Resurrection Man

Ron Perlman vs. the Aliens of Alien Resurrection

By Dan Perez

Fans came away depressed and angry after David Fincher's gloomy, nihilistic take on the Alien franchise, Alien 3. Ripley was dead, Hicks was dead, Newt was dead, and to fans it looked like the series that had begun with Ridley Scott's 1979 Alien and continued with James Cameron's 1986 Aliens was probably dead, too. Sigourney Weaver had sworn off any more Alien movies.

Fast forward five years, and fans are excited again. Time has healed many wounds (even those caused by a swan-dive into molten lead) and Sigourney Weaver has agreed to return to Alien Resurrection, the fourth film in the series, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, whose previous films were Delicatessen and City of Lost Children.

Thanks to that technology du jour-cloning- Ripley is not only back, she's faster stronger and well, a bit more alien than she'd care to be. It seems that after seven attempts to clone Ripley from a blood sample and get the prized alien Queen gestating inside her, number eight produces a Ripley whose human DNA is mixed with alien DNA, giving her some special insight into the menacing creatures, along with a serious identity crisis. The plot device by screenwriter Joss Wheedon (Toy Story, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is also what lured Weaver back to the franchise.

The bulk of the story takes place on a space research station called the Auriga and a mercenary/smuggler ship called the Betty. The Weyland Yutani company from the previous films has been replaced by a new organization that wants access to the alien Queen, which is removed from the cloned Ripley. Then the scientists and soldiers of the Auriga must team up with the mercenary crew of the Betty to battle a sinister new threat bent on getting to Earth: a half-alien, half-human mutation called the Newborn. Other cast members include Winona Ryder Ron Perlman, Brad Dourif, Dan Hedaya, J.E. Freeman, and Michael Wincott. Perlman plays Johner one of the smuggler crew of the Betty.

"I had a great working relationship with the director" says Perlman, "from when we did City of Lost Children together and when this came up - this was his first time in America (we did [City] in France) - he got in touch with me and asked me to take a look at the role. It's a great, great part, so after a series of happy collaborative attempts, the studio came on board and I got the part."

Johner is, according to Perlman, "a rather rough-hewn individual. He's part of the crew of a ship that docks with the mothership, the mothership being a sort of big military installation in space somewhere near Pluto. My ship is basically a guns-for-hire operation: mercenary. We'll take any job as long as there's a paycheck at the end of the day. Our crew is small: there's only six of us. Our ship looks like a jalopy. It's a total mess. We're a total mess. I'm a real obnoxious guy; the one whom the minute you meet him, you know he's going to get killed. So, we're delivering some cargo; we don't even know what... it is basically human material that's going to be used for very clandestine experimentation having to do with the title character of the piece. After we've made our delivery we're going to hang around for a day or two and pick up supplies and get a little R&R before we go on our merry way. And it's during that period that all Hell breaks loose."

Perlman notes that parts of the shoot were physically demanding, particularly a sequence that takes place in the flooded kitchen of the Auriga. The sequence required shooting in a custom-built, 548,000-gallon water tank on the Fox lot. "That was probably the most challenging part of the shoot, and it came right at the beginning. It was a six-month shoot altogether, which is long, under any circumstances. It's a sequence where we have to get from one side of the ship to the other, and the only way to get there is through the kitchen, which we come to find out is flooded. So it's this long swim, during which the stakes get raised because we are now pursued in a very active way, which we come to find out in the middle of this water sequence. So we start out doing a nice calm swim across this thing, and then, halfway through, we're starting to get eaten."

"And it took three weeks to shoot that It was very, very challenging. I saw God about five times. I ran out of air. In trying to do the swim, and just the sheer logistical, physical activity of whatever shot we were doing, along with the excitement of being pursued, it was pretty eye-opening. But at the end of the day, nobody got hurt; there were no casualties at all. It was rather miraculous. The only scenes from the movie I've seen are the 10 minutes that were cut down from that sequence, and it's really exciting."

