The Alien Saga

It waits in silence

and strikes without warning.

It inhabits its prey like a silent time bomb waiting to explode.

It is the perfect killing machine.

Released in 1979, Alien sparked a science-fiction revolution.

It gave us the screen's first bone fide female action hero.

Get away from her, you bitch!

And helped launch the careers

of some of Hollywood's most noted directors.

Now go behind the scenes

of one of the world's most popular and profitable science-fiction franchises,

and witness the evolution of the Alien saga.

Alien began in the mind of Dan O'Bannon,

a filmmaker whose 1973 science-fiction comedy Dark Star

had achieved a modest degree of notoriety.

In 1975, O'Bannon was hired to oversee the special-effects development

on a proposed French film production of Dune,

based on Frank Herbert's classic novel.

While working on visual design concepts,

O'Bannon was introduced to the disturbing work

of Swiss artist HR. Giger.

Over in Pans, I had met a Swiss artist named Hans Giger.

It was a revelation.

I thought to myself

"If somebody could get this guy to design a monster movie,"

"it would be like nothing anyone ever saw."

Unfortunately, neither Giger's nor O'Bannon's visions for Dune

would be realized.

The production was shut down for lack of funding.

Dune fell through with great abruptness,

and I ended up back in L.A. with no money, no car, all my belongings in storage.

And Ron Shusett was good enough to take me in

and let me live on his couch

Ron Shusett was also a young aspiring screenwriter.

He and O'Bannon quickly realized

that they might stand a better chance of setting a script if they worked together.

In search of the perfect story, they catalogued their ideas

before settling on a partially completed screenplay

that O'Bannon had been working on.

It was the flip side of Dark Star-instead of funny, scary.

When you make a comedy and they don't laugh,

it's pretty devastating.

And I thought

"Well, if I can't make them laugh, maybe I can make 'em scream."

Inspired in part by HR. Giger's designs,

O'Bannon's screenplay told the tale of a small group of space travelers

who are menaced by an alien monster on board their ship.

The plot was similar to dozens of other science-fiction films.

But O'Bannon and Shusett felt their concept for the creature

would make the film unique.

The hardest part of figuring out the script

was figuring out exactly what the creature was and how it worked.

And I finally decided to move in the direction of parasites

as they function here on Earth.

They're this for a while,

then they jump on your dog and they burrow in

and they become something else for a while,

and then they jump out of your dog.

We started talking, and he said "Yeah, it could go on his face."

"It could be a creature..." We didn't know what the monster looked like.

"A little creature, and it jumps on his face."

And I said "Somehow the monster has to plant a seed in him."

”But nobody will know that till it comes bursting out of his chest."

"Oh, my God, I think we've got it. We've got the whole movie."

"Nobody’s ever seen anything like this."

And it wrote itself. Within three weeks, we had the story structure completed,

and it took us another three months to do the script.

Ultimately, O'Bannon and Shusett named their story Alien.

They also hired designer Ron Cobb to prepare concept drawings

in an effort to sell the idea to Hollywood.

Armed with sketches and script,

the writers pitched their story to executives at 20th Century Fox.

But the studio promptly rejected it as being too violent.

In fact, the only person who showed any interest at all in the project

was B-movie king Roger Corman.

We sent it over to him. He loved it and said "I'll make the movie."

So we were gonna sign a contract with him to make it for $750,000.

But just before the contract was signed,

an old film-school friend of O'Bannon's offered to take Alien

and pass it on to Brandy wine Productions, an independent film company

owned by filmmakers Walter Hill, Gordon Carroll and David Giler.

Everybody's heard about scripts that came through the window

This one literally came through the window.

Somebody gave O'Bannon and Shusett's script of Alien through the window to...

Walter's desk was on an alley.

Walter read it and said

"Maybe I'm crazy, but it's got one really great scene in it."

"I think that we maybe should consider this one."

It was the chestburster. It was the thing that comes out of its chest

This scene, this one scene, is just so incredible

that it makes it worth it to do the movie.

In the winter of 1976, Brandy wine optioned the script for Alien

and once again pitched it to executives at 20th Century Fox.

Fox, they took us to lunch and said

"This is not the kind of thing we expected from you guys."

"We know this script, and we've seen it before."

