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Riot on the Set
Based on characters created by James Cameron and Dan O'Bannon & Ronald Shusett.
Resemblance to any actual persons, living and/or dead, is intentional but entirely imaginary.
Michael Biehn groaned in disgust as he heard the knock on the door of his trailer. His head was still pounding, his muscles ached in areas he didn't even know were capable of feeling pain, and his eyesight was blurry enough to label him legally blind. And to think this was his condition before he went out drinking.
"It can't possibly be time to shoot yet!" he yelled. "Tell Jim I need another hour!"
"Jim said if you're not on set in five minutes," a small, nervous voice answered from outside, "he'll hitch your trailer to the back of his truck and drive them both into a canyon."
Michael contemplated the scenario as he willed himself out of bed. He had James Cameron pegged for a wild blowhard, but decided vehicular homicide was not outside the man's capability. Good thing he'd slept in his costume; it saved him the time to change.
He opened the door and found cowering in front of him a large, skinny monstrosity; a bony arrangement of insect-like arms and legs covered in an armored black exoskeleton, topped a long, banana-shaped cranium whose only facial features consisted of a drooling, lipless mouth filled with shiny pointed fangs. Michael curiously eyed the creature from head to toe.
"Have we met before?" he asked.
"Uh, no, not formally," the six-foot insect replied. "I mean, we've passed by each other one or twice, but--"
"What's your name?"
"Oh, you can call me Roger!" the bug calling himself Roger announced, grabbing Michael's hand and shaking it furiously.
"Listen, Roger," said Michael, lumbering toward the set with all the enthusiasm of a Death Row inmate, "the last one of you I worked with was very particular about where I shot him. I couldn't get him in the face 'cause I'd ruin his best side, or I couldn't get him in the chest 'cause it was bad for his asthma. I'll warn you right now, if I were in any less mood for that kind of shit today, I swear to God I'd snap and do a Terminator on everybody in this studio. That said, do you have any preference for where I'm going to shoot you?"
"Well, hey, I mean, we wanna get the best shot possible, right?" said Roger. "We're all pretty good at gushing like water balloons if you hit us just right. I think that's something I'll leave up to you. I mean, c'mon, we wanna give 'em their money's worth, am I right?"
"What money's worth?" Michael grumbled. "Cameron's such a cheapskate he won't even spring for guys in suits; we're practically committing mutual genocide just making this damn movie." He motioned to a growing pile of dead bodies on the side of the room that shared certain distinctive features - gruesome holes gouged in their torsos from the inside, and faces frozen in agonized terror.
"Hey, I didn't ask to be born by exploding out of someone's chest," Roger defended himself. "If the guy I popped out of was still alive to be asked, he'd say it was no more pleasant for me than for him!"
On route to the power plant set, they passed by EMTs rolling a pair of stretchers toward the medical bay. Bill Paxton was busy screaming at a pair of sheepishly-grinning aliens while a doctor worked frantically to stitch up the nasty scratches along his lower legs. Meanwhile Lance Henriksen's torso gave a friendly wave to Michael and Roger, then told Paxton to quit complaining and assured him it could be much worse.
At last the actors reached the tangled web of pipes and railed balconies that made up the heart of the LV-426 colony's power plant. Director James Cameron was carrying on simultaneous arguments, one with his wife Gale Anne over the rising budget, the other with Sigourney Weaver and Harriet, the towering mass of bone, teeth, and slime that happened to be mother to Roger and his innumerable, identical siblings.
"Look, I just don't think it's the most appropriate line," said Harriet, lifting her tea with one of her outer arms and squeezing lemon into it with one of her smaller, chest-mounted arms. "By this point in the film, Ms. Weaver's only known me, what, ten minutes? And in that time she's burned all my eggs and blown up my nest, only to call me that awful name once she sees me again..." She turned apologetically to Sigourney. "Nothing against your delivery, sweetness. I dare say it's quite gangbusters coming out of you."
Sigourney nodded and continued for her. "Jim, I'm sure the producers loved a good slap-in-the-face profanity at that point in the story, but listen to the line a few times. 'Get away from her, you bitch!' That just seems like an awfully harsh judgment to make. You're sure Ripley wouldn't get to know her a little better first?"
"Siggy, you're throwing her out an airlock into the cold, unforgiving vacuum of space," Jim argued. "I don't think either of you are interested in that 'getting to know you' garbage."
"All the same," said Harriet, "it's bad enough all the 'dialogue' we get consists of varying degrees of hissing, roaring, and snarling--"
"I take offense to that!" Jim snapped. "Granted, there's plenty of hissing, and maybe even a roar or two, but I defy you to point out one single, solitary snarl! Now I'm sorry, the jury's voted, the line stays. Besides, the scene's shot and we don't have time for reshoots. We've got to do the elevator scene, and then the airlock scene before the end of the day. Michael, so glad you could join us."
Roger was nice enough to fetch Michael a bottle of bourbon. He had downed half of it before Jim even acknowledged his presence. "Can we film this crap festival already?"
"That's the spirit!" Jim applauded. "Places, everybody!"
Roger jumped onto the wall of pipes and hid himself among the shadows, while Sigourney handed Harriet her water bottle and joined Michael at the elevator doors, where they were both handed their assigned props.
