Another cultural touchstone – ewwww
Dan O’Bannon has died. He wrote the script for the original “Alien”. The money quote in his obituary:
O’Bannon said in a 2003 interview that he modeled the alien’s behavior after the life cycle of parasitic microorganisms.
“One thing I realized hadn’t been exploited in science fiction movies were the physical aspects,” he told the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. “The real world offered many examples which were extremely loathsome, and I thought, if it’s good enough for Mother Nature, maybe it will work on an audience.
“One review said that watching this movie was like turning over a rock and finding something disgusting. That was a pretty good description of what I was going after.”
And he succeeded. The ‘alien chestburster’ has become very familiar in our culture.
So once again, we should salute someone who made a major contribution to modern popular culture.
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-dan-obannon19-2009dec19,0,4358785.story
