From the Archives: âBlade Runnerâ went from Harrison Fordâs âmiserableâ production to Ridley Scottâs unicorn scene, ending as a cult classic
âBlade Runner 2049â features Ryan Gosling, Jared Leto and Harrison Ford.
Upon its initial release in 1982, Ridley Scottâs âBlade Runnerâ was a critical and commercial disappointment. Over time the film amassed a devoted cult following, and in 1992, upon the release of Scottâs directorâs cut, Times film critic Kenneth Turan wrote a deep dive into the making of the film and its rediscovery. Twenty-five years later a sequel, âBlade Runner 2049,â will open in theaters nationwide. This article was originally published on Sept. 13, 1992.
Elegant cars gliding through a decaying infrastructure, the dispossessed huddling in the shadow of bright skyscrapers, the sensation of a dystopian, multiethnic civilization that has managed to simultaneously advance and regress â these are scenes of modern urban decline, and if they make you think of a movie, and chances are they will, it can have only one name: âBlade Runner.â
Few, if any, motion pictures have the gift of predicting the future as well as crystallizing an indelible image of it, but that is the key to âBlade Runnerâsâ accomplishments. One of the most enduringly popular science-fiction films, it revived the career of a celebrated writer, helped launch a literary movement and set a standard for the artistic use of special effects many people feel has never been equaled. And, until now, it has never been seen in anything like the form intended by the people who created it.
Starting this weekend, a full decade later than anyone anticipated, Ridley Scottâs original directorâs cut of this moody, brilliant film is having its premier engagement, opening in 60 cities nationwide, with another 90 to follow in three weeks. While classic revivals have become commonplace, the usual re-released versions offer either a technical improvement (Orson Wellesâ âOthelloâ) or else a sprinkle of new footage (âLawrence of Arabiaâ). This âBlade Runnerâ is a very different version, a cut that until two years ago no one even knew existed, and because of the filmâs reputation and power it is intended by Warner Bros. to make some serious money.
Yet if this seems like a simplistic tale of good finally triumphing over evil, be aware that absolutely nothing about âBlade Runnerâ is as simple as it first seems. For this was a film that was awful to make, even by normal Hollywood standards of trauma, agonizing to restructure and rediscovered by a total fluke. The people who worked on it called it âBlood Runner,â a sardonic tribute to the amount of personal grief and broken relationships it caused, and they recall it with horror and awe.
More than anything else, âBlade Runnerâsâ saga is, as the best Hollywood stories invariably are, a microcosm for the industry, starkly underlining how irredeemably deep the classic split between aesthetics and commerce is and also how painfully inevitable. As with an etching by Escher, the final decision on who the villains are here, or even if there are any villains at all, depends on your point of view.
The man who benefited the most, albeit posthumously, from âBlade Runnerâ was the man who started it all. When he died at the age of 53 in March, 1982, less than four months before the filmâs premiere, he was, according to his agent, Russell Galen, looking forward to that event âlike a kid on Christmas Eve.â
Philip K. Dick was one of the architects of modern science fiction. A passionate, emotionally unstable visionary, author of dozens of books and hundreds of short stories, he was, according to critic John Clute, âthe first writer of genre science fiction to become an important literary figure.â As Richard Bernstein noted in a recent front-page New York Times Book Review piece (an august location the writer never expected to inhabit while he was alive), Dick articulated âour deepest fears and most persistent fantasies about technology and its potential to destroy us.â
These themes come out quite vividly in his 1968 novel, âDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?â The main character, Rick Deckard, a futuristic bounty hunter with an unhappy marriage, is offered the job of hunting down half a dozen Nexus 6 androids, or âandysâ: synthetic human beings with four-year life spans whoâve escaped from Mars and are trying to pass as authentic humans on a bleak planet Earth.
