Blade Runner: Three Articles (extra credit)

Here are some extra credit options. Read one or more of the following articles and write and turn in a hard-copy review in which you (1) summarize the article and (2) analyze one or more specific sections and give your point of view.

Article A.  Several versions of Ridley Scott's films have been shown. Here is an article from Wikipedia about the different versions of Blade Runner:

1. The releases seen by most cinema audiences were: the U.S. theatrical version (1982, 116 minutes), known as the original version or Domestic Cut, released on Betamax and VHS in 1983 andLaserdisc in 1987.
2. The International Cut (1982, 117 minutes), also known as the "Criterion Edition" or "uncut version", which included more violent action scenes than the U.S. version. Although initially unavailable in the U.S., and distributed in Europe and Asia via theatrical and local Warner Home Video Laserdisc releases, it was later released on VHS and Criterion Collection Laserdisc in North America, and re-released in 1992 as a "10th Anniversary Edition".
3. The U.S. broadcast version (1986, 114 minutes) was the U.S. theatrical version edited by CBS to tone down the violence, profanity, and nudity to meet broadcasting restrictions.
4. The Ridley Scott-approved (1991, 116 minutes) Director's Cut was prompted by the unauthorized 1990/1991 workprint theatrical release. This Director's Cut was made available on VHS and Laserdisc in 1993, and on DVD in 1997. Significant changes from the theatrical version include: the removal of Deckard's voice-over; re-insertion of a unicorn sequence; and removal of the studio-imposed happy ending. Scott provided extensive notes and consultation to Warner Bros. through film preservationist Michael Arick, who was put in charge of creating the Director's Cut.
5. Ridley Scott's The Final Cut (2007, 117 minutes), or the "25th Anniversary Edition", was released by Warner Bros. theatrically on October 5, 2007, and subsequently released on DVD, HD DVD, andBlu-ray Disc in December 2007.  This is the only version over which Ridley Scott had complete artistic control, as he was not directly in charge of the Director's Cut. In conjunction with the Final Cut cinema release, extensive documentary and other materials were produced for the DVD releases which culminated in a five-disc "Ultimate Collector's Edition" release by Charles de Lauzirika.

For full details, go here.

Article B.  Here is an article about the final cut of Blade Runner that was written for The New York Times upon its release.

Blade Runner: A Cult Classic Restored, Again

September 30, 2007

By FRED KAPLAN

The New York Times

IT’S been 25 years since the release of “Blade Runner,” Ridley Scott’s science fiction cult film turned classic, but only now has his original vision reached the screen.

“Blade Runner: The Final Cut” — as the definitive director’s cut is titled — was scheduled to play at the New York Film Festival Saturday night, opens at the Ziegfeld in New York and the Landmark in Los Angeles on Friday, and comes out in December in a five-disc set with scads of extra features.

An earlier director’s cut played in theaters 15 years ago to great fanfare and is still available on DVD. But the new one is something different: darker, bleaker, more beautifully immersive.

The film, based on Philip K. Dick’s novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” takes place in Los Angeles in 2019. It follows a cop named Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) who hunts down androids — or, in the film’s jargon, replicants— that have escaped from their slave cells on outer-space colonies and are trying to blend in back on Earth.

What’s hypnotic about the film is its seamless portrait of the future, a sleek retro Deco glossed on neon-laced decay: overcrowded cities roamed by hustlers, strugglers and street gangs mumbling a multicultural argot, the sky lit by giant corporate logos and video billboards hyping exotic getaways on other planets, where most English-speaking white people seem to have fled.

Mr. Scott designed this world in minute detail and shot it at night, from oblique angles, mainly on Warner Brothers’ back lot in Burbank, Calif., pumping in smoke and drizzling in rain.

“I’ve never paid quite so much attention to a movie, ever,” Mr. Scott said in a telephone interview from Washington, where he’s shooting a spy thriller. “But we had to create a world that supported the story’s premise, made it believable. Why do you watch a film seven times? Because somebody’s done it right and transported you to its world.”

He created this world from what he saw around him. “I was spending a lot of time in New York,” he said. “The city back then seemed to be dismantling itself. It was marginally out of control. I’d also shot some commercials in Hong Kong. This was before the skyscrapers. The streets seemed medieval. There were 4,000 junks in the harbor, and the harbor was filthy. You wouldn’t want to fall in; you’d never get out alive. I wanted to film ‘Blade Runner’ in Hong Kong, but couldn’t afford to.

When “Blade Runner” came out in June 1982 it received mixed reviews and lost money. The summer’s big hit was “E. T.,” Steven Spielberg’s tale of a cute alien phoning home from the tidy suburbs. Few wanted to watch a movie that implied the world was about to go drastically downhill.

“Here we are 25 years on,” Mr. Scott said, “and we’re seriously discussing the possibility of the end of this world by the end of the century. This is no longer science fiction.”

The special effects that produced this vision were amazing for their day. Created with miniature models, optics and double exposures, they seemed less artificial than many computer effects of a decade later. But like film stock, they faded with time.

For the new director’s cut, the special-effects footage was digitally scanned at 8,000 lines per frame, four times the resolution of most restorations, and then meticulously retouched. The results look almost 3-D.

The film’s theme of dehumanization has also been sharpened. What has been a matter of speculation and debate is now a certainty: Deckard, the replicant-hunting cop, is himself a replicant. Mr. Scott confirmed this: “Yes, he’s a replicant. He was always a replicant.”

