Quote from: SM on Jun 19, 2013, 12:59:41 AM
Not everyone gets their stuff on screen. Esepcially when Cobb's stuff was superior.
And sometimes when you do get your stuff on screen, no one knows who you are and cream their pants over the other guy. Hello, Roger Dicken.
Quote from: 'Hardware - The Definitive SF Works Of Chris Foss'
In the Autumn of 1976 Chris was invited to work on 'Alien' (1979) as the movie's visual design consultant, Dan O'Bannon - who also co-wrote the story and wrote the screenplay - wanted to use the same team from 'Dune'. The studio was in downtown Los Angeles, on the Fox lot. Chris stayed with friends in a "fantastic" house on Mulholland Drive and the studio gave him a choice of exotic cars to drive. "I'd wake up to brilliant Californian sunshine and drive down to the studio. I was working with a lovely chap called Ron Cobb and we got on really well," he recalls. Because they were non-union the production had to keep them hidden, so they worked in everything from a washroom to an un-air conditioned shed over the carpenter's studio. However, Chris and Ron were having so much fun it didn't seem to matter. Their only contact with the production team was through O'Bannon, who was very supportive.
After several months of intensive work the director finally came to view their artwork. After looking around the room at the sea of concept drawings, Chris remembers he simply commented, "'Yeah, room full of spaceships' and walked out again." The only direction Chris and Cobb had was from O'Bannon, who had a very clear idea of what he wanted, "but he was getting countermanded as the 'Alien' production got bigger and bigger. Every day his car was getting more and more dents in it and we took that as a metaphor for the battering he was getting from the production.
From that, it seems...
1: RS wasn't just disengaged on a personal level, but on the very
rare moment he went to see the concept artists (of the stuff which was going to be taking up a lot more screen time than the creature), he was disrespectful of their craft, too. Especially in light of their poor working conditions.
2: RS gave no creative feedback, whatsoever. Whatever the reasons for that, it's bad form for a working relationship.
3: O'Bannon was the one making an effort to try and co-ordinate the creative side of things. If not for what he was doing, the production might have turned out very different.
4: Cobb received the same treatment as Foss. It wasn't about whose work was ultimately chosen.
Doesn't mean RS is a 'bad person', but it does demonstrate how strangely disengaged he was with some very important aspects of the project. This is what I meant when I wrote that he shouldn't be considered the be all and end all of '
Alien'. A tremendously important factor, yes. But just one factor of several, nonetheless.
