57,886 --> 00:47:59,586
There was no CGI.
913
00:47:59,687 --> 00:48:03,424
So you were inside of these big huge caverns
914
00:48:03,524 --> 00:48:05,492
that look like big vaginas, you know?
915
00:48:05,592 --> 00:48:09,864
I mean, everything had a sort of a very sexual orientation.
916
00:48:09,964 --> 00:48:11,732
So you've landed on the planet,
917
00:48:11,833 --> 00:48:14,268
and you've had this ethereal sequence.
918
00:48:14,368 --> 00:48:17,304
Kane is almost guided via the signal,
919
00:48:17,404 --> 00:48:19,373
some voice is calling him onwards.
920
00:48:19,473 --> 00:48:20,842
And it's kind of wonderful to think that there's
921
00:48:20,942 --> 00:48:23,644
something there, you know, that the alien spacecraft
922
00:48:23,744 --> 00:48:25,312
is calling him.
923
00:48:25,412 --> 00:48:28,016
We get finally to the belly of the derelict,
924
00:48:28,116 --> 00:48:30,350
and we get the egg chamber.
925
00:48:30,451 --> 00:48:32,319
That's the wake-up moment.
926
00:48:36,290 --> 00:48:39,160
That whole tactic of the beginning, the openness,
927
00:48:39,259 --> 00:48:41,395
and the kind of hauntingness, suddenly, it
928
00:48:41,495 --> 00:48:43,697
gets sucked inward.
929
00:48:43,797 --> 00:48:45,332
Up until that point, the film has
930
00:48:45,432 --> 00:48:48,702
been a kind of strange hybrid between a Kubrickian
931
00:48:48,802 --> 00:48:51,940
serious science fiction and this almost kind
932
00:48:52,040 --> 00:48:53,574
of fairy tale-like atmosphere.
933
00:48:53,674 --> 00:48:57,411
It's kind of strange sort of hauntingness.
934
00:48:57,511 --> 00:49:00,681
It's not, strictly speaking, entirely realistic
935
00:49:00,781 --> 00:49:03,417
up until the point they have dinner.
936
00:49:03,517 --> 00:49:05,019
The chestburster changes the complexion
937
00:49:05,120 --> 00:49:09,924
of the film from a kind of epic to a kind of horribly,
938
00:49:10,024 --> 00:49:13,862
horribly intimate and sort of claustrophobic and inward.
939
00:49:13,962 --> 00:49:15,964
It's kind of an inward movement, even though the creature
940
00:49:16,064 --> 00:49:17,198
comes out of him.
941
00:49:17,297 --> 00:49:18,766
Suddenly, everybody's trapped.
942
00:49:18,867 --> 00:49:21,668
Suddenly, the spaceship is small and confined, where before,
943
00:49:21,769 --> 00:49:24,038
it being this kind of fast vessel.
944
00:49:24,139 --> 00:49:26,640
And what the film does is make that hyper leap jump
945
00:49:26,740 --> 00:49:30,344
into a primal survival story about many more things
946
00:49:30,444 --> 00:49:32,113
than we realize.
947
00:49:32,213 --> 00:49:35,382
Ridley always says that this... this
948
00:49:35,482 --> 00:49:37,384
was the scene that stood out that
949
00:49:37,484 --> 00:49:39,386
would make or break the film.
950
00:49:39,486 --> 00:49:44,259
It was just some craziness that came out of Ron Shusett
951
00:49:44,358 --> 00:49:46,928
and Dan O'Bannon's mind.
952
00:49:47,028 --> 00:49:49,831
When you read it in the script, there's so many different ways
953
00:49:49,931 --> 00:49:52,233
to approach it.
954
00:49:52,332 --> 00:49:56,670
And Ridley was so constrained with the scene.
955
00:49:56,770 --> 00:49:59,406
It's a very significant moment in film history.
956
00:50:03,710 --> 00:50:07,916
The idea came from a painting from Francis Bacon.
957
00:50:08,016 --> 00:50:12,452
Ridley Scott told me that this painting, it's just
958
00:50:12,553 --> 00:50:16,925
a crucification, and one of the member
959
00:50:17,025 --> 00:50:24,598
has just teeth and red flesh, and he liked to have
960
00:50:24,698 --> 00:50:26,433
the chestburster like that.
961
00:50:29,037 --> 00:50:30,939
I've always been very moved
962
00:50:31,039 --> 00:50:34,175
by the movements of the mouth and the shape
963
00:50:34,275 --> 00:50:35,844
of the mouth and the teeth.
964
00:50:35,944 --> 00:50:40,081
And I like the, you may say, the glitter and color
965
00:50:40,181 --> 00:50:41,883
that comes from the mouth.
966
00:50:41,983 --> 00:50:46,620
When I was first went to Paris, I found in an old bookshop
967
00:50:46,720 --> 00:50:48,689
a book on diseases of mouth.
968
00:50:48,789 --> 00:50:51,993
The plates were hand-colored, and that it
969
00:50:52,093 --> 00:50:55,230
had a tremendous effect on me.
970
00:50:55,330 --> 00:50:56,496
The three studies
971
00:50:56,597 --> 00:50:59,433
for figures at the base of the crucifixion
972
00:50:59,533 --> 00:51:03,838
is the real point of departure for Bacon.
973
00:51:03,938 --> 00:51:09,543
He thought of that picture as his first picture.
974
00:51:09,643 --> 00:51:12,512
He was 35, and that's late, of course, for an artist
975
00:51:12,613 --> 00:51:15,749
to have a first work.
976
00:51:15,850 --> 00:51:17,651
This is his breakthrough work.
977
00:51:17,751 --> 00:51:21,990
And it's full of contradictions, full of paradoxes.
978
00:51:22,090 --> 00:51:25,726
How did suddenly this enormously challenging,
979
00:51:25,827 --> 00:51:31,698
unbelievably horrific and ugly imagery arise?
980
00:51:31,798 --> 00:51:34,601
The imagery is Christian.
981
00:51:34,701 --> 00:51:41,876
And Bacon, even by then, was a very violent atheist.
982
00:51:41,976 --> 00:51:44,478
You get the crucifixion in the title,
983
00:51:44,578 --> 00:51:50,584
but it is a mixture of Greek myths and Christianity.
984
00:51:50,684 --> 00:51:54,322
The Greek influence was very deep,
985
00:51:54,421 --> 00:51:56,590
and I think he thought of himself
986
00:51:56,690 --> 00:51:59,559
as somebody hounded by furies.
987
00:51:59,660 --> 00:52:03,530
And I think he felt their talons in his flesh.
988
00:52:03,630 --> 00:52:07,068
He said, oh, yes, the furies visit me very often.
989
00:52:20,214 --> 00:52:22,582
The temple of Apollo at Delphi
990
00:52:22,683 --> 00:52:26,687
was one of the major sanctuaries of the Greek world.
991
00:52:26,787 --> 00:52:31,326
It is really important in the story of the furies.
992
00:52:31,426 --> 00:52:34,028
The furies in Greek mythology are
993
00:52:34,128 --> 00:52:38,967
avengers of crimes, usually committed by children
994
00:52:39,067 --> 00:52:40,868
against their parents.
995
00:52:40,969 --> 00:52:44,105
And they first appear in Aeschylus' trilogy
996
00:52:44,205 --> 00:52:47,541
when Orestes murders his mother, Clytemnestra,
997
00:52:47,641 --> 00:52:50,111
and her lover, Aegisthus.
998
00:52:50,211 --> 00:52:53,982
When Orestes finds refuge at the temple of Apollo at Delphi,
999
00:52:54,082 --> 00:52:57,484
the ghost of Clytemnestra tries to wake them up and rouse them
1000
00:52:57,584 --> 00:52:59,988
so that they can fulfill their purpose, which
1001
00:53:00,088 --> 00:53:05,059
is to hound down Orestes and take revenge
1002
00:53:05,159 --> 00:53:06,793
for Clytemnestra's murder.
1003
00:53:06,894 --> 00:53:10,530
The violence of the brings up the...
1004
00:53:10,630 --> 00:53:12,799
the... the images.
1005
00:53:12,900 --> 00:53:14,969
I mean, if you remember that wonderful translation
1006
00:53:15,069 --> 00:53:17,671
of one of his lines, "the reek of human blood
1007
00:53:17,771 --> 00:53:19,073
smiles out at me."
1008
00:53:19,173 --> 00:53:21,142
Well, what could be more amazing than that?
1009
00:53:21,242 --> 00:53:25,913
That immediately brings up the most astonishing images.
1010
00:53:26,014 --> 00:53:29,017
The furies are a common torment to a creator,
1011
00:53:29,117 --> 00:53:30,284
and here's why.
1012
00:53:30,385 --> 00:53:34,956
To create is inherently a rebellion against creation.
1013
00:53:35,056 --> 00:53:37,657
The fact that his father kicked him out
1014
00:53:37,758 --> 00:53:41,695
of the house when he discovered he was homosexual was
1015
00:53:41,795 --> 00:53:45,665
a lasting wound in Bacon.
