The Making of Alien

by J.W. Rinzler

Comprehensive and definitive volume telling the complete story of how Alien was made, featuring new interviews with Ridley Scott and other production crew, and including many rarely-seen photos and illustrations from the Fox archives.

In 1979 a movie legend was born, as Twentieth Century-Fox and director Ridley Scott unleashed Alien and gave audiences around the world the scare of their lives.

To celebrate the movie's fortieth anniversary, author J.W. Rinzler (The Making of Star Wars) tells the whole fascinating story of how Alien evolved from a simple idea in the mind of writer Dan O'Bannon into one of the most memorable sci-fi horror thrillers of all time.

With brand new interviews with Ridley Scott and other key members of the original production crew, and featuring many never-before-seen photographs and artworks from the archives, The Making of Alien is the definitive work on this masterpiece of popular cinema.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film, Media Tie In, Art, Horror, History, Art Design

336 pages, Hardcover

First published July 23, 2019

About the author

J. W. Rinzler has authored over 20 books including two New York Times bestsellers and a #1 best-selling graphic novel. With more than 600,000 copies in print, his books have been translated into seven languages.

J. W. Rinzler grew up in Manhattan, New York City, and then in Berkeley, California. He fell in love with old monster films, such as Dracula and Frankenstein, as well as Robin Hood and other adventure movies. He was an avid comic-book and novel reader, an intrepid moviegoer, and had his mind blown by The Beatles, Star Trek, Bruce Lee, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Frank Frazetta, Michelangelo, and Mad Magazine.

Rinzler drew his own comic books (badly), then, in his 20s, moved onto figurative oil painting (okay-ly, but self-taught). He lived in France for almost 10 years, where he began writing. Back in the USA, he worked as executive editor at Lucasfilm for fifteen years, chronicling the work of George Lucas and his genial collaborators in a series of books about Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

During this time, Rinzler also directed and wrote an animated short Riddle of the Black Cat, based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, which was accepted into several festivals, including the Montreal World Film Festival.

His latest book is an epic historical fiction thriller called ALL UP, an epic about the first Space Age, published in July 2020. The sequel will be out in a year or two...

Meanwhile his book on Howard Kazanjian, producer, is due in May 2021; and on Kubrick's The Shining in fall 2021.

Rinzler is married and has two daughters and one grandson. He lives on the northern California coast.

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving into an apartment and stocking a proper bookshelf, the first new book I purchased was The Making of Alien by Jonathan W. Rinzler. Published in 2019, this large book (337 pages of text supported by color photographs and artwork) was commissioned by Twentieth Century Fox. They chose Rinzler, author of many similar books on the making of the Star Wars series. Alien is my favorite movie. I've seen it in theaters eight or nine times. I thought I knew everything about the making of it, but this comprehensively packaged book features terrific stories and stunning visual aids I'd never seen before.

-- "I was aware of Planet of the Vampires," O'Bannon said. "I had seen clips from it and it struck me as evocative. It had the curious mixture that you get in those Italian films of spectacularly good production design with an aggressively low budget mentality." Decades later, O'Bannon would admit: "I stole the giant skeleton from Planet of the Vampires," but would add that he'd been primarily influenced by Clifford D. Simak's "Junkyard," published in a 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction; space explorers alight on a blighted asteroid where they discover a graveyard with a wrecked alien spacecraft; they also come upon a stone tower into which one astronaut lowers himself through a hole in the top.

"I don't steal from anybody," O'Bannon said. "I steal from everybody."



-- "Before we could sign the contract with Roger Corman," Shusett would recall, "Dan and I were walking down the street, and we saw a guy from film school named Mark Haggard. Dan said, 'I want to ditch this guy. He's always telling me he can find money to make movies, but he never has yet.' We ran across an alley but Mark called, 'Dan, Dan! I hear you got a great script! Can I read it?' We said, 'Sure, everybody else is reading it.' We were too stupid to think anyone would rip it off because we didn't think it was good enough."

Haggard drove over to Goldwyn Studios, where Brandywine had a ground-floor office. On the vast acreage of the studio, with its winding streets and standing exterior facades that were always being altered for period shoots, Haggard became disoriented. He couldn't find the right building. Instead, he stumbled up an alley that went by Brandywine's exterior wall. It was a hot July day, so Walter Hill and David Giler, two of the production company's three founders, had their windows wide open. Hill had finished his script for The Driver on May 23, and was working on a revision.

