Warning warning, deep space sirens are going because this episode contains spoilers for Ridley Scott's nineteen seventy nine sci fi classic Alien.
Hello.
My name is Rosie Knight and I'm Carmen Laurent and welcome back to x ray Vision, the podcast where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture. Welcome to another installment of xenomorph Week, a full week of alien focused episodes leading up to the release of Alien Romulus. Carmen is one of our wonderful producers here at x ray Vision and is also an Alien super fan. So today we'll be co hosting this very fun omnibus with.
Me, and then after we talk Alien, we'll hear from our friend James F. Wright about Belaji Bedejo, the man behind the original Alien suit. Rosie, I'm a huge fan of the Alien franchise. Now, have we already gotten your alien backstory before?
I don't think so. I don't think I've shared my alien origin story.
Tell us about your alien origin story, Rosie.
Okay, so my alien origin story is very specific and very terrifying to me personally. When I was a little kid, I got to go to Disney World with my mom and a family that she cleaned their house and they invited us and said, come to Disney World. And I went on a ride that they had at what was at the time called MGM Studios, and it was a ride that went through the history of Hollywood, but randomly just after you know, going through the Western World and the Wizard of Oz. They just had a room where
you were on the Nostromo and his zenomorph came out. Oh, that's no joke. It was like, legit, one of the scariest moments of my life. But then, of course, because I was a morbid child with a taste in the dark side, I then became obsessed with the alien and had to know what it was, and I learned about the movie. And I don't know about you, but one of the first ways that I really got into horrorism, just like reading the backs of vhs or DVDs in
like the video shop. I'm old, but I would definitely be reading all of the kind of backs like oh what happens in Alien? And then that was definitely where my interest and love for the franchise began.
Wow, well, that is definitely a lot cooler than my story. You got to go to Disney World and see the Nostromo in person. That's pretty cool. I am also a child of morbid curiosity, was a child with morbid curiosity. I was definitely attracted to the dark side. You'd call me like I was a little goth baby at the time.
Yeah, so we have that.
So we have that same shared backstory there. And my dad had a huge, massive DVD collection, oh wow.
And prior to that it was VHS.
But then, of course the age of DVD came in and my dad was always at the pawn shop and he would come home like maybe once a week with like a brown paper bag filled with bootleg DVDs from a pawnshop.
I love that. And he had he had like.
Literally like two thousand something DVDs, and at one point in my childhood I had to catalog all of them and everything and put them in alphabetical order and everything too. But he had the Alien VHS box set with the first three movies as well as a box set with I believe it was all four of the movies at
that point, with Alien Resurrection included. And I was one of those kids that was very into box art and definitely judge books by the cover because I saw that egg with the green neon blue coming out of it, and it fascinated me, so I, I, you know, got to sat down and watch it with my dad, and the rest is history from them.
I love that we both had dads who definitely showed us horror movies too early. I definitely I have a really distinct memory of watching Scream two on VHS with my dad and my sister, who's like four years younger than me, and we would definitely like, no, I don't I'd watch slasher movies at that point. But Imber, my sister, still has very unfond memories of that.
Gosh, yeah, that's that's a lot, a lot for a little kid.
I think the youngest scary movie I ever watched was Leprechaun, and that absolutely free me out as a child.
The power of imagination is truly a terrifying thing.
It is, it is.
But we're not here today to talk about the traumas of horror movies that we faced as a child.
That's for a different episode.
Yeah, that's for a different episode.
We're here to talk today about how the first alien movie was made. And I wanted to ask you before I get into it, Rosie, do you know anything about this origin story of the first Alien movie.
I was a fan of reading a lot of Empire magazine and movie stuff, so I've definitely heard the general story, and I do know a lot about the production art because it was done by some of my favorite people. But I want you to tell the people and to refresh me. I'm going to get to be on this journey of alien origin with you.
Okay, awesome. Well, I'm really excited to get into it with you today. Before we can even talk about how we got the first Alien movie, we have to first talk about a movie that was never made, and that was Alejandro Hodorowski's Dune movie.
Wow. Yes, one of the most famous unmade movies of all time.