1016
00:53:45,766 --> 00:53:47,969
I think the furies, to some extent,
1017
00:53:48,069 --> 00:53:50,972
are actually his father, his father
1018
00:53:51,072 --> 00:53:55,309
pursuing him, chasing him out of the family home
1019
00:53:55,410 --> 00:53:58,980
and branding him as an outsider.
1020
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:04,785
This image came fully formed out of Bacon's imagination.
1021
00:54:04,886 --> 00:54:10,858
It's like Athena springing fully formed from the head of Zeus.
1022
00:54:10,958 --> 00:54:12,860
I see it as the monster coming out of Bacon,
1023
00:54:12,960 --> 00:54:15,296
and the monster coming out of the world.
1024
00:54:18,933 --> 00:54:21,735
Myths are thought to be messages from the divine.
1025
00:54:21,836 --> 00:54:24,906
When Ridley Scott puts this image of Bacon
1026
00:54:25,006 --> 00:54:28,543
into Giger's hands, that's an odd synchronicity.
1027
00:54:28,642 --> 00:54:31,245
And when you see the importance of the story,
1028
00:54:31,345 --> 00:54:34,282
and you're looking back on it with the power and magnitude
1029
00:54:34,382 --> 00:54:37,518
with which that story landed, all the synchronicities
1030
00:54:37,617 --> 00:54:39,420
that brought it to that point seem all the
1031
00:54:39,520 --> 00:54:40,587
more important and stunning.
1032
00:54:53,334 --> 00:54:57,205
It's crazy that these scenes that are... a word I hate using,
1033
00:54:57,305 --> 00:54:58,873
but they are so iconic.
1034
00:54:58,973 --> 00:55:01,576
It seems like that page should be...
1035
00:55:01,675 --> 00:55:02,844
you know, obviously, there should be
1036
00:55:02,944 --> 00:55:04,946
like the Constitution, right?
1037
00:55:05,046 --> 00:55:07,482
I mean, at some point at the end of "Citizen Kane," it says,
1038
00:55:07,582 --> 00:55:09,783
and the camera turns and focuses and the...
1039
00:55:09,884 --> 00:55:11,219
it's a sled, Rosebud.
1040
00:55:11,319 --> 00:55:12,752
Fade to black.
1041
00:55:12,854 --> 00:55:15,189
It's not like, you know, you know, you think and you go,
1042
00:55:15,289 --> 00:55:16,057
ta-da!
1043
00:55:16,157 --> 00:55:17,458
Right?
1044
00:55:17,558 --> 00:55:22,964
But the chest buster scene is just a one-page description.
1045
00:55:23,064 --> 00:55:26,666
Broussard's face is screwed up into a mask of agony,
1046
00:55:26,766 --> 00:55:29,904
and he's trembling violently from head to foot.
1047
00:55:30,004 --> 00:55:34,475
There's an incoherent shriek from Broussard, oh my god!
1048
00:55:34,575 --> 00:55:38,712
A red smear of blood blossoms on the chest of Broussard's tunic.
1049
00:55:38,813 --> 00:55:41,182
Their eyes are all riveted to Broussard's chest
1050
00:55:41,282 --> 00:55:43,451
as the fabric of his tunic is ripped open,
1051
00:55:43,551 --> 00:55:47,989
and a horrible, nasty little head the size of a man's fist
1052
00:55:48,089 --> 00:55:49,190
pushes out.
1053
00:55:49,290 --> 00:55:51,791
Everybody screams and leaps back from the table.
1054
00:55:51,893 --> 00:55:54,095
The cat spits and bolts.
1055
00:55:54,195 --> 00:55:57,298
The disgusting little head lunges, comes spurting out
1056
00:55:57,398 --> 00:56:00,734
of Broussard's chest, trailing a thick worm-like tail,
1057
00:56:00,835 --> 00:56:02,937
splattering fluids and blood.
1058
00:56:03,037 --> 00:56:04,771
Lands in the middle of the dishes
1059
00:56:04,872 --> 00:56:07,341
and food on the table and screws away while the men
1060
00:56:07,441 --> 00:56:09,544
are stampeding for safe ground.
1061
00:56:09,644 --> 00:56:13,381
When they finally regain control of themselves, it has escaped.
1062
00:56:13,481 --> 00:56:16,783
Broussard lies slumped in his chair, a huge hole
1063
00:56:16,884 --> 00:56:19,153
in his chest spouting blood.
1064
00:56:19,253 --> 00:56:21,455
The dishes are scattered and the food is
1065
00:56:21,556 --> 00:56:23,757
covered with blood and slime.
1066
00:56:26,627 --> 00:56:28,196
I'd make that movie.
1067
00:56:28,296 --> 00:56:29,430
Yeah.
1068
00:56:29,530 --> 00:56:31,032
The chestburster made everything possible for us.
1069
00:56:31,132 --> 00:56:32,967
It wouldn't have been the magic it was
1070
00:56:33,067 --> 00:56:34,936
without the chestburster scene.
1071
00:56:35,036 --> 00:56:37,338
Everything rested on that scene from beginning to end,
1072
00:56:37,438 --> 00:56:39,974
from getting the film made, to how the audience responds,
1073
00:56:40,074 --> 00:56:42,910
to whether those monsters continue to live
1074
00:56:43,010 --> 00:56:44,744
in our imagination today.
1075
00:56:44,845 --> 00:56:46,614
It's that moment we finally assert
1076
00:56:46,713 --> 00:56:48,748
that science fiction isn't only about minds,
1077
00:56:48,849 --> 00:56:50,151
It's about our bodies.
1078
00:56:50,251 --> 00:56:51,919
It's continuous with the directions
1079
00:56:52,019 --> 00:56:55,056
horror was taking over the preceding decade, right?
1080
00:56:55,156 --> 00:56:57,058
Horror is moving toward body horror,
1081
00:56:57,158 --> 00:57:00,494
through David Cronenberg in particular.
1082
00:57:00,595 --> 00:57:02,463
It's part of the texture of a film
1083
00:57:02,563 --> 00:57:06,167
that to me, is one of the most tactile movies ever made.
1084
00:57:06,267 --> 00:57:09,136
The sense of goo and grime, of things
1085
00:57:09,237 --> 00:57:14,208
spurting at us, the sense of heat and steam and sweat.
1086
00:57:16,743 --> 00:57:20,747
There is a tendency to think about the chestburster sequence
1087
00:57:20,848 --> 00:57:23,351
as a scene or even a moment.
1088
00:57:23,451 --> 00:57:26,420
But it really takes a while to build up to it.
1089
00:57:32,593 --> 00:57:35,663
The Nostromo moving in.
1090
00:57:35,762 --> 00:57:38,633
It's funny, isn't it, how all these, you know,
1091
00:57:38,733 --> 00:57:41,969
outer space shots now have a certain sort of like, you know,
1092
00:57:42,069 --> 00:57:43,571
generalization about them.
1093
00:57:43,671 --> 00:57:47,008
You know, when you think about "2001," how gob-smacking that
1094
00:57:47,108 --> 00:57:50,378
was at the time, and now we just take it completely for granted.
1095
00:57:53,814 --> 00:57:56,050
Why is it called the Nostromo?
1096
00:57:56,150 --> 00:57:58,919
The shuttle craft is called the Narcissus.
1097
00:57:59,020 --> 00:58:02,490
Narcissus and Nostromo are both words
1098
00:58:02,590 --> 00:58:07,528
that are used in book titles by Joseph Conrad, who wrote
1099
00:58:07,628 --> 00:58:10,797
about the evils of imperialism.
1100
00:58:10,898 --> 00:58:13,301
By allusion to the works of Conrad,
1101
00:58:13,401 --> 00:58:16,804
there's a strand within "Alien" which is about a concern
1102
00:58:16,904 --> 00:58:19,607
as to what humanity might find as it
1103
00:58:19,707 --> 00:58:23,210
ventures into the dark places.
1104
00:58:23,311 --> 00:58:25,146
In the case of Conrad, he's thinking
1105
00:58:25,246 --> 00:58:31,118
about the heart of darkness, the dark places of empire.
1106
00:58:31,218 --> 00:58:34,455
At the same moment that Ridley Scott is making "Alien,"
1107
00:58:34,555 --> 00:58:38,292
you have Francis Ford Coppola adapting "Heart of Darkness"
1108
00:58:38,392 --> 00:58:42,563
to be "Apocalypse Now," and explicitly commenting
1109
00:58:42,663 --> 00:58:45,366
on parallels between the Vietnam War
1110
00:58:45,466 --> 00:58:50,404
and the encounter with evil in the British and Belgian empire.
1111
00:58:50,504 --> 00:58:53,874
"Alien" directs our attention or reminds us
1112
00:58:53,974 --> 00:58:58,579
of the dangers of imperialism and conquest
1113
00:58:58,679 --> 00:59:01,048
of other places, what we might find
1114
00:59:01,148 --> 00:59:04,485
in these uncharted regions, especially if we attempt
1115
00:59:04,585 --> 00:59:06,087
to exploit those regions.
1116
00:59:06,187 --> 00:59:09,757
I hate to bring this up, but this is a commercial ship, not
1117
00:59:09,857 --> 00:59:11,092
a rescue ship.
