"Dan came to my door one day, was a fan of my cartoons, and wanted to meet me." "It didn't take long to discover that Dan was a cinema student at USC... ..and was involved in doing fantastic cinema, which I was very interested in." "And after an exchange of enthusiasms... ..and the fact that I had this other secret love of film,... ..l ended up assisting them in a small way by doing some designs for their student film..." "..which they called Dark Star, directed by John Carpenter,... ..who was Dan's friend at the time." "Dark Star, of course, was a student film,... ..which ended up getting a theatrical release." "And Dark Star was a comedy - certainly meant to be." "I saw this work." "I knew Dan had cowritten it and designed the special effects." "It was done for a ridiculously small... even by Corman's standards..." "I said "He's great."" "On its first release, people didn't laugh." "John and I went to some theatres to see and nobody was laughing." "I found the experience traumatic." "We worked so hard to get a particular audience response." "There was nothing." "So I scooted way back from comedy after that... ..cos I realised that, among other things, comedy is individualistic." "Everybody laughs at something different." "But they're all afraid of the same thing." "So a couple of years down the line... ..the idea came to me to do... ..what essentially was a Dark Star stood on its head - scary." "I told him that I wanted to work with him." "I liked his work a lot." "He was very suspicious of me cos I had something to look at - his film." "And I'd never gotten a movie made at that point in my life." "I'd been struggling I don't know how many years at that time." "Five, six years?" "Something like that." "Seven?" "He said "Have you got some scripts you developed?"" "So I sent him two scripts that I had either cowritten or co-storied." "Sometimes I'd do the story, sometimes the screenplay." "He was impressed." "He said "Let's have a meeting."" "Ron Shusett is..." "He's a force of nature." "He's a feral child." "And he's a very brilliant and creative man." "I went down to see him... ..and it was weird cos on that day was born both Alien and Total Recall,... ..because I had an option on the short story by Phil Dick then,..." "..and I couldn't get a script on it, so I told him about it and he knew the story immediately." "He said "l love that story - We Can Remember It For Your Wholesale. "" ""l'd like to develop that with you."" "He said "l've got this idea for a project, too."" "He says "Monster movie." I said "l've never gravitated towards those."" "So I pitched it to him, the idea of Alien." "I had the first half of it." "He said "l can't make a breakthrough from here,... ..but I'll help you do Total Recall, you help me do Alien. "" "That's why it's amazing - both movies were born in that second, you know?" "And so we did." "Since he had a start, we were gonna tackle that first." "And we put aside Total Recall and tried to do something about Alien." "I tried to help him get further with it, but before we ever could we got sidetracked... ..because Dan was hired to do the special effects on the first incarnation of Dune." "And I was brought in to manage all of the special effects in general,... ..which was quite a challenge in a foreign country and a foreign language." "And when we were well under way,... ..and a lot of stuff was designed some months into preproduction,... ..Jodorowski went to an exhibit of Giger's paintings at some art museum." "And he was very enthusiastic... ..and he then contracted with Giger to do some designs." "And I was moved." "I was impressed at his originality... ..and I found the paintings disquieting,... ..disturbing in the extreme." "That was how I first encountered Giger's work." "After Jodorowski's movie closed down,... ..Dan had spent his money, because he'd been making a salary,... ..but we all know your biggest money comes in making a movie." "So he'd used up all his money and was broke." "I ended up with no money, no apartment, no car,... ..and all my belongings in storage and no place to stay." "One of those desperate situations... ..and I asked Ron if I could stay with him till I got back on my feet." "Called me from Paris, said "Can I stay on your couch?" "I'm broke." I said "Yeah."" "Then we resumed our relationship." "It was quite a setback." "I moved into Ron's, moved in on his sofa, slept for a week " "..that was my depressive response." "Then, at the end of the week, I got up off Ron's sofa and said... .."All right." "Now I'm gonna do something to get myself off of Ron's emergency rolls here."" "And so I went to where my belongings were in storage up in Lyon in Hollywood... ..and I got out my desk and my typewriter, set 'em up in Ron's front room." "And we addressed ourselves to finishing Alien." "And it took us, I'm not sure how long, but we worked from that first act he had." "And we got..." "The breakthrough was the "chest burster"." "I said "What d'you think?"" "He said "lt depends on what you do with the second half."" "I said "Yeah, and I don't know where to go with it."" "Little while later Ron comes back into the front room... ..and he said "Do you remember you told me about a script?"" ""An idea you had about monsters getting on a B-17... ..during World War ll?"" ""Gremlins?"" "I said "Oh, yeah."" "Basic idea there was that during a bomb raid some gremlins jump off a cloud... ..and get on the tail of a B-17." "Then, as it's on its way back to base,... ..these little monsters start working their way forward through the plane, toward the front,... ..killing men as they go." "And the trick is to try to barricade them back there until they can get back to base and land." "And he said "Yeah." Well, his point was obvious." "His point was why don't you do that for the second half in the spaceship?" "I said "That's a good idea."" "The rest of the structure wrote itself." "I remember it was three weeks and we had it just exactly as you see it with one exception." "We didn't have the robot idea." "That was later contributed by Giler and Hill, either jointly or one of them." "Other than that, the script you saw, which we wrote based on that three-week outline,... ..was almost exactly the movie you saw on the screen." "Ronnie and I made the deal with an independent production company... ..called Brandywine Productions." "It took a while." "There were many rewrites, and people, you know,..." "As I said, the robot-head idea emerged from