Jaime Prater: Welcome to Perfect Organism, the Alien saga podcast. I am currently the only host right now, Jaime Prater, and I am joined by a guest today, Mr. Jon Sorenson. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Jon Sorenson: You’re welcome.
Jaime: And today, we have John here to discuss many things, primarily his role in the making of Alien and the construction of the Nostromo and what that was like and what that era was like in filmmaking. But, before we get into any of that, again, thank you for coming on the show, and I hope everything is well for you in this crazy world that we live in right now
Jon: It’s a real pleasure, and I’m fine.
Jaime: Good.
Jon: I mean, you just worry about everyone right now, but um, we’ll get through it, we’ll be okay.
Jaime: Yeah. For sure. So I,- there’s a link… I mean I’ve known who you are for quite some time now, but I know there was link someone posted where you… I can’t remember the actual website address, but someone said oh, they were supposed to interview you, but they couldn’t, but you sent sort of a, your little bit of a history of who you were and what you’ve accomplished. And I started reading that, I’m like no. I don’t want to read that, I want to hear that fresh. So, can you sort of get into your background a little bit, and how you came to work in the film industry?
Jon: Yes of course, it’ll be the pleasure. I’ll do my best. Well, I grew up in a very rural, wild area of Scotland. We didn’t have a lot of cinemas, the nearest cinema, we had to walk there (laughs). It was a good five miles away to the nearest little, you know, tiny little cinema. But, um, I remember seeing movies when I was a kid and being very taken with things by, say.. Ray Harryhausen, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, I remember the Cyclops very well. And I thought, ‘How would he do that?” I’d never seen anything like it. Um, and then carious other… we had TV series, like… obviously, Thunderbirds-
Jaime: Yes.
Jon: You know, the Gerry Anderson stuff, and I thought, That’s… That’s very clever. So I got an interest in it, and I always wanted to do photography. And I started building little models, and you know, things you do when you’re a child. I got fascinated by it, and I was always a bit of a loner, so I was a bit of a dreamer. So I’d take these long walks into nature, and… [I had] a vivid imagination. And then I started reading. Read a lot actually, when I was a kid. I veered toward horror stories, Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, all that kind of thing. Anyway, this whole thing kind of went into a ball, into a kind of a center, and I got into my late teens, I suppose, and I thought, right, what is this film industry? And all the movies I was watching on television, if I liked their work, say it was a DP, or a special effects man, or even an actor, I’d start keeping a little jot with all their names in it. Oh, I like this, I like this guy’s work. So when I went to photographic school, to cut a long story short, there was only one in Scotland, that was in Glasgow, and I had to go there for a while. And all my assignments, I managed to turn them into making models, various visual exercises, and various things like that. So I’d built up quite a portfolio. And then to spin on 1977, I think, Star Wars came out, wasn’t it?
Jaime: Mhmm.
Jon: And, I thought- and I wasn’t yet twenty. I was like, you know, I’d really like to work on this. And I was finishing up photographic school and then I had a place at Harrow… Harrow Art School to do a film degree. While I was lining all that up, because it was the only way I could figure- I didn’t know anyone. I was way up in the wilds of Scotland, no one worked in the film industry… People used to say “Well, what’s that?” you know? They just seemed to think like a lot of people, the films just came out of the ether. I said no, people actually make these things. “Oh right, okay. Well, how can you do that?” I said “I don’t know.”
So I remember going, when I was at photographic school, the weekends I’d go to the local library, and get the Who’s Who. It’s a big book that the English have with all the names and addresses of all the notable people. Everything from admiral sea lords to, I don’t know, MPs or something. Anyone. I thought, Yeah! I wonder if there’s- I’d just seen Space: 1999, the Gerry Anderson series, and I had this- in my student flat, I had this tiny little thirteen inch black and white television. And I used to- ‘cause I didn’t watch much television really, unless it was a movie. I still don’t, I don’t even watch television now.
Jaime: Mhmm.
Jon: I’ve just gotten Netflix, that’s how behind the curve I am.
Jaime: Yup. Me too, for the most part. I don’t watch TV.
Jon: No, no. And so, Space: 1999… I heard of that. Brian Johnson, okay. Best look him up in the Who’s Who. Anyway, I wrote to all kinds of people. All the DP’s whose work I’d noted. All English, obviously. Alan Hume, who, I think, went on to photograph Return of the Jedi, but he’d had a long history in British films. Who else? Uh, Suschitzky, Peter Suschitzky. Who’d worked with a film director who became a friend of mine before he died, Ken Russell. You know Ken Russell.
Jaime: Yes, yes.
Jon: So all that- so anyway- I just fired these- and we had no photocopiers up there, so you’d just do the- a type- I’d spend my night, you know, typing up the same two page letter to everybody! (laughs) And I sent them off never thinking I would get any replies. I doubt it would happen these day, Jaime, but in those days it seemed to work. And when I got a letter back it was such a thrill! You know, people would take the time to actually write. I got a letter from Alex Guinness! Who had written to- ‘cause he was in Star Wars, you know, Obi Wan Kenobi.
Jaime: Yes, wow!
Jon: I mean, they couldn’t all help, but it was the fact that they would write to this youngster way up in the highlands. Andy they didn’t know me from anybody. I can’t- I mean there was a lot of people who wrote back. Alex Guinness, I remember. He was doing a play at the Queen’s Theatre, The Old Country, it was, I remember. I saw it later. Anyway, with all these letters, Alan Hume wrote back and so what I did was I saved up some money, and got a transport all the way from the highlands into London. A bus. And um, so I bused it to London, found a little bed and breakfast somewhere on the outskirts of London, and I’d made a list of where all these people were. And I would go out every day on the tube or the train. And Brian Johnson had written and said, oh, you know, you sound very keen. If you’re ever in our area, Shepperton Studios, you know, drop in.
Well of course I was (laughs) that’s not what I was- I couldn’t. No, but anyway you know, God bless him, he meant it because I got to London, I went to see all these people, I saw Alan Hume, he was photographing a movie, I went to uh, where else? Pinewood Studios. I’d never been there, and they allowed me into the set and everything else.
Anyway, so eventually I get up to Shepperton, and there’s Brian. And I show up just this young, fresh-faced… I mean, I didn’t know anything. You know, what is this film industry?. And, uh, I had a ‘folio of stuff under my arm. Brian looked at it. “Oh,” he says, “Okay”. He says, “You look like you can take a photograph and you could probably help out with the models.” I said “Ah, okay, Brian.” I was just wondering, “What’s he gonna say next?”, you know?
Jaime: (laughs)
Jon: And I remember when I was there, this is a real thing, I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody this. Somebody brought in a… a device. And they said “How about this for the laser-cutter?”. It was for when they were trying to get the facehugger off John Hurt. You remember he cuts it-
Jaime: Mhmm.
