Alien was written by Dan O’Bannon, and was truly an interesting script, To compare O’Bannon’s version with the later shooting script. I’d love to read the making of story of that script, to see what happened.
Most of us know the Alien, and what it looks like. In O’Bannon’s story, it had long tentacles and six legs. The Tentacles had almost no role in the story until the ending.
O’Bannon’s story was originally written as “Star Creature”, and had a crew of 5 men. Much of the movie was the same, including huge chunks of dialogue that remained the same. The interesting thing about it was the script had in the middle of it drawings to show certain things that apparently had a lot of interest to O’Bannon, such as the “data Stick”, a combination flashlight/video recorder. Interestingly, O’Bannon was trying to posit a degeneration of mankind in the midst of advancement – Mankind now has an interstellar empire, and is traveling at high speeds throughout the cosmos, but the word Earth has degenerated into Irth.
As a tribute to O’Bannon’s visions, the lifeboat used at the end of the movie is almost exactly the same as O’Bannon’s sketch in the script.
However, there were some changes made by the time of the time of shooting. They brought in another Script Writer to re-do the script, and many things changed. The crew now has seven people,two of them female, and one of whom is a robot (Later revealed to be a Cyberdyne A-7, the same company who made the Terminator, and a robot in the sequel, played by one of my favorite actors, Lance Henrickson makes the ironic comment that the A-7’s were a bit “twitchy”). Cat is renamed “Jones”, and has much more of a story than in O’Bannon’s script.
Stop for a minute, and imagine that negotiation. “We’d like the cat to have more of a movie role.” “Uhhhhh….” However, the studio was right, and Jones gets more of a role than the three scenes he has in the original.
The Strange Pyramid is gone in the shooting script, placing everything into the Alien Ship. The Hieroglyphics are now gone in the shooting script, and Computer (now called “Mother”) does not interpret the distress signal, it is Ripley who does it – against Ash’s instructions. She discovers it is a warning, but we’re never treated to the extent of the warning we get from O’Bannon – he goes so far as to translate three phrases.
In O’Bannon’s script, they take the head of the alien astronaut, and it is nicknamed “Yoric”. Bannon quotes from both Shakespeare in his script, and also from the classic poem “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner”.
In the shooting script, I can’t find any mention to the Data Stick, and it is somewhat more bulky and NASA looking in the movie.In many ways it is exactly the same movie, BUT…
Here’s the big parts…
The Alien does not eat the crew in the shooting script.
And in the Walter Hill-David Giler re-write, the script does something unusual. I don’t know if this is the first shooting script to use this technique, but it’s amazing.
Lines of narration.
Flowing in short chunks.
Forcing you to read faster.
To find out what’s happening.
Each line of five words or less a new scene
Fast edit
Fast action.
Wow.
Like this… actual scene…
Still puffing, he releases his purchase on the stone walls.
Begins to lower himself on power.
Now Kane is dangling free in darkness.
Spinning slowly on the wire as the chest unit unwinds.
Then his feet hit bottom.
Kane grunts in surprise, almost loses his balance.
He flashes his suit lights.
The beams reveal that he is in a large hold.
Row after row of extrusions stretch from floor to ceiling.
See how that forces you to read it? You don’t want to stop!
I kinda like that. See you all later, have to re-write my scripts