them." "We didn't know who the director would be." "There were ten directors before Ridley Scott." "We were in little, tiny offices in Ridley's place in Soho... ..and this script came in." "As it was science fiction with a title like Alien, I remember the two of us wrestled with it... ..so that it was a me-first, me-first thing." "But anyway, Ridley won, so I had to sit for an hour and a half... ..while Ridley sat in the next room reading it,... ..screaming out "Oh, my God!" "Oh, my God!" as he came to certain bits in it." "Anyway, it was a good, fast, fantastic read." "And the thing which gave it a green light was that just at that moment Star Wars opened." "I went and saw Star Wars, I think, in the opening week... ..and, of course, that, like everybody else, blew me away." "And it completely set me off course." "That freaked him out like it did many people who saw that for the first time,... ..and I think he again saw the opportunity of science fiction." "As soon as the science fiction came through the door I was on the plane in 17 hours... ..into Hollywood... ..and met with the guys - Giler, Gordon Carroll,... ..Walter Hill,..." "..Dan O'Bannon and Ron Shusett and Ron Cobb." "They did hire Cobb to work on a weekly basis... ..to see what he could do, if his designs would be feasible." "So all during that year when we first optioned from Fox... ..they employed Cobb, and he was on a weekly salary, working on many designs." "I found myself working with the English science-fiction illustrator Chris Foss,... ..and just turning out drawings in an old rehearsal hall... ..above one of the old stages on the Fox lot for months and months and months." "It was in some ways frustrating cos we just couldn't sense a direction,... ..so I was suggesting things and Chris was as well, with talk of getting Giger involved." "I had some correspondence with Giger " "..some letters and some telephone discussions with him." "And I thought it through very carefully." "I wanted to get the best value out of whatever association we had with Giger." "And so I was very specific about what I asked him to design." "And he said he will give me $1 ,000, if I design the "face hugger" for him." "And he described me this egg, and it was a big egg,... ..and I thought in this big egg must be a big beast, ja?" "So I did quite a big alien face hugger." "I worked like..." "Normally you do industrial design,... ..you think what kind of thing he has to do,... ..what function this beast has." "I mean, it has to jump - it needs a tail like a spring " "..and it needs something to hold,... ..then hands, or fingers, or whatever, to hold the head." "And then I looked on the Egyptian opener of a mouth to get the soul out, you know?" "Something to open the mouth." "Like a combination of that." "That had been my first alien design I did." "(O'Bannon) He did the paintings in Switzerland." "He had them photographed, four by five transparencies." "I was very thrilled with what he came up with." "My next job there was to stick with it and get those paintings on the screen." "We then showed Ridley Giger's designs, some of the sketches,... ..and also his books of his artwork." "And I always remember there was a shot of the alien in it,... ..which Ridley had literally put pencil marks round." "(Giger) The Necro-gnome Five has no eyes." "The Necro-gnome Four has these pipes or tubes behind." "So it was a combination from that." "And I nearly fell off the desk, said "That's it." "Why look farther?"" "And so that's how I saw it." "It was as simple as that." "I've never been so certain about anything in my life." "I've never been so sure about one thing in all my life as when I saw Giger's book... ..cos there seemed to be some hesitation as to whether or not this was the direction,... ..but not from Dan." "Dan and I were absolutely certain." "And I just said "That's it."" "Ridley went to Fox and said "l have to have this man."" "They said "You're the director." "If you insist on him, fine."" "That's how we were able to put Giger through." "So I had this immediate take on it." "The budget at that point was 4.2 million,... ..which at that time was pretty good cos I made The Duellists for 900,000 all in." "And I met with Alan Ladd, I went back to London." "I said I'll storyboard the movie because that's what I'm able to do." "And I sat there for a month and storyboarded the movie the way I saw it." "And I went back to LA, and the power of the storyboard... we doubled the budget." "And after about three weeks after that... ..Ridley Scott with two other guys came to my home in Zurich... ..with Gordon Carroll and David Giler." "He said that he would like very much that I work for 20th Century Fox... ..doing the alien that he has seen in my book." "And so I said "Oh, that's fine."" "So I became involved in these things." "And I tried to make drawings of my dreams." "I read Freud, you know, his dream book,... ..and I tried to build up dream images." "At this time I also had the book where I put in my dreams." "And I always looked the day before what I did, or the night before what happened... ..so I could see that often it was very influenced by that." "And I think Giger has an extra quality of one of the most frightening things of all " "..a quality of reality,... ..um, combined with a sort of his own form of fantasy." "And I think that's what makes it stronger is the reality, not the fantasy." "(woman) And was it easy to work with him?" "Very." "Very." "And, in fact, I'm hoping that maybe we'll do another film very soon." "I got on very well with him, and it was good because it was one designer to another." "One of the more amusing aspects of seeing Giger's drawings long before we met him... ..and then finally realising we were going to meet him." "He was about to arrive at Shepperton, I believe,... ..and the fact that we were very nervous about meeting him!" "All of us said "We're not really sure we want to meet this guy", you know!" "He lived in the pub in Shepperton village." "Imagine having Giger in this pub!" "We used to go in the bar at night and everybody'd wind down." "Giger'd sit there and play jazz piano." "And we'd hear all these stories from his girlfriend... ..about the bones of his wife hanging up in his living room, on the wall, up on the beam." "We'd look at his drawings and think "Yeah, that's about right."" "(Cobb) And, of course, as everyone said, it was so funny." "He was just a guy." "Just sort of a... kind of a quiet, pleasant