This may disappoint some viewers. Deckard is the film’s one person with a conscience. If he’s a replicant, it means that there are no more decent human beings.

“It’s a pretty dark world,” Mr. Scott acknowledged. “How many decent human beings do you meet these days?”

The clue to Deckard’s true nature comes in a scene that was cut from the original release and only recently unearthed by Charles de Lauzirika, Mr. Scott’s assistant and the restoration’s producer. In the film, Deckard falls in love with Rachael (played by Sean Young), a secretary at the Tyrell Corporation, the conglomerate that makes replicants. She discovers that she’s a replicant too. Her memories of childhood were implanted by Tyrell to make her think she’s human.

In the last scene of Mr. Scott’s version, Deckard leads Rachael out of his apartment. He notices an origami figure of a unicorn on the floor. A fellow cop has often left such figures outside replicants’ rooms. In an earlier scene, Deckard was thinking about a unicorn. Looking at the cutout now, he realizes that the authorities know what’s in his mind, that the unicorn is a planted memory, that he’s a replicant and that he and Rachael are both now on the run. They get into the elevator. The door slams. The end.

Neither this scene nor any unicorn appeared in the 1982 release. That version ended with Deckard and Rachael escaping, driving through green countryside, Deckard telling us in his Philip Marlowe voice-over — which ran throughout the movie — that he had learned Rachael is a new type of replicant, built to live as long as humans. They smile. The end.

How to explain such a drastic change? The veteran television producers Bud Yorkin and Jerry Perenchio put up one third of the film’s $22 million budget and the completion bond, which stipulated that if the film went over budget they had to pay the overrun but would also take ownership of the movie. The film went $7 million over budget.

Preview screenings were disastrous. Crowds went to see the new Harrison Ford movie, thinking it would be like “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and they were befuddled. Mr. Yorkin and Mr. Perenchio, whose relations with Mr. Scott were always tense, took over.

In some accounts, Mr. Scott was kicked off the picture and had nothing to do with the voice-over or the happy ending. This isn’t quite accurate.

“I was in a minor argument over it for about six hours,” Mr. Scott recalled. “Then I was fully on board.” He had contemplated a voice-over early on, inspired by Martin Sheen’s in “Apocalypse Now.” When the previews bombed, he revived the idea and had his screenwriters, Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, work on it. The new owners discarded that draft and hired Roland Kibbee, a frequent writer for the detective show “Colombo,” to do a rewrite.

Mr. Scott didn’t like the revision, but he edited it into the movie anyway. He also asked Stanley Kubrick for outtakes of rolling countryside that were shot for “The Shining,” and used them as backdrop for the desired happy ending.

“I went along with the idea that we had to do certain things to get audiences interested,” Mr. Scott recalled. “I later realized that once I adopted that line, I was selling my soul to the devil, inch by inch drifting from my original conception.”

“My original concept,” he said, “was almost operatic: the cadences, the deliberate pacing. I mean that in the sense of the best comic strips, the ones that adults read, which are very operatic. ‘Batman’ — you can’t get more operatic than that.”

Afterward, Mr. Scott moved on to other films. In 1989 a Warner Brothers executive, going through the vaults, came across a 70-millimeter print of Mr. Scott’s original cut. In May 1990 the print was lent to a Los Angeles theater showing a festival of 70-millimeter films. Fans lined up around the block. The same thing happened when two art houses screened it in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Sensing a windfall, Warner Brothers announced the release of a director’s cut and brought in Mr. Scott. It was a rush job — much of the deleted footage couldn’t be found — but it was closer to what he had intended.

In 2000 Mr. Scott announced that he was working on a multidisc set that would include a polished director’s cut. But the project collapsed when the Mr. Yorkin and Mr. Perenchio wouldn’t transfer the rights.

This refusal was widely attributed to lingering bitterness. Mr. Yorkin, speaking by telephone from Los Angeles, denied that. “It’s just there was no reason for another release,” he said. “We needed an idea that would make it an event.”

Last year they realized the film’s 25th anniversary was coming up. “That was an idea we could hook it on,” Mr. Yorkin said. A deal was struck with Warner Brothers. The project was revived.

Mr. de Lauzirika plowed through 977 boxes and cans of film, stored mainly in a Burbank warehouse, and found the missing pieces — including the complete unicorn scene — along with several discs’ worth of material for DVD special features. And the technical experts restored the picture to a level of detail that would have been impossible a few years earlier.

“In many ways,” Mr. de Lauzirika said, “the delay actually helped. So all headaches aside, it’s hard to be bitter. I’m actually quite grateful.”

Article C.  And finally, here is an in-depth interview with director Ridley Scott about the film.

Wired: I'd like to just start out by asking you how it feels to be talking about a new movie that you began 25 years ago.

Scott: It's been ongoing so long, it never went away. So I'm used to it. It kept reemerging, and that's when I realized that it had really unusual staying power. And it's all very well, at the time, as the person who made it, to say, "Well, I knew it had." But I didn't, really, at the time. I knew I'd done a pretty interesting movie which, in fact, was extremely interesting but was so unusual that the majority of people were taken aback. They simply didn't get it. Or, I think, better now to say they were enormously distracted by the environment.

Wired: What do you mean, "enormously distracted by the environment"?