"Everybody hears about scripts that came through the window," Giler said, "but in this case it literally did come through the window."

-- It's possible things began to break Brandywine's way when Ladd heard good things about Star Wars from Steven Spielberg. The director saw an early cut, and telephoned Ladd to assure him that Lucas's film was going to be a smash hit. It may also be that Ladd saw Hill as similar to Lucas. They could both be seen as iconoclastic writer-directors, each with one film under their belt, doing something different in the science fiction genre. Lucas was making a space fantasy. Hill wanted to do science fiction/ horror.

"I think the only person at Twentieth who really believed in this from the beginning was Alan Ladd," O'Bannon said. "The rest of the folks were split down the middle."

Giler and Hill transformed the crew into what they called "truckers in space," as they would be referred to going forward. Among the truckers, they created class divisions based on job descriptions, and made engineers Parker and Brett moan about not receiving as much money as the others.

Hill would say that the most significant difference between their rewrite and the original O'Bannon script was "the mood, the environment ... We added a rough contemporary quality that broke it out of the usual genre mold--the 'kiss my rosy red ass' and 'kill the motherfucker' kind of dialogue that historically you didn't find in science fiction movies."



-- Back in the UK, Lieberson had given the matter some thought and come up with Ridley Scott. He'd known the director for many years. He even had furniture designed by Scott in his apartment. They also had a mutual friend in David Puttnam, who had produced movies for Lieberson's company, Goodtimes Enterprises. "I called Ladd," Lieberson recalled, "and said, 'Listen, there is a director here. Ridley Scott, he's done one film. It looked fantastic; I've got an instinct about this guy.'"

-- In the 40 to 90 minutes it took Scott to read Alien (accounts vary), he found a lot to admire. "It was unpretentious--and unbelievably violent--yet a lot of character painting came through. Characterization was in the attitudes, in the very Spartan choice of language, and what they talked about. An interesting social subtext emphasizing the class differences between the command officers and the guys sweating it out on the engineering decks. Hill writes a screenplay in a very communicative way. The image just comes bang at you, and you understand completely what is going on. It was minimal, but I got a great sense of the drive, the power of the script. And that's unusual. Hill and Giler were tough editors and the material was very well paced. Both great writers. Giler was probably one of the best writers in Hollywood at that point. Also, to me it was more than a horror film, it was a film about terror. The thriller aspects of it just leapt off the page. I found it very pure."

-- By the time Scott was engaged in that series of crucial meetings, O'Bannon had received the hand-bound Necronomicon that Giger had sent him (although the American would remember the text being in German, not French). "I was really flattered," O'Bannon said. "He'd sent it to me because he wanted me to use it on the producers. He didn't think they were sufficiently impressed with his work. The book was brilliant--the man has a real knack for coming up with disturbing imagery."

O'Bannon told Scott he wanted to show him something. "He produced The Necronomicon almost out of nowhere, like it was a dirty magazine or a dirty postcard," Scott recalled, "and asked, 'What do you think?' Dan wasn't actually quite sure about it. Didn't know what people would think when he showed it to me. It was a covert operation."

With Carroll looking on, probably horrified, Scott opened The Necronomicon and leafed through its pages. "I looked down and saw this stunning picture, this remarkable half-page painting," he said. "I nearly fell over. It was the most frightening thing I'd ever seen. I have never been so sure of something in all my life. I thought we'd be arguing for months about what the beast was going to be. But I thought, If we can build that, that's it. I was stunned, really. I flipped. Literally flipped. I've never really been so shook up about anything. O'Bannon lit up like a light bulb, shining like a quartz iodine. It was then that I realized I was dealing with a real sci-fi freak, which I'd never come across before. I thought, My God! I have an egghead here.



-- To further illustrate his intentions, Scott locked himself in his RSA office part of each day to draw storyboards specifically for Alien. "At that time the budget was something like $4.5 million," he said. "And I was very well aware that we couldn't do it for that. There was a preliminary period of about six weeks, during which we had to work up a new budget. It was fairly apparent that a higher budget was inevitable. So when I came back to London to start casting, I also began work on a storyboard presentation to show Fox where the additional money would be spent."

