Michael Patti called me in a panic.
‘What’s up?’
‘The Alien!’
‘What’s up with the Alien? I thought you were doing that spot with Fincher.’ (David Fincher had just finished filming the third installment of the Alien trilogy and Pepsi was doing a spot as a tie-in with the film.)
‘I was, but he wants to do the Alien digitally.’
‘You don’t have time for that.’
‘I know.’
‘You don’t have money for that.’
‘I know.’
‘Can’t you talk him into doing it practically?’
‘He won’t.’
‘So?’
‘I want you to do it.’
‘You don’t want me to do it. You want David Fincher to do it. You just want me to leverage the
situation.’
(Silence)
‘No, I want you to do it.’
‘Okay. I’m used to working with monsters.’
‘You’re funny.’
‘I have to be.’
The facts of the case are simple. They had a lot of stuff left over from the production and I never thought (to this day) that digital creatures were convincing. I had worked with the late, great, Stan
Winston and he told me that the thing that sold the JURASSIC PARK critters was the animatronic
dinosaur that was established before you saw the digital critters. I thought Ridley Scott’s original alien was terrifying because you never saw the critter. You never knew how big it was. I used the same technique in the commercial. A powerful moment in Ridley’s film was the closeup of the sucker’s mouth opening and that was the climax of the Pepsi spot. Shooting it was easy and fun. After I saw the movie, I didn’t think the critter was convincing digitally so I guess we did the right thing. As far as the Alien, I’ve worked with worse.