Memory – The Origins Of Alien - New Alien Documentary On The Way

Started by Corporal Hicks, Sep 10, 2018, 05:38:04 AM

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Memory – The Origins Of Alien - New Alien Documentary On The Way (Read 59,316 times)

RidgeTop

Saw it today, really enjoyed it. The documentary has its own identity unique from all the behind-the-scenes material we've seen before. Memory was very much an art-house style exploration into the feelings that Alien evokes, the symbolism, the ties to mythology. Some great new interviews with Veronica Cartwright, Tom Skerritt, Diane O'Bannon and Carmen Giger. It also goes into the early concepts for Alien and how the story was developed.

I really liked how Dan O'Bannon was finally in the spotlight here, and Giger alongside him. There is a pretty strange opening featuring the "Three Furies" in a set inspired by the Nostromo. They use this Nostromo-style set a few times in the documentary, showing clips from some behind the scenes material we've already seen to emphasize their points.

It's definitely worth a watch, but I do feel it could have used a bit more run time to more thoroughly explore the material, the movie got lost a bit with the "Alien means this!" bits from a number of film-major types they interviewed. Jodorowsky's Dune documentary (slightly referenced in this) really nailed this concept, and I feel like Memory got most of the way there, but not quite all of the way. Still, I hope it sees a wide-release sometime soon, regardless of a few shortcomings from my own personal expectations, it was a real treat.

I'll be writing a more detailed review this week.

Necronomicon II


locusta

Awesome Adam, thanks allot. I do hope it will reach Europe as well, as I truly wanna see it on the big screen.

Whiskeybrewer

Could this be a second disc on the Alien 4k re-release?

Run

At this point it is worth to be mentioned that the "untitled Neil Blomkamp Alien movie project" has officially been vanished from IMDB.

The Old One

Quote from: Run on Jan 28, 2019, 04:27:06 PM
At this point it is worth to be mentioned that the "untitled Neil Blomkamp Alien movie project" has officially been vanished from IMDB.


Ingwar

Quote'Memory: The Origins of Alien' Director on Ridley Scott's Lack of Involvement in the Documentary

Since the stars and filmmakers of Alien have been well represented in features about the making of the film over the years, Alexandre O. Philippe wanted to tell a lesser known story of the classic film. Memory: The Origins of Alien (read our review) focuses on Dan O'Bannon and H.R. Giger. Some other Alien cast members like Tom Skerritt and Veronica Cartwright appear, but Ridley Scott only shows up in archival footage and Sigourney Weaver only in film clips. That's not to say Philippe didn't reach out to them.

"Well, we tried," he told us. "We tried numerous times and it just didn't work out. It's fine."

"The thing about Memory is that it's essentially a cinematic essay about the extraordinary symbiosis that took place between Dan O'Bannon, H.R. Giger and Ridley Scott that gave us Alien. So two of them are sadly gone and had we had Ridley on board, I think it would have perhaps thrown the whole thing off balance a little bit. So sometimes serendipity works in mysterious ways. The fact that Ridley didn't come on board this particular project, of course, made me sad at a certain point. The more I progressed in the making of this film and then eventually realized that we were not going to be able to get an interview with him, it felt serendipitous. It felt like it's probably the right thing for this particular project."

How about Weaver, you ask?

"We went back to Sigourney after we had gotten the news that we got into Sundance and we were going to premiere at Sundance," Philippe said. "The thing about people like Sigourney Weaver or Ridley Scott is they're very busy people. Any film that you make about a Hollywood film where you have to chase certain celebrities, sometimes they just decline. Sometimes they just don't want to do it and sometimes it just doesn't work out schedule-wise. You have to honor that but on our end, I have a story to tell. If I felt that Sigourney or Ridley were necessary to tell the story, then, of course, I would still be chasing them now and we wouldn't have a film today. Even though the film is very much about them, this is an origin story. This is really very much a film about Dan. It's a film about mythology. It's a film about Giger. It's a film about all the early influences that essentially got into Alien. So the story was told. As much as I would have loved to have them in the film, there's a point where you have to go, 'You know, we have to deliver a film to our sales agent and to Sundance by a certain date and the story's been told, so there's going to be no Sigourney, no Ridley."