fellow who had his image... ..and his fascinating projection of these darker occult things he loved to fool with." "He would do amazing things - put up these big sheets of paper and pin them to the wall... ..and then, with a little piece of cardboard and an airbrush, he would sketch and draw... ..and turn giant full-size paintings in just a matter of hours." "It was amazing to watch him work." "I don't think anybody has come up with a design or an idea for an alien entity... ..that is as profoundly, um,..." "..frightening... ..and dark as Giger's alien." "Nope." "There's just nothing else." "Ridley, he never wanted to show the actors the alien." "Then one day when it was finished, before we made the mould,... ..he said "OK, now it's time."" ""We start shooting in a few days and now you have to get familiar with the... alien."" "So he invited everybody to our studio... ..and I was standing there with the cognac and glasses." "And Sigourney came and said "Oh, I don't need any cognac."" "She stepped in, and then she rushed out and said "Give me a glass of cognac!"" "(laughing) She was totally scared!" "When the film came out, some critics..." "They always complain about something." "They said "We don't have much character development."" "I said "Well, that's not what the doctor ordered." "That's not what the film is about."" "You just need to know enough about each character and you're off." " Still with us, Brett?" " Right." "(Scott) Casting a cross section where you have unspoken politics between decks..." "Yaphet and Harry Dean were always very clearly written... ..as the, to quote an English expression,... ..as the "oily rags" from the engine room." " (Brett) We get a half share to their one." " Our time is their time." "That's how they see it." "Same old shit, man." "(Parker) I know why they don't come down here - because of you." "They were the ones creating the "them and us"." "I wanted Veronica to be the fragile one... ..in the process,... ..who, let's say, could have been a geologist... ..probably wondering what she was doing there." "And therefore she is the first one to have this sense of foreboding,... ..which she evoked very well." "This built-in fear, which first of all begins with her thoughtfulness." "I think the first telling sign is when she's staring out at the planet." "I think she's smoking a cigarette,... ..looking through the plate glass at this unfriendly environment." "Ian was a very well-known English theatre actor,... ..who I thought at first was gonna be, you know,... ..lovey!" "And would want endless discussions about, you know, motivation." "Oddly enough, he was the easiest of them all." "I liked Tom's pragmatist,... ..very cool captain." "(Ripley) How can you leave that decision to him?" "Look, I just run the ship." "Anything to do with the science division, Ash has the final word." "How does that happen?" " That's what the company wants to happen." " Since when is that standard procedure?" "Standard procedure is to do what they tell you to do." "I was asked what did I think about the leading character being female." "There is an explanation for this, you know." "Is there really?" "!" "I wanna hear your goddamn explanation!" "(sobbing) I wanna..." "I thought it was no contest." "I thought "Yeah, why not?" "It's a great idea."" "It was Alan Ladd Jnr who decided to make the lead a woman." "Dan and I wrote it for a man, but we had an asterisk and it said... .."Any of the roles can be played by women, let's say two, to reach a broader audience."" "One day Laddy was looking at us and said "Could the lead be one of the two women?"" "We said "Yeah." "We just never thought of it."" "Horror movies with a woman in the lead weren't commercial." "He said "Try it."" "(Scott) It didn't hit me as being extraordinarily unusual." "I just took it on board, said "Yeah, sure." "Good idea."" "Argh!" "Ridley gave me quite a lot of photocopies of Moebius's work,... ..which he was obviously very taken with." "And I had a sort of briefing from him at the very beginning... ..when we talked about the suits." "He generally sort of wanted them to have a Japanese look, a sort of samurai look." "He was going for something practical and yet sort of striking as a design... ..and also looked used and looked worn." "And also he came up with this idea of the various outside vehicle suits, spacesuits,... ..should be colour-coded for each person." "Again, I think Ridley came up with the idea of the Ancient Egyptian wings... ..for Weyland-Yutani's logo." "I came up with the Nostromo patch... ..and all the various little badges for the different departments:" "Engineering and Science, and so forth." "This is a yellow suit as one of the different colours." "And this has got bits of piping and sort of Japanesey sort of cording on it." "And a bogus read-out of some sort on the wrists." "On Star Wars these were always known as "greeblers",... ..which I think is a term which is still used in the science-fiction fraternity." "These are the spacesuit pants." "Nothing very special about them." "There's a patch on the back here which is a stylised Union Jack." "They all had different national badges,... ..or at least there were American ones and British ones." "And various pockets." "And kneepads down here, quilted kneepads." "Right, this is the helmet." "This is, in fact, the reduced-size helmet... ..made of fibreglass with a bronze finish." "Um, two holes in the front for air pipes, which were impractical." "A practical light on top." "You can see inside there's bits of wiring." "This is very heavy." "Various bogus controls here." "Nowadays, when we do this sort of thing,... ..we usually have practical electronic read-outs on these helmets." "This is another very, very heavy item." "This is a sort of backpack, which is supposed to represent the air supply for the suit." "This pipe attaches to the helmet." "When the artist can't stand being in the suit any more, you have to undo all these pipes... ..and take the helmet off, and the whole thing becomes quite complicated." "These are rather unpleasant archaeological remains of a pair of gloves." "I think these were actually made out of some sort of plastic,... ..as opposed to an ordinary pair of gloves with bits of plastic stuck on." "This is a pair of little moon boots, as bought in the shop,... ..with bits of plastic and webbing stuck on them." "Boots were always a problem." "Sometimes they're the least satisfactory part of the