John Connor [Celluloid 03.23.22] scifi horror



The Tourist written by Clair Noto is a legendary screenplay that was widely considered the best script circulating in Hollywood for many years as of 1980. From HR Giger to Francis Coppola, everyone wanted to do it at one point, but nobody could get it over the line.

"Set in contemporary Manhattan, the story follows Grace Ripley, a beautiful executive who counts herself among a secret group of exiled aliens, some morphed to human form to live among us, while others remain in their original guises, waiting to die on the backward planet Earth. Her secretary Marty doesn't know of Grace's origins, nor does Marty's friend Spider O'Toole, a one eyed beauty disenfranchised from society and floating from job to job.

Frogner, an alien disguised as a human salesman, discovered Grace's alien identity while trying to make a deal. He tells this to Harry Sloane, head of the Manhattan Grief Clinic, a front for the alien hideaway known as the Corridor, where any manner of extraterrestrial is stuffed into cubicles to live out their useless lives.


Sloane desperately wants to find John Taiga, an alien who may have developed a way to leave Earth. Sloane will stop at nothing to find and kill Taiga, including enlisting Grace to go on her own search that leads to New York's seedier recesses and the Corridor's darker secrets. Anxiety kills these beings, while sex can either be a savior that rescues them from morphological breakdown, or it can kill both the alien and the chosen human mate in a life-draining cocoon." (via. clairnoto.wixsite.com)


[You can read Clair Noto's original screenplay for The Tourist here.]


Artist H. R. Giger (Alien) designed the exiled extraterrestrials, producing a series of illustrations. You can see of those images here:

















Francis Coppola once optioned The Tourist at the very moment his company Zoetrope was going bust after the massive failure of his musical One from the Heart. It was pitched to Dino de Laurentis’ production company (DUNE, CONAN) but no dice.


Watch this BBC report on Clair Noto's The Tourist from BBC2's Moving Pictures shown 2nd April 1995 for more detail.



Recommended Release: ALIEN NATION (The Complete Series)

You might also like

Wumpus (1 month ago) Reply

That is a very *busy* sounding plot. Also, please don't name your characters Spider or Frogner.

Digger (1 month ago) Reply

@Wumpus-

Spider Robinson and Spider Jerusalem might wish to disagree. However, I will agree with you on Frogner...

Leave a comment

Your Comment