Since Philippe found archival interviews with Scott, O'Bannon, Giger and John Hurt, certainly there are DVD bonus features of Weaver available. There were, but they didn't make the final cut.

"Most of the footage that we have and the stills that we have in the film were provided by the O'Bannon estate and the Giger estate. Both of them have been partners. They're executive producers on the project. Everything else is fair use. At one point in the cut, we did have a clip of Sigourney. It didn't pass the fair use test according to our lawyers so we had to remove it. That's the way it goes. You don't question the fair use lawyers. I'm really glad though that Ridley has a presence in the film through archival footage which to me feels very balanced between Ridley and Dan and Giger. They all have that sort of archival presence. It's almost like a transmission from outer space if you will. Sigourney obviously has a major presence in the form of film clips."

The deleted Weaver clip came during the film's discussion of the chest burster scene.

"It was a really nice soundbite," he said. "It just wasn't anything that was essential in the telling of our story and I think that's why our lawyers probably said, 'We're going to remove that."

Memory actually began as an analysis of the chest burster scene, it's worth noting, similar to Philippe's focus on the Psycho shower scene in 78/52. The doc ended up expanding beyond that one scene, but the iconic moment is still very much a centerpiece of Philippe's film.

"The argument of the film is that all of that hinged on the success of that one scene. Had the execution of that scene failed, everything would have fallen apart. There is no successful Alien without a successful, believable chest burster scene and therefore there is no Alien franchise without a successful chest burster scene."

Ben Manckiewicz even reads O'Bannon's description of the chest burster in the script out loud.

"It's beautifully written first of all," Philippe said. "Dan O'Bannon never gets enough credit. He's a beautiful writer. If you look back at his early drafts, it's fascinating to be able to witness his process. There are so many different incarnations of Alien as a story, so many alternate endings. He really dug very, very deep into what this movie could be. I gotta say, that scene jumps out of you. The prose, it's remarkable to me how short it is, and yet when you read it, you can see the scene unfolding in your head pretty much exactly the way that it came out."

Scott and Weaver may not have given new interviews for Memory, but they are aware of the film. And now that it's got Sundance buzz, Scott is going to watch it.

"What makes me very happy is that a couple of executives from Scott Free came to the premiere, loved the film and apparently Ridley requested to see it so we sent him the link just yesterday," Philippe said. "I'm very excited about sharing the film with him and I really hope that he will like it."

https://bloody-disgusting.com/interviews/3543550/sundance-memory-origins-alien-didnt-need-ridley-scott-sigourney-weaver-exclusive/

Necronomicon II

Interesting that the Giger estate were producers on it, maybe they can be bloody producers on the next movie (or show for that matter) so executives don't have to tip toe around legal red tape.

The Old One

Yeah, agreed.

Corporal Hicks


Necronomicon II

Quote from: Xenomorphine on Jan 27, 2019, 09:11:02 PM
Quote from: Necronomicon II on Jan 27, 2019, 11:51:34 AM
Question for Alexandre O. Philippe -

In regards to Covenant's chestburster, it seems that Scott's intention there was a subversion of the original chestburster; presenting the creature as a thing of beauty not something to be feared or reviled, what are your thoughts on that?

The reasoning behind it was a lot more superficial than that:

Quote from: Ridley Scott, 'Alien Covenant' Official Collector's Magazine
How do I make it better than that? I felt it had to be more of a creature with arms and legs.

The posing and choreography was presenting it as a miracle-of-life thing, from David 8's perspective, but the thought behind changing the design was a relatively shallow one.

Was looking at it more thematically and yeah from David's perspective not so much the design, thus it's probably not so much Scott's intention as it was John Logan's et al. in terms of subversion.

Immortan Jonesy

Quote"I think the sexual imagery of Alien, you could make a whole other film about that," Philippe told us.

https://twitter.com/BDisgusting/status/1090294516597301248

The Old One

J u i c y Dongs.

Necronomicon II


Huggs

Quote from: The Old One on Jan 28, 2019, 05:41:45 PM
Quote from: Run on Jan 28, 2019, 04:27:06 PM
At this point it is worth to be mentioned that the "untitled Neil Blomkamp Alien movie project" has officially been vanished from IMDB.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/36/64/58/366458732d0f63a885e039fda298dc69.gif

"So long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye"  ;D

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