Safety divers assisted the actors in this sequence, hovering just out of shot to provide air and assistance. "Every time we went down, there was one of them to one of us," says Perlman, "because when they yelled 'Cut,' we couldn't see. We'd do rehearsals with masks and regulators, and you could see perfectly and breathe fine, and then they'd say 'OK, we're going to shoot it now,' and they'd take away the mask and you'd become blinded. There were all kinds of lights down there in your eyes, and the water was so full of chlorine to keep everything safe that it was impossible to see your hand in front of your face. So we depended on those safety divers to find us at the end of the take, and shove the air regulator into our mouths. Sometimes they'd get there on time, and sometimes... that's when I saw God."

When asked about shooting special effects sequences, Perlman says, "I don't remember acting to 'Roger Rabbit' very much, if that's what you're asking. There'd be stuff happening around us a lot of the time that really didn't affect what we were doing one way or another. I mean, this is not one of those movies where you're acting to a cartoon a lot. But there was lot of blue-screen, where things will be filled in behind us. Really, I wouldn't say it was one of those things where the special effects dictated the kind of work we did or our approach to the work. No, not in this case. Maybe for some other characters but not for mine."

Of the acting challenges involved, Perlman says, "Well, it's a jeopardy movie. You're playing increments of terror and fear and being pursued and narrowly escaping with your life, or not escaping at all. And so that's very charged and when the camera rolls, you've got to be there. Of course you never shoot in sequence when you're shooting a movie, so you're shooting the climactic portion before you've had a chance to understand what it is that's leading up to it. That was probably, in this case, the most challenging from an acting point of view. Whenever you do a story that takes place 400 years in the future, your imagination is called upon in a very new and unique way. It's important that you get on board with the other members of the cast so that everybody has the same point of view about what life and behavior is like at that juncture: what we've evolved to - what we've evolved from, etc. So, in this case, those are the challenges. Every once in a while you're acting to an alien, and it's not there, but put in in [post-production]. That's another kind of challenge as well."

Perlman has appeared in a number of genre movies and television shows, from the moody horror film Cronos to the hit show Beauty and the Beast, so you might be surprised to find that he's not really a science fiction fan. "You know, I'm not," he states. "I like people movies and people works of literature. I don't read a lot of sci-fi or go out of my way to see sci-fi movies, unless I've heard that this is something you've gotta see. The original Alien movie was one of those ones that everyone was talking about so much that I had to go see it. It's something I probably wouldn't have done. I, like everyone else, was blown away by it, because it was such a people movie until these things got introduced, and then the juxtaposition of these people on a very ordinary kind of low-key mission, juxtaposed against this extraordinary, really scary thing that was realized in such an evocative way - was one of the great movies. And then the second one was even better, in a way. Not better, but it went to another level, and it didn't disappoint you. So there's a great pedigree to this, as far as I'm concerned. Plus the filmmakers, the three guys that came before: Ridley Scott is one of the great filmmakers of our time; James Cameron is one of the great filmmakers of our time, and David Fincher is emerging as one of the great filmmakers of our time. And now, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who comes from France, having made two extraordinary films and who, visually, is so unique, and is defining such a niche for himself in the way he pictorially tells stories on film, that I think it's an honor to appear in that franchise. I felt that from day one to the end. I would go to work and think, 'Wow, I'm in an Alien movie!'

"And people I would tell, because I've been acting for 24 years professionally - people would say 'What are you doing?' and I'd say 'Aliens,' and people would go, 'Wow!' I usually tell people what I'm doing and they say, 'OK, I'm going to go get some coffee now.' People are really jazzed about this deal."

Of working with Sigourney Weaver and the rest of the cast Perlman says, "I'm sure that everyone you interview in your life is going to say this, but in this case it was really true: great, great cast. A lot of fun, a lot of laughing, to cut the tension that is filmmaking. The most unpretentious group of people I've ever been around. Sigourney is great: she's very welcoming. You know that it's her franchise: She's been with it, I don't know how many years, but you wonder on that first day if there's going to be any kind of proprietary approach on her part. But the minute you meet her she's thrilled to be there, she's thrilled to have you on board, she loves creative input, and I think at the end of the day, on this one she really had a good time. We had a lot of camaraderie. We shot all through Thanksgiving and Christmas [and there was] a lot of holiday cheer. Jt was a very positive six months in my life."

If you want to find out more about Alien Resurrection, Twentieth Century-Fox has set up an outstanding official Web site for the movie, which features trailers, slide shows; interviews with actors, and even pictures of the dailies shot for the film, all in an attractive format. Visit the site at:
http://www.alienresurrection.com