Dan OBannons projects are by now said to have collectively grossed over $1 billion for Hollywood.
Well, I almost did.
I supervised all of the effects onDark Starand executed many of them that taught me a lot of technology.
I went over to Paris, which was quite a thrill, and I stayed there for six months.
So I worked with them.
I told Jodorowsky that for do these effects we were going to have to storyboard.
That was more than I needed, but what the heck.
It was an amazing achievement.
Then, when we were just about camera-ready, the French backers pulled out.
So some of my experience withDunewent intoAlien.
And due to certain factors of luck, it indeed happened.
He knew from seeingDark Starthat I had faked some using conventional animation.
Just about the time that that job ended, Fox greenlighted Alien.
Ive gone through the annoyance at making these silly sequels, so I didnt really care anymore.
This is where they rewrote the names of the characters in your original script?
I dont know villains think as villains think; yknow theyre stupid.
When they failed to get that credit they both just flipped their lids.
Theyd already targeted me as a victim, meaning that I was not a friend.
And then when the victim ended up not being victimised, they were just furious, just beside themselves.
So no, they were not about to have me involved in any of those sequels.
Theyre only interested in the money with those sequels, anyway.
These are not artistic fellows.
Did you even see the first Alien Vs. Yeah, sure, I saw it.
What did you think of it?
Perhaps back to the more high-budget universe that you
Id like to see it stop.
A horror movies a fragile thing, and once youve gotten past the original, it isnt scary anymore.
But once he had done that, there really was nothing left to do.
And they just keep squeezing the thing till its an empty bag.
But as long as it keeps bringing in money to them, theyll keep doing it.
Gordon Carroll was the only decent one among the producers.
I changed the title toOmnivore, but it doesnt really matter; its not about vampires.
Actually withThey BiteI sort of plagiarised myself.
I remember being told that special effects are a lost art.
The jerky strobe effect of stop-motion wouldnt have been so apparent.
So I knew they could be done but the studios didnt think they could be done.
They liked it but they passed on it because of that.
And whats the easiest way to do a monster?
Man in a rubber suit yeah?
So I thought okay, Ill have one humanoid monster.
And of course it has a couple of earlier phases, but theyre small and they dont move much.
And so I wrote it, and yeah, it has a similar tone and feel.
Those are my two main horror scripts that Ive written.
I didnt really try very hard to makeReturnscary.
Can you tell us anything about Silvaticus 3015?
Not a lot, because they havent built the idea very far.
They have a couple of main ideas and I can pretty much take it wherever I want from there.
If you ask me why it isnt further developed, its because they havent paid me any money yet.
I start work when I get a cheque.
If Im gonna write without being paid its going to be something on spec that I own.
They said I didnt know what I was doing, and didnt I know that zombies lumbered slowly?
I dont know, but I know that he was congratulating himself on inventing the idea of swiftly-moving zombies.
And I thought, hmmm, I guess hes never seenReturn Of The Living Dead.
And I believed them, and in fact I taught myself how to do every job on a movie.
And they werent even good editors.
My movie is lost.
But I did approach it from a completely opposite standpoint.
I delegated everything, and I just stood back and operated as sort of quality control.
I just watched, and as long as they were doing stuff that looked good, I didnt interfere.
Rod Taylor told that story.
Rod Taylor finally asked Wheres Hitchcock, and they said Well, hes sleeping in his trailer.
So its just a different way of working that makes everyone happier.
Ronnie Shusett I think picked up the option forWholesalefor two thousand dollars.
So I have no idea how one would even get the rights to a Phil Dick story anymore.
Plus, I dont particularly like doing sequels.
Especially of my own material.
If a movies been done, its been done.
Because otherwise, what am I doing?
If it wasnt that.
It was calledTulp, named after the main character.
It was about the mid-life crisis of a man who owns the biggest car dealership in a small town.
The other way all you have to do is describe normal real life.
Which is…big deal.
Hell tell you the deal the only thing thats important to him is his name above the title.
He brought this over to me and said Do you think this could be a full-length screenplay?.
I know that story well and I said sure I do.
I sat down and immediately batted out the first thirty pages and handed it to him.
On the basis of that he said write some more, and I did.
He said I dont agree at all, I think it should be a western on Mars.
Yknow, Pancho Villa on Mars.
I said that was a terrible idea, and I wasnt going to write it.
So he went off and found some other schlemozzle to write it as a western on Mars.
So he came back again and I sat down and wrote the third act at his request.
Ronnie took it away and years passed while he ran around town doing deal-making.
And what happened wasStar Wars, and the rise of a new generation of film-makers.
They couldnt sell westerns anymore, nobody would go to them.
Dont you remember how everything was a western?Yes I do.
And it just stopped at some point around 1970 or thereabouts.
And when it became so wildly popular, everybody over about thirty-five, they just had a haemorrhage.
So everybody started making science fiction movies and the rest is history.
So now I wanted to see some other parts of the world and study some other stuff.
Dark Starwas the thing that kind of drew me back into sci-fi.
Is that a useful form of expression for you?
Yeah, I wish I could do that for a living now, its so much easier than writing.
Id always acted from childhood on, and I was always in theatrical productions at school and then college.
It was an obvious thing to do inDark Star.
Since we werent paying anybody, the other actors were unreliable in terms of showing up.
And I was there and so I acted in the thing.
Sometimes I wish Id stayed in acting.
Yeah, that was the one.
Ive never liked sadistic horror films that lingered on the mutilation.
You cant carry on forever without hitting them in the face with something.
you could divide horror movies into two general categories: sadistic or masochistic.
In the sadistic films they invite you to enjoy the mutilation and to empathise with the monster.
In the masochistic film you are invited to empathise with the victim, and to not like mutilation.
Well, I make masochistic horror films.
There was a Marxist film critic in Canada who wrote a fascinating essay comparingAlientoTexas Chainsaw Massacre.
Its just sitting over on a corner of my desk, gathering dust.
Over the years Ive read a couple of necronomicons published.
I bought and read them and I was very disappointed, and I finally got annoyed.
Its not a long book, but it shouldnt be long.
I dont know if youve ever readJekyll and Hyde…?Yes, I have.
So much of it is finished, itd just be a crime not to finish it.
Very many thanks to Diane OBannon for arranging this interview and to Dan for being so generous and forthcoming.