1118
00:59:11,192 --> 00:59:12,226
Right.
1119
00:59:12,326 --> 00:59:14,628
It's not in my contract to do this kind of duty.
1120
00:59:14,729 --> 00:59:18,866
The 1970s was a time of economic downturn,
1121
00:59:18,966 --> 00:59:22,403
of threat, threat coming from new places.
1122
00:59:22,503 --> 00:59:24,806
Ash, can you see this?
1123
00:59:24,905 --> 00:59:25,539
Yes, I can.
1124
00:59:29,043 --> 00:59:30,578
I've never seen anything like it.
1125
00:59:30,678 --> 00:59:31,679
Particularly the
1126
00:59:31,779 --> 00:59:34,115
first stirrings of terrorism.
1127
00:59:34,215 --> 00:59:35,817
There were enemies within.
1128
00:59:35,916 --> 00:59:38,786
There was political corruption.
1129
00:59:38,886 --> 00:59:41,522
People had doubts, were feeling isolated,
1130
00:59:41,622 --> 00:59:43,324
were feeling disillusioned.
1131
00:59:43,424 --> 00:59:46,026
I say that we abandon this ship.
1132
00:59:46,127 --> 00:59:48,295
We get the shuttle and just get the hell out of here.
1133
00:59:48,396 --> 00:59:51,432
We take our chances and just hope that somebody...
1134
00:59:51,532 --> 00:59:52,133
Lambert.
1135
00:59:52,233 --> 00:59:53,634
...picks us up.
1136
00:59:53,734 --> 00:59:55,269
This is a consequence of Watergate.
1137
00:59:55,369 --> 00:59:57,471
This is a consequence of the Vietnam War.
1138
00:59:57,571 --> 01:00:01,175
This is a consequence of the political corruption in Europe.
1139
01:00:01,275 --> 01:00:04,412
And I think that that uncertainty
1140
01:00:04,512 --> 01:00:08,149
plays out in all kinds of movies from that period.
1141
01:00:10,584 --> 01:00:14,588
If you look at '78, you get Ted Bundy's captured,
1142
01:00:14,688 --> 01:00:17,958
John Wayne Gacy's captured, the Hillside Strangler's out there.
1143
01:00:18,058 --> 01:00:19,693
So there's this kind of new phenomenon
1144
01:00:19,794 --> 01:00:21,128
out there, right, the serial killer,
1145
01:00:21,228 --> 01:00:22,864
and what does that mean?
1146
01:00:22,963 --> 01:00:24,198
There's this kind of idea that there's
1147
01:00:24,298 --> 01:00:26,600
something out there that can be completely evil
1148
01:00:26,700 --> 01:00:28,636
and illogical and horrible.
1149
01:00:28,736 --> 01:00:30,004
And there's no reasoning with it,
1150
01:00:30,104 --> 01:00:32,908
and there's nothing you can do to really stop it.
1151
01:00:33,007 --> 01:00:34,843
At no point in the "Alien" movies,
1152
01:00:34,942 --> 01:00:36,110
and definitely not in the first one,
1153
01:00:36,210 --> 01:00:38,979
do you feel like what makes us human
1154
01:00:39,079 --> 01:00:41,315
is the thing that allows us to beat this creature.
1155
01:00:41,415 --> 01:00:51,759
I admire its purity, a survivor,
1156
01:00:51,860 --> 01:00:57,965
unclouded by conscience, remorse,
1157
01:00:58,065 --> 01:00:59,868
or delusions of morality.
1158
01:00:59,967 --> 01:01:02,636
There is a commentary in there about the way that things are
1159
01:01:02,736 --> 01:01:05,941
going right now, and about what we're doing as human beings,
1160
01:01:06,040 --> 01:01:07,408
and how we're taking those strengths,
1161
01:01:07,508 --> 01:01:10,110
and those emotions, those things that make us human,
1162
01:01:10,211 --> 01:01:13,047
and we're turning our backs on them.
1163
01:01:13,147 --> 01:01:15,483
You have in these, in the 1970s,
1164
01:01:15,583 --> 01:01:18,519
tremendous fear over what's happening
1165
01:01:18,619 --> 01:01:20,621
to the American family.
1166
01:01:20,721 --> 01:01:22,289
And I don't love you anymore.
1167
01:01:24,860 --> 01:01:25,493
Where you going?
1168
01:01:25,593 --> 01:01:27,495
I don't know.
1169
01:01:27,595 --> 01:01:30,097
Panic about divorce,
1170
01:01:30,197 --> 01:01:33,300
panic about family breakdowns.
1171
01:01:33,400 --> 01:01:34,735
Here's what I don't understand,
1172
01:01:34,836 --> 01:01:36,337
all the time... where are you... where are you running?
1173
01:01:36,437 --> 01:01:37,973
All the times I come over here, I can't understand
1174
01:01:38,072 --> 01:01:39,273
how you can prefer her to me.
1175
01:01:39,373 --> 01:01:40,241
You can't understand that?
1176
01:01:40,341 --> 01:01:41,609
No. It's a mystery.
1177
01:01:41,709 --> 01:01:42,911
Well, you knew my history when you married me.
1178
01:01:43,010 --> 01:01:44,044
Yeah.
1179
01:01:44,144 --> 01:01:45,246
I think you can
1180
01:01:45,346 --> 01:01:47,581
see that the crew of the space ship
1181
01:01:47,681 --> 01:01:50,551
operate like a kind of family, and there
1182
01:01:50,651 --> 01:01:54,890
are sort of family-type tensions between them.
1183
01:01:54,990 --> 01:01:57,091
Before we dock, I think we oughta
1184
01:01:57,191 --> 01:01:58,492
discuss the bonus situation.
1185
01:01:58,592 --> 01:02:00,060
- Right, right. - We think we ought...
1186
01:02:00,160 --> 01:02:01,328
One of the things that that strikes me
1187
01:02:01,428 --> 01:02:03,531
about this movie in general is the way
1188
01:02:03,631 --> 01:02:07,134
that it's connecting what's gonna happen with 80s movies
1189
01:02:07,234 --> 01:02:09,637
and what has happened in 70s movies.
1190
01:02:09,737 --> 01:02:13,975
Because sonically, it feels like a Robert Altman movie.
1191
01:02:14,074 --> 01:02:15,576
You have this scene of all of these characters
1192
01:02:15,676 --> 01:02:19,280
sitting around talking before they find out that Kane is OK.
1193
01:02:19,380 --> 01:02:21,315
How about a little something to lower your spirits?
1194
01:02:21,415 --> 01:02:22,750
Thrill me, will you, please?
1195
01:02:22,851 --> 01:02:24,518
The way that it's blocked and staged,
1196
01:02:24,618 --> 01:02:27,788
five or six people in the frame who are all doing something.
1197
01:02:27,889 --> 01:02:29,523
Just give me the short version.
1198
01:02:29,623 --> 01:02:31,692
People talking on top of each other
1199
01:02:31,792 --> 01:02:35,964
at once at equal volumes, where you have to sort of decide
1200
01:02:36,063 --> 01:02:37,832
who you want to listen to, and they're
1201
01:02:37,933 --> 01:02:41,068
all mumbling and talking extremely naturalistically.
1202
01:02:46,440 --> 01:02:48,475
It's doing the thing that cinema in America
1203
01:02:48,576 --> 01:02:50,644
was doing in the 70s, which was to try to point
1204
01:02:50,744 --> 01:02:54,950
the lens at a more naturalistic working class
1205
01:02:55,050 --> 01:02:57,484
reality of America.
1206
01:02:57,585 --> 01:03:01,288
The future of blue collar workers
1207
01:03:01,388 --> 01:03:05,326
is something that's wholly revolutionary.
1208
01:03:05,426 --> 01:03:07,795
And the movie, in a way, is about that.
1209
01:03:07,896 --> 01:03:11,231
It's about the exploitation of these blue collar workers
1210
01:03:11,332 --> 01:03:13,267
by the corporation.
1211
01:03:13,367 --> 01:03:15,336
Hey, Ripley, I wanna ask you a question.
1212
01:03:17,872 --> 01:03:19,473
If they find what they're looking for out there,
1213
01:03:19,573 --> 01:03:21,108
does that mean we get full shares?
1214
01:03:21,208 --> 01:03:22,376
Don't worry, Parker.
1215
01:03:22,476 --> 01:03:25,446
Yeah, you'll get whatever's coming to you.
1216
01:03:25,546 --> 01:03:27,916
Look, I'm not gonna do any more work till we
1217
01:03:28,016 --> 01:03:28,984
get this straightened out.
1218
01:03:29,084 --> 01:03:30,551
|
1219
01:03:30,651 --> 01:03:33,021
"Alien," to me, makes more sense if it were made in 1974,
1220
01:03:33,120 --> 01:03:35,456
'75, '76 than after "Star Wars."
1221
01:03:35,556 --> 01:03:37,191
"Alien" is a smaller movie.
1222
01:03:37,291 --> 01:03:39,159
"Alien"... I can't believe I'm saying this...