Yes, absolutely. Alejandro Hodorowski, famous for his films The Holy Mountain in nineteen seventy three and also Santa Sandre in nineteen eighty nine. He wanted to make this very very ambitious adaptation of the of the Dune books, which had never been made into a movie at this point, and it is one of those movies that we lost to production hell because the production phase never ended and they were unable to find adequate funding to produce this mega
movie that they had cooked up. Apparently it was supposed to be like a fourteen hour movie. Originally sounds very Jodorowski.
Yes, very very Geniowski.
Oh and before I get into this, I do want to call out that there are two documentary films that kind of touch on this, and one of those being it's literally a movie you can find in HBO Max it's called Hodorowski's Dune. And then there's another movie which is harder to find on streaming, but it's called Memory and it's the origin of the first alien movie. And both of those documentaries explore this topic pretty in depth.
But the first Dune movie that was never made. Production of that started in nineteen seventy one, and he had this huge, amazing cast of collaborators that he pulled together to make the movie. He had big prog rock bands of the day, Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd, and Magma, and he eventually landed on Pink Floyd as being the band that was going to do the soundtrack for this movie.
Evenly already the most famous band out of the three, even though I will say Tangerine Dream they have done some truly fantastic film soundtracks. I believe they did one of the Legend soundtracks. There's two different versions for Legend, another Ridley Scott movie. Yeah, and yeah, they are wonderful. But I mean, Pink Floyd, you're talking about heavy his right there.
Absolutely absolutely. I mean, already we're off to a great start here with some amazing bands of the day. But then he pulls in set and character designers hr Geeger, who we hadn't really heard much. He wasn't really like very well known at this point, and Mobius aka Jean Gureaux with special effects by Dan O'Bannon. Now Dan O'Bannon will come into play later on. Now that already already a really fantastic group of collaborators right there. Then we get into the cast of characters who was set to
play in this Dune movie. So we have surrealist painter Salvador Dali just casually, yeah, just casually in there, or author and director Orson Wells, old Hollywood starlett Gloria Swanson, David Carradine, which you know from Kill Bill, one of the Rolling Stones, the Big Rolling Stone, Micjagger, the Biggest Hello,
German actor Udo Kier oh wow. And then my favorite and the reason why I wish we could have seen this movie come to life, is that the disco queen herself A Mandelaer, is set to play daughter of Salbad Dolly's character, who is remind me that character's name again? He was he going to be the emperor, Yes, he was going to be the emperor. Yes, I don't want to say Emperor Palpatine and piss off them. But Amandelayer
was set to play the princess. And it's important to note that Amandelayer at that time in the in the seventies was the muse to Salvador Dolly. So the two of them together on screen is just absolutely mind blowing. The concept of that is mind blowing to me. And then the role of Paula Trds was set to be played by how Owski's twelve year old son. Now this obviously never happened. Yes, So, as I mentioned before, Dan
O'Bannon would come into play later on. He is the writer of the film Alien, but he was chosen for this project for this Dune that never happened because he was co writing and directing special effects for the John Carpenter film Dark Star, which.
I love that movie before. Yes, Yes, originally John Coppener's student film.
I saw that when I was watching the movie, right.
It's really cool, totally great, weird, low key sci fi that I think you can really see that how someone who worked on that could go and create something like Alien.
Absolutely. Yeah, So if you haven't seen Dark Star, check that out. Definitely an essential watch to help you kind of gear up for Alien Romulus. But this iteration of Dune never happened. We're really sad about it.
Yes, Yes, rip.
To that version, the fourteen hour movie that never happened. This also left the special effects director Dan O'Bannon without a job. Now. While he was jobless and also homeless, sleeping on a friend's couch, he worked on a spec script called Memory to sell to studios. It was bought by twentieth Century Fox, and Ridley Scott picked up the
movie to direct. Now Dan O'Bannon having worked with hr Geeger and Chris Foss for six months on Houtrowski's failed attempt to make Dune, he pulled in those two artists to collaborate with him on this new venture, which would become the film Alien. Memory was the original title that was going to be used for the film, but then they landed on Alien, which I think is a lot more of a ominous and spooky name.
Correct, And I also think like the simplicity is probably part of why it's so iconic and why we're still talking about it. I mean, we could in a different time be talking about the Me refranchise, but it's giving cats. Yeah, I feel like I feel like Alien they made the right choice.
They really did.
