Alien Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon, Dead At 63 139
Dave Knott writes "The notable science fiction screenwriter and director Dan O'Bannon has died at the age of 63. O'Bannon's career began with a writing credit for John Carpenter's Dark Star and he went on the write many enduring science fiction and horror films such as Blue Thunder, Lifeforce, Screamers and Total Recall. He was also an occasional director, whose credits include The Return Of The Living Dead, the campy horror film that made popular the zombie chant of 'braaiiiinnnsss.' However, he will be best remembered as the writer of Alien, one of the all-time classics of both the science fiction and horror genres. O'Bannon died after a 30 year battle with Crohn's disease and is survived by his wife, Diane, and son, Adam."
My heart goes out to him... (Score:5, Informative)
As a 32 year old fellow sufferer of an extremely serious case of Crohn's Disease, I can tell you that it is a terrible battle: every day I face large amounts of pain and feelings of illness (e.g. my hemoglobin is 70 due to internal bleeding and should be around 170, making it difficult for me to do anything without feeling exhausted - walking up a flight of stairs nearly makes me faint). Crohn's has stripped me of my quality of life: the limitations it places on me make every day a challenge and it has stripped me of many of my dreams. Indeed, it got so bad that, seeing it as my last option, I tried to kill myself last May to escape from the ravages of this disease (I would have been successful, but I was discovered before I died). Right now I wait for surgery to remove 1 m of my intestines, which should help the situation, but euthanasia is still an option I consider to continue and will pursue if the surgery does not improve my quality of life.
Crohn's research is seriously underfunded, and the cause of this disease or its sister disease, Ulcerative Colitis, is not known. Also, the incidence of Crohn's appears to be on the rise to the point where some countries (e.g. Scotland) have deemed it a near epidemic. I urge you, if you like O'Bannon's work, to make a donation to the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation in your country:
USA: http://www.ccfa.org/ [ccfa.org]
Canada: http://www.ccfc.ca/ [www.ccfc.ca]
Re:Will be watching Dark Star again (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My heart goes out to him... (Score:1, Informative)
A nasty illness to be sure
Symptoms:
* persistent diarrhoea
* abdominal pain
* cramping
* rectal bleeding
* fever
* weight loss
* skin or eye irritations
* delayed growth in children.
More links
Ireland: http://www.iscc.ie/
Europe: http://www.efcca.org/
p.s Alien is easily one of the best Sci-Fi movies of all time if not the best. Like Yorkie, it's not for girls! (except bad-ass girls)
NACC in the UK (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Alien Influence (Score:2, Informative)
You understand that Dan O'Bannon wrote the movie, right? He was the writer, not the art director. This article is about Dan O'Bannon, not your thoughts about the lasting appeal of the art direction in Alien.
Re:My heart goes out to him... (Score:3, Informative)
Should anyone be curious, here's a link to a LiveJournal post where I ask my fellow members of one of LJ's more prominent IBD (inflammatory bowel disease, a collective term for Crohn's, colitis, and a couple other conditions) communities how they describe their Crohn's Disease to other people. I found the answers quite interesting:
http://community.livejournal.com/we_got_guts/569491.html [livejournal.com]
Return of the Living Dead = Best B Movie EVER (Score:4, Informative)
I've got alot of love for Return of the Living Dead. If you read the IMDB for it, it actually gets good ratings, despite being campy.
First Movie with Running Zombies? Check
Tarman? Check
Running around naked in a cemetary? Check
BBBRRRRAAAAAAIIIINNNNSSSSS and zombies that eat them? Check
A movie where every line is a memorable quote? Check
Character names like Trash, Scuz and Suicide? Check
Go BUY it from FYE, Amazon, or KMart now. It's more funny than it is scary, but that doesn't detract from it still being a good movie. Alot of zombie movie lovers keep a place in their heart for this movie, even though it isn't a true George Romero movie.
Re:Will be watching Dark Star again (Score:5, Informative)
O'Bannon not only wrote Dark Star, he plays Sgt. Pinback in the movie.
Co-wrote. With John Carpenter.
O'Bannon also was film editor. And production designer. And supervisor of visual special effects, for which he got a first place award in 1975 from the forerunner of the Saturn Awards.
Looks like a lot of work for one person, and perhaps it was. But keep in mind this was two guys working on a 45 minute student project up until someone paid them US$60k to expand it out to feature length. And as far as I can tell (and I'm another who watches this movie yearly or so) the difference between the original feature length and the much later 'dirctor's cut' is Doolittle's little musical bottle recital.
The focus of the student version was on the 'beach ball' alien sequence, which was comedic. Changing the theme of it to horror for the feature length without losing the impact showed a great deal of talent in both writers. A fellow USC grad's student film helped launch is career also, the final escape sequence of George Lucas's THX 1138. And just to help differentiate between success and academic success, Stephen Spielberg was also a USC grad school student, but didn't finish there due to a C average. (In fact he didn't finish until 2002 at California State University, Long Beach, having received an honorary degree from USC in 1994 and becoming a trustee there in 1996).
Just guessing based on the preponderance of SF work in O'Bannon's IMDB entry, I suspect he rather than Carpenter was the one who adapted Ray Bradbury's short story Kaleidoscope from The Illustrated Man as the ending sequence, with one astronaut carried off by some semi-mystical asteroids, the other ending in a firey re-entry. That adaptation is referenced in the Dark Star Wikipedia entry. Not mentioned anywhere but of too great similarity to ignore are Bomb 20's final act, having determined that he is alone in the universe to exclaim "Let there be light" (vs. Asimov's "The Last Question") and the post-mortem consciousness of the commander afforded by his cryogenic preservation (vs. Larry Niven's "Wait It Out"). I also used to think Talby's obsession with staying in the observation chair wasn't a phobia having to do with the commander's death, but was taken from another story which included mental changes verging on madness if one watched too much empty space, but I can't recall which one, and there's an awful lot of those.
BTW, Benson Arizona MP3 and lyrics are available at SF author Robert Sawyer's web site.
Re:Merchandising (Score:2, Informative)