Scott: Well, we — I mean I had new ground to address: the idea of doing a film that is not necessarily futuristic in the sense of the, futuristic science fiction, but actually more as a look into the future, and the future possibility, which can be more interesting. Because then you're touching on various possibilities of, like, replication, which now are quite commonplace, but 25 years ago they were barely discussing it in the corridors of power where you have to — you know, like the Senate and things like that. They hadn't even gotten to that point. I'm sure it was firmly in biological institutions and laboratories, but they hadn't yet gone for permission. It was almost 10 years or 15 years afterBlade Runner that I read about replication. Now, the film is not really about that at all, it's simply borrowing that possibility and addressing it and putting it to making a sort of unusual protagonist or antagonist that will be leveraged into a Sam Spade or one of those detective, film-noir kind of stories. So people will be familiar with that kind of character, but not at all familiar with the world I was cooking up. Which, again, really came from what I'd seen. And what I'd seen was quite a lot of Hong Kong at the time, pre-skyscraper, where the actual harbor was filled with junks, so Hong Kong was remarkably, darkly romantic. And also a lot of New York at that time, which always seemed to be a city on overload. It seems less so today, because, I think, between the last two mayors there's been this massive cleanup and also a massive show of prosperity. And prosperity, of course, is what cleans cities up. So I'd borrowed from those two dark places and put that into what essentially would become the background, and where we'd be looking forward into — was it 2017 or 2019?

Wired: 2019.

Scott: 2019, yeah. In fact, I even wanted to call it San Angeles, and somebody said, "I don't get it." I said, "Duh! San Francisco and Los Angeles?" And they go, "Oh, oh, oh." They're not even thinking like that, they don't get it. It's bizarre. People only think about what's under their noses, for the most part, until it comes and kicks them in the ass. Like, right now, global warming and how we're nursing what's happening in Iraq.

Wired: Did you take that as a lesson into your future films?

Scott: You know what? I was always aware that this whole Earth is on overload. I've been like that for 30 years, and people used to think I was a — not exactly a depressive, but always dark about it. And I'd say, "It's not dark, mate. It's a fact. It's going to come and hit you in the head." It's right where we are right now, where we're still going, arguing in circles. There's some politicians who still seriously believe that we haven't got global warming.

Wired: In terms of audiences and their ability to accept what you're presenting, did Blade Runnerpose any sort of a lesson to you?

Scott: Word that again?

Wired: Well, you were just saying that people clearly weren't ready to accept —

Scott: People either want a pigeonhole or have a comfortable preconception about what they're sitting and seeing. It's a bit like 20 years of Westerns, and, now, 45 years of cop movies. People are comfortable with the roles, and even though every nook and cranny has been explored, they'll still sit through endless variations, permutations on cops and bad guys, right? In this instance, I was doing a cop and a different bad guy. And to justify the creation of the bad guy, i.e., replication, I had to justify that the outside world would support that idea. So, then, it has to be in the future. So, the future that I had seen portrayed to that particular point — without being specific or mentioning names, because that means I'm getting really critical — all of the urban films until that moment had been pretty ordinary to not very good. So, it was a challenge to say — it's the same as trying to do a monster movie it's, like, Aliens is a monster movie. Alien is a C film elevated to an A film, honestly, by it being well done and a great monster. If it hadn't had that great monster, even with a wonderful cast, it wouldn't have been as good, I don't think. So, in this instance, my special effect, behind it all, would be the world. That's why I put together [industrial designer] Syd Mead and people like that who were actually serious futurists, great speculators, great imagination, looking to the future, where the big test is saying, draw me a car in 30 years' time without it looking like bad science fiction. Or draw me an electric iron that will still be pressing shirts in 20 years' time without it looking silly. That's the stretch, that was the target: that I wanted the world to be futuristic and yet felt — not familiar, because it won't be — but feel authentic. I could buy it. One of the hardest sets to design was his kitchen. It's not Tyrell's room, which is easy because we fantasize about a giant super-Egyptianesque, neo-Egyptianesque boardroom. But the idea of saying, what is his bathroom and kitchen like in those particular times — that's tricky. Nevertheless fascinating. I love the problem.

Wired: Well, let me ask you the obvious question, which is: You did a director's cut in 1992. Why wasn't that the final word?

Scott: The director's cut in 1992 was actually the removal of the voice-over and the ending. But data-wise it wasn't a very well put-together transition onto disc, honestly. It was represented on a disc, and the disc wasn't terribly good. Technically, it didn't look that great. And it should look great, because Blade Runner, at the time, was pretty formidable — is pretty formidable even now, actually. It's surprising when you go from photo chem and not off digital — photo chem's better, right?

Wired: You're talking about picture quality.

Scott: Well, after all that's what we're looking at: picture and sound. We're experiencing picture and sound. If those are sub, then it's going to already start to affect or infect the output. It is important. A lot of people don't even notice the difference of whether they're watching something beautifully technical or not. But it's important to me. So that always got in the way of it being the final version. Right now, I think it's final because I've done all the nips and tucks — removal of voice-over, tidying up one or two of the visual areas — that we couldn't do properly at the time because we didn't have the technology. And removing that silly ending, right? I tried in stuff, once again, because sometimes 25 years afterwards you think, "Let me look at those scenes that were removed." And there was still a good reason why the scenes weren't in the film. The putting back of extensive stuff didn't fly. So, we were pretty good almost the first time up. But what's great about the five-disc set, because there is so much interest and discussion about this particular film, is that it covers every piece of ground, from this final version to the version that was put out to a whole disc just on discussions such as we're having right now, except between all the people who actually helped make the movie. It's really a very in-depth chronicle of the whole goddamn thing.

Wired: Can we talk about the deleted scenes?

