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Sometimes, for science fiction stuff,
we would communicate about
the concept for a sound element
by making little drawings to each other.
I'd say "It has to have a fat envelope
here at the beginning, then it tapers down. "
"This part is rizzy,
this part is searing and hot. "
We would talk like that
and draw little unfinished cartoons
about the way a sound would sound.
(Anderson) Like you attempted to graph it?
(Stone) Not so much graph it as draw
a childish version of what it would look like
if you could see it in a cartoon world.
(Anderson) John is in a cartoon world.
(Stone) He very much is.
He of course has a real genius ear.
The way he bends and shapes sound
to give it personality
and character is unparalleled.
Cinematographer Don McAlpine:
Setting the traps and shooting it hand-held,
necessitated my lying on
my back for hours at a time.
There was not a half-inch of my back
without massive insect bites.
Still, he finds this sequence
the most "emotionally satisfying".
"You feel I am a hunter. "
McAlpine is an avid outdoorsman.
Here, he comments on how this might
have affected his experience on "Predator".
Working in rough exteriors
certainly didn't phase me.
I'm a professional cinematographer,
and arrogant enough to believe
I can do anything. (laughs)
I've deliberately made choices in my career
to avoid getting into a creative rut.
The Hollywood word for it is "typecast".
I did Down and Out in Beverly Hills
and got offered four dog scripts!
The camera is a manner of communicating
all manners of things: Energy, emotion.
When you put two up, you divide the magic.
If the camera's merely
a recording tool you can put up 20,
but if you regard it as an artist's tool,
it's best to use one.
When forced to, I use a second camera
but as peripheral to the main one.
All I'm doing is stimulating
some cells in the back of someone's eye.
My real job is making that image connect
with some thought process or emotion.
You go through a stage in your career
when you're fascinated that you can
simply record an image, like a rose.
As your career develops, you're trying
to make that rose mean something.
When McAlpine ended
his interview for this DVD,
he began a six-week excursion
in the Australian outback.
He intended to do some hunting.
Screenwriters Jim and John Thomas:
( John) In the original script, Dutch
gets back to the camp and finds the ship.
They have a battle there, in a clearing,
in plain view of all
of the trophies it's assembled.
He wounds the hunter mortally.
As it tries to get into his ship and escape,
Dutch kills it with one of its own weapons.
( Jim) That was changed for budgetary
reasons. And also for story.
From the beginning, we were influenced
fairly heavily by Heart of Darkness.
The way we visualised it,
once this team completed this mission
they'd been suckered into
and realised that the only way out
was through this trackless canyon,
they went deeper and deeper
into this jungle,
and into the nightmare
of dealing with this creature,
to the point where
you had only one person left.
In our original story, the team leader
was actually an American Indian
who had gone against his tribal upbringing.
He had become a soldier because
he gained a lot of strength through that.
It was his shield, covering up
all kinds of things in his past.
And after this near-death encounter
with the Predator, he was nearly crazy.
Actually, in his delirious dream state,
there were a couple of flashbacks
where he was remembering things
from his youth as an Indian,
being counselled on how to deal
with the Spirit and the Earth
and how to find his own strength.
Really, that was what it was about:
After all his weapons are stripped away,
this man went to the deepest parts
of himself and found a way to survive.
To Arnold's