Jon: He cuts one of the digits. And I don’t know what this thing was but they were gonna adapt it, and that’s what appeared in the film. I was fascinated by this. I mean, it was for some other purpose. It wasn’t for- they didn’t construct it. It was like, um, you know, Make Do and Mend because it wasn’t a big budget. It’s like uh, Roger Christian recently talked about his lightsaber that he made for the original Star Wars. It cost about twelve dollars, you know. He just made it out of whatever he could. So anyways, ah, right, so that’s how this works. And I went back up to Scotland quickly, I went back up to Scotland. Didn’t think anything of it. I mean, I didn’t hope, you know? You just don’t do that. And this letter arrived. “We’d like you to start in six weeks.” And that was it.
I lived with my grandmother and, uh, she was real individual. She said, “What are you doing?” I said, “ Oh, you remember that man Brian Johnson?”
“Ah ha.”
“Well he’s offered me a job. On a thing called Alien.” I didn’t know what it was, but I saw the letterhead he’d sent up. I thought that was the name of his special effects company, I didn’t know what the film was, you know.
“Oh, okay, very good.”
‘Cause she didn’t know anything about it. So we went to see Star Wars. I took her to see Star Wars to celebrate. To try and explore with her and show her what I was gonna do. ‘Cause I used to make all these little amateur movies. She used to help out with me. And I used to, you know, stop motion little things and experiment on Super 8 film. And then she’d see the stuff projected on the wall, she’d say “How did you do that?” She thought it was like sorcery, you know? She was born in 1900. So she’d been through all that in life.
Jaime: Wow.
Jon: And all this was completely, “Oh, oh! How did you make it move?”
I said, “Well, you know…” And then she helped me out, you know, whatever. It’s a bit like Ray Harryhausen and his mother and father, they used to help him out, I think, with his wee films. Ray, of course, I met and got to know later. Anyway, so I said, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll take you to see Star Wars, and that’ll give you an idea of what’s going on.” “Oh, okay.” And she’s telling all the shopkeepers, all the little bakers, “He’s going down to London to make a spaceship!” “Of course he is.” What!
Jaime: (laughs)
Jon: It was like that. Anyway, so, went to see Star Wars quickly and she… and she loved it! She loved Star Wars. And she said… and she looked at me on the way back, we were on the bus, you know, to get back.
She said, uh, “Oh, wasn’t it amazing the way they trained that big hairy thing to do all those tricks and act?” This was the Wookie. I didn’t tell her there was anybody in the costume, you know, I just let her think… Anyway, a few weeks later, Jaime, I was off! And I went down on a train to…
I said where is this place? Bray Film Studios. Near Windsor. Oh, okay, so I need to get down there. So I had one suitcase. I had a few pounds, not much. I didn’t know how much I was gonna get paid or if I was gonna get paid, I just wanted to be there. ‘Cause this is what you wanna do, you’ve committed to it, mate. Just get on with it and see what happens. And I show up, and on the first day I go into Bray Studios and there is the shell of the Nostromo, just sitting on a, you know, some kind of rig in the workshop, the special effects workshop. Alright, okay!
And that night- oh I said, um… So I helped out a bit, you know, Brian kind of showed me the ropes. He said “You can start off by detailing all this stuff.” I said, “Yeah, that’s fine.” I said, “What about the photographs?” He says, “We’ll get to that later, when you’re on the shooting stage, you know. When we do the models you need to do your photographs then.” I said, “Okay, great.”
So I sat down next to these… I mean all these guys I’d never met. It was about seven or eight of them. All varied backgrounds. All a good laugh, I mean it was a very small crew, Jaime. And um, so we’re in there. I sat next to Simon Deering. The late Simon Deering, he was one of the modelmakers. We just start chatting! And that went on from there. And the day f- and I started uh, Brian gave me the back section. There is no back section of the Nostromo, this- this was the full, you know, sixteen-footer or whatever. The hero model, the main one.
So he gave me that, he said, “Detail that.” And the wonderful thing was he just left you to it! You know, there wasn’t anybody breathing down your neck. It was highly unusual. You were left just to do your thing. Brian would come in once or twice a day and say, “Yeah, that’s good” “That’s not good.” And then he’d go again ‘cause he had other fish to fry. So we’d been given an awful lot of, you know, latitude in the creation of these things.
End of the first day, anyway, I said, “Well…” and my suitcase has been sitting in the workshop all day, you know? Kinda looking at me. I said, “Well, I better go find a bed and breakfast or somewhere to stay.”
Brian said, “No, no, no!” He says, “There’s a dressing room up in the admin building right at the top, there’s only two dressing rooms. One of them used by Christopher Lee, the other one by Peter Cushing. You know, for the Hammer films. I said, “I’ll take it!” (laughs)
Jaime: (laughs)
Jon: And there was a sleeping bag in there. And this little mirror, you know, with all the lights around, like the old- and I was in that dressing room, I lived in there for three months, and so it went on. That’s how it started, anyway.
Jaime: Before I continue, I just want to introduce Patrick Greene, my partner here on Perfect Organism, if you can see him.
Jon: Hi, Patrick! How are you?
Patrick: (laughs) I have to say, this is- I was desperately trying shift things at work so I could be here for this because it’s so incredible to be able to have you on the show. And I was like, “Jaime, there’s a cancellation, I need to jump on this call.”
Jaime and Jon: (laughing)
Patrick: So, I don’t know what you guys have talked about, I just want to say it is such an honor to have you here as, you know, a piece of real Alien history, and as somebody with such a tangible link to so many things that we love so much.
Jon: Well it’s a pleasure to meet you, Patrick. I’m so glad you could hear it, that you could be here. I understand you work for Oxfam, is that right?
Patrick: I do, yeah!
Jon: That’s great. Very important stuff these days.
Patrick: Thank you so much, Jon.
Jon: I see you’ve got an Alien poster up on the wall there behind you.
Patrick: (laughs) There’s about four of them!
Jon: Oh, really? Okay.
Jaime: My question would be- and you talk about, as your working on the Nostromo, they put you in a room and, you’re working on detailing. What does detailing mean?
Jon: Detailing, well… When Star Wars, I mean the average age of the Star Wars crew, I’m talking about the first film, was about nineteen.
Jaime: Wow.