1223
01:03:39,259 --> 01:03:41,395
is a realistic movie.
1224
01:03:41,495 --> 01:03:42,831
Part of it was just
1225
01:03:42,931 --> 01:03:46,500
getting away from that sanitized view of space that
1226
01:03:46,600 --> 01:03:50,137
had dominated science fiction from the 60s and much
1227
01:03:50,237 --> 01:03:53,140
of the 70s, and coming to something
1228
01:03:53,240 --> 01:03:56,310
that felt like a real lived-in environment.
1229
01:03:56,410 --> 01:03:58,113
It was continuous with the world we
1230
01:03:58,212 --> 01:04:00,581
knew outside the movie theater.
1231
01:04:00,681 --> 01:04:01,850
Harry Dean Stanton
1232
01:04:01,950 --> 01:04:03,751
and Yaphet Kotto are the two most
1233
01:04:03,852 --> 01:04:05,386
working class guys on the ship.
1234
01:04:05,486 --> 01:04:09,256
And they, unwittingly maybe, but maybe intuitively,
1235
01:04:09,356 --> 01:04:12,060
know that if they just freeze Kane,
1236
01:04:12,159 --> 01:04:14,963
everything's going to be OK.
1237
01:04:15,063 --> 01:04:18,066
How come they don't freeze him?
1238
01:04:18,165 --> 01:04:20,467
How come you guys don't freeze him?
1239
01:04:20,567 --> 01:04:22,169
What I think we should do is just freeze him.
1240
01:04:22,269 --> 01:04:23,303
I mean, he's got a disease.
1241
01:04:23,404 --> 01:04:24,772
Why don't we stop it where it is?
1242
01:04:24,873 --> 01:04:26,507
He can always get to a doctor when we get back home.
1243
01:04:26,607 --> 01:04:27,741
Right.
1244
01:04:27,842 --> 01:04:30,945
They're speaking the truth in this kind of almost
1245
01:04:31,046 --> 01:04:33,081
Greek chorus kind of prophet way,
1246
01:04:33,180 --> 01:04:34,415
but nobody really wants to listen to them,
1247
01:04:34,515 --> 01:04:36,517
and they're just making fun of them.
1248
01:04:36,617 --> 01:04:38,452
Whenever he says anything, you say
1249
01:04:38,552 --> 01:04:40,621
right, Brett, you know that?
1250
01:04:40,721 --> 01:04:41,588
Right.
1251
01:04:41,689 --> 01:04:43,357
What they're making fun of them for
1252
01:04:43,457 --> 01:04:46,995
is that Harry Dean Stanton keeps saying right, right, right,
1253
01:04:47,095 --> 01:04:48,963
but it's because they are right.
1254
01:04:49,064 --> 01:04:51,432
And in the staging of this scene,
1255
01:04:51,532 --> 01:04:54,401
Dallas, the ship captain, is sitting closest to us,
1256
01:04:54,501 --> 01:04:58,305
and there's this wall of the two working class guys between him
1257
01:04:58,405 --> 01:05:01,810
and the two women, who are scientists and flight officers.
1258
01:05:01,910 --> 01:05:03,845
And when he gets frustrated with this sense
1259
01:05:03,945 --> 01:05:08,083
that, even jokingly, his authority is being undermined
1260
01:05:08,183 --> 01:05:10,617
by these two guys, who are his employees,
1261
01:05:10,718 --> 01:05:13,188
he crosses to the far depth of the shot
1262
01:05:13,287 --> 01:05:15,756
to talk to Lambert, who immediately
1263
01:05:15,857 --> 01:05:18,392
starts talking this sort of elevated, educated way.
1264
01:05:18,492 --> 01:05:20,761
Well, according to my calculations, based on time
1265
01:05:20,862 --> 01:05:22,529
spent getting to and from the planet...
1266
01:05:22,629 --> 01:05:24,032
Just give me the short version.
1267
01:05:24,132 --> 01:05:25,232
How far to Earth?
1268
01:05:25,332 --> 01:05:26,567
10 months.
1269
01:05:26,667 --> 01:05:27,969
And you can really see visually
1270
01:05:28,069 --> 01:05:30,537
in this incredibly subtle way that there really
1271
01:05:30,637 --> 01:05:35,476
is this war about the movement between the classes on the ship
1272
01:05:35,576 --> 01:05:38,980
and who has the right to be heard.
1273
01:05:39,080 --> 01:05:40,781
Right.
1274
01:05:40,882 --> 01:05:44,451
We now know that Hollywood in the 1970s
1275
01:05:44,551 --> 01:05:47,554
was a very oppressive place for women.
1276
01:05:47,654 --> 01:05:49,256
Do you find, in fact, that this, what
1277
01:05:49,356 --> 01:05:52,060
could be best described as your equipment, in fact,
1278
01:05:52,160 --> 01:05:53,393
hinders you perhaps?
1279
01:05:53,494 --> 01:05:54,929
You think about the sexism,
1280
01:05:55,029 --> 01:05:59,167
the misogyny that was implicit within the industry that
1281
01:05:59,266 --> 01:06:00,135
made this film.
1282
01:06:00,235 --> 01:06:01,301
You mean my fingers?
1283
01:06:03,004 --> 01:06:04,271
No, I meant your...
1284
01:06:06,908 --> 01:06:07,775
Come on, spit it out.
1285
01:06:07,876 --> 01:06:08,709
I meant your...
1286
01:06:08,810 --> 01:06:09,811
your figure.
1287
01:06:09,911 --> 01:06:11,179
My figure?
1288
01:06:11,278 --> 01:06:13,313
And there's no way of looking at "Alien"
1289
01:06:13,413 --> 01:06:18,418
without seeing it as a male fantasy of the kind
1290
01:06:18,519 --> 01:06:21,555
of oppression that have been being handed out to women
1291
01:06:21,655 --> 01:06:28,062
over the centuries, a guilt that was part of masculinity
1292
01:06:28,163 --> 01:06:34,035
in the 1970s, and should be part of masculinity now.
1293
01:06:34,135 --> 01:06:38,338
"Alien" has within it fantasies of male pregnancy, fantasies
1294
01:06:38,438 --> 01:06:44,478
of male rape, fantasies of male penetration.
1295
01:06:44,578 --> 01:06:49,050
And it's all tied up with that amazing chest buster scene.
1296
01:06:49,150 --> 01:06:50,919
I don't know how explicitly they
1297
01:06:51,019 --> 01:06:52,553
realized what they were doing.
1298
01:06:52,653 --> 01:06:54,388
I can't imagine that any studio would be like,
1299
01:06:54,488 --> 01:06:56,891
yes, you're making a male rape movie in space.
1300
01:06:56,991 --> 01:06:58,625
For sure, let's go for it.
1301
01:06:58,725 --> 01:07:00,394
It's wonderful that the unconscious works
1302
01:07:00,494 --> 01:07:03,463
in so many mysterious ways.
1303
01:07:03,564 --> 01:07:06,034
It feels like a summoning in a major way,
1304
01:07:06,134 --> 01:07:09,670
an accidental awakening of some repressed spirit.
1305
01:07:09,770 --> 01:07:14,608
The furies certainly speak for the repressed feminine.
1306
01:07:14,708 --> 01:07:18,545
And "Alien" certainly represents the repressed
1307
01:07:18,645 --> 01:07:21,682
feminine's retribution.
1308
01:07:21,782 --> 01:07:25,352
"Alien" touched a nerve with a lot of people
1309
01:07:25,452 --> 01:07:29,157
because it was talking about something,
1310
01:07:29,257 --> 01:07:36,130
that even in 2019, we're still not comfortable addressing.
1311
01:07:36,231 --> 01:07:42,303
The idea that "Alien" is addressing
1312
01:07:42,402 --> 01:07:47,942
the guilt that a patriarchal society feels
1313
01:07:48,042 --> 01:07:49,978
makes perfect sense to me.
1314
01:07:50,078 --> 01:07:51,545
We'll move in pairs.
1315
01:07:51,645 --> 01:07:54,648
We'll go step by step and cut off every bulkhead and every
1316
01:07:54,748 --> 01:07:57,285
vent until we have it cornered, and then we'll blow it
1317
01:07:57,384 --> 01:07:59,053
the fuck out into space.
1318
01:07:59,153 --> 01:08:01,622
Is that acceptable to you?
1319
01:08:01,722 --> 01:08:03,892
Ripley was created in 1979, and it's
1320
01:08:03,992 --> 01:08:06,961
insane that we don't have that many great female characters
1321
01:08:07,061 --> 01:08:08,196
since.
1322
01:08:08,296 --> 01:08:10,131
And especially in a genre like horror,
1323
01:08:10,231 --> 01:08:14,568
that's given so many female characters throughout time,
1324
01:08:14,668 --> 01:08:16,170
and yet, there's not one that strikes us
1325
01:08:16,271 --> 01:08:20,275
as being as developed and as complex and as interesting
1326
01:08:20,375 --> 01:08:21,475
as Ripley was.
1327
01:08:21,575 --> 01:08:23,710
And isn't it ironic that she ends up
1328
01:08:23,811 --> 01:08:27,348
being that way because she was written to be a man?
