Hi, I'm Sigourney Weaver. I played Ripley.
Hi, I'm Ridley Scott, I'm 32 years old, and I'm the director of the movie.
(Weaver laughs)
Funny enough, on the way here this morning, Alan Ladd called me.
- (Weaver) You're kidding? - (Scott) Yeah. And he called me yesterday,
so he obviously has some material.
And Laddie was always...
It's interesting cos he somehow gets his hands on some very interesting material,
and either develops it or otherwise.
This one was when Alan was the head of the studio at 20th Century Fox
and he was enjoying a tremendously successful run of everything, which would...
You know, what leaps to mind is Star Wars, okay?
That was his first Star Wars. And so Laddie was in full glow here.
I'm Ron Shusett. I'm executive producer of Alien,
and also cowrote the original story with Dan O'Bannon.
The title sequence took us a long time. We first tried it...
The first concept, I think, was bits of flesh and bone
were forming the words "Alien."
And we decided that was too gory. It was too classy for that.
I don't know who came up with the concept
of the letters slowly building and generating till it said "Alien, "
but it was certainly a great forward for the movie.
It gave it a really classy quality.
(Scott) The titles were something which is always a difficult thing to do,
and it's always the last thing to get considered.
But because I'd started talking about the marketing on this fairly early on...
Cos we figured we're gonna go out...
You know, we knew pretty soon where we gonna go out.
We were gonna go out in one of the peak moments of the year, which is May.
So we'd already started talking to the designers
who would actually come up with the poster,
and came up with a beautiful logo.
So then I asked them if they would then consider taking that particular logo -
the "Alien, " the word "Alien" -
and incorporating it into the front of the film.
And they said "Well, what do you want?"
I said "Well, somehow, it should come off as a hieroglyphic or a readout."
"So you don't quite know what it is as it's coming up and being spelt out."
And that's what they did. And I...
It's still one of the best logo title cards I've ever had,
you know, for any of the films I've done.
Beautifully done and intriguing,
and somehow absolutely appropriate for the film.
Hello, this is John Hurt. I play Kane.
Well, here we are.
These are one of the shots, of course, that we're so used to at the time
because of the other space films, you know? The... Star Wars, that sort of thing.
But of course they were all spanking new, and things like that.
Whereas, one of the things that Ridley wanted to get,
was the feeling of, really, an old, battered old ship
that had been bashing around the planets for donkey's years.
(Scott) So here we are inside our retro industrial corridors,
which were fundamentally made up of remains of aircraft
that we found in aircraft graveyards.
None of the things we could really afford. Vacuum molding
or presses or anything like that.
And therefore, a lot of the stuff was found
and then assembled like sculpture and then painted.
Then joined together with nicely designed door architraves in polystyrene,
and sprayed to look like plastic.
You know, I was very conscious of the set and the condition of the set,
as to whether it looked aged enough.
(Shusett) And Ron Cobb designed a lot of these earth interiors.
He had never worked on a movie before, except a low-budget movie
which Dan O'Bannon discovered him in called Dark Star,
that was done as Dan's thesis at film school.
All these interiors were Ron Cobb's - the human interiors -
and the alien interiors were by Giger mostly.
(Scott) The ideas of the helmets came, again, late in the day.
What I developed this into is I put two helmets on the back of the seats,
developed some little 16-millimeter projectors that simply projected onto the helmets
as if it were the small monitors relaying alphanumerics and conversation
between the two computers. So these two computers are chatting.
Well, I'm Dan O'Bannon and I wrote the film Alien.
I remember that little corridor we're looking at now.
They built that at my insistence.
All of the corridors they were building in the spaceship were straight.
They were laid down in a grid. And I said "There are no blind corners."
"You need some blind corners in your spaceship."
And they built the thing, and Ridley ended up
putting the hyper-sleep vault at the end of it.
Very nicely handled, the way when the door opens
that the little coat hanging by the door moves slightly.
(Scott) Little details like this, where you get negative air when that door opens.
There's the negative air which is protecting them inside from bacteria.
And it's all not really scientifically thought through. It's viscerally thought through
because I'm too much of a logician, that's the problem.
And I have never quite bought yet into the notion of cryogenics,
in terms of its possibilities.
I'm sure it may one day happen, but I think we're a long way off.
If you think about it carefully, it doesn't make sense,
but I think we got away with it.
And Jerry, particularly, helped here
with one of the best parts of the score in the film.
In that waking sequence, I really love that.
Somehow helped to convey everything,
and allay all the doubts and insecurities I had about:
"How do you bring somebody round, having been asleep for two years?"
I'm Veronica Cartwright, and I play Lambert, the navigator.
Tom Skerritt. I play Dallas.
And I'm Harry Dean Stanton and I play Brett.
(Cartwright) All right, now this was the lovely waking-up pod scene.
We've all been put in suspended animation and frozen for some time.
The women, we had to wear white surgical tape across our nipples
because we were all wearing those boxer shorts -
those lovely boxer shorts -
and apparently, they lost about five countries if we didn't.
Maybe there'll be a shot here and you can see that they're wearing tape.
(Skerritt) Didn't lose Harry or I.
I think we were right there watching, weren't we, Harry?
(Stanton) Yeah, I was thinking about pussy the whole time.
(Skerritt) Oh, yeah, I imagine you were.
(Hurt) We did this one morning as I remember.
You know, when you're doing a science fiction, most of it is lighting,
getting the shots dead right, and so on. Very little acting.
And all of that happens quite quickly.
(Scott) So I had Giler and Carroll through the whole process of the pre and casting.
And Giler and Carroll, well...
Any companions you want, any city you go to,
make sure you got Giler and Carroll with you.
(Weaver) I couldn't agree more.
(Scott) Because you'll find every party in town.
(Weaver) Absolutely.
(Scott) And this was, you know, lodged with serious jet lag and casting sessions.
So I was pretty gaga through the whole process of pre.
(Weaver) Well, that explains it.
(commentators laughing)
(Scott) But we finally saw this...
This beautiful giant walked in the room.
We had a whisper about saying:
"You gotta see this girl, Sigourney Weaver
cos she's doing a lot of theater and she's getting important on Broadway,
- and you better see her." - (Weaver) Hardly. Heh, heh, heh.
(Scott) Yeah. But I was thinking, "Oh, God, we got a real thespian here."
(Weaver laughs)
So in she walked, and I thought "Ah, that's it, that's it."
- It was that simple. - (Weaver) You're kidding me.
- Before I opened my mouth? - (Scott) Before you spoke.
- There you go. - That's so sweet of you.
And I was wearing my hooker boots, so that helped.
(Scott) Oh, that helped a lot, yeah.
And then we did the exchange. I think there was a bit of reading.
Then at one stage, we decided to all have dinner in a Japanese restaurant.
(Weaver) Yes, that's right. 55th Street or something.
(Scott) Which you suggested, okay.
(Weaver) I think it was to meet Walter and David.
(Scott) Right.
(Weaver) And Boaty Boatwright or something.
- (Scott) Boaty. There you go. - (Weaver) Yeah.
(Scott) And we were real close to production by now.
- (Weaver) Yes. - (Scott) We were in formal production.
I mean, in terms of building and... Cos we...
(Weaver) Say you were desperate to find her.
- (Scott) Absolutely. But we were on... - (Weaver) Heh, heh, heh.
(Scott) I was very, very meticulous about casting always.
Cos I figure if you cast right...
From a director's point of view, if you cast right,
at least 50 percent of your problems are over on the day.
(Weaver) Yeah.
(Scott) Because, you know, there's a lot to do.
- And I cast... I lay... Still painful on casting. - (Weaver) Yeah, yeah.
(Scott) Long time on casting. So eventually they were getting uneasy
thinking I didn't really know what I was doing.
But I had done 2000 commercials, I'd done The Duellists, I'd done...
You know, and I was kind of bemused by that, basically saying...
Thinking "back off," okay?
Cos when you see it, you see it. And there she was.
Right?
(commentators laugh)
And then Laddie said "You gotta test."
I said "Laddie, we're shooting in 10 days or something."
And he said "I don't care, you gotta test. I'm not sure."
Cos Laddie's like that, very cautious.
So we tested, and the test could have been almost cut into the movie.
(Weaver) Well, I was so grateful because you built a whole set.
We did a run-through of the movie, which, as an actor -
especially if I was gonna play the part - I really needed.
And it gave us a chance to work together.
And I was... I really thought, going over there,
that I might be like, standing next to a potted palm going "Ah!" Like that.
And so I was so grateful for the day. It was a fabulous day.
(Scott) So then Laddie saw it. I put it together -
I even put a little bit of sound on it, I think.
So I ran it for Laddie - wherever it was - and then he said "Hmm."
And then he said "I'm gonna run it again. Choose half a dozen gals from the office."
He chose girls.
And half a dozen women, gals, came in -
probably PA's, secretaries, assistants, a couple of executives -
we ran it again and Laddie said "So, what do you think?"
And... And one girl suddenly said...
He said "Come on, don't be shy." One girl said "Well, I think..."
Excuse me, you don't mind?
- I'm just gonna say it the way it happened. - (Weaver) Of course.
(Scott) One girl said "I think she's like Jane Fonda," right?
Then another one said "I think she's like..."
And there was four or five extremely complimentary things came out
with cross-references to other stars.
So he said "Okay, okay, all right. Good, you got her," and that was it.
(Weaver) That's great. I didn't really know the story.
I thought he said "Do you like this woman?" And they went "Yeah, she's okay." Ha, ha.
(Scott) Yeah. But he's...
(Weaver) That's shrewd, I think,
- (Scott) Very. - (Weaver) to ask women.
You know, because it's become such an important film for women.
(Scott) Jon Finch had been cast as Kane.
And on the very first day in the bridge, which we're about to come to...
The scene that we're about to come to is the first time on the bridge,
apart from the tracking shot. I did the tracking shot first.
And I noticed that he started to look extremely... Didn't look well.
I didn't ask him. I thought he was just naturally pale that day.
We'd got into, I think, the first slate,
and did "action" and then "cut" and went over to him and said "Do you feel all right?"
And he said "No, I feel terrible." He said "In fact, I'm really feeling bad."
And so we got the medic there.
They had to lift him out of the scene, carry him to a dressing room,
where he was checked out and taken to a hospital
to find he had an extreme case of diabetes.
And that, in fact, was the last of Jon Finch for Alien.
And I had to literally
reconvene at lunchtime,
thinking about who we could get.
And I knew that John Hurt was in London,
so I pitched to John. And went and saw John Hurt that night
and cast him that night.
He was at the studio the next morning.
(Hurt) Well, I think Ridley was, you know, very trusting.
Cos he was very happy with the cast that he got - I think.
And he tended to leave you to yourselves.
He'd set up several cameras - of the scenes that come up later, I'll tell you.
But he trusted us well. He loved to get impromptu moments.
And he did that by having more than one camera working pretty well all the time.
So he had angles well covered
and things that would have a documentary feel to it, in a sense.