Although he wouldn't board out the entire film, Scott wanted to show Ladd and Fox how certain scenes would play and what they might look like. Fox agreed to wait and see before finalizing the budget. In this endeavor O'Bannon had also been invaluable, for he had also pressed for a visual representation so everyone was on the same page and understood what they were up against, as well as what they were going for.

"The boards work for me," Scott said. "It's a way of expressing awareness of the medium. I was an art director before and to draw a sequence helps me think. Once the pictures are right, everything else starts to occur from them. I literally put down every thought I had in my head about how I wanted it to be."



-- At Shepperton, Weaver was taken through a display of Giger artwork by Scott. "They showed me the design and I was like, 'Woooo!'" Weaver said in 1979. "It was a wonderful exploitation of everybody's darkest fears. I thought, It's going to be beautiful and frightening at the same time." Later she'd say that she thought of the phase III alien: "This is a giant penis!" She was then toured around the stages, which left her "impressed by the people," the production crew of Alien.

That night, "I sat down," Weaver said. "I thought, Well, Sigourney, you'd really better make up your mind if you want to do this or not. They've already flown you out here. If you don't, you better think about ending it. I thought about Ripley a long time before deciding I really wanted to play her ...

"I liked that they had broken the rule and written two of the parts, originally designed for men, for women to play," she continued. "I remember thinking, Women aren't allowed to play these warriors and I've been handed this opportunity to play this woman who becomes a warrior and goes from someone rational to someone who's completely instinctive. There was a no-nonsenseness to Ripley. I think she grew up believing there was a certain order to things that could not be broken or changed. And her beliefs are exploded when she suddenly has to work on instinct and emotion. She has to make decisions she hopes are right, but she never will know for sure. I loved that uncertainty because that's something that could be quite frightening to me, to be responsible for a group of people.

"I finally decided I really liked the character of Ripley, as well as the designs and Ridley Scott. Besides, I didn't want anyone else to do it. It wasn't until the day before I did the screen test that I thought, Yes, I would really like to do this, it's going to be interesting."



-- One eyewitness recalled Weaver screaming, Stanton being sick and Skerritt throwing himself back against a wall, "both hands covering his mouth, his eyes wide in terror"--but it was Cartwright who stole the moment.

"One of the blood hoses happened to be angled right straight at Veronica's face," said O'Bannon, "so this jet of blood, about 3 ft. long, caught her smack in the kisser. The amount of blood was unparalleled. It knocked her right off her feet. She was screaming--it was pretty convincing. I was delighted!"

"Veronica looked white and was shaking and she was crying as more blood kept flying around," Christian concluded. "Poor John Hurt was soaked in it, but kept on acting until Ridley softly whispered 'Cut.' Then they all stood around in shock, covered in splattered blood while the crew applauds. Two technicians rush over to help Veronica. They lead her off the set like some pitiful accident victim, visibly shaking.

"Derek Vanlint rushes to the bathroom, clutching his mouth. O'Bannon walks up to Veronica, beaming: 'That was fantastic. What you did was incredible.' Veronica glares at him. 'Thanks, Dan.' She quavers, wiping blood from her mouth. 'But I really was sort of freaked out.'

"Derek complimented me later," Cartwright said, "by saying none of it bothered him until he saw my face, then he ran off to throw up."



-- Although the Jones "family" cats were trained, when Weaver had to retrieve one on the bridge and put it in the box designed by Cobb, things bogged down. "They shot that scene time after time," said Cobb. "Here is the entire crew of this huge spaceship set, the lights, the camera, the dolly, the director, the assistant director, and the makeup people, and the assorted little cat cages that they had full of cats for different takes. We're all sitting around, very tense, waiting. Everybody is being very quiet while someone is trying to get this cat to go to sleep on this control seat. Finally, the assistant director, with this very loud megaphone, says: "Stand by! The cat's lying down, the cat's lying down. Stand by!' Everybody's getting ready,. and finally he says, 'What? It's asleep! It's asleep!!'

"But then the cat wouldn't be there when the camera panned down. Or the cat would jump on Sigourney as soon as she walked in. Or the seat would catapult forward and the cat would disappear into the rafters above the set for good. Then they'd have to get another cat until someone could find the first one. Then they have to be calm and wait for this cat to go to sleep. You couldn't get the same cat back into that seat after it had been frightened out of its wits. No way. For one entire afternoon, there were cats flying all over the place."



