Cinema Alchemist by Roger Christian

Author:Roger Christian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

ALIEN

The moment I left Tim and John’s office I got a phone call. It was Ridley Scott, telling me to get my backside down to Shepperton, right there and then, so I drove straight there.

I first met with Garth Thomas the production manager, whom I knew from The Last Remake of Beau Geste, and Ivor Powell, Ridley’s associate producer, who I knew from the commercials I had made with Ridley and Tony Scott. They introduced me to Gordon Carroll and David Giler, who were really keen to have me aboard. I had a quick discussion with them about how I made my set-decorating department work on Star Wars. They asked me if I was free and could I start immediately as art director and be in charge of the dressing side of the movie. I was happy to do this and went to say hello to Ridley, who was locked away storyboarding, carefully illustrating each shot in the movie using his very precise storyboard frames we called ‘Ridleygrams’. Looking at H.R. Giger’s original paintings placed around the walls in Ridley’s office, much larger than I thought they’d be, was amazing. I liked his work and to see originals close up is always a more tactile experience. With the vision of Giger’s paintings in my head, they gave me a script and put me in a room alone to read it.

I read it through in about forty minutes straight – it read like a bullet train. The script was stripped down and bare, the drama was all there, clean as a razor, and I could see what it could be under Ridley’s powerful eye. The story, like a claustrophobic horror nightmare, really piqued my interest as I like the horror genre when it’s done well. Here it was unique, having been combined into a science-fiction tale, a simple and powerful story like the ten little Indians all being contained in a space adventure inside one ship, a really clever idea. It’s interesting to me how many of the crew hired to work on Alien didn’t get the potential of the script and doubted the film would be any good. (Even the model makers, used to science fiction, explain in their documentary interviews on the Alien makers’ site how they all thought the script was weak and pretty bad. None of them knew Ridley except for his commercials, and could not see the potential about to erupt.)

With the massive success of Star Wars taking them all by surprise they needed another science-fiction movie to follow on. This package, with Walter Hill originally at the helm and Gordon Carroll and David Giler producing, was intriguing enough for them to make the movie. It was never a B movie as so many people say it was. I guess the stripped-down script could resemble one of the Italian spaghetti horror films being made at the time. In the hands of a less visionary director who would simply film the script as it read, it might

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