(Scott) The difference from the original cut is probably just over 12 minutes,
12 and a half minutes of material that hasn't really been seen before.
The reason why it was taken out was basically about story dynamics.
And there's a certain point when you have the story,
and therefore the dynamics - particularly on a film like this,
which is fundamentally a thriller - really moving at the impetus it was going.
You suddenly didn't want to have something, or scene where it took a minute out
or two minutes out to basically work against that impetus.
And so that's why the new stuff that you see
ended up back in the editing room, not going into the film.
But it's quite interesting to revisit this after all these years,
to see maybe I should've left it in. Heh.
(Hurt) Well, I understand that I was intended to be in the film originally,
but I was, at that time, not available.
And I was going to be doing a film in South Africa.
But I wasn't allowed to go to South Africa.
And then, of course, we had to try and find out what the reason was.
It turned out, in the end, that I was probably confused
with that very wonderful actor John Heard, who was a political activist
and had gone down on the South African books as an undesirable
because he didn't believe in apartheid.
Well, none of us agreed with apartheid,
but fortunately some of us were not on the books at that particular time.
So I came back, I didn't do that.
And then Jon Finch - who was going to be playing Kane in Alien - became sick.
And so therefore, the inquiry came in again and I was available this time.
And I remember Ridley coming around to talk to me.
And we were talking till 12:00 at night - and he was pitching it for me -
and at 7:00 that morning, I was on the set. So it all happened very quickly.
(Scott) The idea of a giant magnetic clamp - seeing it drop away -
is, I guess, fair game, why not?
You get the thing, you wouldn't see flame, you wouldn't get vapor,
and eventually you just say "Oh, shut up," you know.
I always loved the cue here in relation to the rolling craft.
I wanted the roll synced to the graphic, as the graphic rolls you as well.
Logic of that... Thank you, Stanley. Very good score.
This is Jerry's... Really at his best, I think, in this film.
He may not agree, but I think it is. It's really great.
My name's Terry Rawlings. I was the editor of Alien.
Goldsmith wrote such a great score for this film,
which is a bone of contention between the two of us.
Cos I think he's a genius, but we didn't agree on everything.
I put music in the film before we get the composer on
because of screenings we have to have and previews.
And I went out of my way to temp it with Jerry Goldsmith
because I knew he was gonna do the score.
And one of the sections - the air shafts -
I used his music from the film Freud that he did,
which they liked better than what we finished up by getting from him for this film,
which upset him terribly.
And the end of the film, which is Howard Hanson's "Symphony No. 2,"
was so perfect for it.
It just did something that Jerry's end titles didn't achieve,
even though it was good.
It just didn't give us that emotional content.
(Scott) The experts are saying "There is no atmosphere."
I said "There is in this film. Otherwise, my model looked like... Not good."
And this is waggling seats,
where I've got a guy crouched down there wobbling the seats,
which is driving everyone crazy, and you get eyeball rolling...
And you've just gotta stick to your guns. I'd have liked more wobbling.
I'd have liked impossible shuddering and shaking,
but we weren't designed for that.
Every step you make, everybody's doubting Thomas, you know.
But that's where you gotta earn your way.
But I just wonder how many people fall by the wayside
because they can't push their point home and don't quite get what they want.
Nobody respects you later for having been a nice guy and given up.
You gotta get it. You have to get it now
because you're gonna wear what you got, basically.
You can be very unpopular on the route, but if you're right, all is forgiven.
(O'Bannon) Now, this sequence here -
when the spaceship is landing on the planetoid -
this is one of the scenes in the movie that came the closest
to the way that I imagined it when I was writing it.
In science-fiction movies up to that time, when a spaceship landed on a planet
it was usually depicted as a pretty effortless endeavor.
The ship would float down from space and, poof, it would land.
When I came to write this, I started thinking about
the times that I'd been a passenger on a big airliner
when they were landing and taking off - particularly during turbulence -
and the way that the aircraft would groan and rattle and twist
and, you know, bump and clatter.
And I thought that it would be really a novel and, you know, an interesting effect
if you could show that landing through the atmosphere
to be a horrendous and dangerous process
where you didn't really know if, maybe, the ship would be torn apart
before it ever made it to the surface of the planet.
And when I saw the film... This sequence as it is in the movie now
with the Nostromo coming down through that dense atmosphere
and wrenching and groaning and crashing,
was really just very close to what I had imagined.
I was very gratified by that.
(Scott) And again, we started to get full use of...
What they had in those days was scissor arcs,
which are basically lightning effects.
Which drove the sound men crazy cos you...
It basically means you're bringing two arcs together and they splutter.
So that's scissor arcs going in the background.
(Scott chuckles)
These two are really funny. They're very real, these two.
I thought they were great. Like, two guys on an oil rig, you know?
That's, again, a model with an insert of a teeny back-projection screen
about a foot and a half by, maybe, 6 inches.
And I'd photographed them on 16,
then projected on the screen, interlocked and photographed it.
Pretty primitive.
Today that would be a snap. You wouldn't even think about it.
But again, coming back, having them in the window, gives you the size of the craft.
You can see there the only thing left on at night in the craft was the little...
The nose light. The bay window in the control room.
(O'Bannon) I mean, you gotta admit Ridley is a master of atmosphere.
And when it comes to texturing a scene -
texture, mood, subtlety of mood, and feeling and atmosphere -
he really is superb.
I mean, without it, it would have been a much lesser picture.
When you're doing a scary movie, a horror story, a suspense movie,
naturally plot is important, it's vital, but so is atmosphere.
And a horror movie that is not atmospheric is not a pleasing thing to watch.
And Alien needed it and he provided it.
(Scott) And again, the low-key performances
give it a kind of reality, I think.
This is business as usual. They have to do it. They gotta go in.
She has a certain amount of trepidation, a little anxiety.
Ash is obviously a scientist
who would rather be tramping around an, you know, unfriendly landscape
than going back to Earth.
So he's obviously got something going on then.
Not that you know anything like that other than you're registering his enthusiasm.
First strange look at Ash.
I always liked those blisters at the bottom of Blenheim -
old bomber, Wellington bomber -
and that's where we put him, in his own blister.
That funny little jog is a clue.
Maybe all robots get stiff.
Well, he's not a robot, he's a kind of humanoid biomechanoid...
You know, he's a replicant, basically. Half human, two-thirds human.
(Skerritt) Okay, here we are in these things that had never been tried before,
and I remember I damn near suffocated in it.
(Cartwright) These were the headgear.
It was like football gear but it weighed about 75 pounds.
They told us they were gonna put oxygen... A little air hole thing in it,
and instead, what would happen was the C2 canisters would leak
and we'd see these lovely little swirls of smoke.
And we'd go "I don't know. I'm seeing smoke.
And he would "That's impossible, just impossible."
And then when we had to lug John across the desert and then take him up...
And we had these hockey gloves that had so much paint on them, they wouldn't move.
We didn't have any sound, we had no air, and I start to pass out.
And you're waving your arms up there going: And I'm like...
(Skerritt) Yeah, I started to pass out too.
(Cartwright) And we're like 24 feet up in the air.
John Hurt, he had to have an oxygen tank every time he went out on this thing.
(Hurt) And there was a moment when the plumes -
that are on our... You know, that were done with a sort of aerosol can -
came out of the top of the thing. You'll see them shortly.
They were actually leaking into our helmets.
They said that they... You know, the helmets couldn't leak
but there was a tube in it which had to bend slightly, and it broke.
And Veronica and I nearly fainted because the aerosol was getting into the...
Which is quite poisonous. Into the helmet itself.
"No, no, no, that's not possible" they said. But it was, I can assure you.
(Scott) My most useful special effect in the corridors
became dry ice in the tube.
And the problem is
when you run it for any length of time, it sucks the oxygen out of the air,
so at the end of a take you start to get out of breath.
We were assured it was entirely safe. So I said "Okay, let's use 'em."
Rocks, which were smooth and weatherworn.
I always loved the spacesuits, I think they're great.
And they... We had a big problem with the space helmets
because once you're inside that helmet, just your body heat and body temperature
starts to send up the temperature inside the helmet.
And therefore, you either form condensation or you get short of breath,
and then you get panicked because you've got no breath.
And some people are claustrophobic and some people aren't.
So we had quite a lot of problems with that.
And with nonstop complaints from the thespians.
But then I don't blame them because I didn't have to wear them, they did.
But, you know, we didn't have the technology and money
to run air lines into those suits and into the helmets, like you do today.
Like, you know, I think Jim could design his own helmet on the Abyss
twelve years later, and literally,
have some manufacturer make the headsets and the face masks,
and they're just walking along breathing happily off oxygen.
You'd think we could do that in those days. No, it wasn't... We couldn't afford it.
So all of this is shot in one stage. You know, being careful
about showing your angles, getting close up. Cos you're real...
Your real investment here is in the... You know, in the...
For hardwares and the suits, which are beautiful.
So a little clump of rocks...
I just kept circling the rocks until I was ready to go...
That's the clump of rocks and that light over there in the background -
filled with smoke - looks real to me, on a big screen particularly.
(O'Bannon) It really looks like the sun setting behind a stormy atmosphere.
His understanding and command of how to achieve lighting effects
was so good that he was able to achieve that with great simplicity.
- (Weaver) Look how beautiful it is. - (Scott) Yeah.
You see, all that stuff is one pass done with artwork and simplicity,
in terms of your effects.
This was done because I had to do it cos the set was not very good.
The set was only a foot high.
These rocks were about a foot and half high.
And I walked in Bray and I hadn't had time to go and see it.
Saw the set and went "Oh, God." And we just stood there.
You know, necessity is really, really the mother of invention.
And I sat there staring at it thinking "What the heck are you gonna do?"
Cos Peter Voysey's sculpture was beautiful.
And I said "Has anyone got...?"
And I think it must have been very early tape camera.
"Who's got a tape camera?"
Said "Well, I've got one at home." "Go get it."
So what I did is... I knew I couldn't film it.
First of all, I couldn't get a camera - a Panaflex - down that low,
which it weighs 65 pounds, and move around like, you know, a hand-held camera,
so I simply got a domestic tape camera
and walked through the set like this, putting that in the background,
then put it back through a TV monitor and filmed off the monitor.
So that's why, somehow, it looks high-tech and certainly has this massive scale.
And that was because I had to do it.
- (Weaver) Well, it's brilliant. - (Scott) I had no choice.
- (Weaver) It's fantastic. - (Scott) Yeah.
(Weaver) Because also the fact that it keeps going in and out
makes you so frightened that they won't be able to see something.
(Scott) And the great sounds of you guys talking back.
Talk back, talk back.
Which also makes it a little bit more fraught and tense.
And aids frustration about only getting half the transmission.
And that's where also Giger's illustrations are fantastic.
But when they're translated literally,
sometimes they can be too much fantasy
and not enough sense of reality, but...
So I was always a little anxious about the exterior.
But then once we got inside, I felt far more comfortable
because they'd really dealt with this very well. This is a great shot here.