Jon: They’re all very young. And so a detail would be something that would be taken out of certain Airfix kits… of a tank or something. Or you would make… we had lathes and saws and all various things you can make them in different shapes. And the idea was, how to place them on the spaceships so it made some kind of logical detail, you know, logical sense. And it looked, obviously, it’s gonna look, you know, good, but you had to- it was very strange. You sort of went into a trance. You know? It was like sculpting. And you just- yeah, that makes sense, you know? The pipe’s coming out of here and, so it was like, you know, micromanaging this thing in sections. And um, each of the details you start calling- the Star Wars crew, they called them Greeblies. We called them Wigets. (laughs) So, we became- we became known for a while as the Jokers of Wigeters
Jaime and Patrick: (laughing)
Jon: So, that’s what it was. So basically, I mean you’d- you didn’t just stick an old stuff on. It was about three or four of us doing this. It was myself, uh, Bill Pearson, obviously. Martin- well, two Martins. Martin (???) and Martin Bower, and we would do this stuff until we’d finished. I mean there was a lot of surface to cover. And then we had the- the hero, the big Nostromo tug. Then, of course, we started on the Refinery. This whole thing went on for about four months. You know, doing this stuff and, uh- but we had a terrific time. I mean it was such a lovely bunch of guys. We all worked on various things afterwards. It was a highly unusual production. I can’t remember any fights. And we were all very diverse, from different backgrounds. Bringing music, which, of course, everyone loves. I love music. Everybody would say, “Here, try this.”
You know and you’d get everything from, you know, Classical to Prog Rock to Ian Dury and The Blockheads. We just shared everything. And, um… But all that detailing- and as I say, you know, Brian would come in. ‘Cause they were doing stuff at Shepperton. Occasionally I’d get taken over to Shepperton because they’d need something detailed or they’d need an extra pair of hands or something. But that- it didn’t happen too often.
That’s where I got to see all the… the other stuff they were doing over there. But the model-making was very intensive, so I took a long time.
Does that answer your question?
Jaime: Absolutely. I have more but, Patrick, you go ahead.
Patrick: There’s sort of just two things that I would just love, ‘cause this is like a first-hand account of the creative process of this film, and I feel like… I have two questions, one’s about the script and the first time you saw it.
Jon: Yes.
Patrick: But the other question is, most of your involvement was, if I’m thinking correctly was, around the summertime… ’78, correct? This is sort of when-
Jon: Yes, that’s right.
Patrick: Can you, like, bring us and our listeners a little bit into what that was like? What was your daily experience on set like? What was it like sort of being there amongst all this film coming together? Was there a sense of what it was gonna be? What was it like to actually be there, you know?
Jon: That’s a wonderful, wonderful question actually. Yes. ‘Cause that’s the stuff that gets into your bloodstream. That’s the stuff that stays with you. I remember arriving and, Bray Studios, I mean- first of all, my first impressions, it was a sense of warmth in the place. And then seeing the bits of spaceships lying around… It was like walking into a dream. This would be in June of ’78, as you said, Patrick. Yes. And then these guys. I couldn’t believe I’d arrived.
Oh, they gave me script the day I arrived, Patrick. The screenplay of Alien, ‘cause I didn’t know anything about it. I think I’d read a fanzine, or something on the train on the way down to London to join the film. And I said, “This is Alien.” And it had a budget of four million dollars. I said “Well that’s small.”
Mind you, I don’t mind that, ‘cause I was a huge fan of the Hammer horrors that they used to make for a dollar-ninety-eight, you know?
Jaime: (laughs)
Jon: Wonderful, wonderful movies.
Patrick: I love Hammer. Hammer horror films are terrific. I am one hundred percent with you on that.
Jon: They are fantastic! And of course, you know, Bray was where they made them! On those shooting stages. So anyway, um, four million dollars, okay. So alright, we don’t have a lot of money. And I was so taken with it. I arrived on a Monday, and cut to Thursday, I was having the time of my life. And there was nothing to shoot on yet, so we had to get- there was no crew, you know, no DP yet, no camera. When all that started, boy oh boy, I was in my element. How do we pull this together? ‘Cause I was aware that they’d done Space: 1999 original negative. Rewinding the film in the camera, plotting out elements. And the crew were mostly from that project.
Anyway, I got the screenplay of Alien and I crawled into my sleeping bag that night, and read this thing straight through. Dan O’Bannon… oh yeah, Dan O’Bannon, right? Dark Star, right? I thought, is this going to be a comedy or something? Anyway, I read it. I was so taken with it! And Walter Hill had reformatted the script into a kind of format- you’ll have seen the screenplay. But that was new at the time. Everything was very clipped and very focused. There wasn’t any long lines of description. So it made you go like this all the time, you turn the page.
Anyway, I loved it. I thought, so I’m on this? This is gonna be terrific! And then downstairs from where I was in the dressing room you went down to get your breakfast ‘cause there was a canteen down there. And there in the evening there was a bar also right directly downstairs from where I slept. So I was in there every night. Brian Johnson and all the crew. Nicky Alder and all that. Nicky was a great one. He said “I’ll take a large glass of white wine.” I said, “Sure.”
And it went on from there. And you get all the stories from them. ‘Cause these guys had done all kinds of stuff! And I wanted to hear it all. I’d ask them questions. They got pretty fed up with me. (laughs) “Look I’m just chilling out here, would mind? I’m getting the fourth degree again. Or fifth degree. I said, “No! Okay. Well I’ll ask you another time.” I wanted to know all about everything they’d done. Because to me that heritage is really important. You know, and then you gotta show these guys some respect. You know, for everything that they’d done.
I was just completely immersed in this world. I remember there was a phone outside. I went and I called my grandmother up in Scotland and I was so immersed in this she said, “What’s it like? Are you enjoying it?” I said, “You know, I can’t really describe it to you. I’m having a wonderful time.” (laughs) She said “Oh, as long as you’re happy.”
Monday I started, I got to the Thursday, and Brian Johnson has called me out of the workshop into the car park. He drove a Jensen Interceptor, I remember. I’d never seen one of these before. And he leaned against it, and I thought, I’m gonna get fired here. (laughs) He’s gonna fire me. ‘Cause he looked really serious. And he said, “Right, how much money do you want.” I had been living on a student grant for like, you know, twenty pounds a week or something in those days, it was a very small amount of money. I’m like oh, yeah! I’m getting paid for this. I forgot about that! I’m getting paid for it.
Anyway, he named a sum and I nearly fainted. I thought this was more money than I’d ever seen in the whole world. I didn’t say anything and he looked at me and he put it up another ten pounds a week! Because I couldn’t say anything. He thought I was bargaining but I wasn’t.
Anyway, so on we went- I like Brian very much, and I got to know Nicky very well too, obviously. Brian went away to America as we went into 1979. He went off to do The Empire Strikes Back. So we didn’t see much of Brian after a while. ‘Cause he had to go and work on that. He’d made a commitment to Twentieth Century FOX for those two films. In fact, I think Brian was gonna do The Empire Strikes Back, and Nicky. And then they said, “Oh we’ve got this other film to do, it’s called Alien. Could you do that for us as well?” And that’s how it worked.
So they got stuck with this Alien. (laughs) ‘Cause it took much longer than anybody thought. There was only thirty-three shots to do on the models. But then, of course later, Ridley came over and he changed his mind about everything so we had to do them all over again. Which is his prerogative, you know, it’s his film.
