Dan O'Bannon
Sci-Fi and horror fans will remember O'Bannon as the screenwriter of Alien. It was O'Bannon's realistic dialog that carried Alien as much as the special effects, H.R.Giger's designs and Ridley Scott's direction of Sigourney Weaver. Alien is simply one of the best movies ever made.
The amazingly creative O'Bannon was also writer and producer, making the critically acclaimed Dark Star even before Aliens.
Harry Knowles of Aint It Cool News, a major media force in science fiction who know O'Bannon and broke the news his passing, had this to say:
Dan O'Bannon was a great geek creator. He provided the screenplay and served as the Special Effects Supervisor on John Carpenter's first masterpiece, DARK STAR. And it is a science fiction masterpiece. I love DARK STAR and its sentient bomb and bean bag monster like very few things in this world. Dan worked on the computer animation and displays on a tiny film called STAR WARS after that. Remember that animation blueprint on how to blow up the Death Star... ie, the rebel plans? O'Bannon had a hand in that!
Then... he was the lead screenwriter on Ridley Scott's little film called ALIEN. Before Dan, there was a blank page. Afterwards we had Ellen Ripley, the Nostromo and the entire legend of the ALIEN. He was responsible for the B-17 sequence of HEAVY METAL, the awesome Helicopter film BLUE THUNDER, the wonderful satire of Romero's Zombie series called THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, my third fave film from Tobe Hooper - LIFE FORCE, the pretty damn fine remake of INVADERS FROM MARS, he got our ass to Mars with TOTAL RECALL... And the number of unmade solid scripts this guy was a part of is legendary.
Dan O'Bannon. Rest in peace.
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