1329
01:08:27,447 --> 01:08:30,517
Ripley is the only maternal character
1330
01:08:30,617 --> 01:08:32,686
within her Promethean crew.
1331
01:08:32,786 --> 01:08:36,657
Her transformation gives us direction
1332
01:08:36,757 --> 01:08:39,559
for the transformation that we need to take as a culture
1333
01:08:39,660 --> 01:08:41,229
to avoid self-destruction.
1334
01:08:41,329 --> 01:08:42,096
She's a new example.
1335
01:08:44,798 --> 01:08:47,001
When we start off this sequence with Kane,
1336
01:08:47,101 --> 01:08:49,436
this very strange shot that's low angle,
1337
01:08:49,536 --> 01:08:51,039
and he's all the way to the side...
1338
01:08:51,139 --> 01:08:53,942
And maybe at that point, for want of a better term,
1339
01:08:54,042 --> 01:08:55,843
there's kind of this something's being buried inside you,
1340
01:08:55,944 --> 01:08:57,412
something's been planted in your brain,
1341
01:08:57,511 --> 01:08:59,080
and you're not sure what.
1342
01:08:59,180 --> 01:09:00,148
How you doing?
1343
01:09:00,248 --> 01:09:01,049
Kane seems all right.
1344
01:09:01,149 --> 01:09:02,582
He's even smiling a bit.
1345
01:09:02,683 --> 01:09:03,918
He's not at his best, but he's... he's looking a bit peaky,
1346
01:09:04,018 --> 01:09:06,653
but he's starting to kind of cough.
1347
01:09:06,753 --> 01:09:08,890
Before you realize what really happens,
1348
01:09:08,990 --> 01:09:10,590
your brain is already ahead of you.
1349
01:09:10,691 --> 01:09:14,429
Your brain is going, it's in him, and it's coming out.
1350
01:09:14,528 --> 01:09:15,796
One thing that he's certainly
1351
01:09:15,897 --> 01:09:19,100
taking advantage of is the incredible width
1352
01:09:19,200 --> 01:09:20,868
of the anamorphic frame.
1353
01:09:20,969 --> 01:09:24,372
The entire cast is in this one wide shot.
1354
01:09:24,471 --> 01:09:26,975
What could be safer than every single cast
1355
01:09:27,075 --> 01:09:31,545
member in a brightly lit white room in a horror movie?
1356
01:09:31,645 --> 01:09:32,981
Everything in that ship is so dark.
1357
01:09:33,081 --> 01:09:35,749
I mean, the light Ridley Scott uses is literally
1358
01:09:35,850 --> 01:09:37,018
the light from the torches.
1359
01:09:37,118 --> 01:09:38,386
That's it, right?
1360
01:09:38,485 --> 01:09:40,888
But that scene, oh my god, you could operate in that scene.
1361
01:09:40,989 --> 01:09:42,457
And you needed to operate in that scene,
1362
01:09:42,556 --> 01:09:45,659
but they couldn't save the patient.
1363
01:09:45,759 --> 01:09:47,661
You go to Ash's reaction.
1364
01:09:47,761 --> 01:09:49,730
I think that really, the key to the tension
1365
01:09:49,831 --> 01:09:52,433
here is tracking Ash, because he's always in opposition
1366
01:09:52,532 --> 01:09:54,634
to everybody else.
1367
01:09:54,735 --> 01:09:56,404
It's a very short shot, and you wouldn't notice it
1368
01:09:56,503 --> 01:09:57,604
the first time, but when you go back
1369
01:09:57,704 --> 01:09:59,606
and rewatch it you realize, he knows
1370
01:09:59,706 --> 01:10:01,075
that this is going to happen.
1371
01:10:01,175 --> 01:10:04,078
There's so many more single one shots of him
1372
01:10:04,178 --> 01:10:07,681
in this very strange off-kilter framing that really gives him
1373
01:10:07,781 --> 01:10:10,852
this sinister surveillance kind of vibe,
1374
01:10:10,952 --> 01:10:12,453
whereas most of the other characters, you're
1375
01:10:12,552 --> 01:10:15,990
seeing them in groups, because they're all on the same team.
1376
01:10:16,090 --> 01:10:18,426
You believe that this is because he has a better intuition
1377
01:10:18,558 --> 01:10:20,727
than the rest of them about how dangerous it is and he's trying
1378
01:10:20,828 --> 01:10:22,930
to protect them, but in fact, he's
1379
01:10:23,031 --> 01:10:26,566
trying to protect this baby monster that he's
1380
01:10:26,666 --> 01:10:27,869
allowed to come into the world.
1381
01:10:27,969 --> 01:10:30,371
This son of a bitch is huge.
1382
01:10:30,471 --> 01:10:31,873
I mean, it's like a man.
1383
01:10:31,973 --> 01:10:33,007
It's big.
1384
01:10:33,107 --> 01:10:35,609
Kane's son.
1385
01:10:35,709 --> 01:10:37,744
Ash is such a dick.
1386
01:10:37,845 --> 01:10:39,914
Ash, you hear or see anything?
1387
01:10:42,749 --> 01:10:46,187
When you think about it, he's not an authentic being.
1388
01:10:46,287 --> 01:10:53,828
So someone, a human person had to program him, educate him.
1389
01:10:53,928 --> 01:10:56,431
Not only is he supposed to look like a person,
1390
01:10:56,531 --> 01:10:59,367
he's supposed to pass as a person,
1391
01:10:59,467 --> 01:11:01,069
because the crew didn't know.
1392
01:11:01,169 --> 01:11:06,274
And that's what makes him the worse.
1393
01:11:06,374 --> 01:11:09,243
That misogyny was built-in.
1394
01:11:09,343 --> 01:11:10,610
Could kill him.
1395
01:11:10,710 --> 01:11:12,413
Ash looks at Dallas,
1396
01:11:12,513 --> 01:11:13,680
like, what do you think?
1397
01:11:13,780 --> 01:11:14,781
I'm willing to take that chance.
1398
01:11:14,882 --> 01:11:16,184
Just cut it off of him.
1399
01:11:16,284 --> 01:11:17,351
You take responsibility?
1400
01:11:17,452 --> 01:11:18,553
Yes, yes, I'll take responsibility.
1401
01:11:18,652 --> 01:11:20,021
Now get it off of him.
1402
01:11:20,121 --> 01:11:22,390
Ripley, on the other hand, is saying,
1403
01:11:22,490 --> 01:11:23,590
I am making this call.
1404
01:11:23,690 --> 01:11:25,493
It's my job to make this call.
1405
01:11:25,625 --> 01:11:27,061
Ripley, this is an order.
1406
01:11:27,161 --> 01:11:28,029
You hear me?
1407
01:11:28,129 --> 01:11:29,063
Yes.
1408
01:11:29,163 --> 01:11:29,763
I read you.
1409
01:11:29,864 --> 01:11:33,700
The answer is negative.
1410
01:11:33,800 --> 01:11:35,069
Inner hatch opened.
1411
01:11:35,169 --> 01:11:37,637
And he says, nope, that's not gonna happen.
1412
01:11:37,737 --> 01:11:39,240
I override you.
1413
01:11:39,340 --> 01:11:44,611
Where does he get the idea to penetrate this woman forcibly?
1414
01:11:44,711 --> 01:11:46,180
You know, but it doesn't logically
1415
01:11:46,280 --> 01:11:48,816
make sense for an artificial life form to do that.
1416
01:11:48,916 --> 01:11:49,851
He would choke her.
1417
01:11:49,951 --> 01:11:51,886
He would suffocate her.
1418
01:11:51,986 --> 01:11:56,924
The final choice that he makes is to just
1419
01:11:57,024 --> 01:11:59,060
put this woman in her place.
1420
01:11:59,160 --> 01:12:02,930
The programming... think, if we think about that,
1421
01:12:03,030 --> 01:12:08,136
if we really unpack that, it's so frustrating.
1422
01:12:08,236 --> 01:12:10,271
I hate him.
1423
01:12:13,808 --> 01:12:15,176
Another thing that I think
1424
01:12:15,276 --> 01:12:18,745
about is the tradition of dramatizations that happen
1425
01:12:18,846 --> 01:12:21,681
over dinners, which you can see in anything
1426
01:12:21,781 --> 01:12:25,052
from Chekov, to Ibsen, going back to Shakespeare.
1427
01:12:25,153 --> 01:12:27,922
And I can't help but think of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner."
1428
01:12:28,022 --> 01:12:30,358
And in this case, it's the alien who's coming to dinner
1429
01:12:30,458 --> 01:12:34,962
and shreds the social fabric of the dinner table.
1430
01:12:35,062 --> 01:12:38,232
But the text and the subtext is totally about food, right?
1431
01:12:38,332 --> 01:12:40,968
The first thing that I'm gonna do when I get back
1432
01:12:41,068 --> 01:12:43,137
is to get some decent food.
1433
01:12:43,237 --> 01:12:44,172
I can dig it, man.
1434
01:12:44,272 --> 01:12:45,606
I'm telling you I've eaten worse food...