We were at it a long time. Nearly a year, I think.
Jaime: Wow.
Jon: Does that answer your question?
Patrick: Oh, definitely. Thank you.
Jon: (laughs) Okay.
Jaime: My next follow-up question would be, as you’re working in your own space and you’re doing exterior work, detail work on a model or various forms of models, was there ever a time they were like, “Hey, would you guys like to go into the actual Nostromo set?” to get a feel, a textural feel to kind of relate
Jon: Yes.
Jaime: So they were able to let you into the set.
Jon: Yes. That was the first thing they did with me, anyway. I went over to Shepperton ‘cause they were constructing the spaceship, Nostromo. And as you know, I think it was Michael Seymour was the Art Director on it. And they constructed this thing. It was very intentional. I don’t suppose it was the first time I’d ever been down, but this… Once you were in that set, you couldn’t come out. It was like a labyrinth. If you wanted to go to the medical bay, it wasn’t a free-standing set, it was all a part of the same thing. So you walked along the corridor. You know, from the bridge to the medical bay. And his idea was to keep everyone in this enclosed claustrophobic setting all day long. I mean, maybe they got a lunch break, I don’t know. But anyway, and so you got a feeling you were in this spaceship.
And there was a technician, another one who’s no longer with us. He was on the physical crew with Nicky, he was called John Hatt. Now, John was in electrics and he couldn’t wait to show me how he’d done all the wiring on the bridge. And he killed the lights, and he threw all the switches and it lit up like a Christmas tree, all these lights all flashing. And that, you know, clicking and clicking and clicking like a computer working like you hear in the film was real. ‘Cause all these relays and everything were all closing and opening. And I thought, wow! And then the medical bay, I remembered that. Yeah, and I saw the planet set on H-stage at Shepperton. The piece of The Derelict they’ve constructed. A landing leg. There’s only one landing leg constructed, it was a monster of a thing. And they behind that, to save money, they’ve made a shape out of, I don’t know, plywood to give the impression in the smoke there’s another leg behind it. So they were trying to save money all the time. But it looked terrific.
And I thought, uh huh, this is great. I just had the feeling that this was gonna be special. Not because it was my first job. But I just felt there’s something about this. Fortunately I was right. There was a kinf od alchemy in it. A kind of magic in the air.
Jaime: I mean, yeah. It’s on-screen too. Whatever magic of alchemy. This quiet foreboding terror, I mean it’s all there. It’s like this microcosm, like there’s conjuring going on. There’s no other movie like Alien. Like as much of a fan as I am of all the films in the series, Alien is its own thing.
Jon: Yes. I agree with you. I mean, I watched it just about a year or two before we got into all this unfortunate business with this virus. And they released Alien, and I managed to get to a cinema to see it on the big screen. I haven’t seen it since 1979, you know, the crew showing.
Jaime: Really!
Jon: Yeah.
Jaime: Wow.
Jon: On the big screen. I’d seen it on video, but that’s not the same.
Jaime: Okay.
Patrick: (laughing) I was gonna say, that’s a long time!
Jon: Yeah, I’d seen it on video and DVD, but I hadn’t seen it on the big screen. And they had this pristine print. I don’t know whether it was the fortieth anniversary, forty-fifth anniversary. I loved it. Even the models! They stand out really well! You know, I thought, these look really good. It could have been shot last week! Nothing about it was dated. And the sense of- and Ridley, I mean he’s gone on to make other films, and we all have our individual journeys, and he’s had his. And he had, who was the editor on Alien, uh, Rawlings.
Patrick: Terry.
Jon: That’s it, Terry Rawlings. And they worked together, you know, hand in glove. And when the facehugger jumps out at John Hurt in the first film, and then you get that kind of screaming as it leaps out, and then, the edit outside to the model Derelict with just the wind blowing. You know it was just so beautifully done. It’s like he was allowing his film to breathe. I don’t know that any of the other Alien films- I mean, they’ve all been very different. My favorites, I mean, I kind of like Alien³, you know. I even like that one, there’s stuff in that that I love!
Jaime: We’re big fans of Alien³.
Patrick: Yeah, so do we! (laughs)
Jon: I watched that one many times, and there’s a spiritual element Alien³ too. That wonderful funeral scene where Hicks and the wee lassie are put into the furnaces. And you hear these words. Of course, it’s a difficult film to embrace because she dies in it and all that stuff, you know, Sigourney. Yeah, that’s my favorite after the original.
Sigourney was wonderful. I mean, as I said, there wasn’t much money around to- to kind of spin off another wee route, we heard that Sigourney wasn’t getting very much money. All she’d done was some off-Broadway stuff. But she was such a trooper. You know if you were anywhere near her, she’d be off making you a cup of tea, you know. She’d bring a mug of tea or something. Just so quietly. Nice lady. Very nice lady.
Patrick: You know, you’re mentioning the 40th anniversary screenings that were happening in 2019 which I was lucky enough to also catch, which was incredible. That restoration print looked so good, and seeing it on the big screen again. Went with a bunch of friends, many of whom are listening to this show right now. It was a great day. And I have to say, I was worried about one thing, because in my entire life, since I saw it when I was seven, it has never looked anything but perfect. And I was thinking- and the miniatures in particular, which is something that- it’s very easy to mess that up, you know, at least for an audience member.
Jon: Yes.
Patrick: It’s easy for the scale to not look right, or to notice just by the way things are moving that the camera’s not lined up correctly or it just doesn’t quite work. I had, actually, a little bit of apprehension seeing it in that restored print on the huge screen. And it looked better than I’d remembered it. I could not get over how well the technology just holds up so beautifully. And so much of it is because of the work that you all put into those things. Into making it feel so believable. I guess something that I’m- that I’ve always sort of wondered about a little bit is what is the single, in your opinion, best thing you can do as somebody building miniatures to make sure that they translate to the big screen well. What’s something that, you think, when it works, makes it work?
Jon: Okay, well first of all, it’s plenty of detail. You gotta put detail in there and the sense of aging. We did a lot of aging on those models. What we called “dirtying down”. Which, all the cracks and crevices, ‘cause this spaceship had to look used. You know, not like they were an Airfix kit. And also give them scale.
The other most important element about it is the photography. That’s so important. Of course we’re not doing that now. There’s a lot of CGI. And God bless them, they do great work. But the photography was so important. To give it that sense of scale- and smoke, a lot of smoke too. I mean one of the things that struck me was the major sequence of landing on this planet. And those shots of the Nostromo coming down over those rocks. That shot- you just hold on that front profile and she’s coming down very, very slowly. The sense of weight in that ship! It looked huge, and you began to wonder, this spaceship- ‘cause we were told it was supposed to be eight hundred feet long. I said, couldn’t you find a smaller tug? You had to try and land this thing. And it just felt so heavy. I mean, you’re white-knuckling hoping they’d make it, you know, because this thing, if it crashed they’d never get off.