They really did make the right choice, because then you can have a sequel called Aliens, you know, incredible, incredible, I mean just amazing sequel naming there. So this movie Alien would become the greatest sci fi horrory yet. And it really is, like I just want to take a moment to talk about how a movie from nineteen seventy nine is still able to stand up to the test of time today and you watch it today in twenty twenty four, and it still feels fresh, It still feels
like completely like ahead of its time. It just it's it's an amazing movie and it's great storytelling. Can't say enough about it.
Yeah, I totally agree, And also as well, just the visual effects, the fact that they were able to create something that was so terrifying and unique, and that still to this day feels scared. I mean they still show Alien in LA probably every couple of months, I would say, so, yeah, they do seventy milimis screenings of it here, And I think it is because it's not one of those movies you go and see for nostalgia. It's one of those movies you go to experience because it is still that scary.
Absolutely, it's one of the Yeah, like if somebody watched it for the first time in twenty twenty four, they would still be as amazed as the person watching it in nineteen seventy nine.
So yeah.
Many of the designs that ended up becoming such like an iconic part of that Alien film were from the designs that hr Geeger had made when he was designing stuff for the film Doune that never happened. So many of those designs were recycled and they ended up being used on the Alien set. Now the design itself for
the Xenomorph. Dan O'Bannon made many attempts himself to design the Xenomorph, but he couldn't land on something that felt both alien and scary and out of this world and unimaginable until the crew saw the nineteen seventy six painting that Giger created called the Necronomicon four. And so that is where the design from the Alien comes from. The Xenomorph, which at the time when the movie came out in nineteen seventy nine, nobody was calling it a xenomorph.
They were just calling it an alien.
Yes, absolutely an alien. But yeah, that is the kind of short and abridged version story of how the failed Dune project would lead to the creation of the film Alien. And that was just eight years later.
Wow, that was so delightful. Common, thank you so much for telling us that story, and thank you all for listening. It's very expensive to make a failed fourteen hour movie, so if you could support us by understanding that. Now we have some messages from us, boss, and we're back. Welcome to the back Matter, where, just like the last pages of your favorite comics, we explore one specific moment, matter,
or theme from a fan fay franchise. And today Common has put together something really cool, a look at some of the most interesting thematic moments and easter eggs throughout the first Alien movie.
Yes, and there's actually a lot of really cool Easter eggs in this movie. We'll get to which one of them is my favorite in just a moment. But starting right out, the entire film, in the entire franchise, contains a lot of symbolism and references to the concept of motherhood, pregnancy, bodily autonomy, you know, stuff like that. You of course have the AI computer system on board the Nostromo. Her name is Yes.
He was very he said, this is text, this is subtext, absolutely absolutely so we're literally taking commands from mother and she's in control and even has like some secret plans of her sleeve, which is even spookier.
And also, of course, in order for an alien to be born, it requires reproduction using a host, so we know the face hugger. It attaches to the face of the host and the host is forced to become pregnant with the chest burster.
Terrifying.
That is terrifying. Now, Dan O'Bannon could have easily made that part of the story something that affected one of the female characters in the movie, Ripley or Joan Lambert, but instead he specifically wanted one of the male characters in the movie to experience this because he wanted to make men who are seeing the movie feel the same exact kind of and all of that that the women in the audience would be experiencing, which I love.
I love that too, And I do absolutely think that if that scene had not been given to the John Hut character, if it had not been a man, I do not know if Hollywood would hold this film in the same high regard in regards to how much it terrified people at the time. So I really loved that choice, and I think it's the beginning of the seeds of how subversive this franchise is.
Absolutely Yeah, and we find out later on in the franchise that if a female host is used by a face hugger, then they give birth to a queen's an a morph. But we're not there yet and the story.
Yeah, we're not that.
Yeah.
So that's, you know, one of the big easter eggs and kind of like the subtext of the movie. But then there are some parts of it that are a little more obvious. Now, I just want to take a moment to talk about one of my absolute favorite characters in sci fi. This is a different easter egg. That is the character Joan Lambert. Now Joan Lambert is played by the amazing actress Veronica Cartwright, which I just want to take a moment to talk about kind of her
legacy and the sci fi genre. So if you're a big sci fi fan like me, you've seen her before in the nineteen seventies version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is kind of a similar theme and kind of a similar concept to what's going on in Alien but taken to another level. And she also has a recurring role in the X Files franchise, which I I haven't talked about this before, but I'm a huge X Files head, so I immediately connected with that part of the movie. But
she is a multiple alien abductee in the X Files franchise. Now, the cool part about her character Joan Lambert that I love is that she is noted as a trans woman in her on screen bio that is displayed of her. So there's like a scene that is in one of the cuts of the films that features the bio of the crew mates behind them while Alan Ripley is talking, and you can see in Joan Lambert's bio that it says, quote, subject is a despin convert at birth male to female.
