Movie Review: Memory: The Origins of Alien

Memory: The Origins of Alien *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Alexandre O. Phillipe.

 

Documentarian Alexandre I. Phillipe has carved a nice little niche for himself in the film world – basically making docs about other films. Before Memory: The Origins of Alien there was The People vs. George Lucas – about the fans who hate the prequels, Doc of the Dead, about the history of the modern zombie movie from Romero on, and his best film 78/52 a feature length examination of the infamous shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho (or, more accurately, about an hour of that, with 30 minutes of padding). Memory: The Origins of Alien isn’t quite that innovative – it doesn’t look at just one scene in Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror/sci-fi masterpiece, but rather than film as a whole (although it’s quite clear that Phillipe is more interested in the chest bursting scene than any other sequence). These kinds of docs run the risk of seeming like a DVD bonus feature blown up to feature length – and to a certain extent, that is what the film is. But it would be an excellent bonus feature, and in a world in which more and more films aren’t coming to DVD at all – and just go to streaming, well, where else are you going to find something like this?

 

There are limitations to how good these films can be – one, obviously, is who is willing to sit down for an interview with Phillipe. So, unfortunately, he doesn’t get Ridley Scott and he doesn’t get Sigourney Weaver – and other key figures like Dan O’Bannon and H.R. Giger have died. And yet, the film still manages to detail how Alien first came to O’Bannon, how the screenplay got fleshed out, how Walter Hill came and went from the project, and how Ridley Scott came on. When he did, O’Bannon’s vision become more possible – because Scott was fully on board, including with Giger’s alien designs, which the studio absolutely hated. It pulls together all of the different sources that inspired the film – either consciously on unconsciously, from sources high and low. It then dives into the making of the film – with a special emphasis on that chest bursting scene – which everyone (correctly) says was the make or break moment for the film – of that didn’t work, the whole movie wouldn’t work.

 

For die hards of Alien, I do have to wonder how much of this is new information – I’d wager not much, because I’m pretty sure I knew most of it. And yet, it’s fascinating to see it all pulled together into one film, and have some differing perspectives on it all – those who helped make the film, and those who have been inspired or loved the film. Phillipe is better here than he was in 78/52 in choosing his interview subjects – that film at times was strange in that it seemed like just about anyone could be interviewed. Here, even if the interview subjects sometimes appear random, no one who doesn’t have anything interesting to say makes the cut.

 

So what you end up with is a making-of doc, but not really. It’s a cultural impact doc, but not really. It’s about the how and why it came together so perfectly, and how and why the film has lasted – and those moments we remember have lasted. I think it still kind of pales into comparison to something like Hitchcock/Truffaut – because in that film director Kent Jones had excellent access to filmmakers who could explain what both of those filmmakers were doing, or De Palma, because Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow had the man himself go through his entire career. But as a doc on a single film, Memory: The Origins of Alien is very good – and would ideal viewing with watching Scott’s masterpiece.

Movie Review: 78/52

78/52 *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Alexandre O. Philippe.

 

You could probably count the number of 45 second movie scenes that could support a feature length documentary on one hand, and have multiple fingers left over. The good news about the documentary 78/52 by Alexandre O. Phillippe, is that he picked one of the few that actually can – the shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho (the title refers to the number of camera setups/number of edits in the scene). The bad news is that for a while anyway – the first 30 minutes or so of the doc – you wonder exactly what the approach to the doc is going to be, and especially wonder how and why Phillipe chose his interview subjects to speak about the scene in question. It really does seem like he was willing to talk too just about anyone who wanted to (sure, come on in, Elijah Wood and a couple of your film geek pals, Illena Douglas, why not?, the director of From Dusk to Dawn 2, sure!). It doesn’t much help that in that first 30 minutes, the doc is going over some very well-trod upon ground – talking about the importance of the scene historically, and how groundbreaking it was, and how daring Hitchcock was for doing it. We saw this (recently) in films like last year’s documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut, and we saw this – dramatically – in the disappointing film Hitchcock with Anthony Hopkins – and those two are just the tip of the iceberg.

