Film Trivia Fact Check: Don’t get fooled by The Who’s Alien encounter again

The internet is filled with facts, both true and otherwise. In Film Trivia Fact Check, we’ll browse the depths of the web’s most user-generated trivia boards and wikis and put them under the microscope. How true are the IMDb Trivia pages? You want the truth? Can you handle the truth? We’re about to find out.

Claim: In Alien, the blue laser lights seen in the egg chamber of the alien ship were borrowed from British rock band The Who, who had been practicing their light show for an upcoming tour at an adjacent soundstage. [Source: Creepy Catalog]

Rating: Mostly true.

Context: Among the many things that made ‘70s filmmaking such an exciting time for genre movies is that none of the franchises were franchises yet. There were no overarching universes, cameos, or Easter eggs to satisfy. Star Wars was just Star Wars, not Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope. These were also original ideas, not based directly on pre-existing source material, so when Star Wars hit, 20th Century Fox did what studios did back then: They bought another original space movie, Alien. However, not yet part of a “Quadrilogy” (let alone a septology), the Xenomorph was hardly a proven star. It wasn’t even a “Xenomorph” yet. As such, Fox was nervous about investing in an R-rated sci-fi adventure about space truckers. Frequently facing budget cuts, director Ridley Scott and co. had to improvise quickly.

One person who was used to improvising was art director Roger Christian. Having recently built the Millennium Falcon, he helped invent the idea of a “used universe,” building and aging spaceships from found objects and earthbound ephemera that made vessels appear grounded and weatherbeaten. The pre-CGI world allowed for a more tactile relationship with effects because many of them had to be accomplished in-camera. Employing his background as an installation artist, Christian began relying on projectors for various pre-digital “digital” effects without rotoscoping.

Production began on Alien in July 1978. Shooting part of the film at Shepperton Studios, Christian would visit his friend and fellow art director Anton Furst, who had a workshop on the lot where he was developing hologram effects. A future Oscar-winner, Furst was also working with The Who, designing the lighting setup for their only 1978 concert at Shepperton.

This was a crucial time for The Who. On the cusp of releasing their monumental Who Are You LP, the band had not toured since the fall of ‘76. The only show they played in 1977 was for The Kids Are Alright documentary, a set the band opted to re-record at Shepperton, known for having the largest stage in Europe at the time. The set would serve as Keith Moon’s final performance with the band. He died later that summer and The Who would resume touring in 1979.

Situated on the north end of Shepperton Studios in the main studio, they would be joined by the Alien production on the lot several weeks later. But while The Who got the footage they needed, Christian, Scott, and co-art director Leslie Dilley were trying to figure out how to make a membrane for their next batch of facehugger eggs. Luckily, Furst was just up the road.

“One day, I heard from him that he was doing stuff with The Who,” Christian said. “They had rented one of the big stages at Shepperton, and he said, ‘Come and have a look, because I’m using the lasers over there.’ He was doing laser projections all over the ceiling, all over the band. I asked him, ‘Does this fan out?’ He showed me how they would make a kind of layer, and I thought ‘Wow, this is the answer to the eggs.’”

Christian went back to the Alien set, got Scott and Dilley, and took him to The Who’s stage. “[Furst] set it up for us, and it sprayed out. Ridley used smoke in everything—every frame of Alien is filled with smoke. So watching the dust in the studio going into it, it formed membranes and you could put your finger in it. So Ridley said, ‘Let’s do it on the set.’”

Christian believes Furst, who died in 1991, probably brought the same projector he used for The Who down to the studio for Alien. They were his projectors, after all, that produced the memorable blue “layer of mist” which helped establish the mysterious aurora of the Space Jockey’s ship. As for whether or not The Who knew that their lasers spelled the end for poor John Hurt, well, that’s between Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend.

“Everything was ‘How do we solve this?’ without much money,” Christian said. Apparently, one just needs to call The Who.