So far no indication of suppressed trauma related to gender alteration. Now, as a trans woman myself, I absolutely love the fact that we have a trans female character in a movie who is literally we only know that by a little easter egg. We don't know that because characters aren't talking about it. She's not taught.
It's it's just one of those things that that is.
And it's like and also she's doing great, even the SI Ship's like, she's doing fine.
She's doing fine.
She does great with these missions where we you know, put her in hyper sleep and all of that, so no.
Need to worry about it.
Yeah, So for me, I think that this is one of the first times that I've ever seen a trans character featured in a movie where it's not made a big deal.
It's just.
Nine yes, in one of the best horror sci fis of all time.
That's pretty incredible. Yeah, And so that's my personal favorite easter egg in the movie. I also love as somebody who loves the Blade Runner franchise as it is now A Francis's really cool. Yes, I love the hint that Blade Runner and Alien take place in the same universe. So towards the end of Alien, when Ripley makes it into her escape pod. She starts up the engines by turning the blue screen on the computer into a red
purge screen. So later in the movie Blade Runner, we see that exact same startup sequence when Officer Gaff enters his flying vehicle and leaves. Ridley Scott has confirmed himself that the two movies are indeed in the same universe. However, Blade Runner takes place in the year twenty nineteen, an Alien takes place in the year two thousand, one hundred and twenty two, so that's like one hundred years they're still using the same computer.
It is, but I'm seeing I could see like a replicant alien crossover coming in our crossover obsessed times.
Absolutely absolutely, and I believe there's also like a novelization or a extra like Easter Egg scene. On one of the DVDs they talk about how Dallas actually takes a paycheck from the Tyrell Corporation, which is another little crossover into those two franchises.
Common thank you so much for joining me to take us on this journey. This was absolutely delightful.
It was it was so much fun, and I'm so freaking excited.
I'm so excited for Alien.
Yes, I am so excited.
Rosie and I have been seeing each other alien memes.
Yes, she's the one who told me about it.
Yes, we still need to get our Alien popcorn buckets. Cinemak put one aside for us.
Yes, please, yes, well thank you.
Yeah, it was a joy.
That was a fun peek behind the scenes on how the first Alien film was made. And now we're going to switch gears and we're going to be speaking with our friend James F. Wright on Bilagie Thedeho, the man in the Xenomorph suit, bom Bomb Bomb. But first a message from our sponsors, and we're back.
With me today is award winning comic book writer James F. Wright. He is also Mapal and he is joined today to tell us all about Belagie Bidejo, the Man in the Xenomorph Suit. James, could you just start by introducing yourself to our listeners.
Hi, I'm James F. Wright. I am a writer. I work in video games. I'm also I wrote comments on a Swayna Rosie, and I'm a big Alien fan, predominantly exclusively the first Alien movie. I will see every Alien movie, but Alien is the one that, especially with my heart. Yeah. I think about that movie at least once a week. Something new I learned about Yes, thank you, I learned something new about that movie seems like every week, and so it comes up in in my thoughts a lot. So happy to be here.
Thank you, amazing. I'm so happy to have you here. As soon as we knew that we were going to do an episode about the Man in the Suit, I was like, James, I hit you up and I was like, this is one of your favorite topics. Okay, So first of all, what's your first memory of Alien? Like, how did you get introduced to it? What was the first time you saw it.
I was much older than my peers when I saw Alien. I was in my twenty twenty one. I was steting abroad in Japan and the local video store had a bunch of movies, obviously, and I've never seen Alien. I was like twenty one, which is old, and so I watched it and I was like, this movie is incredible. It just like like I knew about the chest burster scene because of Spaceballs.
But I wait to find out.