1435
01:12:45,705 --> 01:12:46,807
Even when it comes to...
1436
01:12:46,908 --> 01:12:48,376
there's this shot across the table,
1437
01:12:48,476 --> 01:12:52,146
and you can see the cat in the background, soft focus,
1438
01:12:52,246 --> 01:12:54,015
it's eating dinner too.
1439
01:12:54,115 --> 01:12:56,851
Usually you know what it's made of.
1440
01:12:56,951 --> 01:12:59,753
No, man, I don't want to talk about what it's made of.
1441
01:12:59,854 --> 01:13:00,720
I'm eating...
1442
01:13:00,821 --> 01:13:02,190
What's the food made of?
1443
01:13:02,290 --> 01:13:05,759
It's made out of your fucking insides of your body.
1444
01:13:05,860 --> 01:13:07,862
And there's just this cluster of noise.
1445
01:13:07,962 --> 01:13:10,932
And it's almost like you're hearing it from the point
1446
01:13:11,032 --> 01:13:12,699
of view of the chestburster.
1447
01:13:12,799 --> 01:13:14,768
It's inside of Kane.
1448
01:13:14,869 --> 01:13:16,736
It's fully conscious.
1449
01:13:16,837 --> 01:13:18,639
It's about to come through him.
1450
01:13:18,738 --> 01:13:21,609
It's first impressions of the universe
1451
01:13:21,708 --> 01:13:23,077
are hearing these indistinct voices
1452
01:13:23,177 --> 01:13:24,645
of all of these human beings.
1453
01:13:24,744 --> 01:13:27,949
It's like you're in this sort of sonic womb.
1454
01:13:28,049 --> 01:13:32,453
Now, from the laughter, comes of first sign
1455
01:13:32,553 --> 01:13:35,755
that something is wrong.
1456
01:13:35,856 --> 01:13:39,994
That is John brilliantly portraying the beginning
1457
01:13:40,094 --> 01:13:42,729
of the pain within him.
1458
01:13:42,830 --> 01:13:48,002
The reaction of everybody is so precise, so right.
1459
01:13:48,102 --> 01:13:49,604
As soon as this guy gets sick,
1460
01:13:49,704 --> 01:13:52,206
and he flips hand-held behind his head,
1461
01:13:52,306 --> 01:13:54,809
you feel like you're in this completely different world.
1462
01:13:54,909 --> 01:13:57,812
To me, Ridley's really pulling a Kubrick here.
1463
01:13:57,912 --> 01:13:59,647
You see this in "Clockwork Orange,"
1464
01:13:59,746 --> 01:14:01,249
you see this in "Barry Lyndon."
1465
01:14:01,349 --> 01:14:04,619
In all of these movies, you have Kubrick approaching
1466
01:14:04,719 --> 01:14:07,588
sets and characters with a very squared
1467
01:14:07,688 --> 01:14:09,756
off and rigid formal style.
1468
01:14:09,857 --> 01:14:11,993
But when violence happens, Kubrick
1469
01:14:12,093 --> 01:14:15,296
will drastically change the kind of visual vocabulary
1470
01:14:15,396 --> 01:14:16,731
of the scene.
1471
01:14:16,831 --> 01:14:17,965
It's this amazing choice
1472
01:14:18,065 --> 01:14:20,134
to not see Kane's face at the very moment
1473
01:14:20,234 --> 01:14:22,169
that he's going through the most agony.
1474
01:14:22,270 --> 01:14:24,338
It's incredibly unnerving, and it's
1475
01:14:24,438 --> 01:14:27,208
sort of a taste of what's about to happen
1476
01:14:27,308 --> 01:14:30,811
25 seconds later when it becomes one of the messiest scenes
1477
01:14:30,911 --> 01:14:32,179
in film history.
1478
01:14:32,280 --> 01:14:34,749
Hello, Roger, and cut, push out.
1479
01:14:34,849 --> 01:14:36,717
It was kind of looming
1480
01:14:36,817 --> 01:14:38,252
at us this scene, you know?
1481
01:14:38,352 --> 01:14:40,855
Everyone was a bit worried about it for sure,
1482
01:14:40,955 --> 01:14:42,923
because A, it'd never been done before,
1483
01:14:43,024 --> 01:14:46,494
and there was so much preparation around it.
1484
01:14:46,594 --> 01:14:48,829
Like much of the design work for the film,
1485
01:14:48,929 --> 01:14:51,332
it had taken a long while to get to where they were.
1486
01:14:51,432 --> 01:14:54,035
And I don't know how fully satisfied Ridley was.
1487
01:14:54,135 --> 01:14:56,003
I think the egg and the facehugger
1488
01:14:56,103 --> 01:14:58,139
worked very clearly for him.
1489
01:14:58,239 --> 01:14:59,974
You'd have the kind of witch's fingers element
1490
01:15:00,074 --> 01:15:01,776
of the facehugger, it's slightly kind of sort
1491
01:15:01,876 --> 01:15:04,145
of insectile nature of it.
1492
01:15:04,245 --> 01:15:06,614
But the chestburster was difficult, because it
1493
01:15:06,714 --> 01:15:07,782
had to appear childlike.
1494
01:15:07,882 --> 01:15:09,083
It had to at least kind of function.
1495
01:15:09,183 --> 01:15:11,152
It had to be able to come out of his chest,
1496
01:15:11,252 --> 01:15:13,654
it had to suggest the creature to come.
1497
01:15:13,754 --> 01:15:16,757
So in a way, the design of the chestburster was governed most,
1498
01:15:16,857 --> 01:15:19,260
I think, by function and practicality,
1499
01:15:19,360 --> 01:15:24,165
the need the sequence as much by the flamboyance of Giger's work
1500
01:15:24,265 --> 01:15:29,003
and then Scott's desire to create something extraordinary.
1501
01:15:29,103 --> 01:15:31,238
They couldn't solve the look of it.
1502
01:15:31,339 --> 01:15:33,974
Giger had a go at the chestburster,
1503
01:15:34,075 --> 01:15:35,743
and he says he never got it right.
1504
01:15:35,843 --> 01:15:37,345
It wasn't working.
1505
01:15:37,445 --> 01:15:40,881
I did some design they looked like chicken, something like...
1506
01:15:40,981 --> 01:15:43,684
like chicken without feathers.
1507
01:15:43,784 --> 01:15:46,320
But I was not happy with.
1508
01:15:46,420 --> 01:15:50,124
And then build up the thing, and it
1509
01:15:50,224 --> 01:15:53,260
looked like a small dinosaur.
1510
01:15:53,361 --> 01:15:55,229
It had versions that kind of looked like a turkey
1511
01:15:55,329 --> 01:15:57,598
that had been sort of plucked.
1512
01:15:57,698 --> 01:15:59,100
Just were laughable.
1513
01:15:59,200 --> 01:16:01,502
They couldn't come up with something that was genuinely
1514
01:16:01,602 --> 01:16:03,671
terrifying in its own right.
1515
01:16:03,771 --> 01:16:05,473
Roger Dicken went away
1516
01:16:05,573 --> 01:16:07,575
and developed it on his own.
1517
01:16:07,675 --> 01:16:10,678
He was able to make it work.
1518
01:16:10,778 --> 01:16:13,147
They had made this little puppet.
1519
01:16:13,247 --> 01:16:16,450
Frankly, it looked like a penis and...
1520
01:16:16,550 --> 01:16:17,718
with teeth.
1521
01:16:17,819 --> 01:16:20,888
And they had, like, they said, and we're
1522
01:16:20,988 --> 01:16:24,091
going to have it so that it'll just blow up,
1523
01:16:24,191 --> 01:16:25,493
and then these teeth will come out.
1524
01:16:25,593 --> 01:16:27,895
They were like, describing this.
1525
01:16:27,995 --> 01:16:29,764
It's just a thing.
1526
01:16:29,865 --> 01:16:32,400
We were going, oh, OK.
1527
01:16:32,500 --> 01:16:35,970
I mean, they were so excited, these puppeteer people.
1528
01:16:36,070 --> 01:16:38,672
They were... it was just hysterical.
1529
01:16:38,773 --> 01:16:40,908
The fundamental math of the chestburster sequence
1530
01:16:41,008 --> 01:16:42,878
is that the cast didn't know.
1531
01:16:42,977 --> 01:16:44,578
Course, this isn't quite true.
1532
01:16:44,678 --> 01:16:47,014
We knew that there was going to be a chestburster scene,
1533
01:16:47,114 --> 01:16:49,818
we just didn't know how it was going to be done.
1534
01:16:49,917 --> 01:16:51,419
John Hurt obviously knew,
1535
01:16:51,519 --> 01:16:54,789
so they just kept him plied with red wine and cigarettes all day
1536
01:16:54,890 --> 01:16:56,090
long.
1537
01:16:56,190 --> 01:16:59,527
They knew they were relying on his patience
1538
01:16:59,627 --> 01:17:03,998
to stay in that position while everything was set up.
