This weekend, Brian and I watched a documentary on the Alien Saga. I haven't seen all of the movies, but Brian is a big fan. I wanted to watch the documentary mainly out of curiosity, and because I love learning more about how/why a movie was made.
One of the individuals interviewed for this documentary was the writer Dan O'Bannon. He was cracking me up! It was obvious that this guy was bitter about something. He was a failed comedy writer, so he decided to make auidences squirm with the first alien movie. He talked about sexual the movie was and how uncomfortable he wanted to make male movie goers. (I can't repeat what he described the alien laying his eggs in your mouth as. It was really mind-blowing though.)
Tom Skerritt (who was in the first film) was also amusing. It was obvious that the Alien movies were REALLY hard and uncomfortable to make. Hot and heavy costumes. (Apparently, some of the actors passed out in them.) Strobe lights that made the actors nauseous. Working 7 days a week all day for 4 months. Not the glamourous life of a Hollywood actor.
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4 comments:
Sounds like a really cool show! I'll have to try and check it out sometimes. The whole alien laying eggs thing still makes me cringe even when not watching the movie.
Nice to see actors do hard work sometimes! Of course now with the emphasis on CGI and live action captioning, it doesn't seem like they suffer like in the older days.
Yeah. Good to know that they earn those millions. ;-)
I'm also a big fan of the Alien films -- at least the first two -- the rest of the films are lacking a bit, but the first two are cinematic masterpieces, both for different reasons.
The original Alien was a claustrophobic horror film that succeeded because the filmmakers chose to show as little of the alien as possible; viewers filled in the missing visuals with their own imaginations, which made the film all the more scary.
Aliens was an all-out action film that threw the characters into stressful situation after stressful situation with little downtime.
Both films were scary for completely different reasons.
The sexual undertones of the aliens can be attributed in large part to the twisted mind of Swedish artist H.R. Giger. He loved mixing organic (especially human) and industrial themes, and it shows in the original design of the Alien. His original creature design for the Alien even incorporates a human skull into the alien's head, and it can be seen in only a few scenes in the film.
Boy, I'm a big geek, aren't I?
Nah, you aren't a geek. But I don't think you need to watch the documentary. ;-) You probably could have written it.
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