Scott: Yeah.

Wired: So what will the audience never see?

Scott: There's a guy in the very opening scene interviewing one of the replicants, and it's in some kind of institutional booth. And he is shot. And out of that, the replicant is out and on the streets. That's when we know we have a problem. That character later turns up in the hospital, where Deckard goes to see him and where that character can explain who these replicants are and where they're coming from. But it kind of a repetition, in a way, of the meeting with Deckard's boss in Grand Central Station, which we turn into a police station, right? Not Grand Central Station, but the equivalent of Grand Central in LA, the beautiful Spanish downtown station. It was a bit of over-explaining that you didn't really need, although what was fascinating about it was the hospital room and what would be the equivalent of the breathing machine they'd put him in because he'd taken it through one of his lungs. So, there was that. There was a little bit more with Rachael and Deckard, which was sexuality. I think we went far enough in the film, so I kind of cut it back a bit. It got a bit rough. I needed to actually have Deckard sympathetic. I thought Deckard was very sympathetic. I think Harrison [Ford] was playing a character so opposite to what people had normally expected from him that they were surprised by that — and the fact that the hero, or antihero, finally gets his butt kicked by the so-called bad guy who turns out not to be a bad guy. That's what's good about the movie, right? Otherwise we're all down to bad guys and good guys, which is really boring. It's always nice to make the bad guy either be interestingly sympathetic, because it makes it more interesting. It gives him more depth, as opposed to just being a bad ass, which is kind of boring. Watch American Gangster for Frank Lucas. He's a bad man who sells heroin, and yet you love him. I always try to spin it, you know. I always try to look for the pluses in these characters to keep you involved, evolved. And I guess, in this instance, it did. It kept people involved for 25 years. And those who had seen it are going back for more because they keep rediscovering in the corners of the story, they keep finding new discoveries. So, that's good as well. Somebody had written very simplistically that one of the fascinating things about the film was that it was incomplete. That's absolute horseshit. The film was very specifically designed and is totally complete, with great decisions. A lot of decisions made in that film.

Wired: I'm not sure what that would mean — "incomplete."

Scott: I read this article recently. I don't remember who the hell it was. But somebody had intellectualized and theorized that the film had found an ongoing audiences because in its completion it was incomplete. And therefore, because there had been no decisions made at the end as to who this character may be — which is entirely wrong, because this character always in my mind was a replicant. In those particular days there was more discussion than was welcome, as far as I'm concerned. But at the end of the day, a director is a director, and that's the job, when he carries it hopefully through — particularly if he's actually written or developed something. There's a lot of me in this script. There always is in all the films I do. And you know, a lot of ideas get injected and then are put on paper, right? So, I don't want to pen it — I don't want credit for that — but that's what happens because that's the kind of director I am. If I could write — I can write, but not like, say, [Steve] Zaillian or Hampton [Fancher] — if I could, I'd do it myself. Or if I do, it takes way too long, and I could have done two films in that time. That's really where I come from. And besides, I like to work with writers, like a good composer. I like to talk music with people. Can I play "God Save Our Gracious Queen" on the piano? No. But, do I know music now? Yes. I learned music really through films.

Wired: Well, they're both compositional media.

Scott: They always are. I always shoot my movies with score as certainly part of the dialogue. Music is dialogue. People don't think about it that way, but music is actually dialogue. And sometimes music is the final, finished, additional dialogue. Music can be one of the final characters in the film. That's why people say you shouldn't note the film score. That is complete bullshit. If the film score is working absolutely great, you will probably find that the film is working brilliantly and is probably being elevated by good score.

Wired: Mm-hmm.

Scott: You don't sound too sure about that.

Wired: No, I understand. It's sort of like saying you don't notice when the acting is excellent. Of course you don't because you're drawn into it.

Scott: You're so sucked in, you're completely engaged. It's afterwards when you can say, "Damn, that was good." Then you can quietly analyze why it was good, if you want. And usually it's the unusual circumstances of great story and great acting, and really well carried out. Or less good story, brilliant acting that supports it. Or great story and not such good acting, because the great story supports the not such good acting, which means the director wasn't doing his job. You've got three parts there, you know. I think it always comes back to, if you can, a good story. The hard thing is getting the bloody thing on paper. That is the hardest single thing to do. Once you've got it on paper, the doing is relatively straightforward and, if you've really got it pinned down, makes it more — this is a bit of a generalization — makes it more enjoyable.

Wired: Well, it was never on paper that Deckard was a replicant.

Scott: No, it was actually.

Wired: It was on paper?

Scott: Oh yeah. The whole point of Gaff was — the guy who makes origami and leaves little matchstick figures around, right? The whole point of Gaff, the whole point in that direction at the very end, if Gaff is an operator for the department, then Gaff is also probably an exterminator. Gaff, at the end, doesn't like Deckard, and we don't really know why. And if you take for granted for a moment that, let's say, Deckard is Nexus 7, he probably has an unknown life span and therefore is starting to get awfully human. Gaff, just at the very end, leaves a piece of origami, which is a piece of silver paper you might find in a cigarette packet. And it's of a unicorn, right? So, the unicorn that's used in Deckard's daydream tells me that Deckard wouldn't normally talk about such a thing to anyone. If Gaff knew about that, it's Gaff's message to say, "I've basically read your file, mate." Right? So, that file relates to Deckard's first speech to Rachael when he says, "That isn't your imagination, that's Tyrell's niece's daydreams. And he describes a little spider on a bush outside the kitchen door. Do you remember that?