Les Dilley's set of Giger's sculptural models and drawings.
But, you know, see how well that's done.
That could easily have been very, very corny.
But there's something very organic and interesting - unique actually - about it.
But I still think it's probably one of the better
of these sci-fi genre beast movies.
The lights on the helmets helped tremendously
because you get nice flare.
So half the time it's what you think you see.
I, again, get this all...
If you'd shot this clean, it would have looked like a set.
But we have the flare, which helps a lot.
(Skerritt) And that was really awkward walking.
- (Cartwright) Oh, it really was. - (Skerritt) Yeah.
(Cartwright) Those moon boots. We had moon boots on. And the suit.
(Skerritt) We're trying to look so cool walking around in there, ready to fall at any time.
(Cartwright) We're sweating like pigs.
(commentators laughing)
And those masks kept fogging up.
- Remember how they'd fog up? - (Skerritt) Oh, yeah.
(Cartwright) You couldn't even see John half the time.
(Skerritt) Oh, boy.
(commentators laughing)
(Stanton) They couldn't get the... They didn't have the fog thing worked out, huh?
(Cartwright) No, they'd forgotten to put any escape.
(Stanton) We can send men to the moon,
and we can't even figure out a simple thing like that.
(Cartwright) And see those hockey gloves? They were really hard to manipulate.
(O'Bannon) Ridley - when he shot the film - he went to a great deal of trouble
to create a lighting situation which would duplicate the look of Giger's paintings.
One of the things he did, for example,
was to fill the entire set with a dense but uniform smoke.
And he made sure that that smoke was uniformly distributed.
He didn't want billowing clouds, what he wanted was atmosphere,
was a thickness of the air.
He had people walking around with incense burners filling the stage with smoke,
and then he personally walked around through the sound stage
with a big piece of cardboard, waving it and waving it.
And I couldn't quite figure out what he was doing.
But he didn't shoot
until the fog was uniformly distributed throughout the entire set
so that you couldn't see it billowing at all. It simply thickened the air.
And once he had that, he lit it with elaborate care.
He didn't just put one or two big lights on everything and be satisfied with it.
I didn't understand half of what he was doing.
He ran around clipping all these little snoot lights onto things -
where you wouldn't see them - and aiming them at different objects
and different parts of the set and different props.
And elaborate and careful lighting,
and filtering the color of the light toward a certain blue-gray tone
in order to get the end photographic result to resemble Giger's paintings.
And if he had not done that,
I don't think you would have gotten but a fraction of the value
of Giger's designs from all of that.
(Hurt) Yes, Giger was... He was kind of bleakly fascinating
with his scowls on the top of his four-poster beds and so on.
And he was always dressed in black, as was his girlfriend,
which at that time was more unusual than it is now.
There were only three people I knew who were always dressed in black
and that was Harold Pinter, Giger and his girlfriend.
And my father, but then he was a clergyman.
I think the space jockey is actually somehow the pilot,
and he's part of a military operation -
if that's the word you wanna apply to his world -
and therefore, this is probably some kind of carrier.
A weapon carrier, a biological or biomechanoid carrier of lethal eggs,
inside of which are these small creatures that will actually fundamentally integrate -
in a very aggressive way - into any society or any place it dropped.
So if you land on a human being, you'll have a resemblance to a human being.
If it dropped on an ostrich, it would look like an ostrich.
And there's a fundamental connection in that way in nature
because we'd actually watched in the preparation for this...
Oxford Scientific had this interesting piece of footage
where they'd watched a slice of bark -
which in our terms, to a human being, would be about 12 feet thick -
and there's a grub underneath the bark, between the bark and the tree.
There's always a space between bark and tree.
Across the top of the bark is crawling an insect
which passes over the grub, stops, backs up, and feels the grub is there.
Let's say, the equivalent of 8 feet below you.
And it goes up on its hind legs, produces a needle from between its legs
and drills through the bark and bull's-eyes right into the grub
and lays its seed.
So that the grub becomes the host of the insect.
And now, does...? What comes out of the union of the grub and that particular insect?
Does that become a version of both?
And that's what we basically, you know, went along with.
The man running the laser beams at this particular moment -
who had been doing rock shows and experimental laser beams -
was Anton Furst, who later became an art director
and actually did films such as Batman.
And Anton was great to work with, with his very small team,
and I was absolutely literally blown away by the effect of these beams.
Cos, you know, we hadn't seen it before, really.
And I thought this would be very useful to me to create the skin, like a protection.
See the drops going upwards? They're all going up.
That's cos the egg's upside down.
And then, those are my hands in the middle there, in a pair of rubber gloves,
doing the old flutter as the light comes up.
Cos I said "We gotta have movement in the eggs."
So I had a pair of surgical gloves,
I just stuck my hands into the egg and backlit it
and, you know, we'd do a little flutter, flutter.
There it is again, a pair of hands.
And it's got some liquid in there.
I love the opening here. It's got a steel hydraulic on it.
So you know that is gonna... That's strong.
This is always a great moment.
And I used - actually here - real organic material.
This was delivered every morning from an abattoir,
with steamed cattle and sheep parts
from the slaughterhouse.
And that lacy stuff, in fact, is called Nottingham lace,
and in fact, is the lining of - some people eat it - a cow's stomach.
And the hose that comes out, in fact, is an intestine of a sheep,
which they use to make sausages.
I used it because it's diaphanous.
So to actually put an air line on it, it just behaves like that. It just whips.
And that was all discovered on the day.
(O'Bannon) I'm over here in L.A. Giger's over there in Switzerland.
We're communicating on the phone.
20th Century Fox has finally sent him some money to get started.
And I sat down and I wrote out some very simple parameters
for what I wanted him to start designing.
And I described in the simplest terms what the facehugger was to do.
That it was to be a small, sort of octopus-like thing
that would leap onto a person's face,
wrap its tentacles around behind the person's head,
and then it would have an organ - an ovipositor -
which it would shove down the person's throat.
And a few weeks later,
Giger mailed these large photographic transparencies to us at Fox.
They came through customs -
who didn't understand what they were and were alarmed -
and we had to personally go down to LAX and pick these things up.
When I finally got these photographs that Giger had made
of the designs he had done for the facehugger,
and I held them up to the light where I could see them,
I was stunned at what I saw.
There was the lobed creature attached to the face of a person
but instead of tentacles, there were fingers. Fingers.
As soon as I saw those fingers, I knew that I would do whatever I had to do
to get those fingers into the film.
So I thought that the facehugger deserved to be given a great deal of our attention.
I thought it was a very important element in the story
and nobody seemed to be finding the time for it.
Giger's energies at that point
were going into sculpting the full-sized alien -
the life-sized one, the one which was man-shaped -
and the facehugger wasn't being designed. So I
(Scott) Oh, this is an additional scene we didn't have in the film.
This is where Veronica whacked you.
- (Weaver) She did. - (Scott) Gave you this huge whack.
- (Weaver) You asked her to do that? - (Scott) No, absolutely not.
- But I... - (Weaver) Ha, ha, ha. Sadist.
No, she really hit me. You can see how surprised I was.
- And you put it in? - (Scott) Well, you know...
By the time this is mixed and everything, I think it's okay.
The only reason some of these things come out - wham - has to be...
She really hit you. Wow, did you...
(Weaver) And no one told me she was gonna do that.
(Scott) I... Oop. Sorry. Ha, ha.
(O'Bannon) I asked Ridley "What do you want in the facehugger?"
And Ridley opened up Giger's art book
and he found a page and he pointed to a rather amorphous painting
which showed a kind of an organic shape with a kind of pearly texture to it.
And he said "Something like that."
I said "Okay." I said "If it looks like that, you'll be happy?"
He said "Yeah."
So I personally designed the facehugger.
I went over to the Art Department -
where Ron Cobb and everybody else were slaving on designing everything -
and I set myself up at a drawing board,
I put a great big piece of paper down, and the first thing I did
was I drew a front and side outline of a human head - to start with -
and then I began to draw the alien over that.
I drew it side view,
back view and inside view.
And first I drew a basic lobe shape to fit where it had to fit, over the face,
then I took the paintings -
the very first paintings that Giger had done a year before,
which was the facehugger with those fingers -
and with the greatest of care, I drew fingers onto the thing, copying his exactly.
I mean, I had artistic training, so I could do this.
I could copy carefully. So I got those fingers in.
Then I went to the inner view -
the part of the creature which would be pressed to the face -
and I took the pearly-looking organic shape that Ridley had liked
and I very carefully sketched the soft underbelly of the alien
so that Ridley had what he wanted.
And then I looked at it, and the body of the thing still needed something.
And the point at which the fingers attached to the body of the thing,
I wasn't satisfied with.
So I turned to Ron Cobb - who was right there - I said "Ron."
I said "Can you help me out here? Just take a look."
"See how these fingers attach to the sides of the body of the thing?"
I said "These fingers would continue into the body."
"There would be some kind of skeletal understructure under the skin."
"Would you please sketch in how these fingers would connect
to the skeletal understructure as it disappears into the body of the thing?"
Cos Cobb is a genius at that kind of thing.
And he took a pencil and he looked at it for a minute, and he said "Well, let's see."
"If those fingers attached here, then they would probably continue on into the body."
"There would be a skeletal understructure like this."
And over the space of a few minutes,
he then sketched the internal skeleton of the thing,
and it worked. It looked right.
I said "Okay, that now looks plausible.
The fingers have a biologically realistic basis in the way they fit into the thing."
And so then I finished the drawing.
I rendered it very, very carefully.
And I detached the thing from the drawing table
and I went walking over to find Ridley - I finally found Ridley -
and I held the drawing up in front of him, I said:
"Okay? Facehugger?" And he looked at it and he said "Yes, good. That's fine."
I said "This is good?" He said "Yeah."
I said "Good," and I took this thing and I delivered it over to the sculptors.
I said "Here is the design for the facehugger. Do it like this."
And a few days down the line,
they came up with a sculpture of the thing, sculpted in clay.
They then took a cast of that and they made a mold of it in foam rubber.
And it hasn't been painted yet. It was simply the color of the foam rubber,
which was kind of the color of a manila envelope
which was close to the color of human skin. And I looked at it.
And up to that point I had been thinking of the alien
as having a sort of a lizard-like color, a dark-greenish quality.
But I looked at this facehugger there and it was the color of human skin
and I said "You know what?"
I said "I have never seen a space alien which is the color of human skin."
I said "Doing this is not only novel, it gives it added plausibility."
And I said that to Ridley when he looked at the thing.
By then, they had inserted a wire armature inside the thing
so that you could stand it up and wrap its fingers around something.
And there it was, the facehugger, the color of human skin.
I said "Why don't we not paint it?"
I said "Why don't we leave it like that? Skin color."
And again Ridley liked it and he went for it.
(Scott) I just went for the script.
The script appealed to me in all the elements and graphic design.
And the sets started to come together in my head because I'm a designer anyway,
so I was able to storyboard the whole movie.