suit." "Fortunately they're not seen much and we get away with what we can." "This is a sort of chest pack." "Again, quite heavy, made of fibreglass." "And this has a handle which is actually nonpractical." "It's supposed to come in and out." "Quite why, I've totally forgotten,... ..but it was something, no doubt, that Ridley was insistent on at the time." "This is the chest and shoulder protector." "Armoured shoulder pieces with the little technical badges." "This is the chest plate." "And that had a plate with the name of the wearer on it." "In this case it's Kane." "This is just an ordinary prod, like a cattle prod." "It's got a portable battery." "It's insulated all the way here, all the way up to here." "Just make damn sure nobody puts their hand on the end of it." "These are some of the most imaginative and creative props ever done for a movie." "This little item here is the cat box." "And this is a really neat little piece because it's totally dimensional all the way around." "It just looks really good." "They spared no expense on this film as far as making the stuff really look totally real... ..and totally perfect." "This looks functional to me." "This is interesting because this is a toolbox for the movie Alien... ..that ended up not being in the film." "What reason I don't know, but it's totally practical, as I can show you here." "See, the door opens." "There are actually tools in here that actually still work." "Remember, this is 1979." "Look at this." "It still works." "Pretty good." "1979 battery, huh?" "Here's what's interesting about this - the most interesting part." "You'll notice that there's a switch here." "It turns on the power." "Now watch this." "If I can get this plugged in here right." "These switches go on and... (whirring)" "..it actually works." "Lots of..." "Here's a great drill thing." "Look at this little guy." "Isn't he a cool-looking guy?" "Glue things on him and he becomes something else." "That's neat." "Looks like a mechanical armadillo or some sort of thing." "Movie magic." "Give me a demo." "(electric surge)" "Again." "You can see it's a pretty interesting piece." "One of my favourite pieces on here is the ice-cube tray, which I think is kind of neat." "But that's how Hollywood movie magic is done most of the time." "Now, they made this practical." "It actually turns on." "They used a sound effect in the movie which was better,... ..but this is how it worked when they were shooting." "(beeping)" " And when it hit the alien, it would do that." " (continuous beep)" "(hissing)" "Here's one of the hand weapons from Alien... ..that you actually just saw on their belts of the spacesuits." "They never actually took one out or used it, but it's a beautiful piece." "I don't know who designed this, but it's really, really very good." "Now this is interesting." "This is the front of the Narcissus in Alien." "What they did is they back-projected into that windshield the people wandering around." "There's a scene where Tom Skerritt listens to music in here." "Then Sigourney later on is getting in here." "It's all made of plastic and wood." "It's a beautiful piece of work." "There's so much detailing on this thing." "You cannot believe the detailing they put into this." "That's why this movie had such an incredible, great look about it." "You don't get any better than this kind of work." "Nostromo evolved..." "I think it was more Ron Cobb than anything else, from what I remember." "I think his basic design was how it wound up in the end." "When we first started it was a pretty small vehicle,... ..but then Ridley came on board and the pen started sketching... ..and the pen got further across the page." "Then two pages were joined together... ..and it carried on and it got bigger and bigger." "(Scott) I wanted the whole vehicle to have the scale of an aircraft carrier... ..and, of course, it was a refinery with four towers." "We wanted to evoke a very, very scary place,... ..almost like a gothic castle or a sunken submarine." "All those things had to be there as subnotes." "The towing vehicle was the Nostromo." "It was the tug." "(Johnson) That was the part that detached from the refinery... ..and went down to find the alien." "There was one sort of about two feet and then there was one about six feet,... ..and then there was a gigantic one, or reasonably gigantic." "Gigantic in terms of weight because of the way we started off building it... ..and because of the additions we had to put on it." "The amount of plastic cladding that was involved made it..." "It must have weighed a ton and a half or something." "Nick, could we do that?" "I mean, if we start level, almost nose down,... ..as she starts to hit the strata, can you do that?" "Like a Concorde, yeah?" "And to fly it or to land it, it was on a large pole arm that went out through the back of it." "I had a seven-ton electric fork-lift truck." "We could drive it along on tracks and then we could lower it down to give it its weight." "It was a model, but it weighed that weight so that's the only way we could achieve it." "In a sense, Ridley saw the science fiction of 2001,... ..which was very, very clean and probably very real,... ..and Ridley being very visually orientated, very much the art director,..." "..saw that he could dirty that down." "He could actually stick bits of tape over seats and things like that." "(Allder) His ability to sketch anything he wanted." "I think that was one of the things that helped me more than anything else " "..his ability to explain what he wanted, and left-handed as well, and just sketch this..." ""This is what I want to achieve." "What can we do?"" ""ls this possible?"" "We'd always say yes, and then think "How the hell am I gonna do it?"" "Sometimes it's good to have limitations, I think,... ..because then you have to become inventive." "And I was very frustrated about..." "particularly trying to find... ..what would occur designwise in each corridor, cos each one should look different." "Roger came in one day and said "l've been to a graveyard for aircraft."" "So we just dismantled aircraft." "(Powell) A lot of the stuff that we actually got,... ..like sort of the chairs in the command module... ..l remember came out of..." "I think one was an ejector seat from some scrap yard." "And we did what was called "clagging" things on." "We just literally put things, attached things to it, to give it kind of a pattern and a depth." "That's the first time I saw these warehouses