Alien

Hey, Do You Remember...?

Christopher Schrader

Tv & Film, Comedy

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2017

⏱️ 121 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In space, no one can hear you scream - but on this episode of HDYR, you can hear all of us gushing over Ridley Scott's 1979 masterpiece. We were introduced to the film at different ages, but we all walked away with the same impression... this is one incredible and terrifying movie.

We've seen a lot of talented filmmakers play in this sandbox over the years, but there's something so singular and iconic about what Scott managed to capture here. Alien contains some of the most inventive and influential images ever put on film.

You'd think that the level of over-saturation the brand has experienced would severely hinder the effectiveness of this original entry, but it remains as visceral and frightening as ever.

Topics include: some key differences between Alien and its sequels, the genius of using separate artists to design different aspects of this world, the incredible first act and the intriguing questions we didn't need answered in future films, why one of the least impressive Xenomorph costumes still comes across as one of the best, Carlos' unlikely strategy for defeating an unstoppable killing machine, Chris' awkward first attempts at erotic horror, and much much more!

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About The Show

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, do you remember Alien?
0:06.6	Hello and welcome to Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose-tinted glasses to see how it holds up.
0:31.7	I'm Chris.
0:32.4	I'm Donna.
0:33.3	I'm Carlos.
0:34.1	And I'm Kristen.
0:35.0	And today we're revisiting Alien.
0:53.0	Thank you. I'm Carlos. And I'm Kristen. And today we're revisiting Alien. In space, no one can hear you scream. but in Hollywood, everyone could hear the writers and
0:58.1	producers of Alien arguing over who deserved credit for the film following its release in May
1:03.0	of 1979. Success has many fathers, after all, and while no one involved was prepared to
1:08.7	downplay their contributions, the truth is that,
1:11.3	like the xenomorph itself, there were several key stages in the project's evolution before
1:15.9	it could mature into a near-perfect organism. Its life cycle began with a pair of writers named
1:21.1	Dan O'Bannon and Ron Schusset. O'Bannon had half a script that involved the crew of a spaceship
1:26.3	responding to a distress signal of alien origin.
1:29.4	Shoes had helped him finish it and came up with the idea of the creature hatching from inside one of the human passengers.
1:35.1	Their screenplay made its way around town in search of a host and eventually landed on the desk of filmmaker Walter Hill.
1:41.6	He thought it was pretty terrible, except for one scene, the chess
1:45.1	buster sequence. His producing partner David Giler agreed, and the two of them bought the
1:49.5	rights and got to work on a new draft. They hatched a revised version of the story that
1:54.1	added the character of Ash, changed Ripley into a woman, amped up the scares, reworked the
1:58.7	dialogue, and introduced the concept of a blue-collar
	...

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