And at that moment the movie was 4.6.
I went back to London having said "I'll do the film,"
and I storyboarded extensively.
And by doing that, you know, you're working...
I find storyboarding's interesting because it actually helps you think on paper.
It makes you really pin down in your head exactly what you're gonna do.
You start to see the scene.
From that, we kind of doubled the budget.
Which just shows the power of the old storyboard
because they suddenly start to see things...
There was a lot more here than, I think, just six people in the old, dark house.
I always liked the wardrobe in the film. I thought it was really well done.
And Giger designed the spacesuits.
To a large extent he did that,
and then it was carried out by John Mollo.
Then John did also all the other... This...
The pale blue and the badges and the...
The badges were designed and the...
You know, the broken-down, slightly worn-out view of the uniforms.
And I thought it was pretty good, kind of layered and interesting.
Found a real flight suit for Sigourney, so I couldn't do any better than that
because those flight suits in those days were kind of new, from high-flying jet pilots.
I always thought "Wow, they're great."
I didn't quite know what all the laces did but they were kind of sexy,
so that's what she got.
But John designed all the badges and the prints.
The patches were all printed. Not printed actually, they're stitched.
I wish I'd kept some of these things but I didn't.
One never does at the time.
The symbol above the monitor at the back, which are the wings,
is actually taken from an Egyptian temple.
And a lot of the elements, architecture in here -
if you look around - are rather Egyptian.
The shot of somebody in a room,
or where you get a shot on their back, is vulnerable,
so people get very tense.
You could start to acknowledge the signals and symbols
which are almost like... Maybe it's something primordial
because we were all fundamentally born as hunters,
and therefore there's those little elements
of the basics, that you can start to play with and make people paranoid, uneasy, fearful.
I think it's getting progressively more hard to do,
mainly because there's such an abundance of hard-core thrillers
and every conceivable kind of creature, and it's starting to get used up
until somebody comes along with something unique.
I haven't seen anything unique for a while.
It tends to be more of the same.
I think that's probably why I haven't tried to do another science fiction
since Blade Runner.
Because I haven't really come across anything that really had the story.
It's all about the story and then the characters.
If you've got the story, the chances are you got the characters.
Then what happens after that, the art direction,
it becomes relatively easy with the right people.
(Shusett) And you can see how seriously Ian Holm -
a great Shakespearean actor already, admired for his London stage work -
you can see how into it and how seriously they took not doing this like camp.
And I'll tell you, that happened within the first few weeks.
And the script was so good, I say in all native arrogance.
The actors were so into it cos they could see by the dailies...
We were all looking at this stuff and it was working so great.
If they ever thought "Oh, I'm doing this as a paying job."
"This is gonna be stupid, but Ridley's so brilliant it'll look good,
and it'll be kind of dumb or a modest little thing."
"And they'll say a little sleeper, but silly." I'd say, by the third week,
all of us, all felt this would be an all-time great, classic film.
(Scott) We made up this set because I said:
"The captain must wanna go somewhere just to get away from everyone."
So I figured the logic would be he goes and hides in one of the shuttles
just to get away from everyone,
and play something very normal. Like that was, I think, Mozart.
I always thought this was really a beautiful, very successful set
that we always wanted to be circular.
They always cost more money because everything circular is more expensive.
But it paid off. I think it was absolutely great.
And it's almost like it's positioned beneath... The infirmary is beneath the kitchen.
This will be a multi-deck ship, probably four or five decks.
It's like, if you're trying to lay a floor in your house and you got a circular room,
your use of tile is gonna be more expensive than straight edges.
So if you apply that to a big set, you got a similar thing.
You got a high percentage of waste.
Halfway through the film you're starting to get a bit weary of:
"Oh, God, another scary scene."
"How do we deal with this? Because nothing really happens."
So now you resort to one or two tricks.
And when I talked about going on people's back view
or putting the camera in a funny corner position,
where you began to wonder "Is that the alien?"
"What has happened to it? Where has it gone?"
You know what it looks like, but you don't know where it is.
That's a cheap gag, but it makes everyone leap out of their skin.
You know, sometimes you keep these things going long enough,
you get the tension really builds up with very little.
Again, playing the silence is interesting
because silence, oddly enough, tells you something's gonna happen.
You don't know who's gonna get it,
but I think at this moment you think "This has gone on too long."
"It's too quiet. Is it him?"
(Skerritt) It's one of the first times I sat through a picture I was involved with
where it scared the hell out of me, so, I mean...
You know, I saw all this stuff going on when we were shooting it,
but the magic of how Ridley shoots and the timing of this.
You know? It's the slow... And you take the time to get every little slow move in.
(Scott) When you see this out of context and are able to examine it...
That always gave everyone a big bump.
And funny enough, I was always uncomfortable about that.
But I think by now, we had 'em.
I always remember the producer saying:
"Don't worry, you've got 'em. You've got 'em now."
Here we have the visit from the fishmongers where we use the real thing.
Basically, carefully positioned with tweezers - that's a big oyster -
into a case, which is actually made of plastic.
(O'Bannon) There you go. See, he's just lifting up the edge of the oyster.
These were the tricks that we used
in our efforts to come up with a space creature
which, on the one hand, looked completely different than anything you'd seen before,
but on the other hand,
looked absolutely like something that was alive and made of real flesh.
And on the third hand, is terrifying to look at.
And I believe that we succeeded and I am pleased with that.
You see? There's the value of novelty.
If it's new and you haven't seen it before, it has impact.
Once something becomes familiar... No matter how well it's done,
if it's familiar...
Well, you know the old saying, familiarity breeds contempt.
And it's a shame in a way, because you see Alien now
and Alien no longer has novelty.
So that Alien seen today by a contemporary audience
has only a fraction of the impact it had when the picture first came out
because they've seen it all before.
But at the time, there was a lot in Alien that was entirely new to an audience
and the impact that it had was considerable.
And it was even received well by the critical community.
Cos in those days, science-fiction films were very much looked down upon
by movie critics, and they liked Alien.
(Scott) I mean, really, this is the only horror film -
if you could call it that - I've done.
The thing that really, at that moment, nailed me to the wall
was Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
I haven't seen that in recent years so I don't know how it would play -
whether it is what it is or whether it stands up -
but at the time it was so shocking.
They went to places that no one had actually gone.
And you think "My God, he's not gonna do that," and then he does.
But I would say that probably the best and still the most intelligent all-around,
is probably The Exorcist, you know.
The first Exorcist was really good with a great, very simple narrative idea.
William Friedkin made it all work, cos to even make a film
which begins with a film within a film, is very dangerous and tenuous.
But he made that work. He made the Irish director work,
and then he made the star living in her house in Georgetown, work.
And he took almost the unlikely by making it real, make it stick.
I think that all in all, it's still one of the best.
There are many versions of that. That's the problem,
people settle for less.
But then we have to make films.
(O'Bannon) I was trying to figure out who these people were in the spaceship.
What was the spaceship doing out there and who were the people on board?
So I was looking for something different in order to break the audience's mental mold.
I was doing everything I could
to forbid the audience to think of this as just a space movie.
Because I wanted to isolate them.
I wanted this terrible sense of isolation
so you just knew that you weren't gonna get help from home at all.
(Stanton) And I had this line...
You remember I had the line... "Every time somebody would say something
you say 'right."' "Right."
Well, every... When Yaphet would say it.
So we're doing a scene, one scene where Sigourney says to me:
"Brett, why do you always say 'right' every time he says something?"
In the middle of the take, you know?
And I said "Why don't you go fuck yourself?"
(Stanton laughing)
And they said "cut" and...
And that wasn't in the script, of course.
And Tom Skerritt or Yaphet or one of them said:
"Well, if he's gonna change the lines..."
(Stanton laughing)
It created a big furor.
(Scott) I think there's an uncomfortable atmosphere to the scene
where they can't believe it's that simple, basically.
When you see the film with a proper mix and big sound,
you can hear a lot of very subtle sounds all the time. They're always there.
So they're working on your paranoia.
And I think these atmospherics are terribly important.
This is not scored, this is just uneasy, almost organic sounds
that make you feel uncomfortable.
And you don't know what it is. Is it a system of air conditioning?
Is it the sound of the ship?
So basically Jimmy was asked to design the whole idea of the sound of the ship,
other than just the usual big rumble.
But the big rumble is almost there throughout everything.
So here we have this jocularity, and Ash's slight watchfulness.
(Rawlings) Yeah, the whole point of this is to play this
as if nothing was gonna happen at all.
But I don't think anybody realized what was gonna happen, even the actors.
I'm sure they didn't.
I mean, they knew what was about to happen,
but the way it happened was a shock to them
as well as the audience.
Especially her.
(Skerritt) I remember coming in and watching Ridley set this thing up with John
so I kind of had some idea of what the mechanics were.
I don't think anybody else had... Any of you guys had gone in there.
(Cartwright) No, they wouldn't let us.
They kept us upstairs in those dressing rooms for hours.
(Skerritt) Well, I was down and watching it and...
The look you get on Veronica's face is the real thing.
She had no idea what was gonna happen.
Ridley used some rather uncomplimentary intestines of animals, I think.
(Cartwright) Well, there were huge buckets of offal around and...
(Skerritt) Yeah.
(Cartwright) But what was there, three cameras?
- Three or four cameras. - (Skerritt) Yeah.
- This is some serious indigestion going on. - (Cartwright) Then they rigged him.
- (Stanton) Yeah, the airplane food. - (Skerritt) Yeah. Heh, heh.
(Cartwright) I remember they had the shirt slightly slit.
(Stanton) Yeah.
(Cartwright) And then they stopped it because it wasn't cut enough.
And they told me I'd get a little blood on my face
and they had an entire jet pointed at it.
(Stanton) That was the strongest vision I had in the movie,
when I looked up and saw blood on her face.
(Skerritt) Yeah, yeah. They were out to get her.
- (Stanton) And I thought it was for real. - (Skerritt) They were out to get Veronica.
Look at this. Look at the look on Veronica's face.
I love this. She was saying "What am I doing here?"
(Stanton) That... Yeah, right in there. That's, whoa.
Whoa.
(Cartwright) It's those little teeth with the little projectile.
(Skerritt) Oh, the smile.
"I'm a scientist. Don't touch it."
(Stanton) That Ian.
(Cartwright) Remember, it was the guy on a skateboard underneath that table,
- (Skerritt) Yeah. - (Cartwright) with a cut in the table,
and then they had him on a dolly and they whipped him out.
(Skerritt) Yeah. Yeah.
(Cartwright) It was, like, simple stuff but it just looked so unbelievable.
(Stanton) How many times did we do that? Two or three times?
- (Cartwright) Well, no, one time. - (Skerritt) No, I think it was one time.
(Cartwright) It was a one-off deal. They started to do it,
they realized the shirt wasn't cut enough so they needed to go back and do that,
and then that was a one time. And like four cameras.
And when I got hit in that face, remember, I backed up...