Wired: I don't remember the — oh, the spider. Yeah.

Scott: Well, the spider is an implanted piece of imagination. And therefore Deckard has imagination and even history implanted in his head. He even has memories of his mother and father in his head, maybe a brother or sister in his head. So if you want to make a Nexus that really believes they're human, then you're going to have to think about their past, and you're going to have to put that in their mind.

Wired: Why didn't the unicorn dream sequence appear in either the work print or the original release?

Scott: As I said, there was too much discussion in the room. I wanted it. They didn't want it. I said, "Well, it's a fundamental part of the story." And they said, "Well, isn't it obvious that he's a replicant here?" And I said, "No. No more obvious than he's not a replicant at the end. So, it's a matter of choice, isn't it?"

Wired: As a fan reading people's comments about this, I've come across statements of Harrison Ford saying that he was not a replicant.

Scott: I know.

Wired: And watching the director's cut, it seemed to me when Ford picks up the origami unicorn at the end of the movie —

Scott: And he nods.

Wired: The look on his face says, "Oh, so Gaff was here, and he let Rachael live." It doesn't say, "Oh my God! Am I a replicant?"

Scott: No? Yeah, but then you — OK. I don't know. Why is he nodding when he looks at this silver unicorn? It's actually echoing in his head when he has that drunken daydream at the piano, he's staring at the pictures that Roy Batty had in his drawer. And he can't fathom why Roy Batty's got all these pictures about. Why? Family, background, that's history. Roy Batty's got no history, so he's fascinated by the past. And he has no future. All those things are in there to tap into if you want it. But Deckard, I'm not going to have a balloon go up. Deckard's look on his face, look at it again now that I've told you what it was about. Deckard, again, it's like he had a suspicion that doing the job he does, reading the files he reads on other replicants, because — remember — he's, as they call them, a blade runner. He's a replicant moderator or even exterminator. And if he's done so many now — and who are the biggest hypochondriacs? Doctors. So, if he's a killer of replicants, he may have wondered at one point, can they fiddle with me? Am I human, or am I a replicant? That's in his innermost thoughts. I'm just giving the fully flushed-out possibility to justify that gleaming look at the end where he kind of glints and kind of looks angry, but it's like, to me, an affirmation. That look confirms something. And he nods, he agrees. "Ah hah, Gaff was here." And he goes for the elevator door. And he is a replicant getting into an elevator with another replicant.

Wired: And why does Harrison Ford think otherwise?

Scott: You mean that he may not be or that he is?

Wired: Well, he is on record saying that, as far as he's concerned, Deckard is not a replicant.

Scott: Yeah, but that was, like, probably 20 years ago.

Wired: OK, but —

Scott: He's given up now. He's said, "OK, mate. You win, you win. Anything, anything, just put it to rest."

Wired: OK.

Scott: I'm just saying that the hours of discussion that the writer and I used to have when were trying to get it on paper, that it expanded into that, you see. And that's where it all came from. And suddenly you get everyone's opinion and their mother, and I don't tend to have that any more.

Wired: A moment ago you mentioned that there's a lot of you in the movie.

Scott: Yeah. Always has been. There's a lot of me in The Duellists. There's a lot of me in Alien. I was the fifth choice of director on Alien, and I just knew what to do with it. I knew it was a kind of — it would be classified as a B horror movie, and I just knew what to do. So I said, "I'll do it." And that's what happened.

Wired: You've called Blade Runner your most complete and personal film.

Scott: Probably, yeah. Probably.

Wired: Well, I'm sorry to jog something you probably said off the top of your head 10 years ago, but can you tell me in what ways it's complete, and especially in what ways it's personal?

Scott: Well, different things drive the bus, you know. For instance, I've just finished a thing calledAmerican Gangster — well, I finished months ago, but it comes out in November with Denzel [Washington] and Russell [Crowe]. And it's honestly about two guys who are still alive. And therefore your target, when you're preparing that, is to make sure all the accuracy goes into what you actually know about these people. And, therefore, because they're sufficiently interesting to make a film about, you want to make it absolutely accurate. So you almost have a feeling of, not exactly but nearly, documentary. You really make it a film and not a movie. You know what the difference is? It's not exactly a documentary, but it feels awfully real. This [Blade Runner] involved full-bore imagination, right? And so did Legend. But Legend was borrowed very much from Jean Cocteau'sBeauty and the Beast and a lot of the best of Disney. I just think I did it too early, actually. But this was such a brand new presentation of an arena, which is loosely called the future, that a lot of very specific invention went into this. And because of that, the invention was very entwined, first of all, from the requirements of the story and therefore from what the actors are saying to each other, which is driving it along. So if, in very simplistic terms, Deckard's saying, "I am going out, and I will be back later," when I see him on that street, I have to involve that exterior, that universe. His universe has to be expanded into credibility. That was probably the hardest pressed thing I've done, really, because there was nothing to borrow from. You know, for Black Hawk Down, you can just walk from street to street and say, "I want to be there at 2 o'clock," and just shoot it, right? With some prep — it's not quite that simple, but you know. This was all invented, really.

Wired: I don't know how to ask this question, but in the invention of it, were there personal experiences that you drew on?