So I knew it was gonna happen, but it just like the atmosphere, the characters, the story, so much of that that movie just feels like like a miracle that it exists. And so I revisited later and just saw like the deeper themes emerging. It's not just a horror movie. Is a lot more than that. And I live in LA and so now anytime it's screening, I try to let go.
Yeah, if it's a seven emilimeter alien screening, you will be there.
I will be there. I'll be there, and it's it's again. All the actors I sort of knew from other films, other stories of other TV shows and so on, but in that movie, you know, at the time, none of them weren't your household names and kind of they almost all of them went on to be you know, bigger stars, which is incredible to Yeah, so like I just kind of got it to sootz into me from that from
the first viewing. I mean, the again an atmosphere, the opening, the title sequence even is like is unsettling, just the way that the test fades in, and I was, you know, you see got til and moves and so on, and you you know, you know, there's like a man in a suit, but you don't think about who that is, yeah, or if you ever know who that is? And then when I found out like that once again changed the game room me.
So yeah, I was going to say, it's kind of you talked about how the movie feels like a miracle. It's a working class horror movie. It's a horror about workers trying not to get exploited. It's a horror movie that has Yaffet Koto and Sigourney Weaver and all these incredible actors in it. And then you find out, well, the guy in the suit was a Nigerian graphic artist who was twenty five. He was he was a baby
and he was six feet ten inches tall. And they discovered him in a pub, yes, because they saw his very long legs and they were like, uh, we need someone with long legs. So when did you find out who Bilagie?
But Dejo was Oh boy, oh my gosh, it must have been. It's like the twenty ten's. I think I don't actually have a year because it's kind of passing on in my head. The time is time is fake. But yeah, I had seen a picture of him, and then I think it was in court in conjunction with with something from Alien. I saw a picture of him.
I was like, oh, is that the guy? And then someone had posted a link to YouTube and there's the screen test of him walking through the mock up of the Nostromo set and he's he's got he's got the head on, but he's like he doesn't have the full suit. Don't think he met the full suit on. But he's walking through like the halls, and it's like, oh my gosh, this is like this is him, this is him, you know. And then seeing like how tall he was, six foot ten, you know he was I want to say he was
like playing with the wrong raptors. But that's the wrongs me more friends.
He definitely has Like he definitely has the h he was twenty five and six foot ten. Put a ball in that.
Guy, I'm saying.
In a more mask, Like give that basketball.
He was playing with the wrong rockets. That's the But yeah, I just I was so I wasn't surprised to you know,
see that. Like and again, like Alien is a film that has you know, like Yafakoto has a named black actor, you know whose character doesn't die first, doesn't die second, that's a third he you know, he survives almost at the end of the film, and then to learn that like also the guy in the suit, you know, was as a black performer, and I this may have been his only role, which is incredible to think about.
That's his only role, which is mind blowing because if you think about someone like Doug Jones, they play a monster and they create a role for their whole life as a creature actor. But Bilagi played one of the most famous, if not the most famous on screen monster of the last kind of few decades and this was the only time he did it.
Yeah, That's that's the thing I think about too, is I'm glad you bring up Doug Jones because, like I joked before that like Beliji Bidejo, you know, Walks or Doug Jones could run not just the creature feature, but like this tall, skinny actor who has this like physy that allows them to sort of you know, portray different
kinds of creatures. And when I said before, like this this film feels like a miracle knowing that they were able to take okay, hr gigers, weird creepy like art and then find a person who could fit into like a costume, built a design around that a creature design around is just like, again I don't know how you do it. And again that's obviously like the work of casting, directions and so on to find, you know, the people
who fit these these roles. But just the fact that again, like you said, like they've made him in a pub and he was just he was a student you know, in the UK, and yeah, this is our guy, and like that, Like if that was me, I'd go, oh my god, like this is this is this is why.
Break I love so that on set he's filming in the fifteen piece xenomorph suit and it's incredibly hot and he's you know, wearing it for like fifteen to twenty minutes before it's just soaked in sweat. And it was a four month shoot, So this I think it was pretty grueling, is my impression. Because he did actually get offered the role of this animal for Aliens, but declined, and that's why they created kind of the puppet. And then you get Tom Woodriff Junr who ends up being
in it an Alien three and stuff. But he really did originate it, and he did it on this unexpected kind of low budget movie that would go on to change all science fiction films.
