Sigourney Weaver spoke to Speakeasy last weekend at a press event in Los Angeles in conjunction with the release of The Alien Anthology. In addition to discussing her first impressions of her iconic character, Weaver examined the literal and metaphorical dimensions of the franchise, and offered a few insights how it helped her make the transition into the completely computer-generated worlds James Cameron created for “Avatar,” which is due on Blu-ray November 16 in a new three-disc deluxe edition.
The Wall Street Journal: What was your first impression when you got the script for ‘Alien’?
Sigourney Weaver: When I read the script, I hadn’t seen any of the artwork, so reading the script, it was sort of like ‘Ten Little Indians.’ I liked how spare it was and I liked the momentum of the story, but it wasn’t until I met Ridley, and he’s crazy anyway, and he showed me the pictures of the eggs and the space jockey – I’d just never seen anything so expressionistic, and as he said, like Francis Bacon. I just thought it was so ambitious and that made me realize that as a theater actor, I could only be part of something that visually interesting if I made the movie. So really, to me it was the whole [project]; it wasn’t really the script, which I liked. The way my character was written, so straightforwardly, she wasn’t like, ‘the woman.’ I was just a person, and I loved that about it. But what I loved was what Ridley and then all of the artists brought to it. It was a real collaboration.
Throughout the films there was obviously a maternal theme that ran recurrent in all of them. But when you’re working on a film, do you pay at all attention to those aspects of the production, or do you just focus on what you’re doing?
I think you take it all in. Part of the unpleasantness of being in space with something whose life cycle involved gestating inside a human chest was so [potent] that you couldn’t just discount that. It was that we were out of our element, and we were dealing with something we don’t understand – and it’s horrific, the worst thing you can imagine is something growing in your chest. So I was able to sort of ride on that for several films, actually, and I think you have to take it all in as an actor, I think. You play the scene, you play surviving or whatever it is that’s interesting that’s literal, but the rest of it is the mysterious part – I would think in any art form, music or anything else. There’s a tone in the world, a spirit that infuses your instrument, and it’s a part of your job, I think. And part of the fun of it.
How easy is it to watch or revisit these films, whether it’s for the commentaries or for lost or rediscovered footage? Are you eager or reluctant to jump back in and rewatch the movies?
I think it depends on the movie, and I don’t spend a lot of time watching them. I don’t have these old movies, and I don’t think my daughter has seen – I think she’s seen a third of the movies that I’ve been in. But I think I had to watch the old screen tests for the [Blu-ray] and I think, do we really have to share these. But it was interesting – it’s interesting to see yourself starting out and see what’s difficult for you and what you do well, in sort of an effortless way. I guess I felt, because I work with a lot of young actors at The Flea – we have a company there every year – that it’s good to see the screen tests because, listen, if I could do it, anyone could do it. There’s nothing extraordinary about what I do, but I must have done what Ridley Scott was looking for – or maybe it’s what I didn’t do. I didn’t make it girly or anything like that, I was just straightforward, and I think that’s what he was looking for. It’s interesting in that sense, but the rest of it, someday maybe I’ll have time to [look at].
Each of the “Alien” films feels like it embodies a certain period in the evolution of visual effects. Did that make it at all easy to make the transition to performance capture in “Avatar?”
Boy, I think Jim [Cameron] created a whole new world, because 3-D to me has become a kind of debased invention. I was disappointed in the CGI in the last “Alien” film because we hadn’t conquered the weight aspect of these creatures. But performance capture and 3-D is the way we humans are wired to receive each other, so I think the emotional power of 3-D is something only Jim has seen. And all of this dialogue about whether everything should be 3-D, it’s really missing the point. The point is that this is the difference between sort of hieroglyphics and Greco-Roman sculpture – suddenly hieroglyphics aren’t state-of-the-art any more. And that is why it was such a universal success, because it just jumped past [everything else], and actually it’s going to be a hard act to follow – but not because of the technology. It’s going to be a hard act to follow because people still underestimate 3-D, and that it’s legit, I think.
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/10/26/sigourney-weaver-on-the-alien-anthology-and-how-3-d-film-is-like-greco-roman-sculpture/
Author
Logged