-- Because Fox executives had experienced a preview gone wrong a year before, executives in Dallas started to worry. (A scene in a film about Vietnam vets, Rolling Thunder, had actor Willian Devane put his hand down a waste disposal unit and grind it to the bone, which caused the audience to react viscercally and nearly attack Ladd; one account had his shirt ripped off.)

Scott removed his dark blue jacket because he thought it made him look like an executive and a potential target. Because of the emotional responses, he then found himself in a debate about the sound level with Ladd in the foyer. "Laddie had come to argue with me," Scott said. "Laddie said, 'I'm getting a bit worried--we're overdoing things--this is too strong.' So I said, 'Nonsense. We're all right, we're in good shape,' but I noticed he was looking away and there was this incredible crash as an usher came through the door and collapsed. He collapsed! There was this huge thud and he landed face down on the tiles!

The manager rushed in and said, 'Christ, this is too much, man!' and carried the usher outside to give him fresh air and pat his face. I went out and said, 'You must have eaten something. Do you feel all right?' And he said, 'No, no, I'm all right. That scene with the robot--he got his head knocked off! Who thinks of this stuff?'"

"At that point, there was panic among the Fox ranks," Powell said. "'Are we going to get lynched?!'"

Ladd had had enough. He grabbed his wife and ran for their car.

Back in the theater, onscreen, Ripley was frantically running through the corridors looking for Jones. "Leave the fucking cat!" someone screamed.

But the audience behaved themselves and the film came to a peaceful end.



Who needs film school when there are books like this? The Making of Alien features production art, storyboards, set photos and photocopies of documents, but I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes Polaroids most. Rather than look like it was made in the '70s, Alien is shot and edited in a way that looks like it was made today, and the Polaroids maintain that intimacy. I appreciated how thoroughly Rinzler tracks how much money was spent day to day; accounting is pretty boring and rarely mentioned, as if all you need in Hollywood is a good pitch and cash will just appear magically. This book reinforces how every minute of filmmaking is fueled by available money and fights over money.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of all the films in the Alien franchise the first is still my favourite & this superb book covers everything from early script ideas, through production, poster design & the release of the film in 1979.
My favourite moments from the book are the detailed account of filming the 'chestbuster' scene & screenwriter Dan O'Bannon on using other people's ideas when he says "I don't borrow from anyone. I borrow from everyone."
An excellent book from the author of The Making of the Planet of the Apes, which is also well worth reading!

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another impeccably detailed and fully engrossing behind-the-scenes epic from the prolific Rinzler, beautifully designed and full of great visuals. Even for a production as intensely scrutinized and documented as this one, I still found his exhaustively researched writing to be intensely rewarding and full of perspectives I hadn't come across before.

[Tim Lapetino · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read 5 Making Of books by J.W. Rinzler, including the Star Wars trilogy set, Planet of the Apes, and the Indiana Jones saga. This book might be the best of them.

Rinzler digs deep into the conflict, paranoia, discomfort, and claustrophobia of the Alien film’s making. It was a grueling marathon of a production, and Rinzler helps you feel it at every step. Highly recommended for fans of the film, movie buffs, and those working to tell the stories of creative makers and craftspeople.

[C.J. Bunce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published online at BORG.com.

So many books that go behind the scenes of films take a similar approach, skimming the surface with interviews of only top production heads, providing diehard fans of the property who have read all the fanzines little that is new. So when you get an immersive treatise like The Making of Alien, you must take a few weeks to digest every story, quote and anecdote found inside. Maybe it’s because so much of the inception of the other classics J.W. Rinzler has written about is the stuff of sci-fi movie legend, but Rinzler’s research this time around is completely enthralling. Writer Dan O’Bannon, writer and initial director Walter Hill, concept artist H.R. Giger, director and storyboard artist Ridley Scott, actors Sigourney Weaver, Yaphet Kotto, Veronica Cartwright, and Ian Holm–Rinzler’s chronology is framed by the entry of these people into the project and their key roles. The account of their intersected careers and efforts resulting in the 1979 sci-fi/horror classic provide a detailed understanding of studio productions in the 1970s. For fans of the film and the franchise, you couldn’t ask for more for this year’s 40th anniversary of Alien.

