Charles de Lauzirika has quickly established himself as one of the top documentarians in the business. He first came to prominence for his continuing collaboration with filmmaker Ridley Scott, crafting all of his landmark special editions - Gladiator, Thelma & Louise, Black Hawk Down and now the 9-disc ALIEN Quadrilogy - before branching out with some of the most progressive and pioneering releases yet seen on the format, from the Five-Star Collection of Speed to James Bond and Die Another Day. This USC graduate is also an accomplished filmmaker in his own right, having written and directed numerous screenplays, shorts and music videos.

So, how did you get sucked into this whole Alien thing again?

It began almost immediately after the 1999 Alien Legacy box came out. There was talk of doing them as Five Star Collection discs, but because I thought the first set was fine and there were so many other projects to do, it kind of went around and around for a while. But I had this ulterior motive the whole time because I really wanted to do Alien 3, so I kept going back and saying, "Well, why don't we do Alien 3 instead?"

It went around and around for about two years, and then they finally called and said, "Why don't you do all four?" And then I thought, "I can't turn that down."

When did the project really get up to speed?

Early summer of 2002 was when it really started getting serious.

What was your production schedule like?

Insane. We started proper on this project in July of 2002 and there was about three or four months of warm-up, of doing research, tracking things down and finding people and figuring out what kind of film elements we could use. I would say by about Christmas of 2002 until September of this year, it was a non-stop grind. Multiple editors, multiple restorations. It was a juggernaut.

What was the conceptualization process? Did you sit down with Fox and hash it out or did you just decide what it was going to be?

It started with me doing a really rudimentary groundwork proposal for all four movies. I wanted to start from scratch. I didn't want to use anything we had previously released. Basically, the idea was, "If I'm going to the ultimate disc of the Alien movies, what am I going to do?" That is where I started. I wanted to put everything I possibly could in the set. I wanted to cover every topic. Of course, you get to the point where you realize that's impossible and you're not going to have enough space. Or people have moved on and they don't care about the film or they have a whole other life now. It is tough to bring people back 20-plus years after the fact.

Each Alien movie is very different. How did you approach the theme for what the documentaries about each movie would be like?

In the case of Alien 3, it was such a famously problematic shoot. It has been well documented that this was tough. And that was a gold mine to start out with. Alien: Resurrection, on the other hand, was a comparatively easy shoot. It was here in LA and no one hated each other - it was fairly straightforward. Which is actually much more difficult. Where's the interesting story? Otherwise, it's just like an Entertainment Tonight segment. There's no juice, whereas Alien 3 has tons of juice.

There is an interesting mix of new and old material in all of the documentaries. How do you decide what to keep and what to throw out? Or perhaps a better way of saying it, is pride ever an issue, that you must use something new regardless of quality?

I know some people insist upon only using old stuff and some people insist upon only using new stuff, but to me it's about whatever is better. If somebody makes a more lucid comment today, even though it's 25 years later, then why not use it? And if something is said in the heat of the moment back in the day, why not use that? It's all about telling a cohesive story. Sometimes going back and forth like that makes things visually confusing, but to me it's great because you get a little bit of both.