Script to Screen: “Alien”

Here is a memorable scene from Alien (1979), screenplay Dan O’Bannon, story by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett.

Setup: There is an alien on board the spaceship Nostromo. The ship’s captain Dallas has entered the air shaft to find the alien and kill it using a flamethrower. The other crew members are tracking Dallas’ location:

Here is the scene in the movie:

I’ll see you in comments for a discussion of this terrifying scene from Alien.

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a Go Into The Story series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

UPDATE: Some terrific analysis from ZoeTheCat in comments:

A classic suspense scene from a great movie.

The movie is vastly superior to the written script in this scene for a variety of reasons all falling under the heading of TENSION.

The script attempts a weaker form of scare tactic by showing the alien pawing at air close to the unaware Dallas. I think it is far more effective to leave the audience in the same frame of reference as Dallas (ie: where the F*** IS IT!?).

The precursor of finding the slime is a great addition which further heightens tension. We now know it is there, but where?

I also like the humanizing addition of Dallas showing great fear not present in the script; “Uhhh, am I clear? I want to get the hell out of here.“ Here is a character that we as an audience have looked up to as a leader and voice of calmness and rationality. If he is scared, then we are terrified as we continue to lose our psychological mooring.

But Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) deserves a great deal of credit. Her movie dialog is far, far more compelling than the script. Comparing script to movie, we identify with her fear in the actual voice-overs: “Are you sure it’s not there, I mean It’s got to be there…” This is just a tad more compelling than “It’s clear alright, but I’m still getting two blips…“ The single most powerful part of the scene is how the (Sorry, but you’re going the wrong way) is delivered. The script is less effective. The better way to realize the mistake is by showing Dallas’ action while hearing the terrified Lambert deliver the punch line off-screen “nooo, not that way, the other way… ”

I am not a fan of cheap ‘gotcha’ scare tactics, and the final payoff (alien with outstretched arms) is not one of those. It is the perfect culmination of a terrific stretch of tension. I prefer the Dallas POV over the scripted “a hand reaches up” with off-screen screams. A perfect ending to a perfect scene.

That is a spot on take. And an object lesson as we ‘direct’ action / thriller scenes in our scripts, not with camera angles, but simply by where we choose to focus the attention through scene description and secondary slug lines. As Spielberg proved in Jaws when he didn’t have Bruce the mechanical shark available to him for the early weeks of shooting, visualizing what characters don’t see can be much more frightening than what they do see. That sets up for a big payoff when they [and we] finally do see the object of terror.

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