Sigourney Weaver is passing through the Venice Film Festival, speaking with the press and fans, after receiving a career achievement award at the Italian fest’s opening ceremony on Wednesday.
This afternoon during a masterclass session with young students and journalists, Weaver shared a nugget from her work on Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi flick Alien.
“I remember Ridley didn’t really know how to end it,” Weaver said of the film.
“Ridley was making all these drawings. And he thought he’d keep on shooting until he figured it out. But they told him he had to finish in three days. So they did all these quick experiments and they realized if they have water against the Alien it will look like it’s burning up. It all happened so fast. It was total improvisation.”
Weaver added that throughout the production of Alien, Scott and his DoP Derek Vanlint spent their time coming up “with new ways” to shoot scenes.
“They’d be in some crazy place and turning the camera upside down,” Weaver said. “It’s fabulous to be around a group of people who are single-handedly trying to tell the best story possible. Giving all their particular skills and we just about made it.”
Weaver of course went on to star in the Alien sequel, directed by James Cameron, whom she has continued to collaborate with over the years on the filmmaker’s Avatar series.
Discussing the Avatar franchise, Weaver said that due to Cameron’s timeline for the films, all the actors had to “commit to all four new films without knowing what was in them and make our deals without knowing what was in them.”
“We weren’t sure whether he’d write about any of us except for Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and Jake (Sam Worthington),” she said. “So he’s taken about five years to write them. Luckily, they’re wonderful. And I think the saga is only going to get more fascinating.”
Elsewhere during the lengthy session, Weaver discussed upcoming projects like Bryan Fuller’s Dust Bunny, which she discussed with us here at length during an exclusive pre-festival interview. Weaver also dug into what she believes her career has lacked over the years.
“In my experience, one thing I’m really missing is women directors and writers,” she said. “That was true for a long, long time.”
The Venice Film Festival runs until September 7.
