BAFTA , The Landmark, Los Angeles , January 7th 2016,
John Alan Simon: And in doing Alien, one of the things that I think, it has such a kind of dream like quality to it in many ways
Ridley Scott: Mhmm
John Alan Simon: You, you know, you had already er found I guess H R Giger at that point
Ridley Scott: Yuh
John Alan Simon: Someone who you wanted to work with
Ridley Scott: Well, the studio weren't sure about it 'cause they thought it was obscene, well I said, obscene's good, er, but this book Necronomicon had it in there, so that's the alien, that's it and they said, errrrrrgh, I said that's it, you know, if we can make that, you can, I've never seen anything like that, so then I flew to Switzerland, met Giger, he didn't want to come 'cause he didn't fly, so we put him on a train, brought him in and he stayed in Shepperton for almost ten months, and he was great, reliable creative power source, and but he worked in, but he worked in secrecy, we gave him one very small studio, like in a ten thousand square foot studio, we made it very private. He was in there with Mia his wife and agent, and and one person helping, Peter Voysey was a great sculptor, so Voysey helped him a lot on sculpting stuff and Peter Voysey fundamentally made the, what I call the famous croissant, the spaceship which is fantastic, that was Voysey and erm, and er, and it was a good relationship with Giger, it was marvelous
John Alan Simon: And the er, the cavern sequence with the er, with the er, with the eggs, is something I always remember, what was the evolution, what was the origins of that for you from a visual point of view
Ridley Scott: Erm, nothing really, I mean I think er, we , we had two departments running, I knew that logically I had a one brain designer for the alien and the alien universe, that would be Giger, so Giger did drawings of the interior of the corridors, the landscape, all the evolutions of the alien himself, then the other side of it would be Michael Seymour, production designer doing Nostromo and all the other elements involved in Nostromo, and I used a guy I don't know if you know him, called Jean-Giraud Moebius designed the spacesuits, John, very good costume designer called John, my god I've forgotten his name did all the rest of the uniforms, John, John, John, John Mollo. Yeah, he was very very good, so he did all the rest and and the drawings for the space, or the costume, the space suits were by erm Jean-Giraud Moebius. So I had three different brains on it, and it was very interesting and John and and Michael Seymour had two great art directors, one called Roger Christian and one called Les Dilley, and Les looked after all the alien stuff which is very tricky, from a drawing to that, it could easily look like a very bad coffee bar in Soho in 1951, and erm and so he was, that was incredible including the, this space jockey, the corridor itself was wonderfully Zebrite, not many know what Zebrite is, it's the final polish all the wall, so you loose that fakey fairground look, it looked fantastic, and erm Roger, we as always arguing about not so much the money, because it was all done by that point, 8.4 , I think yeah, it went 8.6, and er Roger, I said , you know, I want this and that and that and that and they said you couldn't afford it because it couldn't be molding and you couldn't have the money for molding, and so we went off and bought a Canberra Bomber, and dismantled it from a graveyard and from that we, Roger fundamentally said, sculpt me two pieces of this corridor two pieces of that corridor because the bombers have repetition, so you just stick'em up, tack'em up and sculptural, spray it white and by god it looks like it works, that's what it was.
John Alan Simon: You're now preparing to do another Alien, I guess its er in line with the Prometheus story part of it
Ridley Scott: Sequel
John Alan Simon: Sequel. Er, tell us a little bit about how differently would that time gap, a thirty now almost a forty year time gap between the two movies, right
Ridley Scott: Well, you know, the er Alien was a great franchise and erm
John Alan Simon: You never did the, you didn't do any of the others
Ridley Scott: They never asked. I thought, welcome to Hollywood, and that was the first lesson, you're in for the first lesson, I didn't even know it was happening until I found out so, I think I would have been too expensive, so I wasn't asked and erm, by then because I had done Blade Runner and da da da and erm, I bear no malic, erm, I was pissed for a bit though I'll tell yer, and erm, Jim did a good great job, that, I think gradually that one, it's a hard act to follow, that first Alien was good special because the beast himself. The cast was fantastic. Without that Alien, you wouldn't have had the same kind of movie, it's a monst.., I was going to say it's a monster, it was a beautiful monster, and er, catatonic when you, it was like as scary as hell
John Alan Simon: In terms of the new one, in terms of how you would prepare, kind of getting another shot at the preparing
Ridley Scott: Well, no I think they've used it up and they know that, and when they do Alien vs Predator (*cringe*) you can't do that, come on, so, it , I don't care, I mean, really I just see it as it is, that's ri... silly, and so I think it was, they put it away, and I thought about it, you know, there's a way out of this, we could re... go back pre prequel the whole idea, 'cause no one asked the bloody question, why would you make such a beautiful perfect monster, monstrous creature and for what reason, and I always figured it was in the hold of a ship, so that craft was always like a battlewagon for me carrying bacteriological bio bio biomechanoid, er, erm monsters that could be put down anywhere that they wanted to be cleaned out and cleaned up.
John Alan Simon: Like a weapon of mass destruction
Ridley Scott: It's a weapon of mass destruction, and , and that was, I just eventually went quiet on that, didn't mention it because no one was doing it, and so I came back and that's why Prometheus was cooked up pretty well I thought and we've reignited the erm thing, we did well on that, very well. To now we go to the next one, the next one is who made it and why, and I'm not going to tell you, and erm, and why will be explained
John Alan Simon: And in terms of how you plan a movie
Transcribed on 28th February 2016
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