Absolutely, I think too that like the idea that again that this role that sort of like changed type of films is important to note too, because this is a film that's coming. It's in production or at least like the script group of pre Star Wars, and in Star Wars is a huge hit. And then you know, Fox is like, Okay, what do we have any sci fi things? And you know they sort of I think it was starbast At one point they name the change a few times with.
An alien catchy name.
Starby's Starby Sounds dope, though Starby Sounds is more heavy. This is a B movie. An alien sort of like pushes against the B movie tropes and stuff. But it was impressive to see that, like because Star Wars is there's no real dangerous alien. It's like they're all like cute little guys or our friends.
Or whatever, cute little guys.
And then you know with alien it's like what if space was scary again?
Yeah, and it's like Jaws for space.
It very much is. And so like the nature of Asia, like his his size, because he does have this like angular quality to it that like feels not that he feels alien, but you know what I mean that there's just like, yeah.
There's something to him that well, the alien movies don't exist without him. And I think that's why it was so important for us to do an episode, because the Xenomorph was a game changer, because, as you say, at this point, everyone's used to cute little guys. If there is a baddie, it's more of a kind of campy, old school villain like Darth Vader, who's a human in
a suit, very obviously a human. And our vision of what aliens were in you know, American culture, in Western culture was like the little gray men with the little circular heads, and they look kind of like us. I mean, the Xenomorph looks nothing like anything they've ever seen. It's straight out of a nightmare. And Beilagi is a big part of that because he took tai chi classes so that he could learn how to move like a praying mantis.
And when he's not look I love all the alien movies, but I am like you, I'm a die hard alien fan. I feel like when it's not him, you can absolutely tell, especially when you start getting to the later movies and they're using like the glove hands that are coming down that are always getting memed. He really brought it together to life in a way that was so unique and singular that it almost makes sense that he only did it for one film.
Yeah, Yeah, it's it is that sort of I think in a way about John Cazell Junior, who played Yeah Fredo in The Godfather, was in five movies and they're all nominated for Best Picture. That's sort of like, you know, perfect record or Blodge Vodajos in one film.
And it seems like you knows, yeah, one hundred percent, attack betting one thousand, and I think about like just doing that and then but also I think I think having to like understanding to like turn down aliens for that role.
Like Okay, I did it and like it was grueling, I don't do it again.
I think that is it's made something fantastic. It's done.
Yeah, I think that's impressive.
I think that's really special. And also there's some great stories from his family, like his brother Boyega said that he never told them about being in the film, like until it was getting released, and he was just this really humble, sweet guy, and because they were all over the world, they couldn't watch it together. But Boyeger did get to go to the premiere with his brother with Bilagie, and that was, like he said, it was very cool times and I imagine that it was cool.
Oh hey, by the way, I'm in a movie.
Yeah, I'm in a movie. Oh, by the way, it's going to be like one of the most famous sci fi fictions of all time. And uh yeah, I calm and pulled a really cool piece of trivia that I didn't know, which is that the Blagie Imperial cigarettes that the crew of the Nostromo smoke. That was in reference to Billagi little way of shouting at.
How good is that?
That's so good? That's so good.
Yeah, it's really interesting to just.
Yeah, some years ago they had one of the auctions. Yeah, yeah, they have the film Membor of real auctions. They had Yafakoto's jacket. Wow, I wanted it. But if they were someone who did, if they had the set production design of the CETA cigarettes, I would absolutely.
We don't smoke, but those are the things that we would tape. Yeah, And we kind of talked about how this was, you know, this was his first movie. It was kind of his only movie, and then nobody really knew what happened to him for a long time, but it was revealed kind of in a twenty fourteen article which I think is really where we all started to get to know about him, called the Life of Bilagi Pideo, was that he had actually just moved back to Nigeria and opened an art gallery, so he got to live
his you know, his graphics resign dream life. And sadly, it was in this article that we discovered that he passed away at thirty nine from complications related to sick or salemnemia. So I mean, talk about a life that was so impactful in such a short period of time.