Scott: I think you always do. I mean, I do. In that respect, directors, probably — well I do. Actors draw from personal experience, certainly, as a director. I don't think all directors do, but I certainly draw from personal experience — sometimes I remember things, sometimes it will come out from the back of my head and I'm thinking, I never knew where that came from. And then I can analyze afterwards and realize that's what it was. Funny enough, the beauty in industry, which is probably killing us, but actually nevertheless is beautifully like Hades, is one reason why you start to feel the beauty in the godawful condition of the red horizon and the geysers of filth going into the air. I used to go to art school in West Hartlepool College up in the north of England, which is almost right alongside the Durham steel mills and Imperial Chemical Industries, and the air would smell like toast. Toast is quite nice, but when you realize it's steel, and it's probably particles, it's not very good. But I'm still here. So, you draw back on that. And to walk across that footbridge at night, you'd be walking fundamentally above, on an elevated walk on the steel mill. So you'd be crossing through, sometimes, the smoke and dirt and crap, and you're looking down into the fire. So, things like that are remembered. Personal experience in spending a little bit of time in Hong Kong at the time when it was kind of almost wonderfully medieval, Asian medieval. And therefore deciding what to do: Do we go Hispanic or do we go Asian for what seems to be the majority on the streets in San Angeles at that time? So I opted for Asian.

Wired: Is it true that you didn't read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? before making the movie?

Scott: I actually couldn't get into it. I met Phillip K. Dick later, and he said, "I understand you couldn't read the book." And I said, "You know you're so dense, mate, by page 32, there's about 17 storylines." And I said, "So, one of the problems is actually distilling this down into a three-act play that can be filmed." And Hampton had done that with a thing he had called Dangerous Days. Didn't Catherine Bigelow do a film later called Dangerous Days?

Wired: It sounds familiar, but I don't know.

Scott: It was called Dangerous Days, and [Michael] Deeley had come to see me when I was actually mixing Alien. And he said, basically, "I hear Alien is pretty good, and do you want to do another science fiction?" I said, "I don't really want to go down that route if I can avoid it next." But, to cut a long story short, eight months later, after a lot of buggering about what I might do, what I might not do, the Dangerous Days script stayed with me. So I went back to him saying, "You know, if you guys had to expand this into something more spectacular, we can push this right outside and onto the street and create this universe of futuristic urban future. And wouldn't that be interesting." Because I could never shake loose the fact that I was a designer, which I'm constantly criticized for, and I really don't give a shit. Because, at the end of the day, it's proved to be quite useful. In fact, I'm sitting right now in front of a 6-by-4 canvas, because I've been painting again seriously for a while now. I'm staring at a big portrait of my niece with her pony. And my favorite artist, if you're going to go back — do you know who Stubbs is?

Wired: I don't know him.

Scott: George Stubbs is an 18th-century painter, one of the great ones. I always get influenced way back when. So the target is, how can I paint like him? That's a tough call, but I'm getting there. So I always like to struggle with the visual side still, and it's working out quite well, actually. I've never lost the art school background, you see. Always draw the storyboards, and the old paintings — seven years of art school. I decided to start painting again a year ago. I was afraid, actually, because — and big is better. You know, when you start painting, you want to be a big canvas if you can. So the [?] simple small sketch, and then you think that's that. And then you're facing the big white canvas. It's a bit like a movie. And getting the canvas together, where you can start really addressing it — I always remember being told, "Get rid of the white canvas as fast as possible." It's a bit like saying, "Get your assembly as quick as possible, then you can look at the overall scheme of things."

Wired: "Your assembly"? I don't understand.

Scott: Editing.

Wired: I see, the assembly edit.

Scott: Editing is the same thing as — when all the lumps and pieces are missing, it's hard to judge. And that final look of it, when you're going to look at your first cut, is always scary as hell, because it's nearly always too long. A few road bumps in it. Sometimes you're amazed that, "Oh, my goodness, that works." Doesn't happen very often. It's always hard work.

Wired: I've read that there are wires and shadows in the earlier versions of the movie that you've eliminated.

Scott: Mm-hmm, yeah.

Wired: Given the design focus that you have, and you're famous for your attention to detail, I just wonder: How did wires and shadows get into the original print?

Scott: Because you can't make a spinner fly without a crank. That's why it was raining in the shot, because the rain would help to hide the cables. But when that spinner comes around the corner — we always say today, "Oh, that's digital." It's not. That's a real 2-ton spinner being hoisted out around the corner and brought around the corner by a large crank that literally brought it down, landed it, and took it off again. Bloody good crane driver, right? You have four points on the cable that keep it steady. Because those big cranes are incredibly technically accurate. So he could do that. But I always used to sit there staring at the cables. Then eventually one or two of the geeks spotted it. So we took those out.

Wired: I see.

Scott: I was tempted not to, because I thought it was quite charming that there were cables still in the shot, you know. And there was when Roy Batty came out of the phone booth, and for some bizarre reason we never noticed that somebody's thumb was in the bottom left-hand corner. The phone booth was automatic door and I couldn't de-automate it, and I was getting really beaten up because we were against the gun, so I just shot. I was, by then, getting a two-take Charlie. And there was the bloody thumb in the shot. We just left it in there for a while. It's things like that, the little mistakes like that, that you're tempted to leave them in actually. It's a signature saying, "Yes, it is fiction, it is fantastical moviemaking."

Wired: Today it would be done with computer-generated imagery.

Scott: Oh yeah, you wouldn't even think about it.

Wired: There would be no thumb.

Scott: Oh, it's become too easy.

Wired: Do you have a sense that it's better to do it physically or better to do it digitally?