1539
01:17:04,098 --> 01:17:07,067
The atmosphere on the set had a certain frisson,
1540
01:17:07,168 --> 01:17:09,470
you know, in the morning, because everybody
1541
01:17:09,570 --> 01:17:12,339
knew that this was filmically, a sort of major scene.
1542
01:17:12,440 --> 01:17:14,175
I don't think anybody had any idea that it would
1543
01:17:14,275 --> 01:17:16,710
become a kind of film classic.
1544
01:17:16,812 --> 01:17:19,413
Roger Dicken brought the chestburster to the set
1545
01:17:19,513 --> 01:17:20,948
in a carrier bag.
1546
01:17:21,048 --> 01:17:22,550
Blood was being loaded.
1547
01:17:22,650 --> 01:17:25,286
All the crew was sort of donning these rain jackets because they
1548
01:17:25,386 --> 01:17:27,087
kind of knew what was coming.
1549
01:17:27,188 --> 01:17:29,056
In the morning, Ridley said, let's put
1550
01:17:29,156 --> 01:17:31,158
some bits of gristle and stuff.
1551
01:17:31,258 --> 01:17:33,461
So I sent the buyer down to the abattoir
1552
01:17:33,561 --> 01:17:38,799
to buy a load of offal, which stank terrible.
1553
01:17:38,900 --> 01:17:42,938
And they put it in formaldehyde for you, but it was worse.
1554
01:17:43,037 --> 01:17:44,104
But we packed it round.
1555
01:17:44,205 --> 01:17:45,573
And Ridley was doing it himself too.
1556
01:17:45,673 --> 01:17:49,811
We were sticking it all around underneath.
1557
01:17:49,911 --> 01:17:51,880
We're all up in our dressing rooms
1558
01:17:51,979 --> 01:17:53,514
at Shepperton Studios.
1559
01:17:53,614 --> 01:17:55,884
Harry Dean Stanton is sitting in the hall
1560
01:17:55,983 --> 01:17:57,785
singing and playing guitar.
1561
01:17:57,886 --> 01:17:59,353
We're up there for hours.
1562
01:17:59,453 --> 01:18:02,623
We kept wondering, what the... what was going on?
1563
01:18:02,723 --> 01:18:04,291
But at a certain point in time,
1564
01:18:04,391 --> 01:18:07,194
some assistant is sent to bring them to set.
1565
01:18:07,294 --> 01:18:11,265
And what greets them isn't a vision, it's a smell.
1566
01:18:11,365 --> 01:18:13,000
Because over these hours, this kind
1567
01:18:13,100 --> 01:18:14,768
of offal and produce has just
1568
01:18:14,870 --> 01:18:16,504
been cooking under the lights.
1569
01:18:16,604 --> 01:18:20,541
Literally, you gagged when you walked onto the set.
1570
01:18:20,641 --> 01:18:21,810
It was so disgusting.
1571
01:18:21,910 --> 01:18:24,512
Ridley wasn't certain how that was going to happen,
1572
01:18:24,612 --> 01:18:27,448
how... how... how's that gonna manifest?
1573
01:18:27,548 --> 01:18:31,552
All this... this innards of a cow and the blood,
1574
01:18:31,652 --> 01:18:34,355
and thinking, my.
1575
01:18:34,455 --> 01:18:35,824
What they saw was John
1576
01:18:35,924 --> 01:18:39,126
Hurt spread out on this table with all of these hoses.
1577
01:18:39,226 --> 01:18:41,262
Everybody is covered up in suits.
1578
01:18:41,362 --> 01:18:44,064
The actors walk in, and they see that waiting for them.
1579
01:18:44,164 --> 01:18:46,333
And I saw them, their faces all sort of dropped.
1580
01:18:46,433 --> 01:18:49,871
They all sort of went like this, and their eyes got big
1581
01:18:49,971 --> 01:18:51,806
and roamed around all over this stuff.
1582
01:18:51,907 --> 01:18:54,575
We started to shoot the scene,
1583
01:18:54,675 --> 01:18:58,013
and I was told I'd get a little blood on me.
1584
01:18:58,112 --> 01:19:00,447
So we start to roll.
1585
01:19:00,548 --> 01:19:03,852
And then what happens is brilliant.
1586
01:19:03,952 --> 01:19:08,055
There's just this splat, almost like a bullet has hit him.
1587
01:19:08,155 --> 01:19:11,392
He puts a pause in.
1588
01:19:11,492 --> 01:19:13,995
You've got to kind of give the audience a chance
1589
01:19:14,094 --> 01:19:15,864
to realize what's happened.
1590
01:19:15,964 --> 01:19:18,499
The whole thing was really a trick in the cut.
1591
01:19:18,599 --> 01:19:20,301
And there was a cut to the other side
1592
01:19:20,401 --> 01:19:23,704
of the table where by which time I had been
1593
01:19:23,804 --> 01:19:25,339
replaced by a replica body.
1594
01:19:25,439 --> 01:19:28,309
His t-shirt pulled you know, tightly on it,
1595
01:19:28,409 --> 01:19:34,348
and then there's gonna be blood lines on high pressure pumps.
1596
01:19:34,448 --> 01:19:36,383
They're going to blow blood everywhere.
1597
01:19:36,483 --> 01:19:39,520
So we start to roll, and then all of a sudden,
1598
01:19:39,620 --> 01:19:40,554
Ridley shouts, cut.
1599
01:19:40,654 --> 01:19:41,488
Cut.
1600
01:19:41,589 --> 01:19:44,025
It didn't work on the first take.
1601
01:19:44,124 --> 01:19:45,559
There wasn't much of a chestburster.
1602
01:19:45,659 --> 01:19:47,795
It couldn't get through the damn t-shirt.
1603
01:19:47,896 --> 01:19:50,331
Well, we found ourselves leaning in to see
1604
01:19:50,431 --> 01:19:51,900
what the hell was going on.
1605
01:19:52,000 --> 01:19:55,402
Second time, it still didn't go through,
1606
01:19:55,502 --> 01:19:57,237
but it came up like that, and then
1607
01:19:57,338 --> 01:19:58,840
went down and covered in blood.
1608
01:19:58,940 --> 01:20:02,109
And the actors were all kind of looking like that and curious.
1609
01:20:02,209 --> 01:20:07,581
So it was a stroke of genius that it went wrong.
1610
01:20:07,681 --> 01:20:11,652
They still didn't know what was coming.
1611
01:20:11,752 --> 01:20:13,387
And it reset again.
1612
01:20:13,487 --> 01:20:16,992
Ridley just said to Nick Allder and to Roger Dicken,
1613
01:20:17,092 --> 01:20:18,994
just get it through this time.
1614
01:20:19,094 --> 01:20:22,763
And they added more blood, more pipelines.
1615
01:20:22,864 --> 01:20:25,265
And this thing goes up through, splat.
1616
01:20:25,366 --> 01:20:27,002
They fire all the pumps.
1617
01:20:27,102 --> 01:20:28,268
When it went through,
1618
01:20:28,369 --> 01:20:32,206
I mean, that blood just went everywhere.
1619
01:20:32,306 --> 01:20:34,508
It was just exactly what Scott wanted.
1620
01:20:34,608 --> 01:20:38,445
It was just this absolutely immediate visceral response.
1621
01:20:38,545 --> 01:20:43,118
When it happened, of course, it stills you.
1622
01:20:43,217 --> 01:20:48,123
So that's how it manifests, huh?
1623
01:20:48,222 --> 01:20:49,124
God!
1624
01:20:49,223 --> 01:20:52,159
And again, Nick, and again!
1625
01:20:52,259 --> 01:20:55,729
I had leaned into a blood jet.
1626
01:20:55,830 --> 01:20:59,366
That little blood shot me square in the face.
1627
01:20:59,466 --> 01:21:03,704
And that's when I jumped back and I went, oh my god.
1628
01:21:03,804 --> 01:21:08,009
And my knees hit the back of those banquette
1629
01:21:08,109 --> 01:21:12,713
where we were all sitting, and it flipped me upside down.
1630
01:21:12,814 --> 01:21:15,150
And I said, oh my gosh, we're still shooting.
1631
01:21:15,249 --> 01:21:17,251
So I rolled over and I got back up,
1632
01:21:17,351 --> 01:21:21,089
and I ran around and got back into the scene.
1633
01:21:24,859 --> 01:21:27,996
So there were different... there were different reactions to it.
1634
01:21:28,096 --> 01:21:29,596
And action.
1635
01:21:29,697 --> 01:21:31,198
Blood.
1636
01:21:31,298 --> 01:21:32,199
Blood.
1637
01:21:32,299 --> 01:21:33,168
Enough.
1638
01:21:33,267 --> 01:21:33,868
Push it out.
1639
01:21:33,968 --> 01:21:35,003
Pump it.
1640
01:21:35,103 --> 01:21:36,071
Roger Dicken had
1641
01:21:36,171 --> 01:21:37,771
built little lungs in as well.
1642
01:21:37,872 --> 01:21:40,708
It was a lot of stuff going on under the table
1643
01:21:40,809 --> 01:21:45,412
to make it look so real, hung bits of stuff all over it so
1644
01:21:45,512 --> 01:21:47,414
that it looked like it broke through the flesh
1645
01:21:47,514 --> 01:21:48,615
and heart and muscles.