Rinzler, who has also created similar deep dives behind the scenes of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, the Indiana Jones films, and last year’s The Making of Planet of the Apes, has established the best format for giving sci-fi fans the ultimate immersive experience. In many ways The Making of Alien is an account of the necessary vetting process behind any major creative endeavor. The first draft of any story is never the best, and sometimes neither is the 100th draft. But the best books and the best movies get reviewed by other people, usually producers, editors, studios, departments, some with prestige and money backing them, sometimes over and over, with changes made to every chapter, with creators and ideas that are tried on for size, dismissed, re-introduced, and sometimes brought back again. By the end of many a film, the contributors are exhausted and disenchanted, some even devastated. Only sometimes this is alleviated by a resulting success. It was even more difficult working on a project like Alien–a mash-up of science fiction and horror pulled together in the 1970s, when drama was in, and science fiction meant either the cold drama of 2001: A Space Odyssey or the roller coaster spectacle of Star Wars. Behind the scenes there would be overlaps in creative types, like famed set “graffiti artist” Roger Christian and sound expert Ben Burtt. But ultimately Alien had to be something different to get noticed.

The stories of O’Bannon and Giger’s contributions and conflicts are the most intriguing of the bunch, and if you’ve read everything available on the film you’ll be surprised there is far more to their stories you haven’t read. The influence of John Carpenter was paramount to getting the idea of the film past the first step, particularly his films Dark Star and The Thing. Along the journey other creators would intersect with the project–people like Steven Spielberg, Alan Ladd, Jr., John Dykstra, Brian Johnson, Nick Allder, Ron Cobb, Jerry Goldsmith, and even Jean “Moebius” Giraud.

2001 got science fiction films noticed. Star Wars made them popular. But Alien cemented the professions of visual effects and an entire segment of moviemakers in Hollywood and around the world. Science fiction could thereafter also be terrifying and carry an R rating.

In Rinzler’s book you’ll find some good tidbits about Alien′s casting. Like Meryl Streep was the initial frontrunner for the role of Ripley, a role that wasn’t initially even written for a woman. In fact it was the success of films starring women like Jane Fonda that prompted a change to a leading woman for Alien–so the execs at the studios might take notice. Behind the camera Ridley Scott and the assistant directors played age-old tricks on the actors throughout the shoot. In addition to a well-known story of Veronica Cartwright’s reaction to the chestburster alien being her own real reaction (she passed out on set), Scott & Company pushed the actors, especially Yaphet Kotto, to agitate Sigourney Weaver, both to keep her off-balance and edgy and to force her to take charge as their leader once the camera started to roll.

Fans of concept art will love Ridley Scott’s personally drawn storyboards. Rinzler also includes key pieces of several drafts of the screenplay, illustrating various plot and character changes. Readers will leave with a better understanding of why Giger’s own accounts of the trials of working with 20th Century Fox were so problematic, and why the various phases of the alien creatures were so difficult for all the contributors to visualize and finalize.

J.W. Rinzler’s The Making of Alien is a big, over-sized hardcover with a massive 336 pages and 1,000+ mostly color photographs and concept drawings. It’s a must for film buffs and fans of the franchise.

[Jason Bovberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fabulous, comprehensive look at the making of one of my favorite movies. Some redundancy with the Alien Quadrilogy DVD set, but enough new stuff to be truly absorbing.

[Roy Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth it for this random anecdote about Alejandro Jodorowsky of stillborn pre-Lynch Dune fame. Rinzler plays it totally straight before, during, and after, as if this is just another day in the office. Jodorowsky has nothing to do with the picture other than liking Dark Star, the flick these guys did before Alien. If you've never seen it just imagine what woukd happen if you created (and acted in) a sci-fi movie and like... you did the best you could. Also imagine you're a film student at USC. That's Dark Star except these guys did it in the 70s so it has that whole fucken smelly bell bottomed unkempt hair and absolutely disgusting beard flavor to it. So anyways they meet Jodorowsky who is kind of famous for being this surrealist Chilean French director...