I think it’s just that, and having a feel for it, I mean having a physical thing in front of you. And then you can move a light around it. And then try a bit of this, you know, maybe a little filtration on the camera. I mean that’s what Ridley Scott liked to do, that’s why we did so many of the model shots over. He’d start like that. He’d just start with a clean slate, set a piece of stuff in, move the lights around, and he’d be sculpting, looking through the camera. I’d never seen that before. But this is what he liked to do, he had a long history of TV commercials. I bet he spent ages, you know, tweaking and moving things around. And there we’d sit, and the crew of course, they didn’t argue with him, but they said “What’s he doing?” and the model’s over there in the corner, why doesn’t he just go and shoot that? No, he wanted to construct things to camera. And once you understood what he was doing, we couldn’t do enough for him.
We’d be standing there with bits of models, you know, move it here, move it here, (laughs) and it was like a commercial! And it turned out he was right, and this was the way he liked to work. He didn’t know anything about special effects, but he knew what looked good through the camera, and we just did everything to help him. I remember, because the crew were getting fed up with this. “Hang on, we spent ages building this stuff and now we’re-“ Look, it’s his film, let’s just see what he does.
I remember standing on the shooting stage at lunchtime, the model stage, with my old friend Bill Pearson, who just left us. And Bill and I were looking at the refinery with the four towers on it. We’re starting to get into this mojo of moving stuff around, and Bill and I were looking at the four towers, I said, “You know, Bill, it’d be better if we moved that one over there and move that one there.” This voice speaks out from the shadows. “What are you two talking about?” It was Ridley Scott. I said, well, we’re just talking about the refinery, Ridley. We’re thinking about moving that there, and moving that there.” “Oh, right!” and his face lit up. It was like, you know, finally somebody was on his side. I mean, you had to fight so hard on that film.
And after that, he came into the bar that night, you know. Bill and I were standing there, and he bought us both a beer. And there was an assistant director on the film who’d worked with him for years and he says, “He never bought me a beer in ten years,” he says, “how come you guys got it?” I said, “We don’t know!” and he stood there and drunk it with us. Because we- I don’t know, I’m guessing. I’m thinking now, as I did then, it’s because he saw that we were prepared to try for his vision, not just a bunch of pre-prepared models. You know, it was his film, and it was only going to be done once, for the first time. There wouldn’t be another original Alien. And so he wants to move that there? So, what? Big deal. Let’s move it. And I liked him enormously. Nobody worked harder than he did. He was up eighteen hours a day, you know, doing this, this and this. This film was so important to him. I could see that, and it was a struggle for him. He was very hard on himself to get this right. So that’s what I thought of him. I liked him very much in those days. I don’t know what he’s like now, I’m going back a long time.
I’d seen The Duelists, which was his first film. I remember talking to him about filters, ‘cause I was a photographer. And we talked about The Duelists. ‘Cause this is how you learn. This was my film school. You get this from the horse’s mouth, this stuff. And I said, “Yeah, I see Stanley Kubrick used a lot of the same techniques in Barry Lyndon.” I said, “The Duelists looked very similar to Barry Lyndon.” He says, “Ah, yeah,” he says, “Kubrick. We’ve been using those filter and smoke for years. We did it first.” He was very protective of his look. I said “Yeah, I know that, but Barry Lyndon was a fine looking film.” He said, “Oh, yeah, yeah it was, but, we did it first, though.” (laughs) He was very approachable and we worked hard. You could tell he was learning too. I mean he’d done commercials, but it’s not the same as doing a feature film. He was learning his craft, and saying oh, does this work, does this work?
Later I worked with his brother on a couple of commercials, you know, Tony Scott. And I was on the camera crew assisting. This is just an aside. If I thought Ridley was driven, and he’s the older brother, you should have seen Tony. Oh, man. (laughs) He just never stopped he was like a tornado. To get this look, and to get what he wanted. That was them, that was the Scott brothers.
Anyway, on we went. And the film did evolve, as you said, Patrick. Because I was there from June ’78, I didn’t come off it ‘til April ’79. It seemed to go through chapters. The whole creative process. We started off in this one little summer by the river, and everybody would get together for Friday night and just sit around by the river, and there swans going up and down. Then we went to the winter, where it was dark, cold. Then we would do more, kind of, model things. Insects with the brains coming out the skull, or Ian Holm’s head sticking up through the table, you know, Ash. When they disconnected him. And it just felt like a kind of odyssey, and you become a part of it. It was like a fluid in your veins, you just lived this thing. So when it ended, I mean, what a wrench. We’d all been in this thing together and for me it was an education. Oh I see, so this is what it feels like when it finishes. Well, because it was my first thing. But, I was so lucky to have as a first assignment, Alien. You couldn’t have wished for a better job, and a better bunch of people. Some of them, many of them I’ve kept in touch with. From all across the production. And yeah, it was a special time, guys.
Jaime: I bet. So It sounds like you were working on detail, and you’re working on the Nostromo, but then you moved into working on things that were being filmed like Ian Holm’s head and-
Jon: Yes.
Jaime: What was that process like moving from a studio space with a model, working on that for months, to hey, you’re on set now, and we need to make sure that this looks good. How was that transition?
Jon: You know, it was great, because that was really where I wanted to be. And the modelmaking was terrific. It’s like I’m talking about it being in chapters. Chapter One was being in the workshop with all those guys which was a kind of routine. It was a kind of existence, like I’m talking about it getting in your bloodstream, and then when we started shooting, I remember I said to Brian or Nicky Alder, I said, “Look, I want to be over there.” you know, helping them set up. Because in any event, a part of my job was to take stills.
Brian Johnson had this idea that he would use- they’d done it on Space: 1999. You take a photograph, a black and white photograph of, say, the front of the model… you blow it up and then you would back-project people moving around inside of it. Because, you see the still, I mean, unless you’re making a 3D film, it doesn’t matter if it’s lit properly you can get away with just doing a still photograph. So we did some of that. So that got me over there and every day they were shooting models and I was fascinated by the movie cameras.
Mitchell S35 was the workhorse. I’d never seen one before. The proper Panavision. Because we were shooting the models in widescreen, as well as the feature film, we were using spherical lenses, which created problems of depth of field. All this stuff I was learning. And the way they plot it out. So I would be there helping to set up, helping to move things around, if they want a camera, I’d just be a general assist on the unit. If a piece fell off the model, I’d fix it. You know, all that kind of stuff. And that is where I wanted to be, I don’t want to be anywhere else in the world but there. I got to know the DP Denny Ayling very well and we just had a laugh.
