I was an employee on the Fox lot in LA when they were shooting Alien Resurrection. I didn't actually work on the movie, so I don't have a lot of great info, but here is everything Alien related from my time at the studio:

We weren't allowed to walk onto the Alien set since it was a closed set (as most are) but I've always found that if you seem to be on your way somewhere and walk with a purpose (rather than gawking and wandering around) most people won't challenge you (unless they're actually in the middle of shooting). So I was able to walk through the sets a couple of times. I saw the basketball set, which was a lot smaller in real life than it looked onscreen, and I went through a couple of corridors. Then I walked through a second soundstage where they had a lot of rooms partially flooded (that's where they were filming the underwater scenes.

I often used to see Kim Flowers. I'd walk past her a lot because the steps to my office is where she used sit and have a smoke break and read a paperback. I remember thinking that her hair braids looked cool.

The strangest day was when I was walking past the dumpster outside the Aliens stage and saw that it was filled with Sigourney Weavers. They were all made of foam and in various stages of damage and dismemberment. I'm pretty sure they were from the shots where they had all the various Ripley mutations floating in liquid. The ones I saw were either ones they had used, or perhaps test molds that hadn't come out right. It was kind of a creepy sight as they almost looked like they were fighting their way to crawl out the dumpster (it couldn't close all the way because of the big pile).
But to see a whole dumpster of Alien props being thrown out was tough. I thought about how I could get one or two home but there was just no way. First of all, I'd have to get them to my car without someone seeing me (tricky) and then they used to spot check employee car trunks as we left the parking structure so there was a good chance of being caught. And studio garbage was still studio property. I didn't want to lose my job. And at this point I didn't even own a digital camera that I could have secretly snapped a picture with.

In the basement to my building was the old Fox Research Library. They had a lot of great books and some binders with original Alien design work etc. (and there was an original teaser poster from the first movie hanging in the hallway outside) They also had one of the original Nostromo helmets from the first movie. I remember thinking that it looked very small in real life compared to what I remembered in the movie. It wasn't until I watched one of the 'making ofs' years later that I realized that they had done that one shot with children in the suits to make the ship look bigger. So the helmet they had must have been one of the kids helmets.

One last thing - I don't know if anyone on this board currently works on the Fox lot (I don't anymore) but they used to have this amazing but little known thing - Any Fox employee was allowed to make an appt to explore the photo archives. Few people did it because they didn't know about it, but it was amazing. Basically, you go into this room stacked with photo and negative boxes, put on a pair of white gloves and request any fox movie ever made. If they have (and can find) a box, they grab it for you or point you to it and you then get to paw through the studio photo archives for that movie. It's where they keep the negs for all the publicity and onset photos. Including ones that never made it to the press kit or were never printed because someone had their eyes closed etc..

I only got the opportunity to do this once and I was so overwhelmed I didn't know what to ask for. I wish I could say I requested the Alien movies, but I didn't. I had limited time on my lunch break and I had always been a big fan of Murneau's remake of Nosferatu. Since it was a fox co-production they had a box for it and I was able to see some really cool photos. (and before you ask, no, there are no Star Wars negs in there, George has all that - I asked)

Want to know the best part? You could request a PRINT from any negative you wanted. 5x7s, 8x10s, whatever. And all you would pay was the cheap lab fee for processing. All you had to do was promise that the pic was for your own use and you wouldn't sell it. This was before the rise of eBay so I'd be surprised if they still do this now. But if they did... I can't imagine what kind of cool behind-the-scenes and reference photos they might have in there for Aliens.

The next time I'm on the lot for a meeting I'll try to find out if any of this is still around (last I heard, even the venerable Fox Research Library was being shut down), but until then, maybe there's another Fox employee that could find out for us.

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I want a dumpster full of Sigourney Weavers...

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Not sure you'd want these ones. Picture the way some of the messed up Ripleys in the glass tubes looked. Then picture them torn up with lots of yellow styrofoam-looking stuff showing.
Then again, maybe you would want a dumpster full of that. I don't really know you. : )

It would have been a cool prop to have, but probably not something my girl would want me displaying in the house. Maybe for Halloween though.

Speaking of Halloween, that reminds me of another Alien related story. Back in about 1993 or so, a guy went to the ILM Halloween party walking around in the power loader from Aliens. One that he had totally built himself. It was a bit smaller than the real thing, but still totally awesome.
Do you know how hard it is to win the costume contest at an ILM Halloween party?

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jwrites, thanks for sharing your reminiscences of some of your experiences on the Fox lot. Very vivid, well articulated, and interesting!

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"Your old titles mean nothing here... Captain!"

I've tried personally contacting the archives department by phone with NO
success at all.

I have a major piece of set dressing used in a Fox TV series, and have come up
empty trying to find original references on it so I can refurb it back to original
condition.



Thanks for sharing your story. Pretty interesting.

Russ

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"A writer needs a pen, a painter a brush, and a filmmaker an army." - Orson Wells.

http://www.rookscastle.com
http://www.alchemyarms.com

Yeah, in my experience studio people aren't all that receptive or helpful to folks from the outside (heck, they weren't always that great to us folks on the inside, with a few notable exceptions).
It doesn't help that with budget cuts staffs in departments like studio archives have been cut to the bone or eliminated.

I'll have to go through my rolodex and see if anyone I know still works there so that maybe we can get someone on the inside to get some answers. And I'll do some poking around next time I'm on the lot.
Could take a while though. If I get through to someone with some answers on things I'll ask about your thing too (feel free to send me a PM about it so I know exactly what it is. Who knows, maybe I know someone who worked on the show).

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Thanks for sharing. I just wish more people who were around at the time had the opportunity to talk about what it was like. That bin must have looked hideous if it was filled with the Sigourney Weaver clones John West rejected... the one's they used were pretty gross. One of the clever ideas in the movie actually.

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"I saw Avatar last weekend, it was so awesome, I wish the whole world was in 3D"

I'm not sure I'm remembering this right, but it's possible that a bunch of the ones in the dumpster were burned, which would mean they were used onscreen and were from the scene where Ripley torches the place. Then again, it's possible these were all just rejects, maybe test dummies to see how they would look when burning.
I guess we may never know.

The only other thing I remember is seeing Dominique Pinon drive onto the lot and park near the soundstage. That mug of his was hard to miss.

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Many thanks for sharing your experiences there! I can only imagine how cool it must have been!

Kevin

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I told you I'd shoot, but you didn't believe me! WHY DIDN'T YOU BELIEVE ME!?!

I'd imagine that dumpsters are picked up at least once a day .. and the waste disposal company that I was familiar with, they are actually routed just like the milkman or the postman .. what if you hung out near the dumbster until you saw the crew that cleared them out. I'd imagine you might have been able to talk them into saving some stuff for you. Unless, they already knew that that stuff was worth money to collectors, then it's matter of dollars.

I remember talking to one of the guys who worked for BFI was the company I knew, and he said they routinely comb through what they pick up, and there were a lot of stuff, including brand new stuff still in the packaging that gets thrown out, and the guys were onto to that fact and would scavange their haul.

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I wouldn't be surprised if the sanitation company that services a movie studio has special rules about secure disposal. I'm not thinking about props so much, but these types of companies are paranoid about corporate espionage (people getting ahold of scripts for upcoming movies, financial paperwork etc..)

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