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After working with Ron Cobb in Alien, Benja went on to design and build the fantasy scenery for Conan (in Almeria, including the magnificent Tower of Power), which started a long-term collaboration with producer Raffaella De Laurentiis.
"Sometimes you had to be historically accurate, as you said, for example with the setting that would be more Arabic, other times it's Roman architecture, other times... that was your specialty.
But sometimes you had to be precise instead of with history, with fantasy."
"For example, you had to conceive much of the set, the scenery, in Conan.
Conan is also filmed, I don't know if it's entirely filmed in Spain.
There are shots in Almeria, there are shots in Cuenca, there are shots...
So, of course, you who are used to delineate, to make architecturally precise sets..."
"How do you deal with Conan when they tell you, well, this is a fantasy?
Here you don't... you obviously drink from a lot of inspirations, but we see a column that has snakes in it....
How do you see it there?
Well, Conan is funny because I was the art director, not the designer."
"The production designer was Ron Cobb.
Ron Cobb was an image illustrator for Ridley Scott's other film, Alien.
That's where we met and he was the one who insisted that I be one of his assistants, who was, as art director, Pier Luigi Basile and I. There were two of us."
"This is for De Laurentiis, I understand, this production too.
Of course, that's where I met Raffaella de Laurentiis, with whom I've made many films.
And then you start making fantastic environments.
Yes, the original idea always started with Ron."
"Because, of course, it was an animalistic architecture.
Everywhere there were snakes, monsters, and so on.
integrated into the architectural style, which in normal architecture has also been done.
Yes, in Egypt mainly."
"So, well, it was very entertaining. I really loved it.
Were you in the part that takes place in the Enchanted City?
Not in the Enchanted City, I wasn't there. That's where the witch lived.
It was not any kind of architecture."
"It was using the rock and the geography of that place.
What we did do was, in Almeria, the Power Mountain.
All this was drawn by me.
It was quite an important set and very complicated to do."
"Because it was on the slope of the mountain to make the stairs going up to the top of the temple.
It was complicated because it was necessary to put a swimming pool at the bottom.
where they throw the torches at the end.
And there were 200 steps of 8 or 10 meters wide."
"enclosed under a handrail that was a snake's body.
It was one meter long...
Sure, it went all the way up and ended up with the steep snake.
and with the mouth a bit open, from where some lamps were hanging."
"Every three steps there was another type of step.
of a dimension three times bigger where all the bases of the basins with the fire rested.
Because the scene was at night."