There was a fair bit of experimentation. To get those shot, I mean there was a- stop me from going off on tangents and talking too much. There was the shot where you see the Alien refinery very tiny in the shot and its going into orbit. You see the main planet, and there there’s rings, you know, it’s quite a wide shot in space. That took four days. We did it all in the camera. Rewinding the camera, rewinding the camera, putting in the rings, rewinding the camera, putting in the- this whole thing. And having to work out the exposures. It was great learning experience for me, and every morning- they had this very small rushes theater, you guys call them dailies, I think, in America. We go in in the morning and see what we’d done yesterday. And it was like and adventure.
Even the projectionist got into it! (laughs) This guy- there was a projectionist, he’d been a projectionist in the days of Hammer, so he’d been there since the Stone Age, you know? And he’s, “Ah, yeah!” If we had a shot with a model going overhead in the dailies, and he’d suddenly come up with a sound effect. (laughs) I said, “What’s this!” He’d have a Welsh choir singing! (sings low baritone note) (laughs) and the model went over! He just thought- he was so enthused by it and he wanted to be creative and be part of it. So we went over what kind of sound effect he was gonna come up with next! All these Welsh male singers are all low bass. So all the speakers are distorting as the ship went over.
Just wonderful people. There was an electrician and he’d been with Hammer, he’d been with Bray for ages. He seemed to be totally invincible to electricity. He’d come on the stage and there’d be two anodes on the wall where you hook on the wires, and you say to him, “Are they live?” and he’d just grab them! (laughs) and the shock would go through him! I said, “My God, man!”
So there was this old school feel to it all. We were working with models and we didn’t have an motion control, I mean, that was a legend. Somewhere in San Francisco they were doing motion control, but we didn’t need it anyway, we didn’t need motion control. There were some experiments, I remember Nicky having some experiments, you know, with stepping motors and various things, but we didn’t need it. It wasn’t that kind of film. This was a wonderful thing; the heritage thing, again. And then you get these stories from the days of making Frankenstein with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. You just wanted to know all of it. I said “Ah, right! Okay.”
And they’d done the Rocky Horror Picture Show also just before went. As you say, Patrick, its just all a part of the whole experience, it did get in your bloodstream, yeah.
Patrick: You’re mentioning the Mitchell camera that you guys were using,
Jon: Yes.
Patrick: The only, sort of, Mitchell trivia that I know is that they invented, I think, the first filmable 70mm camera in the 1920s…
Jon: Yes.
Patrick: …I believe. Which is insane, and the reason I’m getting into that is because, to me, something that we’ve talked about quite a bit on this show, and something that you have, probably, the best experience with of literally anybody that we will ever talk to, so I want to ask you about it is, filmmaking as you said, used to take a lot longer in a lot of ways, right? So, for example, that shot with the rings and the planet, matching exposures, matching takes, matching the angle of the shot, matching the lens, having to go back and physically rewind the film, and tape it and blah blah blah, all these various manual things, right?
Jon: Yes.
Patrick: That, for the most part, in mainstream filmmaking, doesn’t exist anymore.
Jon: No.
Patrick: And I’m wondering, what’s your perspective on that as an artist and as somebody who has been around for both of those sort of phases. What do you think it changes about the process? Or does it?
Jon: I think it does change the process. I mean, it has to. The physical reality of seeing these things and having them in front of you. I remember the actor that played the captain, Dallas, Tom Skerritt. Now, he came over to Bray, maybe he had a day off. And suddenly I look ‘round and he’s standing next to me and I recognized him from the rushes, you know, from the dailies. And he’s just looking at these models in awe. And he walks up to the Nostromo and he touches it. You can’t do that with a CGI image. And looked ‘round at me and he said, “This film really is gonna be something, isn’t it?” That’s the physicality of being able to see that stuff.
And then the physicality of- I mean, I don’t know how they can do- you have these completely green screen productions, and that doesn’t give the actors a chance, does it, really? How can it? There’s nothing to react to. The idea that they had them in this set at Shepperton. The Nostromo bridge and all that stuff, and they never got out of it. It started to make them cranky and tired. Yes? And get on each other’s nerves. Yaphet, he didn’t like Bolaji, who played the alien. They got really cranky, you know? So that’s the kind of physicality of it. I don’t see that you could get- look, CGI guys are very, very thorough, you know? Some of their work is awesome, but it’s a totally… alien process- it’s a different process. I don’t know whether they should call it electronic film production, you know? Where they don’t do any sets. It’s another species of filmmaking completely. To be physically- even having an actor in it. But you know, if you’re doing- I was doing the models- I was help contributing to the models and I heard that- I wasn’t long arrived, I heard that Jon Finch was gonna be in the film. Of course, it turned out he wasn’t because he got ill. Had to be replaced by John Hurt. But I was a huge fan of Jon Finch, he’d done a couple of films I liked very much. And as I’m working on this model, I said, “ Ah,” you know, your neurons start firing.
“He’s gonna be walking around inside this spaceship? And I’m sticking on a piece here.” It’s that kind of thing. And that’s the alchemy of it. Of course, I was disappointed he got sick. But John Hurt, of course, was terrific so we were okay. But no, I don’t know. There’s something about- its like I don’t- you know, any little thing I’ve done, personal projects of my own, I love being on location. I don’t like being stuck inside four walls in a studio. It’s fine if that’s what you gotta do, but with location, the physicality of the location is also a star. It speaks to you, and you make a better film, I think.
No, we were lucky to be able to be able to make those things physically. I mean, I can’t tell you- I’ve met some CGI people… they’d gotten envious because we actually built something physical. You know? And I take that as a huge compliment because they do great work. “No, but you got to build it, man.” So, I don’t know. You tell me.
Jaime: You mention Bolaji, and I’m curious. In the beginning of your work on the picture, of course the film is titled Alien, you know this, you read the script. Was there a time that they’re like, okay, we’re gonna let you guys see the creature? or-
Jon: Yes.
Jaime: ‘Cause I know there’s images of- you know… can’t go on the set, things seem very private, very closed off, and I was curious if there was also restrictions within the people working. Like, okay, we’re not showing this to anybody right now. What was that like for you?
Jon: Yeah. That’s right, and everything you say is completely correct. There was a lot of secrecy. Mainly because- it wasn’t just only FOX going trying to protect their investment. No one was quite sure if it would work because, after all, what ended up with was a man in a suit. It don’t matter if its H.R. Giger. No one knew Giger from a hole in the wall. He was just this wonderful Swiss artist who came over. And he was wonderful. And so how is this thing gonna evolve? Because even after it was completed the suit was- the biggest asset they had in that film in terms of the alien was actually Bolaji. Because his- again, the physicality we’re talking about.
