CULT CINEMA
Memory: The Origins Of Alien
WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UKALEXANDRE O PHILIPPE’S NEW DOCUMENTARY,
MEMORY, TAKES US TO UNEXPLORED DEPTHS
OF RIDLEY SCOTT’S ALIEN...
ORIGIN
OF THE
SPECIES
WORDS JONATHAN HATFULL© Courtesy of the O’Bannon Estate040 |
Y FIRST MEMORY OF ALIEN,
which kind of haunted me for
years, was actually the poster,”
fi lmmaker Alexandre O Philippe
tells us. “It’s this absolutely
perfect combination that makes you really want
to see it and also gives you the sense of dread. If
I watch it, what’s going to happen? Is it going to
mess with my brain?”
The answer to that question is clearly: yes.
For 40 years, Ridley Scott’s nightmare has
terrifi ed and fascinated audiences, and now
Philippe, who previously tackled Night Of The
Living Dead in Doc Of The Dead and Psycho
with 78/52, has turned his keen eye and love of
interpretation to its history and subtext.
“Initially the fi lm was going to be focused
on the chest-burster scene,” he remembers.
“I was interested to see if I could explore it
in a similar way that I dealt with the shower
scene in Psycho, but very quickly realised that
they’re very different beasts and it would have
been a mistake. When I started exploring the
mythological underpinnings of the fi lm I realised
that there was really something there. And it
was really the story of Ridley Scott showing
the triptych by Francis Bacon to HR Giger and
realising that this particular triptych had been
hijacked by the Furies. I thought: ‘This is really
interesting, I want to go down that particular
rabbit hole and see where it takes me,’ and
the moment that I did I think everything started
opening up in new ways.”
As you might expect given the title, Philippe
puts a welcome focus on writer Dan O’Bannon’s
life and career, and how this unique, eccentric
individual came to conceive of one of the
greatest genre movies ever made. O’Bannon’s
widow Diane is a key presence in the fi lm and
Philippe tells us that her participation was
crucial. “To be able to meet Diane O’Bannon
and open her archives and stuff that as a fan
of Alien you had heard about but never seen...
it was really special,” he enthuses. “She had
all these boxes open in her living room, there
were like eight boxes fi lled with sketches, self-
portraits, storyboards and alternate endings
and everything you can imagine. It took a little
bit of convincing, but I think she sensed very
quickly that our heart was in the right place and
she basically just said: ‘Have it. Let’s do this.’
And that’s why we give her a credit as executive
producer, without her we wouldn’t have a fi lm,
no question.”
However, the fi lmmaker is also keenly
interested in pushing further to explore the
mythological and artistic inspirations, from
Bacon to ancient Egypt. The fi lm has a host of
expert voices, from the production team and
cast to fi lm critics and scholars, each of whom
has their own take on what Alien means.
“Great movies are just as much the product
of the unconscious as they are the product of
conscious craft, and when that happens you get
something like Alien and then here we are 40
years later and we’re still uncovering layers of
meaning,” he enthuses. “You look at a piece like
Alien and it’s a fi lm that went completely against
the trends and is essentially a male rape movie
in space.
“It’s not fully conscious, clearly the people
who were working on this fi lm were not fully
conscious of what they were working on. I don’t
think it’s possible, I mean quite frankly if they
had been conscious of it, I don’t think the movie
would have been greenlit in the fi rst place!”
While it’s great to see the likes of Tom Skerritt
and Veronica Cartwright chatting about their
experiences, Philippe tells us that he was much
more nervous about fi nding the right academicDan O’Bannon was
a force of nature.
© Courtesy of the O’Bannon Estate