And that that's like, you know, was just heartbreaking. Yeah, you know, because he didn't again, like the impact that he made was so huge and again like being able to like leave Hollywood behind in a way, like you know, he didn't go because like yeah, because he if you think about like seventy nine, you know, when Alien comes out, he turns down Aliens obviously, but like there are a lot of films he could have been in, you know, like Spielberg could have used him in something like there's
a lot of because again, like the way he's built and he just sort of like took that role and made it his own, a enomorphe. And so I think that like like he could have kept doing you know, he could have gone the dug up Doug Juons route, right, but he chose to go back home and he got to like you said, he got to live out that dream of having art gallery. And I think that's really incredible that like like to do the thing and then like you know what I'm going to I'm going to
walk away from it. I think that's you know, I mean, like you don't like this isn't this isn't for me, but like I have other dreams and like this was a fun thing to do, but like you know, it's not enough have to do it.
For that Yeah, you know they picked me out of a pub and I just said, yeah, I'll take the money. I'll wear this suit for four months. And now, actually no, I'm a I'm a graphic artist, and I want to make sure that I get to pursue that passion and you know, go back to Nigeria because I was only here studying and he studied in the US, studied in London, and then he's like, pow, I'm going back to own
an art gallery. I think that is really powerful. And also I think that it's something that we talk about a lot in comics, someone like Mike mcnola, who years ago said I'm finishing Hellboy the main series and I'm just doing it and everyone was like, WHOA, you can do that.
You can just you.
Can finish something on your own terms and say like I'm done.
Like that.
That's really powerful because a lot of times, especially with Aliens, which there was kind of a you know, change over from Ridley Scott to James Cameron, and there were kind of controversies about that with Geiger and stuff, It's really interesting that he was actually recognized for what he did and they offered it to him and he made that choice to say no, yeah, I don't want to be in that suit again, which honestly, yeah, before I let you go, could you just kind of talk a little
bit about this is something that you has been like a passion of yours, someone you've been impacted by. And now thanks to the Internet and memes, I feel like Blagie story is getting better known and we get see photos of him. What's it been like to kind of see that recognition finally getting there.
It's a joy and we're seeing, and I think we're seeing more like people know who the men and the Brezela suits were. There's a famous picture of like three of them, like walking down the street in the post and I think that like sort of you know, there's a asking Blije, Butjejo allows us to see him, you know, as he was not just in the suit, but as a man, as a person, and it's important to me, I think, because what's great about Alien is there's so
many set photos. There's so many set photos that like they knew what they were going to they ruin making some special away and so because again he was in one film and then you know he sort of he ended up going back home, there's not a lot of images of him. And so seeing the ones we do have where he's like with the crew or he's kind of hanging out on set in this cool leather jacket or his cool shoes, like he's very stylish, and I think that's like, again, he's an artist, so I can
get a sense of that. And so seeing like there's one picture that doesn't exist where he was walking in the sound stage from the studio with one of the other people from one of the other production crew members. I can't remember who it was, but like, she is like five foot one and he's six foot ten to walking side by side, and he's wearing like a pair
of like Converse sneakers, and I want that picture. You know, it doesn't exist, but I want, Yeah, I want to see like the so like, yeah, I think, like you know, the handful of images that we do have allows us to kind of help better understand who he was. You know, he's not just the guy in the suit. He sees more than that. I think that's important.
So I totally agree. Well, James, thank you so much for joining me on this special edition of Extra Vision. Where can people find you? Where can they find your?
So?
What do you have to plug?
Yeah? I am on Instagram, Black Bull Speaks. I'm also on a Blue sky as Chuck Spear. You search for me. I use a bunch of different aliases, hilarious puns, I write comments. I have an itch site. It's James F. Wright's wri t S. I don't know what the urel is, but it's for ch I you can find my work there, comics and so on. So yeah, thank you, Rosie, thank you everyone, of.
Course, thank you so much.
Tomorrow, we'll be wrapping up our Xenomorph week with a special preview of the upcoming movie Alien Romulus Jason and Joel. We'll be breaking down the trailers, the promotional material, and what we can expect from director Fidi Alvarez's filmography and Ridley Scott's legacy. And then Friday, super producer Joel is back with Rosie as we sink our teeth into another very fang forward franchise. That's the episode. Thanks for listening.
Bye x ray Vision is hosted by Jason Kenseepsion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Joelle Smith and Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer is a Boo Zafar. Our producers are Carmen Laurent and Mia Taylor. Our theme song is by Brian Basquez.
Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and Heidi Our discord moderata