He was a Massai, he was extremely tall and extremely thin. The way he moved was different to maybe you or I. he had this kind of stealth… I can’t describe it. The first time we did a mock-up with him in half a costume, and it scared the living daylights out of you, you know, just the way he was moving! He was like a… I don’t know. A Massai stalking something, it was just something. I thought they’ve really found something with this guy. Of course, they’ve never used anyone quite like that since, have they? Really, I don’t know who’s done them. They did great work in the sequels, but this was one creature. And he was very skinny, but extremely strong, and he could get his body into- he could twist it and do all kinds of stuff with it. That’s how it worked. I think he contributed, but he doesn’t get enough credit for it. He was the alien. I know there were stunt men, but there are shots in that film… There’s one shot where, it’s near the end of the film when he’s standing over Veronica. It’s in the engine room, isn’t it? And Yaphet’s just been killed, and you just see this huge thing. This skeletal… just moving towards her. Again, it’s more of an alchemy, isn’t it? The first time we saw it, Bolaji- well, we saw a lot of it, but he came over, he had to do a photoshoot. There was always stuff going on. There was a photoshoot for FOX with the alien costume. We built a wee bit of a set, you know, that he could kind of hide in where the pipes started. And he would just sit there and crouch, you know, and this bloody head. Just scared the hell out of you.
And of course, H.R. Giger. Wonderful. Wonderful artist.
Patrick: Well, I was actually gonna ask about Giger and I also want to say, listeners, there’s footage these movement tests that Jon is talking about out there on the internet with Bolaji and you can see the way that even just with the helmet on and a black outfit that movement is- that’s the alien right there.
Jon: Yes.
Patrick: So you were on set with Giger, right?
Jon: Yes! Oh, yes.
Patrick: What was that like? What was it like when he came there, and working around him? Was there a vibe or, you know, what was it like? What was he like?
Jon: The thing about Giger, it’s like some… We’ve all got our heroes, like a couple of mine were film directors who I got to meet before they died. One them, Ken Russell. You know Ken Russell. And he had a reputation for being a bit of a monster. He was nothing like that. He was a sane, quiet- it was an act, this playing the film director. It wasn’t anything meant to be nasty.
By the same measure, H.R. Giger, when you saw his artwork, you were expecting, I don’t know, Jack the Ripper or something. But he was this very quiet, very gentle individual. Like Ridley Scott, like a lot of artists, he took his work a lot more seriously than he took himself. So important to him. And he was in a new field. He hadn’t really done any film. So he was suddenly- suddenly he had to take his designs and make them into a 3D thing. Make them alive, you know? Take it out of the painting. And that, for him, was a learning experience. So he was assigned various sculptors, to help him and to basically do what he wanted. But he didn’t know if it was gonna work any more than anyone else. He just had this vision. Again, it’s all part of what I keep saying, I know it’s a bore, but: alchemy. Where did Giger come from? It was like he dropped out of the sky. I mean he was there making these things. With assistance. He was very quiet, very gentle, very modest. That’s what I remember about him.
Jaime: That’s awesome. I have just a fanboy question for you. Were you able to go on the set with the Space Jockey?
Jon: Yes.
Jaime: Yeah. What was that like?
Jon: That was at Shepperton. That was won- well again, this was the thing… this sense of this thing getting under your skin. When I first saw that, I said “What on earth?” Because this was H.R. Giger. And of course, I come down from Scotland, and I’d read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft stories. This kind of otherworldliness. There was a lot of Lovecraft in the original Alien. I think Dan O’Bannon, I think he said that once before he died. Because the aliens… original film… they were not monsters. They were- they had a different set of rules to us, that’s all it was. And they saw all this as this, this and this.
And the Space Jockey, there was no talk about the Space Jockey being the Engineers. You know, we got that stuff in Prometheus? None of that stuff was around. It was just something they found on this spaceship. Unexplained. Hinted at. And the ribcage had broken out, and it was frozen into this fantastic looking chair and this instrument that was more organic than anything else. There was a lot of that kind of talk, this organic look to everything. There’s a lot of that in Alien. I haven’t seen much that, I don’t think. Again, that came out of Giger. Everything had to be organic.
When I first saw it, I remember thinking that this thing in the chair was nothing to do with the aliens. It was another story, somehow. And I loved the fact it was a mystery. It was just left. You saw it and then you moved on. And these things were planted all through the film. There was more hinted at. Even the inside of the alien spaceship, The Derelict with all the eggs. You know, when John Hurt was lowered down and all. Those… lasers… At Shepperton a company that did lasers for rock shows. Anton Furst, I think, was the guy that run the company. Later went on to be an art director, production design. And these lasers and all these eggs, and you just got these bits of a jigsaw puzzle, and you’re thinking as you watch the film for the first time, what the hell happened here?! What are these things? What’s the story of the guy in the chair?
But this complete otherworldliness. The whole Alien thing. The whole feel of the film. It was a huge- it was an epic, but done on a small scale. It hinted at all kinds of things, and that’s Lovecraft. You get a glimpse in the shadows. You get this, you get that, and nothing’s explained. You leave it to the audience’s imagination or their intelligence. You say, “Oh, wow. Okay.”
I just watched and old Hammer film, I’ll throw this in, just the other night. The Abominable Snowman. It sounds preposterous title for a film but it was written by Nigel Kneale who did the Quatermass stuff. I don’t know if you’re familiar with him. And it was made by Hammer. It was an old black and white one in the very early days of production. And I was so taken with this film, I saw it many years ago. I just streamed it as a treat. I thought, I wonder if I’d still like this. And it was so- the implications in it… they go up into the Himalayas. You get a glimpse of this, a glimpse of that. That’s it. And you feel your mind expanding out. And by the end of the film you’re convinced that these Yeti are another species, and alien species much better than we are. And they’re in the mountains waiting for us to screw up so then they’ll take over. All this is implied all the way through. And you don’t see anything very much. Just a hint of sound effect. A footprint. But it goes into a jigsaw, and that’s what I loved about the original Alien. The idea that it hinted at so much.
Now, I don’t know how- I wasn’t in on the process. I have no idea what they were doing. But, you know, by the time they get around to Prometheus it seemed to me he’s rewriting things. I thought the Engineers were wonderful, I thought they were a great creation, but I didn’t see the connections they were making for that film at the time of the original Alien. I couldn’t see any of those connections. The idea that the chair, for example, was one of these… it seemed to me they just put a helmet on the guy to make him look like the original film. (laughs) It didn’t seem to click. I’m not criticizing, but you know, I’m in the audience the same as anybody else and I’m entitled to think, that doesn’t work, what are they doing? I mean, the engineers were something else. The idea that they’d constructed these things, and now of course, it’s gone onto having a robot, this Michael Fassbender robot has turned into kind of a Victor Frankenstein. I mean, the whole thing’s utterly preposterous. That’s just my- you know, God bless them. They made the films. Include me out. I much prefer the, you know, the hinted at.
Jaime: The ambiguity. Yeah, yeah, the mystery. For sure.
Jon: Yeah!
Jaime: I don’t have much more for you. Patrick, I know, has a question or two. Again, thank you so much for coming on. My next question is, where did Alien take you in your career? After working on that, where’d you go creatively?