1646
01:21:50,952 --> 01:21:56,557
That was part of Ridley wanting this to be unquestionably real.
1647
01:21:57,658 --> 01:22:00,095
And I think that scream, when it screams,
1648
01:22:00,195 --> 01:22:01,996
there's the Bacon shot.
1649
01:22:02,097 --> 01:22:05,499
There's something really strange in those paintings that
1650
01:22:05,599 --> 01:22:09,436
connects to the phobias that we carry with us to this day,
1651
01:22:09,536 --> 01:22:11,572
and they come from our ancient past.
1652
01:22:11,672 --> 01:22:14,109
So I think, you know, particularly
1653
01:22:14,209 --> 01:22:17,812
the "Incubus" is one that was struck
1654
01:22:17,912 --> 01:22:19,914
me when I read the script.
1655
01:22:20,014 --> 01:22:22,716
Because that chestburster it comes out and sits there
1656
01:22:22,817 --> 01:22:25,887
for a moment and screams, and that's just as you
1657
01:22:25,987 --> 01:22:27,354
imagine an incubus would do.
1658
01:22:27,454 --> 01:22:30,125
It would come out, sit, and scream at you.
1659
01:22:30,225 --> 01:22:32,493
I loved that image so much, and what
1660
01:22:32,593 --> 01:22:35,262
I see in it is something that's like a material
1661
01:22:35,362 --> 01:22:38,133
object trying to come to life.
1662
01:22:38,233 --> 01:22:40,201
And that's what "Alien" is.
1663
01:22:40,300 --> 01:22:41,668
Slow.
1664
01:22:41,769 --> 01:22:42,937
Slow.
1665
01:22:43,037 --> 01:22:46,707
OK, and the head back.
1666
01:22:46,808 --> 01:22:49,110
Slow, Go!
1667
01:22:49,210 --> 01:22:49,944
Shit.
1668
01:22:50,044 --> 01:22:50,644
Great.
1669
01:22:50,744 --> 01:22:51,179
Cut it.
1670
01:22:51,278 --> 01:22:51,946
Cut it.
1671
01:22:52,046 --> 01:22:53,413
Save the blood.
1672
01:22:53,514 --> 01:22:55,482
When I'm watching the chestburster scene
1673
01:22:55,582 --> 01:22:59,020
on the Nostromo, and I'm thinking about how brilliantly
1674
01:22:59,120 --> 01:23:02,056
staged it is because it doesn't take place in a dark corridor
1675
01:23:02,157 --> 01:23:03,624
with a guy all by himself.
1676
01:23:03,724 --> 01:23:07,661
And then decades later, Ridley Scott
1677
01:23:07,761 --> 01:23:11,465
restages a chestburster scene and does it exactly in that way
1678
01:23:11,565 --> 01:23:14,334
that's so much more tropey.
1679
01:23:14,434 --> 01:23:17,604
In the dark, a guy alone being watched over
1680
01:23:17,704 --> 01:23:25,679
only by the malevolent David, and with this smoke and lights
1681
01:23:25,779 --> 01:23:29,217
behind him, it's almost like it's the first draft
1682
01:23:29,316 --> 01:23:30,819
of the original scene that was rejected
1683
01:23:30,919 --> 01:23:34,421
and then for some reason, revisited later.
1684
01:23:34,521 --> 01:23:38,425
But on the other hand, there is something really
1685
01:23:38,525 --> 01:23:41,863
delightful if you give into it.
1686
01:23:41,963 --> 01:23:45,332
I feel like Ridley Scott can't find a better way
1687
01:23:45,432 --> 01:23:49,570
to talk about his own mortality than by going back
1688
01:23:49,670 --> 01:23:54,309
over and over to the origin side of the height of his powers
1689
01:23:54,408 --> 01:23:57,511
and the height of his creativity.
1690
01:23:57,611 --> 01:23:59,881
If you look at where Ridley Scott is currently
1691
01:23:59,981 --> 01:24:02,817
taking the "Alien" cycle, he's using
1692
01:24:02,917 --> 01:24:05,320
it explicitly to explore questions
1693
01:24:05,419 --> 01:24:07,588
of where did life come from?
1694
01:24:07,688 --> 01:24:10,992
What does it mean to be human?
1695
01:24:11,092 --> 01:24:15,796
He seems fascinated by the idea that the child would destroy
1696
01:24:15,897 --> 01:24:22,070
the parent, that the created would destroy the creator, that
1697
01:24:22,170 --> 01:24:26,007
things we make come back and destroy us, which I suppose
1698
01:24:26,107 --> 01:24:28,609
are variations on the Frankenstein story.
1699
01:24:28,709 --> 01:24:32,646
But the repeated recurrence of this in his work
1700
01:24:32,746 --> 01:24:36,851
suggests, I think, a major autistic obsession, actually.
1701
01:24:39,720 --> 01:24:43,024
People often talk of Hollywood as the dream factory
1702
01:24:43,124 --> 01:24:45,626
but I think the dreams that Hollywood puts on the screens
1703
01:24:45,726 --> 01:24:48,395
are not just the dream of one person,
1704
01:24:48,495 --> 01:24:50,865
they're collective dreams.
1705
01:24:50,965 --> 01:24:55,435
Cinema is a window on our collective unconscious.
1706
01:24:55,535 --> 01:24:58,139
And in that way, I think that "Alien"
1707
01:24:58,239 --> 01:25:00,842
is an incredibly important window
1708
01:25:00,942 --> 01:25:06,881
on what people were thinking about as of the late 1970s.
1709
01:25:06,981 --> 01:25:09,583
When you look back an alien 40 years later,
1710
01:25:09,683 --> 01:25:11,718
it seems prophetic of where we've gone.
1711
01:25:11,819 --> 01:25:13,187
We're still going in the same direction
1712
01:25:13,288 --> 01:25:15,957
that it seemed to be indicating at the time, which makes
1713
01:25:16,057 --> 01:25:19,760
the world of "Alien," if not probable, at least, you know,
1714
01:25:19,861 --> 01:25:21,628
looking like a possibility in the way
1715
01:25:21,728 --> 01:25:23,497
that "Star Wars" could never be.
1716
01:25:27,668 --> 01:25:30,704
The last act of "Alien" is escaping self-destruction.
1717
01:25:30,804 --> 01:25:32,840
That's the myth of our times.
1718
01:25:32,941 --> 01:25:34,708
Part of what makes "Alien" so powerful is it's
1719
01:25:34,809 --> 01:25:36,377
so much more than an allegory.
1720
01:25:36,476 --> 01:25:41,182
It taps into a deep set of patterns that can
1721
01:25:41,282 --> 01:25:42,917
mean many, many, many things.
1722
01:25:43,017 --> 01:25:45,652
I don't think we can get to the bottom of "Alien."
1723
01:25:45,752 --> 01:25:48,823
Like a piece of sand vibrating in a somatic experiment,
1724
01:25:48,923 --> 01:25:51,692
in touch with something deeper, Dan O'Bannon must have been
1725
01:25:51,792 --> 01:25:53,694
on the frequency for this myth.
1726
01:25:53,794 --> 01:25:59,000
He seems to have been a stenograph for a larger song.
1727
01:26:00,801 --> 01:26:04,504
My husband was out of time, in a way,
1728
01:26:04,604 --> 01:26:08,042
out of specific time.
1729
01:26:08,142 --> 01:26:09,543
But he lives on.
1730
01:26:09,643 --> 01:26:13,348
And when he was dying, that's what I said to him.
1731
01:26:13,448 --> 01:26:15,383
He was not conscious.
1732
01:26:15,482 --> 01:26:17,885
I said, you moved the world.
1733
01:26:17,986 --> 01:26:18,552
You did it.
1734
01:26:18,652 --> 01:26:20,355
You moved the world.
1735
01:26:20,455 --> 01:26:22,223
And he did.
1736
01:26:22,323 --> 01:26:26,060
In a way, I don't think Dan O'Bannon is finished yet.
1737
01:26:26,160 --> 01:26:30,231
When he died, I had a strange feeling
1738
01:26:30,331 --> 01:26:35,370
that he'd gone back to the future from whence he'd come.
1739
01:26:35,470 --> 01:26:39,340
And there's still things there that are emerging from him
1740
01:26:39,440 --> 01:26:42,709
and things that I have that are just
1741
01:26:42,810 --> 01:26:44,479
now becoming relevant today.
1742
01:26:44,578 --> 01:26:47,448
And there's more there.
1743
01:26:47,547 --> 01:26:48,715
There's more there.
1744
01:26:48,816 --> 01:26:51,152
Don't ask me why he had this connection
1745
01:26:51,252 --> 01:26:55,957
to the past and the future, but he sure did.
1746
01:26:56,057 --> 01:26:59,659
He came from a place that had no telephone or television
1747
01:26:59,760 --> 01:27:03,031
and went to the stars.
1748
01:27:03,131 --> 01:27:03,697
Went to the stars.
1749
01:27:03,797 --> 01:27:05,199
It's inexplicable.
136340
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