"... Jodorowsky has taken off his suit jacket and is running his fingers through his hair... which is now sticking out in all directions. I was feeling mighty elevated when all of a sudden...he altered. In one instant all if his facial muscles relaxed and his eyes opened very wide, and at the same moment, 20 years fell from his face. I went into a state of transcendental hallucination -- and wham! Out from his face shoot these radiating lines of light, which produce around his head a shimmering circular mandala or kaleidescope-like pattern, with his face in the center and his eyes locked into mine, and the rest of the room vanishing into oblivion.
This was startling to me only in the sense of having it generated by someone's mind instead of LSD.
Then all of a sudden all of his features...,the lids came back down, and the face smiled, and the 20 years suddenly came back. He said "that's enlightenment.""

[Sean Boyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful book, and a nice, chronological breakdown of the production of Alien. The quality of the book is superb. Thick, glossy page stock for beautiful image reproduction and crisp text; reader-friendly text and sidebar layouts; outstanding use of white on cover; this is just an all-round beautifully produced book.

Rinzler's writing is crisp and clean. Nothing flowery or philosophical; he's simply reporting on the production of Alien, from concept to its sequels. But it's very readable and not dry.

That said, because of its size and page stock, this thing weighs around five pounds, so it's not always the most comfortable tome to hold or sit on your lap.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible examination of the process of making the film 'Alien' from first concept to completed film, covering all the stages in between and even after the release. Highly readable and with a wealth of fascinating detail, there are also hundreds of photos included showing all stages of the production. From the description of the fraught process involved in getting the film green-lit, it is an absolute wonder that any film actually gets made! I would totally recommend this huge book to anyone with an interest in the film itself or in the process of film-making in general.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book's only error was not publishing Scott's second pass storyboards in full. That's the director's cut. O'Bannon/Shusset's plan, Giler/Hill's Hollywood realism, Cobb/Foss/Giger's biomechanics-tech, and Scott's immersive Kubrick-Lucas visualizations + radical approach with letting the actors sort out their characters on their own.

Highest levels of risk-taking rewards with a new genre, B-movie to A-levels.

[Klaus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kerrassaan huikea teos, jossa todellakin näkyy kirjoittajan intohimo elokuvaa kohtaan. Erittäin mielenkiintoista tarinaa ja taustoitusta tekoprosessista pieniäkään yksityiskohtia unohtamatta. Kaiken kruunaa upea kuvitus Gigerin konseptitaiteesta lähtien. Viiden tähden leffa on tämän viiden tähden kirjan ansainnut.

[Sebastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first 'Making of' book about a movie I read. You definitly need to be a true fan of the movie and a movie aficionado to enjoy that kind of books (I'm both). The sheer volume of photos from the set and other material from the shoot and first-hand information from the people involved is impressive for a book written 40 years after the movie was released.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is absolutely brilliant and the author spared no expense in getting every minute detail into this “book that won’t fit on a shelf.”

Yes the making of specials from the Alien Anthology set are by far the best documentaries about a making of movie, ever! But this book focuses on a few more players in the game and it was an enjoyable read to have in between books!

[Jefferson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great for anyone who is a fan of the film or interested in the filmmaking process. Worth it for all the production artwork alone.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author is on fire. Having read making of star wars before this, I am even more in awe of the amount of facts and photos Rinzler has managed to uncover. We're talking about a (damn good) movie that was filmed 4 decades ago, yet the it almost feels like the author was there on the set and during production, every minute seems to be recorded.
If you're a movie buff, like me, and still think Alien is an epic movie, definitely read this hefty and glorious tome!

[Robin Burkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best, and most detailed 'making ofs' I've ever read.

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this *very* thorough dive into the making of my favorite movie. Early concept art is fun to flip through and there's so many behind the scenes stories that I hadn't heard before, despite being pretty well versed in the making-of already. Some of the concept art that went unused is really interesting since it went on to be used for another property (or another Alien movie, in a couple cases). And what a relief they didn't go with that original Alien design...

The real highlight for me was all of the early script inclusions. Seeing that evolve into the final product was very interesting. This movie was so, so, so close to being a forgettable schlocky B-movie...that DNA is all over. Instead, it's one of the finest horror films ever made, a perfect organism.

My biggest complaint is the actual size of the book. It makes it really lovely to flip through and see huge, high quality pictures, but it makes it a complete pain to actually *read*.