full of aircraft parts where buyers went out... ..and bought this stuff from the RAF." "And you just had all these wonderful pieces you could just suggest." "And I could put in my drawings, "This would make a great back of this",... ..and backs of television sets - all sorts of things." "Ridley had this kind of idea in the back of his mind... ..that he wanted to make it sort of slightly..." "I think it was Aztec or Egyptian... ..or something about it - that sort of a certain feel." "And I remember the padding on the corridors changed colour two or three times... ..to the angst of the production department." "(Scott) Watch the walk thing, and cue John." "Action, John!" "Rise and shine, Lambert." "(Lambert) What time is it?" "What do you care?" "Number one:" "the set was really kind of brilliant." "To actually get into the set you'd say "Well, where's so-and-so?" "He's in the mess."" "You had to walk down the proper corridors to get to it." "There wasn't floating walls to walk into that set." "You'd have to physically walk down, through the hypersleep corridors,... ..through this corridor, another one to get to the bridge." "It was like shooting on a location." "(Cobb) I was still involved in exploring the look of the ship." "Ridley wanted us to explore the sense... ..that aspects of the Nostromo might look like a cathedral with votive candles,... ..which, of course, is what turns out to be Mother - the computer, the master computer." "All the lights, all being one colour, was meant to look like a niche in a cathedral." "Lots and lots of amazing ideas like this." "Most of them now started coming from Ridley for us to all explore." "Unlike other sets I'd worked on at that time, where you rip off ceilings to light the set,... ..none of those were ever taken off." "It was all shot and lit from the ground or from the sides or through the walls." "(Scott) Derek had to think carefully about how he lights the corridors... ..so he could simply switch the lights on and you're lit." "But when you get that even spread - I didn't want to get that even spread." "I wanted to get it more dramatic... ..so he had a plugging system where he'd take it off on one side." "It was a pretty simple process once he got it set up." "The interior of Nostromo,... ..the actual flight deck which Ridley had not liked... ..because the height of the actual ceiling parts of the Nostromo were too high... ..and because we were shooting 2:35 to 1 ." "When he saw it on rushes,... ..he felt that the command module looked a little, um, looked a little high." "And, of course, as we were shooting on widescreen,... ..why build a set that high if you'll never see it?" "I wanted to have the four walls." "I wanted to feel I was inside it... ..and have that sense of claustrophobia, which was important." "(Johnson) They sawed about four feet out of the middle section of the walls of the set... ..and dropped everything down." "And then rebuilt it all." "So when we started shooting everything was close." "The monitors were down at eye level... ..and people had to walk between things, instead of having space." "In fact, Sigourney's pretty tall." "So I think her head clearance was only four or five inches in the doors." "So when she was running she had to watch that she didn't brain herself." "(Allder) We had a directive, basically from Ridley,... ..to say that he would like everything on that set to be totally practical." "So every light, any button that was on any panel,... ..whether it be for a door on the bridge or anything, physically worked." "So when the artist pressed a button something else reacted to them." "Other lights would happen or something else would happen." "The seats would actually move backwards and forwards, they would recline." "So it was a very, very kind of mechanically intense set." "We had again Ron Cobb, and his kind of concepts were great... ..because he has this ability of being a bit of a mad scientist in kind of that way." "And he would just not have a door open." "There would be a reason why the door locks would work this way." "No matter what you did,... ..he'd always come up with some reason why this one works differently to the other one." "Because the pressure's outside and not inside and stuff like that." "So you used to work very closely with the art department on a lot of things like that." "The attention to detail was pretty good." "And I think when you're in there with all the monitors running... ..you really felt like you were almost there." "Locked and floating." "If it drops anytime now, we'll catch it." "Initial damping's going off." "Hold on, people, there's gonna be a little bump." "I was also aware of the fact that everyone was exceptionally good at it, though, too,... ..cos I knew it was much better than things I'd seen in other films." "And so you could rest assured that the picture would be weighted toward... ..uh, not drawing your attention to it,... ..but just getting rid of your doubt that this is a spacecraft and this is really working." "That's what you want in good design - you want everything to work,... ..so you can believe they're really there." "And I think that worked wonderfully well in the Nostromo." "Everyone thought they were trapped on that ship and couldn't get away,... ..and this damn thing was running around punching holes in their skulls." "Argh!" "(jangling)" "Giger's mind was behind the sort of..." "everything to do with the alien world." "The derelict spaceship, the egg silo,... ..the space jockey... um... all of that." "For me the alien world was my biomechanical world,... ..so it was, in a way, easy." "(Dilley) And his artwork was amazing." "And it's amazingly difficult to reproduce in three dimensions." "I mean, if you take Ron's artwork for spaceships and things like that,... ..it's got a very good architectural feel about it." "Somebody trained with an architectural background... ..could interpret those illustrations and get the stuff drawn up and made." "With Giger's stuff you don't have that ground to work from,... ..so you end up either sculpting clay models and then slicing the models up... ..to get the sections through the walls and the buildings, whatever it might be." "(Scott) We created a private studio in the corner of one of the smaller stages,... ..which was a lockup, so nobody could go in it." "I used to go in at five every evening to see how his day had been... ..and he'd be standing there dressed in black and covered in white