MEMORY
Origin Of The Species
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interviewees. “Finding those experts and those
scholars, and to interview them and edit them
in a way that was not going to come across as
pontifi cation or as too academic and it would
still have a dramatic and entertaining fl ow, that
was the main concern,” he explains. “Because
those are big ideas. There are a lot of huge
ideas in Memory, and so to make those ideas
digestible and accessible and entertaining to
an audience, that was my main challenge but
luckily I think we found the right people for
that too.”
It should be noted that there’s plenty of
fascinating material focusing on the production
history, including a great breakdown of the
chest-burster sequence and a really quite
touching look at O’Bannon’s campaign to
secure the services of the great HR Giger. “And
the fact that Ridley said ‘absolutely!’” marvels
Philippe. “He could have looked at it and said:
‘No, I don’t want to go in that direction at all to
explore what’s lurking under the surface. And
then you have a completely different fi lm. So,
what was it that made Ridley say yes? He was
clearly the right director for this project, he was
in tune with it.”
The result is a fascinating treasure trove
that will send you scurrying off to dig out your
Blu-ray. While reeling off some of our favourite
readings from the fi lm that were new to us, we
asked Philippe if there was anything specifi c that
surprised him.
“Oh sure, you name it,” he laughs. “The ties
to Egyptian mythology was something I was
not really aware of, there’s so many things.
Making a fi lm like this has to be a process of
discovery and you have to kind of get into it like
a newborn in a way because you have to keep
the excitement about this fi lm that you’ve seen a
gazillion times.
“But I fully believe that when you talk about
these great movies to people who obviously
have a tremendous knowledge about them and
a very specifi c point of view, you inevitably start
seeing it in a different way and there’s no limit
to that. I could talk to a million people, a million
fi lmmakers, a million artists about the Psycho
shower scene and every time I would look at in
a different way. And the same thing with Alien,
because we all bring something to it.”
Memory: The Origins Of Alien is in cinemas 30
August and DVD and on demand 2 September.
Tom Skerritt still
treasures the fi lm.
There’s a wealth of
archive material.
