I love the way Ridley Scott rambles. You ask him one thing and his mind starts wandering to other stories from his career. It’s win-win. You either get background on the new Alien prequels he’s working on, or some other awesome story about his classic movies. Scott shared all of those thoughts in a Q&A at the Hero Complex film festival, in between screenings of Alien and Blade Runner, hosted by Geoff Boucher.
Q: What brought you back to Alien after all these years?
Ridley Scott: Well, I watched the franchise zip along for the next 20-30 years and they never asked me back. I never even knew the second one was being made and I thought oh, well, welcome to Hollywood. Giger and me and Jean Giraud and the team, we put this together. There’s no bitterness. Only a little bit. I let it go basically because Blade Runner, which had followed, was a really tough experience and the result on Blade Runner hadn’t been good. Then somebody said, “Why don’t you make ordinary movies that people can understand?” I said okay, so I went off and made Legend. That was a brilliant disaster. It’s a wonder I’m still employed. That’s why I think journalists say to me, “In the down period of your career which followed Legend…” I haven’t had a down period in my career. I’ve enjoyed every god damn film I’ve made from Someone to Watch Over Me to White Squall. There’s always been a reason why you make a movie if you’re a filmmaker. So I never think about that form of success. It doesn’t matter. The key is it doesn’t matter. The important thing is the quality of the work in your estimation. The only critic that’s important is yourself. Whatever happens at the box office is kind of semi-irrelevant because the most relevant thing is what do you feel about it? Whatever they try to do and cut it around, and you may be wrong, but if you win the argument and you win the day and it fails, try to appreciate what you did. That was the most important thing. I still think at the end of that time on Blade Runner, I sat thinking, “Damn, that should have played. Why didn’t they get it?” Because I knew Alien played like a son of a bitch. Same on Legend. I figured all I’d done was a live action cartoon. I worked it out, I noticed every Christmas when I’d walk around Picadilly Circus, they’d always bring out the old cartoons, Snow White, all the Disney cartoons would come out and they would all make money with very little P&A. They’d just stick it in the theaters and collect another $9 million that Christmas. So I thought I’m going to make a live-action fairy story in the spirit of Grimm’s fairy tales. In fact, more so in the spirit of Walt Disney. Didn’t work. There’s some good stuff in there. Tim Curry is fantastic as the devil. Tom Cruise was terrific as Jack. I don't know whether he likes it or not now. I thought he was terrific.
Q: So what then brought you back to Alien?
Scott: Yeah, I sat thinking about the franchise which now has died on the road somewhere way back and is lying in the dust. I thought what I should do is go back. In the first Alien, when John Hurt climbed up and looked over the top of the rise and said the immortal lines, “Good God, what is this?” That’s a joke but what we saw was appropriate for a “good God” because it was a massive giant lying in a chair. The chair was either a form of engine or some piece of technology, and I always thought, “No one has ever asked who it was?” I call him the Space Jockey. So I thought we’re going to go back, who the hell is the Space Jockey. It’s written and I’m prepping it now.
Q: What is the time frame, how much earlier does this take place?
Scott: It could be anything but way before Alien 1. I’m always fascinated by and had a conversation with some scientists, these NASA folks, the real thing who do all kind of exploratory stuff down at the bottom of the ocean, become close to life forms which live between six inches and one foot between 2,500 degrees coming out of the blowholes in the ground to the volcanoes. A foot away is minus 90 and they live between those two areas. As far I’m concerned, they’re aliens. You’re functioning at 3,000 feet so you may as well be on Pluto or Mars or whatever. So it’s a very good way to train. That’s why they train down there. The first Alien was mostly the old dark house, seven people in the old dark house. They’ve got an unwelcome visitor and he’s going to get rid of them. That was it. In many respects, Alien in its form, even though the script was pretty interesting to me, I was so excited when I read it, but it was a very basic screenplay. We were always concerned about and I was always criticized about the characterizations. I say, well, you’ve got a son of a bitch like that, you don’t need any motivation.
Q: What inspires your vision for Alien now 30 years later, with all the technology that’s come since?
Scott: Still trying to hold onto the realities of what it does take to leave, and when you’re leaving your pretty well going out there for [years]. If you have near light speed, then you’re really going back to Mr. Spock, Star Trek, beam me up, Scotty. If you will ever approach NLS, near light speed, which these scientists say will we get there? Maybe. It’s a completely different form of thinking. We’re just not thinking that way yet. He says, “I can explain light speed. If you’ve got seven glasses of water, I’ll explain the principal of light speed.” The other said, “Oh, stop him because you’ll be here for an hour.” It’s kind of interesting, they’re already talking about those possibilities. What we’re able to do and we’re allowed to do by making movies is to cheat like hell.
Q: If you had been offered the sequel to Alien back in the ‘80s, what would it have been like?
Scott: I would have probably done who was the big boy? Who is the jockey? Basically no one ever picked it up. I said, “There he is. He’s this giant.”