powder." "He'd be there with clay in his hands and say "Zis I thought was the landscape... ..and the bones and this..."" "And he created this beautiful, um, presentation." "Because he's a sculptor, he likes to get his hands dirty,... ..so he was always, uh, you know, in with dirty hands... ..embellishing this or embellishing that." "Giger was always inspecting the set as it developed and... ..saying... .."We must have more bones on the set."" "I'd say "Yeah, but the bones of the set from your scale... ..are gonna be giant bones the size of this table."" "And, of course, we couldn't afford it." "So a lot of it had to be landscaped like a bleak... ..which is what you see - a bleak landscape - with the occasional peculiar rock formations." "(Dilley) Some were made on the set, depending on the size." "If they were 20-feet, 30-feet long, you didn't wanna make that in the workshop... ..and try and carry them down to the stage and then position them." "We would do another system there." "We would make the framework up on the set... ..in the position they wanted and where they were supposed to be,... ..and then you would wire-mesh them." "Cover them in plaster and literally sculpt them in position." "Now, that's OK, but the only disadvantage with doing it that way... ..is when Ridley comes on the set and says "Let's move it over here and shoot over here."" "It's not so easy to move as something that is light as a feather and four men can pick it up." "But when it's been made with wood,... ..and it's got an inch and a half of plaster on it, it's not so easy." "But we did it when we needed to." "The space jockey set,... ..that was all bone structure and ribs and... the whole way,... ..and all diminishing shapes." "It might just look like a flat wall back there, but it was very busy." "It was 45-feet high by 90... 100-feet long." "Just a very intricate back wall." "I remember Ridley coming on the set." "He said "We'll do this and make it bigger."" "I said "How?"" "So he brought in two of his boys in miniature spacesuits... ..and walked those down the middle of the set... ..and, of course, enhanced the size immensely." "(Giger) Sometimes it also happened that I was not ready in time." "You will see that in the space jockey that it's only half paint... ..and he had to film that absolutely the other day." "I was crazy." "It was at night, I was working on this shitty..." "Oh..." "Yeah." "All of us, when we're in preparation for movies, strive for 100'%' of what our vision is." "And if we end up with 80'%' we've done really well." "And I think what he was doing when you saw him doing that... ..was trying to achieve his 100'%'." "I said to Ridley "You can't shoot it like it is."" "He said "No, no." "We printed it a little bit darker."" "So I said "lt's not dark enough." "It looks terrible."" "You can see that in the beginning when you see first time." "The space jockey is not as dark as he later on is." "So that was, for me, terrible to see... ..that that got filmed before it was really paint in the right way." "(Kane) It is completely enclosed,... ..and it's full of leathery objects, like eggs or something." "Ridley was always looking for something different... ..and at that time there was a company in the studio that used to deal with lasers." "We found that it actually just lit this membrane of smoke." "It was a totally different look that people hadn't used before." "I don't think we know how we could've got that membrane without other big opticals,... ..which we couldn't afford to do because we didn't have really the big budget for it." "I did a kind of like a... for the eggs,... ..like an area around very organic-like tentacles, you know." "The eggs had been made in polystyrene." "They had to be first transparent... that you could see inside the movements of the alien " "..of the face hugger." "(Allder) We had membranes inside it that would pulse... ..because they were lit from inside to show the silhouette." "(Kane) Wait a minute." "There's movement." "The actual opening and closing was actually mechanical and literally done with wires,... ..again with the breathing membrane inside." "One of my young guys, every morning that was his job." "He used to go to a local abattoir... ..and he used to get pig intestines." "We used to get hearts, livers." "But they were all washed and completely hygienic to touch." "We had freezers that we used to keep them in." "They'd be used one day, then gone." "But if you actually hold one of these membranes up,... ..there's something you really can't produce artificially." "Nature has got this amazing kind of ability to do things that are very difficult to copy." "(screeching)" "There are such quick cuts that are in there, that make all these things really work." "If you dwell on them too long, you'd actually see." "Unfortunately, people with videos do try and find out,... ..but luckily they've never found out how a lot of these things were done." "You could feel the tension in the audience." "And then he looks in." "And I think one guy said "Don't look in."" "And it came out with a wallop and everybody goes bomp... ..and you know you're off." "I was always told that when the script was doing the rounds in Hollywood,... ..that if the chest-burster scene hadn't been in it,... ..the movie would've never necessarily seen the light of day." "But that was the pivotal scene that made everybody sit up and take notice." "That was the core of the idea that Dan had about..." "He got that from the wasp that paralyses the spider and lays its eggs on the spider,... ..and then buries it in the ground so that the living spider serves as food for the larvae." "He always was so horrified at that idea... ..that he felt he had to write a science-fiction screenplay... ..incorporating that particular concept." "I always remember the day when Giger walked in." "He was furious." "He wasn't happy with this chest burster." "And he always used to have to bring it in, whatever the object was, covered in a cloth,... ..so you'd then reveal what it was." "He came in with his arm bound up with a sack around it... ..and he looked really... not a happy fellow." "And a lot of talk and a lot of preamble..." "and obviously he was embarrassed about it." "He took it off and it was very funny cos it looked like a turkey on his arm." "I said "l don't know how this is gonna fit inside the stomach."" "That's when Giger said "l've got enough to do." "I've got the planet to do."" ""We haven't worked the