 

Luckily for those of us who already know all of that, the last hour of this 90 minute doc is something that really is fascinating – and really is worth your time. As the doc moves away from those talking about the importance of the scenes, and starts to break down the various elements of it – the different setups, and what they mean, the various cuts, Bernard Hermann’s score, etc. – the film gets into the nitty, gritty film geek stuff that you really do want to see in a doc like this. Sure, there is still a lot of fawning over Hitchcock and his genius here – but, whatever, it is kind of deserved.

 

The film takes the various stories and theories about the scene – and who is responsible for its greatness – and at the very least, addresses them. There is a vocal contingent who believes that the legendary title designer Saul Bass deserves more credit than he gets, because of the storyboards for it he drew – and the movie does show the various ways Hitchcock both followed them, and deviated from them to make the scene work more. The doc is perhaps even more fawning in its praise of Hermann and his score than it is even of Hitchcock – the composers he interviews seem to be in awe of him.

 

I do think there are various missed opportunities here. There is a fascinating moment where the film puts on a side-by-side comparison between the shower scene and a boxing scene in Scorsese’s Raging Bull the director has admitted to having inspired by in the editing of by the scene – but that flashes by too quickly. The doc interviews various people associated with the making of Gus Van Sant’s 1998 shot-for-shot remake of the film – but I would have loved it had it delved deeper into why that film didn’t work the same way (I believe the editor of the film essentially admits it doesn’t – but I would have loved a little more insight). I also think that the film could have stood with a little bit of questioning of the official narrative of Hitchcock as a genius – and delved past that a little. After all, there is a lot of talk in the doc about how modern Psycho is – and how with the melding of sex and violence, it was a precursor of much of what came after. But, surely someone thinks that may not be entirely good – especially considering what we know of Hitchcock and his relationships with actresses.

 

Still, this is pretty much a fan film, and on that level it works. As a filmmaker, that is pretty much what Phillippe is known for – he made The People vs. George Lucas – a film about why Star Wars fans love the original trilogy – and hate the prequels (whiny man children), and Doc of the Dead – about the history of the modern Zombie film. This is his best work to date, perhaps because it’s the most compressed – most focused on a single subject, rather than trying to do too much. Even if you know Psycho inside out and backwards, you should see this film – and if you haven’t – well, what are you waiting for?

Movie Review: Doc of the Dead

Doc of the Dead
Directed by: Alexandre O. Philippe.
Written by: Chad Herschberger & Alexandre O. Philippe.

Zombies are everywhere right now. As popular culture icons, they pretty much disappeared in the 1990s – after decades of movies by the likes of George A. Romero, and a host of imitators, the genre seemed to have pretty much died off. But the early 2000s brought them back in a big way – first in films like Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, and then onto the Walking Dead comics by Robert Kirkman – and the insanely popular TV show it inspired. Zombies are everywhere now – they’ve gone mainstream again. A good documentary about the phenomenon could easily be made – and some of Doc of the Dead is fascinating. But a lot of it isn’t. Perhaps a feature documentary wasn’t needed – a short would have done.

Doc of the Dead goes back to origins of the genre on film – breezing through the first 7 decades of cinema in a few minutes – from The Cabinet of Dr. Cagliari (1919) to White Zombie (1932) to I Walked with a Zombie (1943) through some sci-fi of the 1950s. Quite quickly it gets to George A. Romero and Night of the Living Dead (1968) – which pretty much invented the zombie genre as we know it today. It then walks through Romero’s films, and its many imitators, and show how zombies have gone mainstream – with books, comics, movies, TV shows, and everything else – and then showing the conventions, zombie walks and everything thing the die-hard fans of the genre have done.

Some of this is fascinating stuff. I didn’t think very much of the analysis of the movies – which basically sticks the big hits, and doesn’t tell us anything new or unique about them (Dawn of the Dead is about consumerism? Who knew?) and doesn’t even delve too deep into any of them either. I was much more interested in some of the things I didn’t know – the origins of the zombies in reality, and the possibilities of a real zombie outbreak (it may not be possible for the dead to come back to life, but perhaps an infection could create real, zombie-like people).

