I read today that Dan O’Bannon, the screenwriter who wrote some of my favorite films including Alien, Total Recall, Dark Star and wrote/directed The Return of the Living Dead has died, aged 63. He was finally brought down by a battle he’d been waging with Crohn’s Disease since before ALIEN.
I can remember the first time I saw Alien, it scared the crap out of me. I watched the movie at the old Redwood Drive In in Redwood City in the summer of 1979. I was sitting in the back of Bob Eppler’s old Volkswagen Squareback. Also along was Pat and Bob’s brother. Being a “dude” meant that you could not admit to being scared but damn – when that alien popped out of the chest, the whole car jumped.
Think about it for a second: without this man, we wouldn’t have Ellen Ripley. More on him here.
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