How 'Alien' was born
Screenwriting matters: A look back at the origins of 'Alien' (initially called 'Star Beast') - and an annotated page from the first draft.
I love digging into the past of films in general, and of screenwriters in particular. While that thing called ‘movie magic’ is what you, ideally, end up seeing on the silver screen, there’s lots of magic to be had along the way. Most of that magic, I find, comes in the form of fruitful collaborations. You meet people with the same passion for film, you grow together, you occasionally work together - you get along and trust each other. There are countless examples of industry folks collaborating, on and off, with the same crowd over the course of decades.
Alien was the brain-child of Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett. They began collaborating a few years after Dark Star, while also pursuing their solo projects. The Alien creature we all know from the film was ‘born’ while O’Bannon was working on project in Paris, where he discovered H. R. Giger’s artwork. “His paintings had a profound effect on me. I had never seen anything that was quite as horrible and at the same time as beautiful as his work. And so I ended up writing a script about a Giger monster.
Giger’s artwork really does remain unique to this day - both unique and disturbing. Learn a bit more about him and his biomechanics artwork here. To me, Giger actually wasn’t first and foremost known because of Alien, it was because of his 1973 album cover for ELP’s Brain Salad Surgery - great cover! By the way, when Giger published a book of illustrations called The Necronomicon, people thought it was a reference to Lovecraft’s mythos - turns out Giger just like the name. Come to think of it, I would have loved to see Giger gives us his version of Cthulhu, Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath and ever so many more.
Back to the making of Alien! O’Bannon and Shusett worked on the story together, the screenplay credit belonged to O’Bannon alone. Always good to remember that the story is worth at least as much as the screenplay. Every concise form of the eventual film, whether a treatment, an expose, or even a one-page synopsis, will contain the essential building blocks that eventually allow the screenplay to stand rock solid. Case in point: According to Wikipedia, it was Shusett who came up with the iconic ‘alien-bursting-from-a-stomach’ device. As memorable as that moment is, it wasn’t there just for the horror of it - it was a powerful story device to sneak the alien creature onto the spaceship where it would then go on to remove the crew one by one.
When O’Bannon and Shusett pitched the film to studios, the presented it as “Jaws in space” - I’ve no doubt that this worked on executives’ minds. One particular gift of good screenwriters is the gift of brevity. To come up with a five-word sentence instead of a paragraph, to craft the perfect logline, to pitch in three words “Jaws in space” … always worth remembering, we can always cut, we can always trim - we can always do more to end up the fewer words that will deliver on greatest possible impact. Same with the script’s initial title, by the way - its working title was “Star Beast,” to go from there to “Alien” was genius.
Before Ridley Scott signed up to direct, a whole lot more of what’s generally termed “development hell” ensued - with other writers coming on board to deliver eight more drafts and even the shooting script. Still, the final and sole screenwriting credit remained with O’Bannon. Quite surprising, to me. According to Wikipedia the other writers, among them none other than Walter Hill, added the whole - now iconic - Ash/Android subplot. Seems to me that a co-credit would have been proper.
1976 - an early draft of Alien - originally called Starbeast - Alien was originally written by Dan O'Bannon - who co-wrote and co-starred in John Carpenter's Dark Star. He then went on to collaborate with Ronald Shusett on the story that would become Alien.
June 1978 - revised final script - written by Walter Hill and David Giler, based on original script by Dan O'Bannon. Hill and Giler reshaped the prose, making it lean and crisp.
Anyway - movie magic ended up happening after years and years and years of collaboration and shuffling and shifting and developing. Below an annotated page from the shooting script (who annotated? Weaver? Scott? I’ve no idea.). Keep scrolling for an in-depth documentary of “The Making of Alien.” Now, I don’t know about you, but I feel like diving into my Alien collection and enjoying a day with Giger’s monster.
Great insight into the writing process of Alien. Good stories are truly a collaborative work. I have to think about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that was a flop in terms of screenwriting. And this is what happens when a single person writes a film. And even a book, as a matter of fact. I read the other day on Margaret Atwood’s Substack how novels are edited for professional writers. It’s a complex lengthy process that involves lots of people and lots of reshaping of the original story. Is anything truly only one person’s work?