You know, we later found out everybody had seen it before.

Undaunted, Hill and Giler began a massive rewrite of the project.

Two weeks tater, they resubmitted the script to Fox.

This time, the executives loved it.

Studio chief Alan Ladd Jr. was ready to move forward,

but only if something could be done

to spice up the Seeding rote of Astronaut Ripley.

Women in jeopardy is lot more frightening than men in jeopardy, I think.

I said "Let's change the male lead to a female lead."

It was originally written for a male.

But we had an asterisk on the front - the title page - and it said

"Any of the roles can be changed so there could be two women

to give it a broader appeal."

So we really just had a secretary change "he" to "she"

and didn't do anything different.

That is how Ripley got to be a woman.

Envisioning Alien as a small $4.5 million film,

Fox sent the script to Ridley Scott,

a prolific commercial director from England.

Scottie first feature film, a period piece entitled The Duellists,

had just been released and was earning great critical acclaim

for creating a striking visual style on a low budget.

I think I was the right director to do science fiction

because I didn't know much about it, and therefore I didn't believe in it.

But I was intrigued enough by the dynamics of the story,

of the script - the outrageous dynamics of the script -

to say "I think I can do something with this."

So I went home and sat at home for three weeks

and story boarded the whole film.

And then they saw the board

and saw the additions that I wanted to put into it,

figured that we couldn't afford it,

so, what they did is they presented the board to the studio

and we doubled the budget.

With Scott on board

and the budget now increased to $8.5 million,

the next challenge was casting.

For the pivotal role of Ripley,

the studio briefly considered hiring an established female star like Meryl Streep,

Katharine Ross or Geneviève Bujold.

But the recent release of 20th Century Fox's Star Wars

had proven that big names weren't always necessary to make big money.

Everyone thought the same strategy should also apply to Alien.

So the studio launched a massive search for an unknown actress to star in the film.

Eventually, the choice was narrowed down

to a young New York theater actress

whose mos! notable film experience had been a six-second walk-on

in Woody Allen's Annie Hall.

I had heard it was a science-fiction movie,

and I wasn't that interested, I have to say.

I didn't really wanna make movies.

I wanted to work with, like, Mike Nichols

and Woody Allen on movies, and that was about it.

So I almost didn't go the audition.

Luckily, I went over.

I was wearing these very high hooker boots, I remember, cos I really didn't...

I didn't think it mattered how tall I was.

Usually I tried to appear more petite.

Ironically, Sigourney Weaver had little in common

with the blue-collar character of Ripley.

The daughter of former NBC chief Pat Weaver,

Sigourney had grown up on the fashionable Upper East Side of New York City.

Needing to be convinced,

Fox executives ordered these rarely seen screen tests...

- Ashen. » "which Ridley Scott filmed in London.

They decided to test me.

And Ridley Scott, who'd only done one film,

I think he felt like they were testing him as well.

- One, take four, scene second part. - And achoo.

So he built this whole incredible set for me.

I mean, it wasn't like I had to do it with a potted palm or anything.

It was this beautiful set that I ran through.

We did a couple of scenes.

What's happening with those repairs?

They'll be finished in an hour.

Look, I need some relief.

Why did you wait until now'?

You keep staring out at that thing long enough

they'll be peeling you off the walls.

- We're the new... - I've seen it nap pen.

We're the new pioneers, Ripley.

We even get to have our own special diseases.

I'm tired of talking.

You waited too Mung.

Give it a try anyway.

cm.

Alan Ladd watched the screen test

and had all the secretaries in the building come down and watch ll,

and then everybody asked... They got into a big argument -

did she look more like Jane Fonda or Faye Dunaway -

and, you know, all the rest of this stuff.

And he just said "You can have her. She's in."

With the leading role filled,

filming began on July the 5th, 1978, at Shepperton Studios outside London.

To round out the cast,

Scott assembled a team of established veteran actors,

including Tom Skerritt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto,

Harry Dean Stanton, Veronica Cartwright and John Hurt.

But despite the breadth and experience of the cast,

Fox was still taking a gamble on Alien.

The film was still very much a B movie -

a B movie with a large budget,

an unproven director, and an unknown star.

As the crew of the mining ship Nostromo lies in hypersleep,