Q: Why did you swear off sci-fi for so long, and what brought you back?
Scott: That’s because I couldn’t think of anything then. I’ve wrestled with or tried to get a book for years called Forever War. So we’re on about the fourth draft now. Very good writer. Thank God we’ve got a good writer because Forever War is a very complex idea. I’d love to do a western. I have one being written right now so fingers crossed.
Q: Alien is so lean. What do you think came through to connect with people? Was it Sigourney Weaver?
Scott: I met with Sigourney, who hadn’t done a movie. She was beginning to get known off Broadway. We were casting and everyone else I had, everyone but her. In fact, I didn’t have Sigourney cast until almost three weeks before principal photography, because I tested her. The test I could have cut into the movie. I tested her on the sets as they were being built, so that would put me out on a month. Laddy was going crazy saying, “You’ve got to make your mind up.” I said, “Yeah, but I can’t find it yet.” I heard about this woman. I just dug up some photographs out of the archives which are spectacular. She looks 23-24. I went to meet her in New York. She had a very good bio, very smart. Her dad was Pat Weaver. So I met her and immediately the sheer physique, because she came in high heels. I’m not a midget but I’m 5’8” and Jesus Christ I was always looking up at her. I walked into the restaurant, she held my hand and I felt like, “Mommy.” I said we’re going to have to test and she tested and that was it. You could have cut it into the movie. It must have been hard for her though because there was so little dialogue, but the dialogue that existed I think was pretty damn good, but it was austere. I call it austere. It doesn’t give you a lot to get into. There’s no five minute scenes. The last thing for her would be she will gradually earn the position during the drama that she was suddenly coming to the fore. When you see her at the kitchen table at the beginning of the film, you think okay, she’s going to be the first one to go in a big, gory, horrible mess. Gradually during it, when she takes over from Yaphet Kotto, tells him to shut the f*** up, I’m yanking Yaphet Kotto’s chains, “Go on, get her going, get her going.” So Yaphet was pushing her and she lost it which is great. It’s on film. I just kept silent, she kept going. It was great. She has great intuition, great thinking, great elegance. It was a rare experience.
Q: How did you meet Harrison Ford for Blade Runner?
Scott: I was casting in a building and I’d heard that this film was being made called Indiana Jones and it was being made up at Elstree in London. I said to the studio, my partners, “I want to cast this guy called Harrison Ford.” So they said, “Who’s that?” I said, “Well, he’s the guy who drives that funny circular vehicle, the Maltese Falcon?"
Q: Millennium Falcon.
Scott: Yeah, and they said, “Oh, okay.” They said why and I said, “Well, because Stephen and George have decided this guy is the star of Indiana Jones. I think we want him to follow in this film because it sounds like it’s a good idea. So I waited one night to meet with him. He said, “Oh, I’m filming.” He turned up I think around 11 o’clock at night but he came straight from the set so he still had on the hat, leather jacket, unshaven. He said, “I’m really sorry I’m late.” He had the Indiana Jones gear on and that was it. He found the script very interested. I think the script read really well because it was full of prose description as well as some really damn good dialogue.
Q: Why do you think Blade Runner ages so well?
Scott: I was right the first time. You guys were wrong.
Q: Has the friction between you and Ford been overstated over the years?
Scott: Yeah, it’s always overstated. It was a very difficult world to climb into because I knew exactly what I wanted. Once again I was very influenced by Moebius. Just peripherally. I don't know if Moebius would recognize it or not but it was there. So for me to describe what’s happening all the time, why it’s raining all the time, drove me nuts so I got very bad tempered. I said, “It’s raining because I want it to f***in’ rain, okay? It’s going to look fantastic.” I got fed up with explaining myself. Fortunately, I got a very good cameraman. With him he would bring his first class unit. If you’re an operator it’s really frustrating. It’s a bit like being a surgeon in the room on a heart operation and you can’t touch the patient. So I’m starting with Jordan and his guys and it got tense because I’d say I wanted this. Why? I said, “Because that’s what I want.” Because that’s the job. Filmmaking is a team effort without any question and usually the better you are, the better the team. People say, “You’ve got an eye. You don’t need a good cameraman.” Are you kidding? I need a great cameraman because I’m going to either give him a jolly good time or he’s going to have a really hard time and enjoy it at the end, but that’s the deal. I’m like a coach. So at the end of the day on a movie, somebody has to be autonomous. Politely preferably and politically, nicely, yes. Someone has to say, “You go that way.”
Q: When have you last seen Harrison Ford?
Scott: I’m fixing my knee so I have to see a physio but the physio is really hardcore at this point because when the surgeon says it’s not really going to hurt, six weeks later the physio comes and says this is really going to hurt. So it’s lying in a bench at a hardcore gym for a half an hour, going to work out and it’s like pulling all the tendons, sweating. I went outside and there’s Harrison. Everyday the last three months. I thought, “That can’t be Harrison. That’s Harrison.” He looks good. He’s putting on muscle and he’s working out to get himself ready.