Scott: No, not necessarily. I mean, otherwise I'll sound like an old fart. I think less is more. When you see an explosion where no one could have survived that explosion, and the person is still running, then it's bullshit. And that's frequently why they're just not as good, you know. Whereas when you've got to do it physically, you've got to be careful — like really careful. And it's different. With digital the painting book is unlimited, and there are advantages and disadvantages, you know. The world in, say,Lord of the Rings would have been nothing like as impressive as that 30 years ago, as it is today where he can literally do anything. Although I must say Star Wars was one of the first — the one that George [Lucas] directed is still, honestly, the best by far. There was the beginning of some interesting digital thinking in that one. [Stanley] Kubrick really showed the way with 2001: [A Space Odyssey], where he had some very simple variations and versions of digital work. It was not digital so much as computer-driven shots. And that was [Douglas] Trumbull. Trumbull was working with Stanley. They got through that pretty magnificently. That was the first of the really great science fictions, where I went, "Wow, that works." Everything up to that one, I always felt, was a bit too much fantasy and not enough reality.

Wired: But that's digitally controlled cameras, which is really — I suppose the mechanical precision is related to current CGI. But today you have a plastic universe. You generate it the way you want it to look.

Scott: You can't say it's not as good, because good things have come out of it, like the variations of some films where they've really used it discerningly, I think is the best way of putting it, rather than going to massive overkill, which is when it becomes the end, not the means. And that's OK, because there are audiences who want that, right? I still have to have the story, so the digital is purely not the end. It's the means to the end.

Wired: Blade Runner was prescient in its presentation of technology in some ways. Not presentation of technology, but in its depiction of the world. You know, anticipating globalization, genetic engineering, biometric security. What kind of influence do you think the movie has had on —

Scott: Enormous, enormous. I know it has. I had one of the biggest — now maybe the biggest — one of the top six architects in the world tell me he used to run it regularly in his office once a month.

Wired: Will you name names?

Scott: No. But he's real big. And he said to me once, he said, "Do you know who I am?" I said, "Sure." He said, "You know, I've got to tell you something. The bloody film Blade Runner drove me crazy. And I eventually couldn't explain it, I just used to run it and we'd sit there watching it, usually on a Friday afternoon, staring at it." He was talking about retrofitting the interior on the exterior, where the innards can be beautiful. And a lot of architecture has grown to innards on the outside, you know? And eventually now we're into full-blown glass. I don't think we're seeing great developments necessarily in LA. Some quite good stuff in New York. But the best stuff is stunning, is staggering, in places like the Far East. I'll even say Hong Kong. I'll say certainly Shanghai is really interesting. But very interesting stuff in Europe; in Holland they've got really great architects, fantastic. And Potsdamer Platz in Berlin is kind of interesting, evolution into glass, which is kind of practical and beautiful. I'm not including Chicago, because I haven't been there in a bit, but I understand Chicago has some nice stuff there. But New York, while it's evolved spectacularly, the best in New York, to me, is keeping a hold of all the old buildings, old warehousing and things like that. Thank God they didn't pull them down. They're kind of beautiful, and they've sort of kept them and they've evolved, which is cool. London's evolved very nicely now. Really good stuff. Wow.

Wired: I haven't been there.

Scott: Architecture would have been my game if I hadn't done movies.

Wired: That kind of comes across in Blade Runner, along with your design sensibility.

Scott: Yep. Design and/or architecture. I think, living — I would have gotten involved in just living. I mean, [Philippe] Starck is very clever in terms of his — he can design a building, design interior, design furniture. A lot of the architects are now shifting into taking on board the whole thing, which is what it should be. Because frequently an architect will design a building, take a walk, and not care about what's put inside it, which is a pity, because you get a great building, you walk in there, and everything inside is shit. They'll design the space and then walk. And then it's up to the client to say, "Oh, we want to put these things in there." If I was an architect, I'd say, "You can't have that chair."

Wired: Perhaps the moviemaking analog to that is keeping in mind how your audience will view the movie once you've made it and released it.

Scott: Yeah, I mean, hopefully. Certainly Charles Knode people don't talk about often enough. Charles Knode's wardrobe. Deckard was subtle, but very good, because it's so futuristic. Usually you get bad futuristic suits, right? Deckard was very good, very well done. And the women's clothes, Rachael's clothes, were stunning. And I stared at what happened very shortly after that, which are a couple of really big Italian designers. There's a lot of influence from the film in that direction.

Wired: I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought.

Scott: You were talking about influences of the film, various influences. Fashion, definitely. Architecture, definitely. Interiors, definitely. A big clothing designer sent me stuff with the interior of his whole place. The factories looked like Blade Runner. He used to send me stuff, which is very sweet. And hotels in New York started to get very what I call — Blade Runner is kind of retro, '40s projecting into the future. A lot of that happened in New York for a bit.

Wired: Those buildings you said you loved in New York, those are '40s buildings.

Scott: Well, there's a beauty in having a big girder in a room with bolts and things like that. You don't tear it down, you keep it.

Wired: The quaint touches, I don't think you intended them that way, but there are pay phones inBlade Runner.

Scott: Yeah. But there are digital phones that have been scrawled all over, because in the nightclub he talks to her on a digphone.

Wired: I also think of the flying car, which is sort of a 1950s sci-fi cliche almost.