Unfortunately, the stuff that’s of real interest to me about the film is about a third of the movie. Another third is going over the movies and books that anyone who knows anything about zombie movies already knows all about (but hell, if you think zombies begins and ends with The Walking Dead, then by all means educate yourself). And then another third is downright embarrassing – strange re-enactments, and stuff that is just plain boring.

 
A good documentary about zombie culture could easily be made. But Doc of the Dead, directed by Alexandre O. Philippe – who directed the far better The People vs. George Lucas, about fans who hate the man they once adored (which was strangely fairer to Lucas than I thought it would be) – isn’t that film. It seems to be made for people who know nothing about zombie culture – and if they know nothing about zombie culture, then why the hell would they watch a documentary about zombie culture? The film quite simply isn’t good enough.

DVD Review: The People vs. George Lucas

The People vs. George Lucas ***

Director: Alexandre O. Philippe.

Han Solo shot first. Greedo came to get him, and before he could shoot or capture him, Han Solo gunned him down in cold blood. That was what happened in the original 1977 version of Star Wars. When George Lucas did the special additions, he added more than just special effects – he added a different plot point when he has Greedo shoot first, miss, and than have Han Solo gun him gun. That turns what Han Solo did from an act of cold blooded murder to an act of justifiable self defense. And you know what? I don’t give a shit.

Unlike most of the fanboys (and girls) who make up the talking heads in the entertaining documentary The People vs. George Lucas, I was not a child of the 1970s. I can’t remember watching Star Wars for the first time in 1977 and being blown away by it – mainly because I wasn’t born until 1981. By then not only Star Wars, but also The Empire Strikes Back, had been released. Sure, I watched the movies when I was a kid, and loved them (we had all sorts of Star Wars toys), but I can’t say that Star Wars was the definitive moment of my childhood. Which perhaps explains why, unlike so many in the film, I can never honestly say that George Lucas raped my childhood by making changes to the original trilogy, and then having the gall to make the “prequels”. I’ll admit – I actually like all three prequel films. Sure, other than Revenge of the Sith, none of them even come close to the original or The Empire Strikes Back or The Return of the Jedi, but all three are entertaining space operas – which is what the first three films were. But yes, I will agree, that Jar Jar Binks never should have happened.

The People vs. George Lucas is a fascinating look at fandom – at just how far some people will go with their love and obsession with something – and how quickly that love can turn to hate. It’s suggested in the movie that the way you prove that you truly love Star Wars is to hate Star Wars. And I think that makes perfect sense.

When George Lucas started his film career, he was frustrated by the fact that the film industry was run by corporations. He liked making tiny, non-narrative films and worked alongside Francis Ford Coppola. He made two other films before Star Wars – THX 1138 and American Graffitti, and although both are excellent films, he was frustrated that corporations stuck their noses into his art. He was determined not to let that happen again – and he didn’t. The Star Wars films, for better or for worse, are all George Lucas. He has complete control over every aspect of every film and it seems like he will never be done tinkering with them. And then, most frustrating of all, he’ll make the previous additions unavailable to all who want them. Star Wars is his, goddamn it, and people will see only what Lucas wants them to see.

And yet, George Lucas has also given much back to the fans. There are thousands of fan films featuring Star Wars characters and themes, and Lucas not only doesn’t sue anyone for infringing on his copyright, he encourages it. He holds contests for the best ones, he makes special audio and visual effects available to anyone who wants to use them in their films. You can essentially do whatever you want to Star Wars, and George Lucas doesn’t care. But those six films are his, and he’ll do to them whatever the hell he wants.

Yes, there are arguments about preserving film history to be made – and I agree with them. There should be the original versions of the films made available. These are the films that people fell so much in love with, and these are the films that won so many Oscars. The Special Additions are not the same film. And the originals should be preserved.

But in all honesty, does it really matter THAT much? Are the changes Lucas made to the original trilogy really THAT awful that anyone can honestly say that they go from loving them to hating them? Will future generations watching Star Wars really care? Are the prequel movies really that much awful?

What I would interesting is to show all six Star Wars films to a 30 year old who had never heard of Star Wars before (impossible I know) and see what they think of them. I would argue that the people who hate the special additions and the prequels as much as they do are doing so more because of nostalgia for their childhood then any logical reason. Just don’t tell them that.