(Stanton) Yeah, that's my strongest vision in the movie, of blood on your face.
(Cartwright) And my knees hit the back of that banquette and I flipped upside down,
and my boots were sticking up in the air.
(Skerritt) You were immobilized for four days.
(Stanton) And I thought it was real.
(commentators laughing)
(Scott) Again, Jerry's theme, which tells us there's more.
It's threatening.
And somehow chilling. Chilly, beautiful and elegant.
I think O'Bannon and... I know Ronnie adored it.
I'm not sure about Dan. I'd always wanted Dan's approval.
- I thought Dark Star was really amazing. - (Weaver) Yeah.
- (Scott) Very humorous piece. Brilliant. - (Weaver) Yeah.
(Scott) And that was directed by John Carpenter.
Dan had written that one.
Dan had got involved in some of the directing process.
I know Dan's deepest, innermost dream
would have been to have directed this movie, right?
And therefore I felt, A, the fact that he was relieved...
Because oddly enough he really loved The Duellists,
which is really strange because he's a science-fiction fanatic
and I wasn't.
So whoever chose me to do this is bizarre.
(Weaver) You chose yourself.
(Scott) Well, I just read it. Yeah, but I was fifth in line.
I was the fifth or sixth director.
(Weaver) You mean other people had turned it down?
(Scott) Oh, yeah. You want me to name them?
(Weaver) Well, that's because... Ha, ha, ha.
(Scott) I know who they were. I was thinking "Wow, what a dummy."
(Weaver) But also I remember being a dummy too because when I read it -
not knowing what the alien looked like -
I just saw this big, like, gummy bear, you know?
- (Scott) That would have been awful. - (Weaver) I know, it would have been.
That's why when I first met you and you said "What do you think of the script?"
I said "Well, I think it's very bleak."
And I remember the casting person, Goldberg, kind of going...
You know, like, "Shut up, stupid."
(Weaver laughing)
"You're lucky just to be here."
(Scott) But "bleak" is right because that's what we wanted.
- (Weaver) Well, and once I saw the designs, - (Scott) Yeah.
(Weaver) it completely changed the way I thought about the script.
(O'Bannon) I was, of course, tempted to develop these characters up and give them,
you know, full psychological profiles and, you know, personal problems,
and the whole panoply of character stuff
that is always done by knee-jerk reaction in every movie and every screenplay.
Except for one thing, and that was that it bored me.
I didn't give a rat's ass.
I didn't care about their personal psychological quirks.
Except insomuch as it had an immediate bearing on the situation at hand.
I didn't want to stop and tell the life stories of these characters because I didn't care.
I cared about the monster that was going to kill them.
That, I cared about.
So I didn't do any of that in the script. I did none of it at all.
(Scott) Everybody really worked great in the process of a film that,
in a funny kind of way, doesn't call for background
and who's writing to who at home,
and how are you getting that information back to families and:
(Scott gibbering)
Because actually what it was, is a B movie.
- It's "Seven Little..." What's? - (Weaver) "Ten Little Indians."
(Scott) Ten little Indians in the old dark house, and that's what it is.
But I think what happened is, we all elevated it.
(Skerritt) Well, there was a scene here I remember, where Yaphet came in -
and Yaphet loves to kind of stir things up -
and he came in to work one afternoon - it may have been this afternoon here -
and the English crew was very quiet and always very gentlemanly,
standing back as Yaphet came on the set and said:
(in gruff voice) "Let's cut this quiet shit. Come on."
"You guys stand around, you don't do nothing."
"You just act like gentlemen."
(in normal voice) And he really got it going and finally calmed down -
he got his blood circulating at that point -
and I was standing in the back and there were a couple of Englishmen in front of me
and one looks at the other, he says
(in English accent) "Isn't it grand being English?"
(commentators laughing)
(Stanton) He's got a point, really.
(Cartwright) Oh, I think we're on to something here.
- (Skerritt in normal voice) Ah. Jonesy, - (Cartwright) Oh, that's... Oh, it's the cat.
(Skerritt) you beast, you.
(Rawlings) It was a fantastic exercise, I think, for both of us
because this was, I think, Ridley's second film.
And it was my third, I did two others before that.
So it was all very new,
and I don't think I've ever worked as hard as we did on this picture -
the sort of hours we put in to do it.
You know, we tried everything we knew how, all different ways around.
The whole idea was to terrorize people as much as possible.
And that only comes with, like, pushing people into a corner endlessly.
Going as far as you can go, but not going over the top.
(Scott) And, yeah, I remember running the film in, I think...
Where was it, in London? Or was it L.A., the Egyptian?
But I remember running it in London - and the film in L.A. -
and I knew we had something really extraordinary
mainly because of the reaction, not just during but afterwards.
There was this kind of stunned silence.
And I remember Harry coming up to me - I think it was at the Egyptian -
and he's so sweet, and Harry looked at me, he said "Thanks for the close-ups, man."
- (Weaver) Oh, sweet. - (Scott) Yeah.
And he'd meant when he walks through and goes "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty."
- Which is great. - (Weaver) Yeah.
- (Scott) That moment, you know he is gone. - (Weaver) I know.
(Scott) But he was very sweet, and he and Yaphet made this great duo.
In fact, I think the whole, to me, is probably the best ensemble I've ever had.
(Stanton) Now, this is where I screwed up. I could never play terror.
I can play crying, I can laugh, I can cry, I can do everything but playing terror.
And I didn't know it at the time but I found out later how to play terror,
and I didn't use it in this part.
It worked, but I wish I'd have known it.
You don't look scared, you just look like "I've never seen anything like this before."
Like, that's all you have to do.
(Cartwright) Ew. There's the skin.
- It's shedding its skin. - (Skerritt) Yeah.
Something's up, Harry.
(Stanton) God, they're sickening, the images they got in here.
(Cartwright chuckles)
Disgusting.
(Rawlings) This is great sound-wise too.
When you just enter this, like, rain forest
with the rain and the dripping just surrounding you.
(Scott) Again, sticking to your guns. "Why the water?"
So I would just say "Why not?" "Why the chains?"
"Well, the chains aren't very high-tech."
Said "Yeah, but you know what? You've still gotta let things down
so it's still gonna be rope or water. It's not necessarily electronic."
So I had the chains dressed cos the room looked a bit blank
and I needed the movement in there.
"How is it moving?" I said "I don't care."
"Where's the water coming from?" I said "Condensation."
"Why the condensation?"
"Well, because something's gone wrong on the ship, but they can..."
"It's not life-threatening. They'll put up with it."
- (Skerritt) The clinking of the... - (Cartwright) Yeah, the chains and the...
(Skerritt) Oh, yeah.
Oh, Ridley. Ridley, Ridley.
(Cartwright) And the rain. See, like, there's all that moisture that's coming down.
You wouldn't get that moisture in outer space, I don't think, but...
(Skerritt) You do now.
(Stanton) That was my idea. Ridley loved me for that one.
- He lapped it up immediately. - (Skerritt) Yeah.
(Scott) There's always this sense that "Had I made it too slow?"
It isn't slow. I think it makes it more tense.
You know something always is gonna happen.
This was always amusing. I couldn't get a reaction out of the cat.
So I said "I know what'll do it."
So I put a board alongside Harry Dean Stanton
and had a German shepherd there, and we just lifted the board.
It was on a leash so it never harmed the cat.
But that's how you get that reaction, the cat that's basically going "What?"
And there.
That's where it sees the shepherd.
And Harry's trying to ignore it.
Would I do this today? Not really. I'd be...
You know, I'd still be going for the tension,
I'd still be going for nothing happening,
but I think it works pretty well.
Sometimes you look at these scenes and think "I wanna cut. I wanna cut a little bit."
(Skerritt) I think the only direction we got from Ridley
was after we did one of those ensemble pieces in the dining room.
He took his eye off the camera and he winced and he said "Interesting."
Do you remember that?
That was the only direction he ever gave us, I believe.
(Stanton) Which was enough.
(commentators laugh)
(Rawlings) It's very hard to talk about editing. That's why I say this is very difficult.
Maybe you'll find other people who can talk about it far more fluid than I can.
But whenever I've talked about editing, people say "Why did you do so-and-so?"
I have to say it was instinctive.
I did it because it felt right at the time.
It's like if you're teaching somebody how to do something.
You can't teach people how to edit.
You can tell them what they can't or they shouldn't do,
but then those rules are already there to be broken
because we take tremendous gambles with editing.
And I'm still - after all these years of doing it -
endlessly surprised at what we can achieve
with the same pieces of film played in different ways
and tricked around.
But saying why and how you do things,
it's got to come down to the material you were given -
and obviously what you were trying to achieve -
and then it's gotta be an in-built thing. It's gotta be your inner timing.
And then of course, that will work to a certain extent
and then your director will suggest
changes which you never thought of,
and I hope that's what I do for them.
Is that, with all the pressures that a director has,
he doesn't have time to think of every variation on a scene.
I spend a lot of time talking to directors when they're shooting
so I know what they're looking for for the sequence.
So that when I come to put it together,
the first thing I do is to put it together with the takes that they like,
with the ideas that they want me to try and get across.
But in doing that, I see other things, and I hopefully bring that to their attention.
Or I do it that way so that they can see what other ideas there are.
And I think that's what my job is,
to sort of take what they give me a stage further.
Then we develop it together.
(Scott) Again, this is all industrial tubing and stuff.
None of this we made. You know, we just got the tubing.
This whole thing from here, with off-cuts to them, is in a day.
That's all I was given, a day.
"You have a day and that's that."
And I'm shooting with a real flame and a guy holding a light, lighting himself.
There's no other light in here but that. We just shot.
That's always great about Derek, even on anamorphic,
I just shot this as it is. That's it. There's nothing else there.
I still think Derek used to squeeze more out of an anamorphic lens
than anyone else, you know?
But, you know, the advantage as an operator when you're a director is...
Because you're seeing it, you know you're getting it.
You know, you know what you're getting.
So it's almost like putting the storyboard together in your head
as you're seeing it happen.
If you're not looking through the viewfinder,
you're kind of insulated from what's going on.
I mean, we're helped today by good video assist and everything,
but there's nothing quite like being through the viewfinder
and being close to the actor. You're very much part of it.
To me, there's an entire logic to that, of operating and directing the same thing.
(Shusett) I remember when Ridley met me, he said:
"I want it to be the most straightforward, unpretentious, riveting thriller,
like Psycho or Rosemary's Baby,
or even the most brilliant B-level, like Night of the Living Dead
and Texas Chain Saw Massacre."
"But I want it to look - and I'm going to do this - like 2001."
And I knew right then - because I'd seen The Duellists -
I knew he could make it look like 2001,
but I didn't realize that he had that frame of mind.
"I'm not gonna make this into a pretentious..."
"I want it to play just like it read on the page."
And then he said "We're gonna watch together all the classic scare movies
so I can get the rhythm of how scares work."
