Daily Dialogue — June 26, 2018

“Oh, God, it’s moving right toward you!”

— Alien (1979), written by Dan O’Bannon, story by Dan O’Bannon and Ron Shusett

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Aliens.

Trivia: In the original script by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, the names of the characters were Standard, Roby, Broussard, Melkonis, Hunter, and Faust (there was no Ash character). Walter Hill and David Giler hated the names, and changed them multiple times during revisions. They finally settled on Dallas, Ripley, Kane, Lambert, Parker, and Brett, and added Ash. The script by O’Bannon and Shusett also had a clause indicating that all of the characters are “unisex”, meaning they could be cast with men or women. Consequently, all of the characters are only referred to by their last name (Dallas, Kane, Ripley, Ash, Lambert, Parker, and Brett), and the few gender-specific pronouns (he or she) were corrected after casting. However, Shusett and O’Bannon never thought of casting Ripley as a female character.

Dialogue On Dialogue: The chest-busting scene is memorable, for sure, but when the alien leaps out at Dallas caused me to leap out of my theater seat.