It’s #AlienDay so as a wee huzzah to the greatest movie ever made (fight me), wanted to do a thread about Ron Cobb’s work on the film because it’s a) seminal & b) needs to be celebrated, just like the man himself

Ron Cobb had been better known as a left-wing political cartoonist for the past decade () when he was approached by USC student Dan O'Bannon to work on a low budget flick with his classmate, John Carpenter

That student film was Dark Star & although Cobb considered himself "just a cartoonist" he leapt at the opportunity to design the spaceship because "I’ve always been interested in astronautics and space flight"

"It was a great opportunity to represent things I always thought were missing in films like that," Cobb told me in 2013. An enduring pet peeve of his with space shit was a lack of realism & that would become a defining trait of his film work: practicality and facts

O'Bannon & Cobb became, like, one of the great low-key cinematic partnerships: he hooked him up to design some of the Star Wars Cantina aliens which were also informed by Cobb's obsessions with realism in fantastical settings

Ron Cobb on the inspiration for his Star Wars Cantina alien designs: "I wanted to explore aliens that weren’t just people with putty on their face. I’m fascinated by adaptive evolution and how it solves problems to enable nature to prevail."

O'Bannon also got Cobb work on Jodorowsky's Dune #rip - "I submitted a few little paintings. At the time I have to admit, I wasn’t real impressed with Dune - it was never a favourite of mine" - & Jodorowsky said he didn't like his work cos it was "too NASA"

Obvi that falls apart - "one of the reasons was Jodorowsky invited Salvador Dali to play the Emperor & Dali agreed but on the condition that he was paid $10,000 every hour" - & O'Bannon sells the Alien script to Fox with Cobb's concept artwork attached as a package

Cobb trots off to the UK as "just a cartoonist" to work on Alien & his creation of not just Nostromo, but the micro & macro design elements inside the ship (as well as it's practical mechanics) become iconic in a movie that’s FULL of iconic shit

“I always relished the idea of doing movies about space flight because that’s so much more interesting if you’re a little more realistic. I was impatient with fantasy visions.” - Ron Cobb #AlienDay

"The interesting thing about Alien was I would jump up & down, bitch & moan about how a realistic portrayal of space flight would enhance the film...you would have that extra jeopardy of being in this pressurised can with absolute infinite nothing outside - & that’s jeopardy!"

I ended up becoming friends with Ron & his wife Robin Love around 2012-ish through the political cartoonists at the newspaper I worked at who were all tight with him & would have a weekly wine sesh

He legit had the best stories, like how the crew heard O'Bannon had convinced Ridley Scott to hire H.R. Giger to make the alien. "We all sat around & looked at each other, looked at his paintings & were like 'gee, I don’t know if I want to meet this guy let alone work with him'."

Then he got there : "He was wonderful, a really nice fellow. He was a study at being creepy: he always wore black but if there weren’t a lot of people around to witness his performances, he was just a bloke, he’d go to the pub." Here's Ron & Hans at said pub.

Ron & the rest of the crew were still skeptical that H.R. Giger was the right fit because he was using "phallic symbols & motorcycle parts" to make the creature: "most of his paintings looked that way, giant phallus & strange exhaust pipes coming out of the butt" #AlienDay

AND none of the other artists had seen what H.R. was working on cos he was kept seperate, so Ron Cobb snuck in one night when everyone had gone home "I remember after a while he had been working on it & they’d put this screen around the 8ft sculpture where he was working."

"So I timidly snuck in, opened the door, went in & jumped a foot when I saw the alien standing there. It was very effective. It was something between a black widow spider & a cockroach ... maybe worse." - Ron Cobb #AlienDay

"Ridley was right about the creature...It was just a well crafted mechanism for terrorising people & it worked in a big, box-office way. His instincts were right." Also, Ron Cobb has an amazing archive of pics from not just Alien but ALL his work here: http://roncobb.net/05-Alien.html 

In 2013, @OneBlakeMinute & I organised a screening of Alien in Sydney, Australia with Ron Cobb doing a Q & A at the end. He hadn’t seen the movie on the big screen since the 70s & was really nervous, cos he thought nobody would come along https://twitter.com/moviemazz/status/389653421864652800?s=20

The screening sold out & there was a line of people at the end who queued up to get autographs from Ron, take pics, shake his hand & I'll never forget him being so surprised that folks gave a shit. "They make it sound like I did everything!”

Anywho, that's an #AlienDay thread on me mate Ron Cobb, what a mad dog. If you want more detail, here's a feature I wrote back in 2014 that has more stuff about his friendship with Spielberg, nearly directing E.T. etc. https://www.9news.com.au/9stories/the-hidden-american-film-genius-who-calls-australia-home/df19a5db-77b5-4e1e-a779-24f4a47c4a23