In early 1983 the late film doyen Satyajit Ray received a phone call from one of the grand masters of science fiction, Arthur C Clarke — who had just seen Steven Spielberg’s ET — to comment on the “striking parallels” between the film and Ray’s script, The Alien.
Ray had written The Alien in 1967. According to Ray’s biographer, Andrew Robinson, Clarke’s close friend and part-time film producer Mike Wilson had been involved in The Alien project, pursued by Columbia pictures initially. Columbia was the producer of Spielberg’s ET.
Clarke suggested Ray write to Spielberg in case he got accused of plagiarism. This was followed by Ray’s casual remark to the Indian press that ET “would not have been possible without my script of The Alien being available throughout America in mimeographed copies”. And thus set in motion insinuations of intrigue that still capture the imagination of film buffs in India. The controversy, however, died a quick death at that time. The Los Angeles Times, writes Robinson, picked up Ray’s comment in the Indian press and took it to Spielberg’s office at Warner Brothers who apparently “groaned” at the accusation. And later on a visit to Sri Lanka, where Clarke lives, Spielberg “rather indignantly” (Clarke’s words) said: “Tell Satyajit I was a kid in high school when his script was circulating in Hollywood.”
Ray, though saddened by the death of his project, never pursued the subject of parallels between The Alien and ET again. So what was Ray’s Alien about?
In Ray’s words his alien was a “cross between a gnome and a famished refugee child: large head, spindly limbs, a lean torso …” which lands its spaceship in a pond in a little village in Bengal. The first villager to encounter the alien, as in ET’s case, is a child. In Ray’s script the child is an orphan boy (who lives on fruit stolen from neighbours’ trees) who immediately befriends the alien.
The alien is a mischievous imp who decides to have some fun with the villagers. He starts performing “miracles”, ripening a villager’s corn overnight, making the meanest villager’s mango tree bear fruit, causing an old man’s corpse to open its eyes when his grandson is watching … and allowing his submerged spaceship to rise above the water to draw the village’s attention.
The superstitious villagers assume that the golden spire in the pond is a submerged temple and begin to worship it (well, the story is set in India what do you expect).
Enter three outsiders, with different views of the situation. Mohan, a rational journalist, interested in the changing face of the village; Joe Devlin, an American engineer hired to dig tube-wells; and his boss GL Bajoria, an unscrupulous businessman, who decides there is more money to be made by pumping the water out of the pond to restore “the temple”.
Mohan convinces Devlin that the “temple” is actually a “spaceship” and both try to dissuade Bajoria from pursuing his plans. In the climax of the script the villagers, now convinced that the “temple” is responsible for “unjust miracles” (what god makes the meanest man’s tree bear fruit?) is not exactly holy, are no longer enthusiastic about Bajoria’s plans. But as the businessman attempts to pump the water out, the shaceship whizzes off seemingly prompted by shots fired from Devlin’s gun. Initially Devlin — with his liking for tribal girls and smoking pot with the sadhus — is a suspect figure in the eyes of the villagers, however, he ends up as their hero.
Ray, a big fan of Peter Sellers from his Dr Strangelove days, had put aside Bajoria’s role for himself. He knew he would need Hollywood to raise the money for the expensive special effects required and for a couple of big names to feature in The Alien. According to Robinson, Ray had visited Hollywood in 1958, when his first film Pather Panchali — a winner at Cannes in 1955 — had been released in the United States.
With the help of Clarke’s friend, Wilson, Ray met Sellers in Paris. Sellers confessed to being a big fan of Ray’s work, though he had never seen any of his films. By then Ray was ranked with the other cinema greats of his time — Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa and Michelangelo Antonioni. The five shared a mutual respect and admiration for each other’s works. Kurosawa once wrote: “Not to have seen the cinema of Ray is like living in the world without seeing the sun or moon.”
So it was with some respect that Hollywood received Ray when he flew to Hollywood in 1967. Wilson had informed him that Columbia was interested in the project and so were Marlon Brando and Steve McQueen, who both wanted to play the American engineer. He met Sellers for the second time at sitarist Ravi Shankar’s home in Los Angeles. Sellers was learning to imitate the motions of playing the sitar for his role in the forthcoming The Party. He told Ray he did not have a problem playing a small role.
Ray watched Sellers shoot The Party. Robinson writes in his introduction of The Alien, which was published by Faber along with Ray’s two other screenplays in 1989, that the film director was “puzzled by Seller’s apparent inability to grasp the feebleness of his material”. He left the “Carrollian Wonderland” — the term he had coined to describe Hollywood — sure that The Alien was “doomed”.
Sellers wrote to him in mid-1968 that he would not be able to play Bajoria as it stood. Clarke’s friend Wilson, who had managed to put his name on the script as co-writer decided to become a sadhu. While Columbia continued to pursue the project, Ray, busy with projects at home, was no longer enthusiastic about it. And then ET came along.
And what did Ray think about ET? He found the alien in ET “a bit corny at times” but he liked the “marvellous” children in it. And his comments have influenced my opinion of Spielberg’s ET. His alien, Ray said, “had a sense of humour, a sense of fun, a mischievous quality. I think mine was a whimsy.” Even though Ray is dead, his Alien, I think, still deserves to come to life. Maybe his son Sandip, also a filmmaker, will think about doing it.
ET opens in theatres this week to commemorate its 25th anniversary