Travails With The Alien: When Satyajit Ray considered suing Spielberg

A book accounting Satyajit Ray's failed attempts to make a sci-fi film in Hollywood is a poignant reminder of his gullibility when it came to the business practices of the American film world

Travails With The Alien: The film that was never made and other adventures with science fiction

Author: Satyajit Ray

Publisher:  HarperCollins & Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Archives 

Pages: 214+X

Price: Rs 699

On March 30, 1992, Satyajit Ray delivered a short and memorable speech accepting the honorary Oscar award in recognition of his “rare mastery of the art of motion pictures, and of his profound humanitarian outlook”. It was perhaps the most poignant moment in Ray’s distinguished career as a film-maker. He was unwell and he had to deliver that acceptance speech from a hospital bed in Calcutta, as Kolkata was known, clutching the Oscar statuette with his left hand. 

“Well, it’s an extraordinary experience for me to be here tonight to receive this magnificent award; certainly the best achievement of my movie-making career,” Ray began in his rich baritone, though his speech was a little slurred because of his illness. Before concluding, Ray paid his best tribute to Hollywood. “I have learned everything I’ve learned about the craft of cinema from the making of American films,” he said. 

The irony of the lavish praise Ray heaped on Hollywood was hardly lost on his legions of adoring fans. Wasn’t this the same Hollywood that had given the maestro a raw deal when he wanted to make a science-fiction film with its financial and technical help?

Satyajit Ray

Travails with the Alien provides answers to many such questions. The book is a compilation of previously published articles on Ray’s failed attempts to make a science-fiction film with Hollywood producers. It is embellished by some of the articles that Ray wrote on the subject, his media interviews, copies of rare photographs and letters from some Hollywood legends and science-fiction writers. The volume’s special attraction is the full screenplay of The Alien and a few of Ray’s stories on science. If Ray’s wife, Bijoya Ray’s account of how her husband felt cheated during his Hollywood adventure had also been included, the volume would have been complete.

Nevertheless, these articles and documents establish beyond doubt that Ray was undoubtedly an internationally acknowledged creative genius, but he was gullible too, almost like R K Narayan, who was also taken for a ride by Hollywood and Bollywood at the same time. Ray was no better than a novice when it came to dealing with some of Hollywood’s scheming film entrepreneurs. To be sure, the film-maker himself was quite aware of his failing in this respect and seemed to be reconciled to the thought that he was not prepared to deal with Hollywood’s sharp business practices. 

In contrast, Ray relished his world in Calcutta, at peace with making films in and around that city. He did not even wish to go to Bombay, now Mumbai, to make films. If Hollywood became a hurdle for Ray to realise his dream of making a science-fiction film — not once but twice — he was upset for a while but quickly moved on. 

So, when the same Hollywood came back to him with a life-time achievement award, just a few months before he died, it was perhaps a vindication that Hollywood had at last recognised his worth as a film-maker. 

Book cover of Travails with the Alien

Ray’s fascination with science fiction is not widely known outside the Bangla literary world. In the 1960s, he revived the children’s magazine, his father had launched, Sandesh, and he soon realised the need for creating stories that would explore the world of science fiction and engage the magazine’s young readers. But Ray’s science fiction was markedly different from what had become popular in the West. It was not about outer space, but an exploration of how living beings coming to the earth from outer space deal with people, situations and social or religious practices here. 

One of the stories, “Bonkubabur Bandhu”, was an inspiration for Ray to make his first science-fiction film. In the late 1960s, a few years after he had earned international fame by making The Apu Trilogy, he wrote a brief outline of a screenplay based on this story, called it The Alien and sought the opinion of British science-fiction writer, Arthur C Clarke. 

Clarke wasted no time in asking Ray to make it into a film with Hollywood’s help. He introduced Ray to Mike Wilson, a film-maker based in Colombo. It was at Wilson’s insistence that Ray produced the entire screenplay and the two even formed a company. Ray’s suspicions were not raised when the final document presented to Columbia Pictures had Wilson as the co-author — even though he had made virtually no contribution to the screenplay. It was only when Ray heard from Columbia that Wilson had been paid an advance of over $10,000 that disillusionment set in.

Ray refused to sign any more documents and wanted Wilson to send the papers to his Calcutta home. Those papers never came. Columbia was still interested in the project, provided Ray dissociated himself from Wilson, who now had to be persuaded to give up his rights on the screenplay.  

It was a bizarre situation. The final blow for Ray was when Wilson, after being persuaded to give up his rights to the screenplay, wrote a cryptic note: “Dear Ravana: You may keep Seetha. She’s yours. Keep her, and make her and the world happy.” That was not enough for Columbia to start work on the film with Ray. Wilson’s attempt to present Ray as Ravana, suggesting that it was Ray who had stolen the script from Wilson, was preposterous. Equally shocking was the behaviour of Peter Sellers, who had initially shown interest in playing the role of an Indian businessman in The Alien, but backed out, not before expropriating a phrase that he had read in Ray’s screenplay for use in a role he played in another film. 

The proposal for making The Alien was revived in the 1980s and Ray was even promised an advance of $50,000, according to Bijoya Ray. But by the time this plan crystallised, Steven Spielberg released E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial with a similar theme. Ray pointed out that dozens of mimeographed copies of his script for The Alien were available in Hollywood and he had considered suing Spielberg for plagiarism, backing out only when he realised that he would not be able to prove the charges as Spielberg had made necessary changes in the story. 

This was the second time Ray’s idea of making a science-fiction film in Hollywood had to be aborted because he did no want to be seen to have made a film that apparently copied an idea from E.T.. Spielberg’s response to Ray’s suggestions on legal action was interesting. “Tell Satyajit, I was a kid in High School when his script was circulating in Hollywood,” Spielberg informed Clarke when told how Ray was upset over the matter. There were also suggestions, with no corroboration though, that the controversy had been deliberately raked up at that time so that Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi could bag most of the Oscar awards for that year rather than E.T..

Several years later, when the idea of honouring Ray with an Oscar was mooted, among those who strongly supported the idea was Spielberg! Ray’s relationship with Hollywood has been no less dramatic than many of the films that Hollywood produces every year.