And we did that. We made a list and we all - Ridley and I and Dan O'Bannon -
we all watched them. And I knew from when he even said that -
from that first meeting - I knew that he was gonna do just the job he did.
(Scott) I was a bit nervous about these flamethrowers.
We were assured they were safe -
and of course the actors were taken off to practice with them -
but I was always nervous about them.
The liquid fuel and... I didn't like them at all.
We were very careful and cautious about everything.
So fortunately, there were no accidents, but I do not like playing with fire.
(O'Bannon) I was stuck on one point,
which was once they got the thing on the spaceship,
I wanted to avoid the cliché of bullets bouncing off of the thing -
the indestructible monster.
I mean, that's the ancient cliché, right?
You can't stop it, bullets won't stop it. Not at all.
I wanted the thing to be, in every respect, a natural animal.
Which means, yes, if you shoot it, it'll die.
So the question was, in the second half of the movie:
"Why don't they just kill the thing? Why don't they just squash it?" Right?
"Stick a knife in it, whatever."
And I wasn't sure how to achieve that
and I'd asked Ron Cobb if he had any thoughts.
Ron Cobb, I remember - who was always helpful - said:
"Well, suppose the thing bled acid that would, like, burn through metal."
I said "Great." I said "Then they couldn't kill it cos then it would..."
"Its blood would eat a hole in the bulkhead and the ship would lose all of its oxygen."
I said "Great."
(Skerritt) Oh, look at this. This is the other guy gets it.
This damn fool.
"Okay, Harry, order me a beer. I think I'm gonna join you soon."
(Stanton chuckles)
- (Cartwright) Ew. - (Skerritt) Oh, yeah.
He sang me a ballad. That's what it was.
That's why I couldn't shoot him.
(Scott) It's funny, they always used to amuse the hell out of me, because you'd see...
The whole audience would...
When you get a nice bump of 800 people all together,
that really is gratifying.
It almost becomes really amusing, actually. But it is fun to do a thriller.
I'd like to do it again, but I need to find the piece of material.
It doesn't have to be that sophisticated, you know?
You can make it more sophisticated, really.
- (Cartwright) See, I am the only smart one. - (Stanton) Yeah.
(Cartwright) We abandon this stupid ship and get the hell out of here.
(Skerritt) The audience is right with you.
(Cartwright) Nobody listens. Yeah, nobody listens.
(Skerritt) The audience is cheering you on.
(Stanton) Why didn't you say that before they got to me? Yeah.
(Stanton chuckles)
Why didn't you bring it up earlier?
(Skerritt) Well, that's cos... Whatever my character...
Dallas and her were having an affair, and that's why she wanted to...
- (Stanton) Yeah. - (Cartwright) Which they cut out.
(Stanton) She was getting laid.
(Skerritt) So there you have it.
(Scott) This is the bit where I wanted to raise the level a little bit.
So Yaphet and I were a little complicit here,
and said "I wanna crank the volume up here and push him, and be irritating."
And we got it. It was very good.
(Cartwright) And I know that...
I mean, because she started out being very emotional
and all of this stuff because of Dallas dying,
and he just kept pushing her and pushing her, and pushing her.
And I know Ridley was saying "Get to her gut."
So when he gave that whole speech and he slams down his thing,
and he walks off the set again, she was so pissed off,
which was what the movie needed.
I mean, she had to take control of that ship.
She couldn't be a wimpy person. I was the wimp.
You know, I was the only sane one. But I think he did egg us on.
(Cartwright laughs)
(Scott) Relationships would be discouraged.
You know, the idea of casual sex would be normal,
for obvious reasons. I thought "Why not?"
Because if you've got seven on board, somebody's gonna get left out.
And so casual relationships, whether it's male or female,
male with male, female with female,
seems to be okay in space.
When you're locked away in a big tin can for years on end,
could be years, plus hyper-sleep, so it might feel like a year.
You might be away 10 years.
So I tried to instigate that and there was a suggestion of that with Dallas.
And that was the beginning with Veronica.
Say, an idea of "Should we infer something here?"
"Should we have an inference of, you know, a lesbian or gay relationship, or not?"
It would have been kind of interesting.
Today I'd probably do that just to thicken up the layers in the characters.
(O'Bannon) The general idea of what constitutes a suspense story
was an issue of some contention among the producers,
and I lost a couple of those battles.
There was no Ash in my original script, they added that.
The idea being here that all scripts must have a subplot.
Simply to have a single plot by itself is inadequate,
all stories must have subplots. So they created a subplot.
Ian Holm gives a brilliant performance, it's brilliantly directed by Ridley,
but if you stop and think about it,
if it wasn't in there, what difference would it make one way or the other?
I mean, who gives a rat's ass? I mean, so somebody is a robot.
It annoyed me when they did it because it was what I called the Russian spy.
It was a tendency in certain types of thrillers -
when people are on an interesting mission - to stick in a Russian spy.
One of them is a spy and they don't know which one
and he's trying to screw up the mission. Fantastic Voyage had that.
When I saw Fantastic Voyage, I found it annoying.
You're just about getting ready to head off into the body of this person
and have this fantastic mission
to go through his bloodstream, get to the brain and save him,
when you're informed that one of them is a Russian spy
and he's going to stop the mission from its completion.
And instead of it adding any genuine suspense,
all it did was annoy me and made me think:
"Oh, I see. So maybe now I don't get to see what I wanna see in the movie
because the Russian spy will prevent it."
It's a tensioning device which is commonly resorted to and doesn't work,
cos it doesn't provide any real suspense.
It doesn't do anything, except provide finger exercise for the writer
who thinks that all stories must have subplots.
So I think it's an inferior idea, of inferior minds,
well-acted and well-directed.
And fortunately, it occupies little enough screen time
that it doesn't disrupt the main plot.
(Scott) The Ash thing was interesting.
That Ash was an implant of the corporation - having a robot on board.
So instead of just having a spy, you've got a biomechanoid human being.
(Weaver) It's a very modern idea, still very relevant.
(Scott) Yeah, very modern.
He has a formidable memory so he doesn't even need a computer.
It all goes in and it'll all spout out later.
I thought that was a great... That was a first.
- (Weaver) Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. - (Scott) I thought, that's a really good idea.
It makes sense.
(Weaver) You said "Well, come on downstairs. It's gonna be great."
"Ash is gonna pick up this sex magazine and he's gonna stick it up your hooter."
And I didn't know cockney, and I thought "Hm, my hooter?"
And so luckily, when we got downstairs,
(Weaver laughing)
it was up my mouth to choke me.
But it was funny. It was one of those things. You know, I didn't actually think...
- "Well, Ridley would never do that." - (Scott) Exactly.
(Weaver) Nothing would have surprised me.
(Scott) Exactly. I figured robots had to have...
If they're really sophisticated, had to occasionally have the urge.
So I'd said to Ash "How do you feel about sexual drive?"
He said "Great."
(Weaver laughs)
So I said "Rather than just beating her up, isn't it more interesting
that he actually has always wanted to
and here's his opportunity, but he doesn't have that part."
- (Weaver) Oh, he doesn't. - (Scott) "And therefore it's a magazine."
(Weaver) Ah. I didn't understand the Freudian overtones of the scene.
(Scott) I hope there aren't any kids listening to all this.
(Weaver) Well, if kids can watch these movies, they can hear this stuff.
(Scott) Exactly.
(Shusett) This is Giler and Hill's concept.
It was the only thing that wasn't in the original script of Dan's and mine.
And the reason I knew it would work...
Because you needed something after the chestburster
that was at least close to it - as amazing - and that is this,
when his head is knocked off and you don't realize he's a robot.
And that kept the third act from being a letdown.
Oh, God. Jesus Christ.
(Scott) This is a great turnabout in the story
because, really, just when you think that your main and only aggressor
is this thing loose on the ship,
you now got a much bigger problem.
You've got two aggressors.
Which raises their paranoia, and that of the audience, twofold.
Always useful at this moment, when you're about three quarters of the way through.
So also, suddenly the drops of milk made logic.
Cos instead of having spurting blood or fluid, I decided to have spurting...
I didn't use milk, because it would stink in no time.
So it was just basically colored water.
But considering all things
and the budget involved, we did pretty good.
This was again "What do we wanna do for the innards?"
And I said "Pasta, glass marbles..."
"Get me, not caviar, but get me a bit of the cheap caviar,
and milk, and that's it."
And I just dressed it on the table. This is years of pack shots, you see.
It's some pasta... Thin rubber tubes, pasta,
and there's a cheap form of black caviar which was great.
Dress that with the glass balls and you think:
"My God, that's so high-tech, I don't know what it is."
But it just shows, you don't need that much. You know, you don't need to go nuts.
(Cartwright) The original scene had more grapey things and stuff,
and so I guess they took it...
I talked to Ian later and he said they went back and reshot it
with more tubey looking odds and ends.
And they also changed the dialogue.
It wasn't what it was originally.
Well, that whole thing about how:
"Well, nobody had bothered to try to communicate with it."
"I mean, maybe if we gave it a chance..." "It was part of an experimental program..."
Which in a weird sort of way didn't make him as evil.
Originally, this is where he had brought up:
"Has anybody tried to communicate with it?"
And we were all standing around and... You know, and listening to him.
And he was so touching when he was doing it.
And then Ridley shouts "cut"
because he had milk and he had grapes and he had little...
He hated the little silver balls that were, like, on the c...
So here we are, we're all, like, sitting there with bated breath listening to Ian
who's got his head in the middle of a table,
you know, with grapes and all sorts of stuff hanging off his head,
and then he...
He shouts "cut" because he didn't like the silver balls.
So what you see is, Ian went back months later and redid it.
But I loved his ideas.
Ian had this twitch throughout the thing, which you don't get to see very much.
He had, like... He starts out fine, but as he starts to get...
This left eye would, like, twitch all the time as he starts to break down.
(Scott) So now we're probably trying to work out all...
You know, you don't have to explain it, that craft have droids on board.
You know, big corporations...
Maybe the rumor has always been from the big corporations do...
Out of paranoia for their own investment
of the huge craft and the cargo and the knowledge,
always plant a spy within the crew on board
just in case the crew decided to go off and sell it to somebody.
And therefore, they always have their own security blanket as part of the crew.
And he, of course, is one. And I think that was a really nice idea -
a new idea - which then gets used again and again and again and again, you know.
(Shusett) And Sigourney was a revelation to us because on the set,
she never seemed to be acting much because she's reflective.
It's all behind the eyes.
These guys are, all of them, surrounded by the best character actors in the business
and we thought "Gee, is she gonna be any good? She's not acting."
And every time we'd look at the dailies, we'd say "She's great."
"How come she looks so great?" Because it was always... It's behind the eyes.
As Orson Welles once said...
When he was watching Gary Cooper shoot a scene on the set, he said:
"Oh, we'll have to reshoot that." Then he looked at the dailies and it was fantastic.
Orson Welles said "That camera either loves you or it doesn't."
And Sigourney's whole career and success is she doesn't overact it.