Scott: I think it's impractical. That's why it's probably not going to happen. You'll probably get, like, if you take Los Angeles. Who said, Los Angeles is 45 miles across and 7 meters thick? You've got the big downtown city and the big uptown developments of Century City, which will definitely evolve probably more than it has. I'm surprised it hasn't evolved more. And between that you've got the huge hinterlands of two-, three-story architecture. So, that's where LA would be far more practical for lots of air traffic. But New York would be very impractical. And I used to fly regularly, so here's another personal experience. The years when I was doing a lot of TV commercials, I was flying in and out of New York. Once a week I'd go into New York — once a month I'd go into New York, 12 times a year. And I'd get off the plane at JFK, I'd get a helicopter, which was the service — which in those days I remember cost $20 — get on this chopper with double rotors, almost like the big Sikorsky. Take off, you're in — land on top of the PanAmerican Building, winter or summer, high wind or balmy evening. And it was hairy. And that's how I used to do it, did that for almost two years, until one of the choppers in a very stormy January or February evening nearly missed the top of the building because of the wind gusts. And it perched perilously on the edge and they nearly lost it. And that was the end of that. There was no more helicopters, they just closed them down. But I always remembered that. It was always coming and going down 5th Avenue and approaching the PanAm Building as we got closer and closer that I used to think about Blade Runner.

Wired: Aren't those flying cars kind of like the explosion that you couldn't possibly walk away from, that the protagonist walks away from?

Scott: Sorry, how do you mean?

Wired: It's maybe not so much an unrealistic as an impractical, as you say, element —

Scott: I think it will certainly happen when they plan it. We're talking some time away when you may have controlled cars on controlled freeways, where you interlock, drive on, and it turns off until you want to get off. Where you'll be going at a given speed. It will be assisted. It won't be gasoline, it will be electric or whatever, hydrogen. I drive an electric car now. My whole company's gone green about a year ago. So everybody's now got the combination electric and a bit of gas. You start up a little gas and then you go straight to electric as soon as you're moving.

Wired: What do you drive?

Scott: I'm driving — what do you call it? — a Lexus. It's like an SUV, but it's a Lexus. It's very good, actually.

Wired: It's a hybrid.

Scott: Sound is toxic, so there's no sound. So when you switch it on, you think, "Has the engine started or has it not started?" There's no movement until you put it in gear; then you start moving. It's really, really impressive. And the surge ain't bad at all.

Wired: This is difficult for science fiction films, if everything is silent.

Scott: Yeah. You won't have any of those big bursts and gouts of steam and shit. In those days, I thought everything from hot and cold air, condensation, overload, all pushing us toward global warming.

Wired: What have you learned about Blade Runner, about the story, the characters, the ideas at play, that you didn't know when you went into production?

Scott: I always knew everything! I mean, I always knew it. I knew all the characters. But because the film wasn't expensive, and it wasn't cheap — we're like three years after [Michael] Cimino's movie [Heaven's Gate], and two years after 1942, which was fairly expensive, Steven's [Spielberg's] film — or '41 was it? We were about 23 [million dollars] and a bit. So, probably about the same price asIndiana Jones. And Indiana Jones was the previous year. So, what did I learn? I learned more about and got more experience as a filmmaker. But every time you do a movie, in fact, the more experience you get, you can almost say, the less you know. Because the more you know, the more can go wrong. So that can also make you more insecure. But I guess I don't really worry about much. I just try and do the best I can on the set. And at the time, I'm in three movies. I mean this is my third movie. My first movie is pretty good actually, called The Duellists. And that was criticized for being too beautiful, and you know, I took that to heart. So the next one wasAlien, and that was less beautiful but more impressive and more grungy. I was criticized for a lack of character development. I said, "What fucking character development do you need when you've got that son of bitch on board?" So I started getting defensive, then realized actually I was in fairly good shape in terms of being a film director, because for the kind of movies that I will do, I will be always very visual. And I won't push it in your face, but I know it's an advantage. I've got a good eye, and I don't know what a good eye means, but I've got a good eye, I think. I can align and see way beforehand, imagine way beforehand, what's going to be. That's good, that's very useful. Because some people don't have that, they have other talents. I've had to evolve my capabilities in developing material. And even though I've chosen the story, found the writer, had it written on The Duellists, so that was a total development by us, by [Scott Free?], and then got it financed and got it made. Alien I was sent, and I read it and thought, "I know what to do with this," and didn't want to change anything. Because they kept saying, "Want to change anything?" "Nope." They said, "No?" I said, "No. That's it. Let's go." So that was great, because that flew. And then Blade Runner was the play, which then evolved for eight months every day. Hampton and I and Deeley every day talked, talked, talked, talked. As Deeley was trying to get the financing, the film was growing. And that was interesting because that was a real evolution of working alongside a writer that I really respect. And it was hard for him because sometimes he'd say "Oh fuck." I'd suddenly have this brain wave that comes from a visual notion. We'd get a lot of, "Oh God, I thought we had that worked out." I said, "Yeah, but wouldn't this be great?" And he'd say, "Yeah, but that will mean this, this, this, and this." Because then there's a domino effect, particularly if you're going to have — the best screenplays are organic. Like a good book is very organic. And that's why the words — I always liked the definition of sentimental. I am asentimental. Sometimes it's used as a word to describe something as a compliment, and I say, "No, sentimental is bad. Emotional is good." The difference is that sentimental is unearned emotion, right? So when something slips by and you either sneer or feel for the moment that somebody was trying to manipulate you, it's because the playwright hadn't earned it. Right? He hadn't earned the right to push your emotional button. That's when you think, blech. OK, then it means he came too quick or from the wrong direction.