With a documentary about Hitchcock’s Psycho in his rear-view mirror and another about The Exorcist due later this year, director Alexandre O. Philippe is the go-to man for the feature-length revisiting of classic movies. His latest film is 40th anniversary look back at Alien…
STARBURST: What inspired you to make this film about Alien?
Alexandra O. Philippe: I was very interested in the idea of exploring the chestburster scene in a way that is similar to the way that I had explored the Psycho showed scene (in the 2017 documentary 78/52). And I very quickly realised that you can’t really approach the chestburster scene in the same way, because if you do, what you end up having is a behind the scenes documentary. I could have had a very interesting discussion on the behind scenes work, but I think it’s been done and it’s just not the kind of film that I make – I’m interested to go a lot deeper than that. In fact, I had put together a ‘sizzle’ reel fir that, but it just didn’t work. But there was this in story that I did find really interesting, which is of Ridley Scott showing the Frances Bacon triptych ‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’ to HR Giger and pointing to it as a source of inspiration. Then I started doing some research into the idea that you’re looking essentially as a scene of crucifixion but those are the Greek Furies and that the Furies keep coming back again and again in Bacon’s work. I thought ‘OK, I want to go down this rabbit hole and see what I find’. The moment I started going down that path of mythology and looking at Alien from that perspective, doors started opening. In fact, shortly after that, very serendipitously I ended up getting introduced to Diane O’Bannon (wife of Alien screenplay writer Dan O’Bannon) who for the first time opened her husband’s extraordinary archives. Everything ensued from that and as a result Memory is a very different film than 78/52 and I think in many ways it goes deeper.
I found the Bacon connection very interesting. I remember as a kid my mates and I being fascinated by the imagery of Alien and chestburster scene in particular, which we saw in the Alien photo-novel, and also by Francis Bacon’s artwork, because Bacon had a weekend house in the village where we lived, and we’d peer through his letterbox at the weird paintings in his hallway, which spooked us. We definitely felt that Bacon’s work and Alien were somehow connected.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Alien hits you in a way you don’t really comprehend because the imagery is rooted in iconography that as humans and has meant something to us for millennia. You respond to it without completely understanding what it is you’re responding to, and I fully believe that that is the reason Alien became as popular as it did at a time when was not supposed to work. It went completely against the grain of what people wanted in 1979 but resonated on a mythic level. People walked out of the theatre shaken; I think it took a long time for them to understand how it had affected them, and I think we’re still digesting – no pun intended – what Alien really is about, 40 years later.
Dan O’Bannon is a significant figure to the film, was it tempting to make the film entirely about his story, his contribution?
No question about it. At one point the title of the film was Dan O’Bannon’s Alien, but to me what became really central is this idea of the symbiosis between O’Bannon, Giger, and Scott giving us Alien in the way that we know it. I think Memory is fundamentally a film about the resonance of myth and our collective unconscious. That’s why it is an origin story very specifically examined through that lens.
The opening scene of the film is a dramatic sequence that really throws the audience loop…
[Laughs] Well I want to be careful not to tell you too much because I think it’s a scene that has to be experienced. It’s a scene that contains everything the film is about and it’s meant to experience on a purely visceral level. If you’re an Alien fan you’re gonna recognise some imagery and see they are linked to Alien but also connected to the ancient world. What’s going on? It’s a scene that quite frankly came out completely from the unconscious and it establishes this question of what is the connection between the Furies and Alien. It’s to keep the audience on their toes and make them realise that this is not the kind of film on Alien that they might expect it’s going to be.
Just as unnerving as the Alien itself at that time was the movie’s ‘adult’ approach to big-budget SF – the very naturalistic performances, the greasy food, the sweaty clothes, the smoking, the swearing…
Yeah that’s the genius of the movie, this very strange combination of blue-collar workers in space, a very realistic kind of world, with the completely out-there Lovecraftian universe of HR Giger. To marry those two worlds in a way that works so beautifully is so good, it’s just so good…
What have you got coming up next?
I’m actually finishing it now; it’s called Leap of Faith and it’s a completely unique take on The Exorcist. It’s essentially a chamber film, a very intimate portrait that goes to the heart of William Friedkin’s process as a filmmaker and an artist. So it’s only him and it’s the Exorcist via arts, classical music, classic cinema and it goes into his mind’s eye and his thought process. So we’re looking to premiere that in the fall, so it’s a big year!
MEMORY: THE ORIGINS OF ALIEN is in cinemas 30 Aug and on DVD and on demand 2 Sept and is reviewed here.