(O'Bannon) The whole point of Alien isn't that this is a dangerous space monster.
The whole point of Alien - according to Walter Hill -
is that evil corporations created this situation.
This crew wouldn't even be in this desperate situation in the first place
if the evil corporation hadn't sought out this organism
and decided to use it as a weapon,
and stuck a robot on board to deceive the crew.
And get them trapped in a situation where this alien organism could do its worst
and show that it would be a very good weapon
for the corporation's weapon systems.
And as far as Walter Hill is concerned, that's what the movie is about.
But you can see how, having taken the time and trouble
to have conceived of and write Alien in the first place,
to find myself butting up against a producer who was a writer.
(Scott) This was anamorphic. I wanted a wide screen.
Perceptive, a wide screen is... Feels like it's bigger.
Then gradually they developed into the idea of Super 35, which is...
The big difference with anamorphic is you're using anamorphic lenses,
which means there's more glass on the front of the lens,
which means that the picture quality is not as sharp.
It means you need more light to push through more glass.
So it sounds like all downside.
And in these days, it was, cos we had a lot of focus problems in this
because we were kind of low-light level, right on the edge.
So that means your low-light level, being right on the edge,
you're approaching wide open, which is not good for the lens and clarity.
So we had a bit of focus problem.
You know, you can use the loss of depth of focus on anamorphic
which is a thing in itself - it's part of the characterization
of the kind of style you're choosing and the story you're telling.
Just the remains of a helicopter there, just sprayed gold.
Jet engines there, turned on end and sprayed gold. With gold foil on them,
just to make it look more peculiarly high-tech.
This is where you get the nice flares on the glass like that, from anamorphic.
Again, silences, silences.
Being with the actress or the actor... We can literally be right there with them
if you're hand-holding, you see this.
Veronica was always great at controlling barely controlled terror - catatonic terror.
She's always, like, two steps from a heart attack,
which I think she finally does at the end - have a heart attack.
(Rawlings) It's fantastic, you see, the time you take over everything.
This is what makes this film so special.
And when it happens, it's like that. It's over. It's over.
(Scott) Again, would I buy Jonesy today? I didn't even think about it in those days.
I thought "Why not? You know, you have a cat, she'd be attached to the cat."
Like I've got dogs, I'd do anything for my dogs.
Would I go back for my dogs? Absolutely.
The air-condition going. The little fans working.
So I have air lines of people blowing things, so everything's moving and bouncing.
And then there's a useful thing here.
Again, a useful shock is coming up.
That was very useful at this point.
And very simple, you know?
Just have a guy, a propman, push it forward with his feet.
He's not... None of that... Just somebody there pushing it forward.
That is a clue. The cat - meow - going inside is a clue.
People were convinced that the alien was now inside the cat.
(Shusett) Yaphet is so good as he's so intense.
He said "I've been waiting 15 years for something like this,
that I knew would become an amazing, all-time great movie."
Before we even started shooting. Can you imagine that? What great vision.
First day I met him, he said that to me.
(Cartwright) Yaphet is the one who keeps telling me to move but I can't really move
when I'm between him and the alien, and here he comes.
See, now, this is the thing. He's, like, fascinating in a weird sort of way.
Look at him. He's, like, looking at me. He's, like, checking me out.
So I was going off of the fact that I would end up in a locker somehow,
but obviously, he's doing other things to me.
Bolaji, who played the alien, he was just amazing.
I mean, he was this graphic artist that they found in a pub.
And he was 7 foot tall and he was Masai, so he had very long limbs,
so actually that suit fit him. But he'd walk around in these white sneakers.
And Tom was the one who actually said "This poor guy can't sit down."
And they built him a special swing.
Cos he couldn't sit down once he had that tail on.
And I always remember Ridley wanting to do,
and there is a shot of it... You see the head and the brain?
Well, that was maggots, and they wanted to stick that on Bolaji's head
and he goes "I draw the line."
See, now, that's Harry Dean's legs
because I wear white pants and cowboy boots through the whole thing.
But that was taken from the scene
where the alien comes down in that warehouse thing.
Now, they manipulated the film so they don't look blue,
but that's not even the grating that's on the floor.
I remember the first time seeing this with an audience
and then, of course, the reporters, they go "And how did it feel?"
I said "I don't know. Why don't you ask Harry?"
I was so pissed off.
I mean, years later it works, so it's fine, but I think they could've warned me.
But you see, this death scene, it was never completed originally.
What I was supposed to do was crawl away
and I basically die of fright in the locker,
and it was supposedly the same locker that Jones had been in.
But that was never shot. And I kept asking when we were going to finish the scene,
cos, I mean, the next thing I knew, they were onto something else.
(Scott) I mean, we didn't know how she died...
But the implication that there was a kind of sexuality
to this androgynous male-female who could give birth itself,
but it could also impregnate.
So it's like... There are insects like that, so we based that on...
You know, a little bit of good old Mother Nature.
And was that some dreadful ending?
Was that some terrible invasion of her body, a rape?
And therefore, would there be a version of the Cartwright character?
Certainly whatever happens, there'd be more humanoid aliens now on board this craft,
and that's what she's now gotta destroy.
That's one of the difficulties. You now go again into this genre
and then think of something that is, you know, equally unique, and it's difficult.
You know, I just fell on Giger at these moments,
who hadn't been seen that much except in Switzerland.
Had a following actually at that moment, but he was just perfect.
The, you know, right elements came together at the right time.
(Cartwright) If you think about it, everybody who's done a horror movie after this
has copied what the alien looks like.
The only one that hasn't
really looked like this was in Signs as an alien.
But it's still that elongated sort of body.
But if you think about it, all of these movies, they've...
This obviously is a classic, and they've all sort of followed this theory.
This was the first time that it wasn't clean, I think.
All those outer-space movies were so clean.
And this isn't clean. It's dirty and it's grotty,
and I think he established a whole separate world out there.
So it was a really interesting concept, I think.
And then when he stumbled, of course, onto the Giger stuff -
which has all the erotic sort of overtones to it -
it just sort of added to the whole thing.
(Scott) So here we are in a new area, of which it wasn't shown in the film.
A lot of people were asking "Well, what happened to it?"
But we agonized over this. Have it in, have it out.
Did we need to see what was happening to them?
Did we need to see - most importantly of all - the tragedy of her
having to incinerate all her old friends, colleagues, crewmates.
And we finally elected not to. We wanted to move on.
But she does it really well.
Completely both fearful and vulnerable at the same time.
But somehow in control.
Who would go in there at that point?
If I mixed this, I'd certainly have the echoes of the warning system going.
So she knows she's against the clock.
This was a marvelous panel of Giger's on the right,
which was beautifully done.
And we get the fact that their morphing - metamorphosing -
they are changing into being consumed - I guess
by whatever the alien's organism is - into an egg.
Nobody'd seen this kind of thing.
That's one of the difficulties. You now go again into this genre
and think of something that is equally unique and it's difficult.
(Cartwright) Alfred Hitchcock used to say "If you don't see something,
it's your imagination."
Cos I did The Birds, and there was this scene with the jungle gym
and all the birds on the jungle gym.
Well, a lot of them were cardboard and a lot of them were real.
I said "Well, aren't people going to know?"
And he says "Well, no. Your eye sees something
and it's your imagination that makes you believe that everything is alive."
And it's the same thing with this alien.
I mean, you're sitting there and after a while you start looking at the tubing and stuff
to see if it's going to be coming out,
and then all of sudden it comes out like this and you go "Shit, I didn't see it there."
I mean, it's like it becomes so much more terrifying
than having something that you can blatantly see.
And I think that's where the other ones
have sort of gone off and you just sort of lose interest.
I mean, because you're not being a participant anymore.
You're not using your imagination to create things.
I mean, this was the first time that there were people,
where each character, somebody could get involved with.
And I was worried because I seemed to cry through the whole thing,
and they said "No, you're the audience. You're the one who's reasonable."
"Let's get, you know, out of here."
So I guess it worked, obviously. I mean, they've done four, so...
I think it was probably a very good formula.
(Scott) You know, the thing about a film like this is,
this is a lot of perpetual demonstration of heart-stopping terror
because if the actor can't give it to you, then the audience ain't gonna feel it.
Right? And eventually the wear-out factor on the beast will wear out.
That's why I always kept it to minimal, like the shark.
- The less you see, the better. - (Weaver) Absolutely.
(Scott) And so there's a lot of stuff...
And I'll always remember, in watching the end of the big mix,
thinking "Good God, there's 17 and a half minutes at the end of this movie
where Sigourney has no dialogue, just a lot of physical stuff."
"Running around in a constant state of catatonic terror."
- Right? - (Weaver) That's my best thing.
(commentators laugh)
(Scott) No, but it's hard, isn't it?
(Weaver) I loved that part of it. I loved...
I loved the character, and just doing it all with images
because I think it emphasized her loneliness, her isolation.
And the fact that... You know, she could have talked to her cat, I guess,
but I loved that. I thought, she couldn't even speak or communicate with anyone.
- It made her more vulnerable, I thought. - (Scott) Yeah, but it's hard.
It's difficult for... As an outsider looking in - because that's what my job is, to look in -
I always thought... I was actually full of admiration for what you did,
particularly through that whole process,
cos that's an area in the film that can easily become two-dimensional, right?
And I think you got... Somehow, you added two dimensions,
so we had four dimensions going there. I always thought that was great.
I really like the performance of the light here as well
because you're just using flat-on strobe lights here.
I'd love to get stills of this actually.
(O'Bannon) It just... It was like a bolt of lightning when I realized
that the audience didn't have to be told.
What I realized then was that if it was difficult or artificial to tell,
then it shouldn't be told at all.
That the only things that the audience should be told,
in terms of exposition,
were things that were natural and easy for the characters to be speaking about.
And that if it was not natural and easy for them to be speaking about these things,
then it shouldn't be in there at all.
And this is a principle of exposition that I've used ever since.
Not just in dialogue, but in general.
Any time that I find myself explaining something in a screenplay,
and it seems forced or unnatural, that's when I stop and say:
"Ah."
"That's because it doesn't need to be told. It shouldn't be told."
If it belonged in the story, it would emerge naturally.
If it doesn't emerge naturally, it shouldn't be in there
and it's just gonna sound horrible.
Didn't matter what they were doing out there. Who gave a honk?
It mattered to us, the filmmakers. It mattered to me, the writer,
so that we could create a plausible world for these people,
so that you could perceive them as real people in a real situation with a real history.
(Scott) Now, the film was meant to be over when she goes inside.
You take off, you do the signing off.
Now, clearly, you cannot end the film here,
even with a big bang behind her.
And, you know, the big bangs then are not the big bangs we could do today.
But you know what? Today it'd be CGI. This is all real.
Inside the studio, on the set,
which is, you know, only firewood.
Okay, so this is all designed as the end of the movie.
So there's a 1 -megaton thing gonna go off in a second.
And graphic design, interesting, huh?
Just a flat card, nothing happening.