egg out, or the face hugger."" "So we elected to take on board a guy, who is local here, called Roger Dicken." "So Dicken got involved in designing the little beast." "It was really strange." "We actually loaded poor John Hurt up over lunch time... ..and he had his false fibreglass chest piece over the top of that." "There's one of my guys supplying him with a cigarette... ..and in the other hand he's got a glass of wine." "We had all the shapes of the body with a T-shirt on... ..and Nicky built the rig which burst through the T-shirt." "Poor John on the table with the puppet all ready to go and the actors brought in,... ..in this long set where you couldn't see that it was a set, you know?" "You were all packed into this room,... ..like on location on the Nostromo you're shooting this scene!" "I just looked around at everybody and we were all shaking." "We were all shaking, just like this." "I mean, really involuntarily shaking." "Because the artists did not know what was going to happen on that first take." "Likewise, a lot of the crew didn't,... ..because nobody had ever seen what we were physically going to achieve." "It was frightening what we were going to see." "We knew how it was done, but it was frightening." "And we were scared to death it wouldn't work, or it would look silly." "And where were we if this scene looked ridiculous?" "You know?" "We're screwed." "Nothing else will work." "(Johnson) It didn't burst through first time." "It pushed up and there's blood everywhere and we felt we hadn't done that properly,... ..but it wound up in the movie cos it looks really good." "It lifts up everything." "(Allder) It was literally hit on two buttons." "One was the bump, bump." "First you see it bump once, then a second time,... ..and then the blood and it comes through." " (screeches)" " Ah!" "A pint and a half of blood somehow seemed to come straight out and hit her in the face." "She screamed "Ah!", like that!" "And then I think she fall." "That's where she disappears over the back of the seat, but she got up actually quite green." "(laughs) Yeah, that was strong." "I went to the dailies to watch, like, 40 minutes of this thing bursting out blood,... ..shot after shot." "There were so many cameras." "And it was overwhelming." "Derek Vanlint had to throw up." "He shot it on a 50-foot-tall screen, and you're sitting there,... ..you're seeing 20 minutes of the chest burster, and guts and everything." "He ran to the toilet." "I was impressed - this is the cinematographer." "I said "God, what have we wrought here?"" "I literally..." "You know, watching and watching and we saw so much more than anyone." "We saw every shot again and again and again." "And when I walked out of here, I walked right into a wall." "I just walked straight into a wall!" "And Cobb, who'd seen it being shot and was part of the creative... he got in..." "We drove to the screening room to look at this." "He drove there in his car." "Some of us walked." "He got into a grey car." "He tried to get in his car - his car was red." "He was so shook up, he was getting into an automobile with the wrong colour." "And he said "Oh, I just never thought it would look..." "I never..." He was just mumbling." "Then the next worry is what are the Fox executives gonna say when they see this?" "They're gonna faint!" "You know, like, this is wait a minute!" "This is like pornography." "It's so horrible, you know?" "It was fantastic, it was just fantastic." "(Allder) And then it went on to more of the glove puppet, where it turns round and that,... ..which is where Roger took over." "And poor Roger Dicken is laying underneath with his little hand puppet of the front part." "(screeches)" "Then suddenly Ridley said he wants its tail to whiplash everywhere." "My major contribution was to put an airline in the tail so that as it goes away..." "We cracked a valve open and 2,000lbs came down through a plastic tube... ..and it wants to go anywhere it wants to." "So we got this whiplashing around, knocking things off the table as it went through." "There's nothing like audience participation in something like that." "And you could cut the atmosphere in the theatre with a knife." "And when the chest burster happened,... ..what was interesting, there were some reactions... ..cos at that point I was standing on the side and I was on the third preview,... ..watching them with curiosity more than anything now..." "..cos I was starting to witness, um,... ..real, er... terror." "(Scott) I always felt it was a war machine - the aliens were weapons." "Ridley always used my book as the Bible of the whole film, you know." "He said "Like that and that." It always was in my books." "My whole biomechanic style came into that and I still work in this biomechanic style." "Ridley's fear and horror of what the movie might be tarred with at the end was... .."l do not want to make a film about a man in a rubber suit."" "I was allotted the task of casting somebody of fairly unique body proportions." "(Scott) Bolaji was close to 7, maybe 6'8", 6'9"." "Somebody saw him in a pub with a pint, in a tweed jacket and tie,... ..so they went over to him and said "D'you wanna be in the movies?"" "I think he gave the obvious retort." "And, of course, his whole body was very, very slender... ..and he was just thrilled to come into this process,... ..although I don't think he realised the agony he was in for..." "..when he was fitted into the suit and carrying the head,... ..which, whilst it was light, it was still heavy." "(Powell) He sculpted the first model out of bones and clay and God knows what else." "As you walked in there, the creature's standing there." "It would make you jump." "You'd go "Ah!" involuntarily." "It was so frightening " "..this great big black thing towering over you as you walk in." "It was incredible." "Incredibly effective." "He wanted it to have a tail because a tail can make a lot of, uh, movements." "I love the... what I call "the jelly bag"." "I always thought the head should be like aspic." "You know what I mean by aspic?" "It should be like an aspic, which in itself was an eye." "Whether the alien could see or whether the alien could simply sense like an insect,... ..l never had to answer that question." "Ridley always said "l have to play with..." "I need that I can play with several things,... ..like the expression."" "He showed me first time how you make it with very simple things,... ..with latex pieces from contraceptives, making