Jon: From Alien, I went to… let me see. I did The Watcher in the Woods for Disney.
Jaime: Yes! Love that movie. Just watched it recently.
Jon: Yeah. The photographic effects. Again, for another director I admired very much, John Hough. That’s one of my favorites. I love that film. I loved the whole process, again I was working more in animation and opticals over at Pinewood Studios. And we were doing photographic effects in the camera. So we did a fair bit of that. There’s a lot front projection, we did all the stuff too. Then, of course… what else did I do? My god, dear. But anyways, getting more into learning photography, you know, the camera. So, I worked with John Boorman for a wee while on his Arthurian thing, Excalibur. What else? Then I got asked onto The Dark Crystal. That was a year.
Jaime: I did not know that.
Jon: Yeah, yeah! I was on Dark Crystal for a year. I’d just been thinking about that too in connection with Alien. All the skies you see, the storm skies at the beginning. That was me, I did all those. I’m so proud of that. That voiceover at the beginning of the film and the lightning and the thunder and the crack of the electricity, and then the crystal cracked, and all these clouds all rolling over the Skeksis, you know, the castle. It was so- I mean, if I never did anything else… I loved that.
Jaime: It’s my all-time favorite movie.
Jon: Really!
Jaime: Yeah, yeah.
Patrick: Jaime has a podcast, actually, about The Dark Crystal.
Jaime: Well, I don’t have a podcast, I’ve cohosted a podcast-
Patrick: Co-hosts a podcast-
Jaime: -about The Dark Crystal, yeah I’ve got a very interesting history and I’m really good friends with Louis Leterrier who directed the Netflix series, so,
Jon: Yes. Yes.
Jaime: I ended up hanging out with him during his final days in the editing room on that show, so yeah. But the original Dark Crystal is a profound piece of art.
Jon: Well, again, that’s the physicality. You know, all the stuff was made- they had a… because I’m, I suppose, a wee bit of a creative eccentric, in the midsummer at Elstree Studios, and they were shooting, I think it was Return of the Jedi, I think was next door. ‘Cause I remember I was doing stuff for the skies and I had a big tank and I was just left alone to do this stuff. And I had a crew who used to photograph it, camera crew. They’d come off Superman and they come and worked with me on this stuff. You turn around and- as I say, I was just thinking about this stuff. Something about water, it draws people. Anthony Daniels was stood in there one day. You know, the C-3PO guy smiling that big smile and asking me what I was doing. And then Mark Hamill would show up. He’d just sit by the tank. Who was the other one… the Monty Python guy, Terry Gilliam, who I worked with for a while on a thing he did called Time Bandits. But I used to- in the midsummer they had a backlot that was made up to look like The Dark Crystal. They had a lot of plants and artificial stuff. I used to get my sleeping bag, I used to sleep out there in the summer because I love wakening up with all this toadstools and mushrooms and stuff like that all sprayed these colors. It was a wonderful time, guys.
Patrick: I feel like that sleeping bag deserves its own docuseries.
Jon: (laughs)
Patrick: That thing has been in some amazing places!
Jon: I should have kept it, Patrick!
Patrick: (laughs) Um, you know, before I ask my final question for you, I would let you know that we watch The Dark Crystal at our house and show our kids who are quite young, you know-
Jon: Yes.
Patrick: -with relative frequency and the early scenes, that I adore, with the sky that you’re talking about. I think this will be a nice little thing to know, is that my kids always get afraid of it ‘cause it’s so ominous. So they do they thing where they kind of hide for a second. And then I always see, especially Henry, who’s a little bit braver sometimes than Jude, his older brother. I see him kind of pulling the blanket down and looking at it like this.
Jon: (laughs)
Patrick: Which I think gets at exactly what is powerful about cinema, you know? About films like-
Jon: That’s true.
Patrick: Dark Crystal and Alien and anything that puts you in that headspace where you’re kind of afraid to look, but you really need to, you know?
Jon: Yes.
Patrick: It shows you things that- there’s no other medium that can do it. So anyway, for my final question, which is sort of to that, we’ve interviewed, just on this podcast alone, probably thirty of forty, at least, people at this point. And something we, pretty much, ask all of them is, what is Alien to you? And this- as somebody who actually built part of Alien, this is a pretty historic day for Jaime and I as friends and colleagues, but also just for people listening to this show. So this is the first time we’ve been able to ask this of somebody who was actually there when it was happening. What is Alien to you?
Jon: Alien, to me, is a very vital part of my life. Because it was a project that had an atmosphere like no other. each film has its own unique take, but Alien was, for a first time experience, I was very lucky. It was a godsend. And the guys who I worked on it with, as I say, were a small crew. They became, to me, like brothers and everywhere I went after that, I took them with me. That’s how important it was. It wasn’t just a job. It was something else and I took all those guys with me. I remember a young director trying to learn his craft and experimentation. There was no threat, although the film was about threat. It was just a very, very happy experience.
Patrick: I’m so glad that meeting got canceled and I was able to sit here for this-
Jon: (laughs)
Patrick: - because it’s been so cool! Thank you so much, Jon.
Jon: It’s been a pleasure!
Jamie: Yes, thank you.
Jon: Have you got everything you need, or? You’re alright?
Jamie: Yeah, I just also wanted to- I mean, I know that your Facebook page is closed down, but I’ve seen a lot of the photos that you were posting and they were really, really beautiful, as a photographer myself.
Jon: Oh, thank you.
Jamie: People either have the eye or they don’t. Obviously you do, and so I really have been able to appreciate your work, and again, thank you so much for coming on. For us, an interview like this- because Alien is a very- it’s almost a mystical, spiritual experience of a film. The series that we devoted to the first film we called The Forbidden Planet because that’s the texture, like you’re in this mystery box and no one’s telling you much and you’re just sort of on your own. I don’t know any other film that’s conjured that kind of… that physical texture, the spiritual texture, the alchemy that you were saying than Alien. It’s just in a league of its own.
Jon: I’m so pleased you-
Jaime: Thank you for sharing.
Jon: Yeah, I’m so pleased you said that because Forbidden Planet is one of my favorites. You talking about the MGM film? The Forbidden Planet?
Jaime: Yes.
Jon: Have you heard that Joshua Meador from the Disney studios, who did all the animation and the electronic sounds?
Patrick: He had the synthesizers.
Jon: Well, thank you very much, guys.
Jaime: Thank you so much for coming on and giving us your time. Enjoy your time away.
Jon: Yes.
Jaime: I’ll send you an email just to let you know when it’s gonna be out, but it will be on April 26th, which is like, Alien Day, 4/26, the name of the planet.
Jon: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Jaime: -or the designation of the planet. So, thank you, sir. So much. Enjoy your evening.
Jon: It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Jaime: Okay, thank you.
Jon: Take it easy, guys.
Patrick: You, too.