"Jim, are you sure we can't do this scene with a dummy and, I don't know, a can of green paint?" Michael asked desperately as he was fitted with his Marine armor.
"Are you kidding me? I'm not made of dummies and paint!" he answered through his bullhorn.
"Unbelievable," Michael muttered.
"You think this is bad," Sigourney whispered, "wait till he makes that 'sinking boat movie' he's been going on about."
"Ready..." called the director, "...aaaaaaaaand action!"
The sirens blared like wild birds; warning lights continuously blinked on and off in the darkness. Ripley and Hicks fought their way through the corridor toward the elevator. For every alien that dared show its face, Hicks had a shot waiting, and a volatile rain of the monsters' acidic blood drizzled around them.
At last they made it to the elevator. Ripley madly pushed the button, doing so repeatedly regardless of how little good it did. This elevator, like so many others, would take its own sweet time reaching their floor. When it finally did, they raced inside and pushed the button for the landing pad where hopefully the shuttle was waiting for them.
As the doors closed, however, a pair of long black claws snapped inside, and a grotesque ridged head forced its way inside from above the entrance, glaring upside-down at the two humans. It opened its slobbering mouth, revealing its "tongue", the inner jaw that could launch itself with skull-piercing force.
"Eat this!" Hicks cried, as he shoved the barrel of his gun into the alien's mouth and fired. The shot went out the back of creature's curved cranium, and a spray of acid went in all directions with one light splash landing squarely on Hicks's chest. As the doors closed and the elevator began to climb, Hicks frantically removed his upper body armor as the acid ate through it. Upon tearing it from his chest, he collapsed against the wall; the acid had only just reached his shirt, mildly burning his skin and leaving him weak and short of breath.
"Almost home," Ripley assured him, as she began nursing his wound.
"Cut!" Jim shouted. "That was incredible!"
Michael jumped to his feet and growled, clutching his aching chest and pointing an accusing glare at James Cameron. "That hurt, god dammit! You knew it would hit me like that, didn't you!?"
"I told Roger to give a good spray, is all," Jim explained. "I never specifically told him to bleed all over you."
"My health insurance better cover this!" he screamed, examining his raw skin and counting his missing chest hairs. He stormed off the set, paying no mind to the lifeless, headless body of Roger that was melting a hole in the floor.
"Okay, setting up for the airlock scene," Jim announced, "in three... two... one... mark!"
He pulled a small metal lever next to the director's chair, and at once the walls of the power plant shrank away; walls flipped around and rearranged themselves, until the space ship Sulaco's docking bay was formed.
A earthquake-like rumble erupted from underneath the floor as the booster engines ignited, and personnel all across the set stumbled and fell as the set was launched into orbit. A production assistant monitoring their altitude flashed Jim a thumbs-up when they reached the desired distance.
"Let's do this!" the director ordered. "Harriet, we're gonna need you in the airlock, and we'll be dropping Sigourney and the power loader on you in a moment."
A dual-paneled gateway opened up in the floor, revealing a fifteen-foot-deep cubicle space with a second set of doors at its bottom.
"James, I really must protest to this," Harriet pleaded. "Surely we can think of--"
"GET IN THE FUCKING HOLE!"
Allowing herself a moment to shrink back in shock, Harriet reluctantly scuttled across the set and climbed to the bottom of the airlock. Meanwhile Sigourney Weaver had been strapped into the cybernetic loading apparatus that earlier she'd used to "battle" the foul creature; with a signal from Jim, the PA's shoved it into the hole and on top of Harriet.
"All right, this is it, people!" Jim shouted with pride. "Now remember, that is the cold, hard, relentless vacuum of space we're exposing ourselves to, so for God's sake, hold on to something!"
If Harriet had eyes, she would have rolled them. Nonetheless, she suddenly noticed the thin, nigh-invisible wires that were attached to Sigourney's costume and led to a sturdy-looking rig at the ceiling of the set.
"Ready..."
"Now wait one bloody minute!" Harriet cried. "Shouldn't I have a safety harness so you can pull me back in!?"
"That's a very good question, we'll look into that," Jim dismissively replied. "Action!"
Sigourney released herself from the power loader's operator seat, climbed the ladder and activated the outer airlock doors. They opened, and with a mighty roar of decompression, both the power loader, and Harriet underneath it, were blown out the hatch and into outer space. The door's automatic systems kicked in, and Sigourney dragged herself onto the floor of the set just as the airlock's inner doors shut.
"Looked good from here," Jim praised. "Did the satellite camera get the exterior shot we wanted?"
"Sure did," the assistant director answered, "except for one thing..."
He beckoned Cameron over to the monitor and replayed the shot it had just recorded. It was exactly as Jim has envisioned it: the camera pulling away from the outside of the Sulaco as the Alien Queen flails her limbs, screaming.
So good was the shot, in fact, that it even picked up Harriet's crystal-clear cry of "I'll get you for this, you miserable penny-pinching..." The rest was lost as she drifted off into the nothingness.
Jim leaned over to the sound designer and whispered, "Can we dub over that in Post?"
"Shouldn't be a problem," he shrugged.
"Righty-oh, then. That's a wrap!"