lips or whatever." "And changing expression, showing two teeth like you have drawn it,... ..so I had it drawn already,... ..but he said "You really have to do it like that."" "A man we shouldn't forget is Carlo Rambaldi,... ..who actually built the mechanism to make it work and make the jaw work... ..and the interlocking jaw within the jaw." "(Cobb) It's truly a collaboration of everyone." "It wasn't all Giger, it wasn't all Ridley." "It was both." "It was Dan, it was the concept." "Everyone worked together." "It was just beautifully calculated to just scare the hell out of you every time." "What I liked was the subtle way Ridley showed the alien." "What really got me was how little we saw of it and how effective it was." "Aah!" "(Scott) It's like the old shark - you don't want to see too much." "You know?" "Jaws is great cos you hardly see it." "What I always liked very much was the scene with the cat when the alien comes down." "(hisses)" "Hey, I'm not gonna hurt you." "Come on." "Ridley always said "Don't give too much away in the beginning."" ""No, don't give it away." "Keep it for the..."" "And it's like that." "Very rare, but I think the tension he did, that's really strong." "It interests me, too, in that everyone swears the thing went through enormous changes,... ..but of course it didn't." "People think it was small at first, which it was when it burst out of the chest." "But after that, the creature was always the same size,... ..but everyone swears it was getting larger, you know!" "Or it looked entirely different in every shot, but it really didn't." "(Powell) I think the alien is, you know, the alien itself is the franchise, really." "It's a powerful, powerful visual." "Years later I finally... realised what a strong film... ..and what the music and everything, how that was done." "Just I felt what I was missing... ..a lot of scenes we worked on that was not seen." "And that was a little unsatisfying." "(moaning)" "Dallas!" "God!" "(Dallas moaning)" "Dallas..." "Kill... me..." "What-what did it do?" "Brett?" "I'll get you out of here." "I'll get you up to the shuttle." "Kill... me..." "What can I do?" "Mercy!" "First of all, the scene was an explanation of the cycle of things... ..and how and what had been happening to these people." "It's a great scene cos it's also an emotional scene,... ..but the film is on such a roll,... ..the dynamics are really working at that point... ..and suddenly the whole thing stopped, not because the scene wasn't interesting,..." "..but because the trajectory of the character at this point is to get out of there... ..and get on to that shuttle and get out of Dodge." "We took a big chance on showing the engines blast the alien." "We had these big high-pressure water pipes with misting sprays." "When she put the thing into overdrive, the lights came on with the high-pressure hoses." "(Johnson) The water sprayed out, which made the lights much more intense." "The alien dropped out on its cable." "(Johnson) It's such an effective shot with the noise." "It has real power to it, doesn't it?" "(engines rumbling)" "The fact that we're talking about it here 20 years later is absolutely amazing." "But I'm not surprised." "(Powell) From the technician part up to the top there was a definite buzz about the movie." "We all knew we were making something special." "It's a feeling that I've never known on a film since." "I had actually promised myself that I will always go, no matter what,... ..l would go to the first-night opening,... ..which has got to be one of the most incredible moments in my whole life." "Just thinking about it now, my skin can actually creep... ..to how enthusiastic it was kind of received." "Here, kitty." "When Harry Dean Stanton's going "Here, kitty, kitty", this guy said "Holy shit"... ..and he turned round and crawled across the chairs and got out into the aisle,... ..and he crawled out." "Then two or three other people started crawling out." "As it got nearer to the end of the thing, probably about 30-35 people had gone out,... ..either with their head down or their fingers in their ears." "It really got to some people." "They were in big shock." "It was effectively a new genre of movie, of horror movie." "I stepped out to smoke a cigarette and a guy came and said "You chicken?"" "I said "Yes, you're right."" "Because he thought that I'm afraid, that I can't resist to watch the movie." "And I said "Yeah, you're right." "It's too much for me"... ..because he didn't know who I am." "It's like a bad dream, you know." "A bad dream that you can't forget." "And it's also thrilling and fun, you know " "..the basic idea of enjoying being scared... ..because it's just so outrageously beyond your normal experience." "It takes you out of yourself." "It's true escapism, but at the same time it feels like a, uh,... ..a fable about any problem you may face in your life that's overwhelming." "When the work was finished on Alien, I thought it will be something special." "But I never know that it will be so important." "And I remember Gordon Carroll saying "You will get famous with this film."" "And I said "Oh, my God, I do not like to, uh..."" "I mean, in a way I have problem with, as an artist, as a fine artist, because of this film." "But I think the film itself gives me more other things than a fine artist." "I wouldn't be so successful probably as with the Alien film." "People always know me as the father of this alien... ..and (chuckles)... it's OK." "I remember being struck by the fact that LA had suddenly become smaller,... ..friendlier and more manageable." "Because my position in it had improved." "It was less frightening." "It actually felt to me as though the town occupied less acreage." "I always wanted to make great movies, and that's a truly great one." "Sometimes you wait your whole life - even if you have it in you, you don't get the chance." "First, they won't want your movie, and second, they won't do it your way." "So both things had to happen." "Then you gotta be surrounded with great people that bring their own brilliance to it." "I thought it might age because techniques have changed." "Impatience of audiences have changed... ..and therefore would it be slow?" "Would it still be as scary?" "Absolutely." "(Scott) You get so separated from it, it's like you didn't make it, but it's a good movie." "This is Ripley,... ..last survivor of the Nostromo,... ..signing off." "Visiontext subtitles:" "Natasha Cohn"