[Jon Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in hardback, checked out from the local library. I have said it before: I am a sucker for these "making of the movie" books. It is a bonus when the book is about the making of a movie I really like, and that is true for the movie "Alien". When the movie came out in the summer of 1979, I was between my junior and senior years of high school. I don't know how many times I went back to see that movie in the theater - maybe 2 or 3 times. As far as "making of the movie" books go, this is a good one. The copy I read was large format, maybe 15" x 15", and the book is loaded with great pictures, so the large format is a plus. The text is very informative as well, loaded with anecdotes and technical tidbits. Four out of five stars.

[Juan Manuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uno de mis propósitos de año nuevo fue leer más y ya terminé mi segundo libro del año, The making of alien, un exhaustiva y detallada recolección de fotos, imágenes, fotos y por supuesto la creación de una de mis películas favoritas, narra desde su concepción hasta su legado, me sorprende la cantidad de detalles que este libro logra evocar en tan pocas páginas, y sobre todo el transmitir el estrés, los conflictos e incluso los nervios y preocupaciones de cada unidad de producción, y es que trabajar en una película sigue siendo un trabajo y este libro trae los chismes y peleas estúpidas que tenían los equipos, valió la pena cada centavo de este libro y me encantó
10/10

[Philip Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another absolutely masterpiece from the incomparable Rinzler. Easily on par with his groundbreaking work on the making of Star Wars. Covers every iteration of the script, Scott's storyboards, Giger's designs, the building of sets, lighting, acting, direction, editing, scoring, sound mix, studio interference and the many, many arguments over who actually wrote the film. If you're a fan of the film, I can't recommend it highly enough.

[Intruder · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10 - bardzo dobra.

[David Flores · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must-have for fans of the movie. It gets into the nuts-and-bolts of how the classic movie was made with amazing detail. It's incredibly comprehensive.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding. Was not expecting to actually read most of the text, having borrowed it from the library to geek out on some production designs and such. But it’s so well researched, so thorough, and so well organized that it just carried me along from start to finish. An amazing window into not just how a Hollywood movie gets greenlit and made, but how a perhaps malformed germ of an idea evolves and matures, eventually coming out the other side (or bursting out of the chest?) as an arguable masterpiece.

[Ben]

Rinzler is about as exhaustive as you are going to find. I'm learning more and more that the number of stories and the sheer volume of information involved in the making of a film of any size is more than the market for making of books can really bear. So much is poorly documented and lost forever in a sea of ego in this industry. Rinzler does his best to restore balance.

Unlike the sister volume about Star Wars, it's not a happy tale. Stress and problems followed the cast and crew down every rabbit hole and the payoff was not up to expectations either critically or financially. At the heart of the nerve center stands O'Bannon. Equal parts genius and maniac and 100% deserving of a film in his own right.

[Joshua]

I love Alien but my primary reason for reading this book is author J.W. Rinzler, whose three books on the making of the original Star Wars trilogy represent perhaps the best behind the scenes filmmaking content I’ve encountered. Having recently read Robert Caro’s Working I found myself even more impressed with the time and research that must’ve gone into Rinzler’s writing this book, though here researching, you know, Alien, rather than LBJ or one of Caro’s more monumental subjects.

All that said, my god making Alien sounds absolutely miserable.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very thorough book about making the movie Alien. Very impressive. I am surprised they didn't talk more about Ripley's yelling at the Alien of "Get away from her, you b*tch!" That was a huge scene in the movie and they really didn't tell you what the reaction was in the theaters or how the other actors felt. So, it was kind of weird not to have that in the book

[Olle Moquist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely comprehensive. My only gripes are with the format. The book is so huge and heavy that holding it upright while reading becomes a challenge in and of itself. Should also be said that even though the book is 336 pages it packs at least double that amount's worth of text owing to its massive footprint.

[Kirq · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutnie obowiązkowa pozycja dla fanów obcego. Nieprzebrana skarbnica materiałów i ciekawostek, ale przede wszystkim, kompletna historia powstania filmu, od genezy pierwszych pomysłów, do rozliczeń finansowych na końcu.

[Michael Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kick ass.

[Michael Masloboishchykov · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you would like to know how many times Ridley Scott's shoelaces came undone during the filming of this movie, you should definitely read this book.