Just the sound and mixing between three cards.
And I figure you've gotta have two or three.
I got the wobbling down now pretty good.
Nobody had really wobbled the camera till this moment, I remember that.
Something's really wobbling the camera.
A bit unsure about the red ball.
And score.
Now, this would be the end of the film.
That's it. She'd do a signing off there.
And I had to say "No. You know, you can't do that. It cannot possibly end there."
You know, we made it for 8.6, which even in those days was pretty cheap.
(Weaver) I didn't know that. I thought it was 14.
- (Scott) Eight-point-six. - (Weaver) Wow.
(Scott) Yeah. So at the end, I said:
"I wanna spend X to give you a fourth act."
"How much?" And I said "Well, it'll take us four days."
"Four days?"
I said "Well, you don't even know what I'm gonna do yet."
"Let me explain what I'm gonna do."
"Then you'll go 'how can you do that in four days?' as opposed to 'four days?"'
I said "We're not finishing the film when she jumps in the shuttle."
"There's a fourth act."
And they said "What do you mean?"
"The film's over when she jumps in the shuttle. It takes off, and bingo."
I said "No, there's a fourth act in there which will change the way films are made."
Because I think, until this moment, it's almost fair to say...
There's probably gonna be some small independent films
saying to me "You're full of bull."
But, you know, today we've gotten into the idea now of a "the end,"
then "the end," and then "the end."
- And by the way, here's the other end. - (Weaver) Yeah.
(Scott) And I always wanted to close the lid and then suddenly let it out again.
- Ba-bam. Okay? - (Weaver) Yes.
(Scott) So when Ripley goes into that shuttle,
there's a moment where you know the film isn't over.
When you're sitting in the seat and the camera's craning up
and Jerry Goldsmith does a really great little turn in the cue,
and that's where the screw turns.
And you can feel the whole audience, who are now...
At this first-time screening, you could feel that they were like that.
You could feel that screw turning there in the lid, and you could feel people go:
"Oh, no. Please, God, let me out of here."
- Which is a great thing to have going. - (Weaver) Yes, yes, yes.
Well, I loved all of that also. I'd done a lot of dance so it really...
I think so much of these movies is physical and sensory.
And, you know, to just be there with the smell of the smoke and everything.
- You know, it was so eerie and scary. - (Scott) Yeah, yeah.
(Weaver) And I loved the music that you picked. What was the music?
(Scott) We used Tomita, cos I remember saying... We talked about this on the phone.
Cos I was thinking "Whatever I can do right now, she's on her own," right?
So I said, I'd been playing with Tomita in the editing room as a temp track -
a temp score.
And he'd done "Planets," and one of them was "God of War is Mars."
(Weaver) Right, right, right. Which we used a lot in Alien 3, I think.
(Scott) And I said "Do you want...?"
I was very tentative about this, about suggesting it.
And I was really amazed when you said "Absolutely."
"Anything like that would be brilliant."
I said "Look, I can organize half a dozen 15-inch speakers down the side of the set,
and I've got this great piece of music which you may find extremely useful."
"Cos not only does it sound like engines, it is extremely threatening and ominous."
You said, "Anything like that. What is it? Let me hear it."
Bang, and we used that.
But it drove the sound guys crazy because everything had to be resounded.
- (Weaver) Oh, yeah. - (Scott) At that moment I didn't care.
- (Weaver) No. - (Scott) I said "No."
- (Weaver) There wasn't much dialogue. - (Scott) No. Ha, ha, ha.
(Weaver chuckles)
(Weaver) And I remember asking you not to tell me what was gonna happen
- so that I could be really surprised. - (Scott) Yeah, right.
(Weaver) And I've always felt that the reason...
I mean, just casting, as you say, Bolaji Badejo, who's that...
You know, his arm... My arm was like his leg.
I mean, he looked like he was from another world anyway,
but when you put the suit on him, it was stunningly beautiful,
as well as being terrifying.
And all you needed was that one gesture, and it was so scary.
(Scott) We always wanted to make him intelligent.
(Weaver) We actually wanted to have more of a sort of quasi-sex scene.
And who was the executive at Fox in London?
- Peter...? - (Scott) Yeah, Peter Beale.
(Weaver) Peter Beale would come on the set and give us a very stern Germanic look.
And kind of look at his watch, and basically said to you:
"You have two days to finish this," or something.
And so this whole other thing...
We wanted the alien to come and look at her through the glass
and be intrigued by the soft pinkness of her compared to him.
We wanted him to be that intelligent, and that it kind of turned him on.
(Scott) Exactly. There was a moment that we wanted...
(Weaver) "Beauty and the Beast," I think we were going for.
(Scott) Exactly, right. Yeah.
(Weaver) There is an appetite for a fifth one, which is something I never expected.
And, you know, I say:
"Well, it's really hard to come up with a fifth story that's new and fresh,
but I have wanted to go back into space."
I think outer-space adventure is a good thing for us right now
because Earth is so grim.
And so we've been talking about it, but very generally.
(Scott) Yeah. It's a tough one, particularly with the success of 4.
I think if you close the lid, it should be the end of the first chapter.
- (Weaver) Mm-hm. - (Scott) And I think, very simply,
what no one's done is simply gone back to revisit "What was it?"
- No one's ever said: - (Weaver) Where did it come from?
(Scott) "Who's the space jockey? He wasn't an alien."
- (Weaver) Yeah. - (Scott) "What was that battleship?"
"Is it a battleship, is it an aircraft carrier?"
"Is it a biomechanoid weapon carrier as opposed to an aircraft carrier?"
"Why did it land? Did it crashland
or did it settle there because it had engine trouble?"
If those things have engines. Everything has an engine.
- (Weaver) Or did he get the SOS? - (Scott) Exactly.
- And how long ago? - (Weaver) Yes.
(Scott) Cos those eggs would sit there.
(Scott) Sigourney said "I feel I wanna sing something to keep me distracted."
And she came up with "You Are My Lucky Star."
I thought "What a great idea."
And then the powers that be back at the studio said:
"Do you know how expensive 'You Are My Lucky Star' is?"
But that was it.
I think it's nice, the idea of having her choosing to sing,
almost as an iron bar, to hang onto her own sanity.
Can you imagine if this was real?
I thought it was a good idea so we just did it.
(Stanton) Yeah, there's a lot of talented people involved in that.
Sigourney was great.
And that's usually a man's part,
and to carry it off with this strength that she has - this presence -
that's very impressive.
And a great statement for the women too.
(Stanton chuckles)
The women's movement.
(Scott) This is, again, a very good view of the alien.
I think you've seen very little snippets of him up to now,
but the danger is "Yes, he's a man in a suit," but then it would be.
It would be a humanoid version of an alien life form.
This is the most vulnerable moment for the way the alien looks.
Bang.
And that's half the ship hanging upside down.
That's a stuntman called Roy Scammell.
And they're saying "Yeah, but how you gonna do the engines?"
And I said "Water."
They said, "What do you mean, 'water'?" I said "Make a ring of water."
"Overcrank it all and it will look like plasma engine."
They said "What's a plasma engine?" I said "I've no idea, but it sounds good."
And as far as I'm concerned, it looks like a plasma engine, and that's that.
That's just water with an arc above it - obviously at a safe distance -
so when the water comes on, it rings.
The lights go on as well, and you get a sense of jet power.
(Rawlings) Well, we wanted to linger on the demise of this creature
as long as you possibly can.
If you just had it with her blasting the engine to shoot him away,
it would have been over and done with.
And there would be no satisfaction for her - that she got rid of it.
So you have him struggle to stay in there, but when he goes,
he then goes again and again.
If you could have done it three or four times, it would have just held anyway.
You just wanted to see this thing going forever.
Or hopefully.
I should reach the frontier in about six weeks.
(Scott) I love all these oblique references to "frontier" and "six weeks."
You don't really know what the distances are,
you don't know how long or what "six weeks" means.
How long is she gonna go to sleep for?
But either way, she's gonna go into a hyper-sleep
and go into hibernation with Jonesy.
(Weaver) Would you ever wanna go back to where they came from?
(Scott) Oh, I think you have to.
(Weaver) I think that's the question I've always asked myself:
"What kind of society are they, if they are one?"
"What kind of world do they come from and why did they leave?"
"Why did they send aliens out?"
(Scott) It's entirely illogical that we are the only people in this galaxy.
- (Weaver) I think so too. - (Scott) It's entirely illogical.
(Weaver) It would be so disappointing, and ridiculous, really.
- (Scott) "That's us?" - (Weaver) Yeah, you can't.
(Scott) If you believe in the big bang, which is... From that to where we are now,
is such an accident of trillions of events to do the right thing
so that you can sit right here, is actually impossible.
So a scientist will say "It is actually the wand of God,
or it's a far more superior being that enables us to be sitting here."
That's where science and religion start to do that. Right?
(Weaver) I think it would be great to go back
because I'm asked that question so many times:
"Where did the alien come from?"
People really wanna know in a very visceral way.
(Hurt) Well, I mean, it's become an enormous -
I mean, on a huge scale - cult film, you know?
And, you know, I think the sci-fi freaks... I mean, it's a major, major movie so...
And, you know, I, by chance happened to be in one of the major scenes.
So the photograph they're always asking me to draw on is the actual birth itself.
I almost have to put an arrow to say which is me.
(Hurt chuckling)
(Cartwright) Well, part of the whole thing was the fact that Ian's character...
Remember, he asked us whether or not we ever tried to communicate with it?
And none of us ever did. We just assumed it was big, ugly and nasty.
So now, nobody ever bothered to communicate with it or try.
- (Stanton) With the monster? - (Cartwright) With the monster.
(Stanton) Well, what the fuck you gonna say to him? Wah...
(Cartwright) Well, no, but it's like a "Beauty and the Beast" thing.
(Skerritt) That's the problem, Harry.
We didn't communicate, it felt ignored, it got pissed.
And people... It wanted a hug probably.
(Stanton) It didn't look like something that would be articulate in English.
What are you talking about, communicate with it?
(Cartwright) That's what... No, that's what's he says.
"Did anybody try to communicate with it?"
- (Stanton) What, Ian says that? - (Cartwright) Yeah, when he's a robot.
The whole thing is nobody bothered to try to...
(Stanton) Yeah, I hate Ian in this.
(commentators chuckle)
(Cartwright) Nobody bothered to try to communicate with it.
They just assumed it was awful.
Who knows? Maybe it wasn't necessarily out to hurt us,
but nobody bothered to try to see if there was any difference.
(Skerritt) No, it was out to hurt us. Yeah.
(Stanton) We should have cuddled it and pet him a little bit.
(Skerritt) Anything that's got hydrochloric acid running through its veins is out to hurt.
- (Cartwright) To get us? - (Skerritt) Yeah.
(Cartwright) But that was part of the whole thing.
(Stanton) Well, that's all for me, isn't it?
(commentators chuckling)
Can I go now?
[ENGLISH - US - SDH - COMMENTARY]