Deckard agrees to the task because he wants the money to buy the environmentally plundered futureâs ultimate status symbol, a live animal â specifically, a sheep. He meets Tyrell, the maker of the Nexus 6 robots, as well as his nominal niece, Rachal, who, Deckard discovers, is an android. He has a brief affair with Rachal, terminates the six andys and, after much philosophical speculation about how androids and humans differ and ruminations about a futuristic religion called Mercerism, Deckard returns to a somehow strengthened relationship with his wife.
âPhil was crazy, wonderful; heâd stop and look at his hands for five minutes straight, like he was getting messages from Mars,â remembers Fancher, a striking man with a casually bohemian air. âBut he didnât like me. He kept insulting me, acting like I was Hollywood, some emissary from people with cigars.â No deal resulted, but five years later, when Brian Kelly, an actor friend of Fancher, was looking for a property to produce, Fancher, âjust to put him off, knowing heâd be going up a blind alley,â sent him off to Phil Dick. But the two got on; Kelly got an option on âAndroids,â and Fancher eventually became screenwriter.
Fancherâs drafts (he ultimately did eight) eliminated both Mercerism and the wife, upgraded Rachal to girlfriend and placed the âAndroidsâ story in the dark, fatalistic world of film noir. âI wrote it for Robert Mitchum,â he says, âa wiped-out guy with scars and hangovers who got up and did his job. But there was no love in his life. He was missing part of himself, and he found it through contact with this woman. He found his heart by falling in love with the Tin Man.â
These drafts concluded with Deckard taking Rachal out of the city, letting her see nature for the first time, and then, because she has only a few days to live, shooting her in the snow.
While Fancher was writing, Kelly brought the project to the attention of the more experienced Michael Deeley, who in addition to âThe Deer Hunterâ had overseen dozens of films, including Sam Peckinpahâs âThe Convoy,â and had run British Lion and Thorn EMI. Deeley, a polished Briton, liked the novel, seeing it as âa thriller and a romance, like the Nazi commandant falling in love with the Jewish girl whoâs supposed to be his victim.â
Deeley immediately thought of Ridley Scott, a filmmaker heâd known for a number of years. But Scott, a successful director of commercials whose only released film was the little-seen âThe Duellists,â was in post-production with something called âAlienâ and was not ready to commit to another science-fiction project. So the script, whose name kept changing from âAndroidâ to âAnimalâ to âMechanismoâ to âDangerous Days,â made the well-traveled Hollywood rounds.
Director Robert Mulligan, best known for the sweetly sentimental âTo Kill A Mockingbird,â briefly became involved. âThe romantic element was a lot softer then,â says Deeley by way of explaining what now seems like a curious choice. Mulligan never got beyond preliminary discussions, but by then, Scott, who had become an A-list director with the success of âAlien,â decided he was interested after all. In April, 1980, Filmways Pictures announced a $13-million budget for an as-yet-untitled tale of âtechnological terror.â
Scott liked Fancherâs dark take on the script. In fact, both men found their collaboration energizing. âFor a writer it was awesome, really inspiring, a creative fun house,â remembers Fancher. âAnd Scott had a way of speaking in shorthand. âWhatâs out the window?â he said one day. I told him I didnât know. âWell, think about it,â he said,â a brief dialogue that led eventually to the elaborately imagined future world that would become the filmâs trademark.
It was Fancher who uncovered the name âBlade Runner,â taken from the title of an obscure work by William Burroughs. It was during his tenure that Dustin Hoffman was seriously considered for the role of Deckard. But Hoffman pulled out, and Fancher, after all those drafts, was replaced. âRidley and I had had disagreements, but I thought Iâd won the arguments,â he says with bemused irony. âI was so naive, I didnât know that writers did what theyâre told.â
David Peoples, the second writer on the project, had a background in the documentary field, including co-writing the moving Oscar-nominated study of J. Robert Oppenheimer, âThe Day After Trinity.â But though theyâd never been produced, heâd written seven or eight dark, futuristic spec scripts (and went on to write Clint Eastwoodâs current âUnforgivenâ) that had come to the attention of director Tony Scott, Ridleyâs brother.
Though excited by the opportunity, Peoples remembers being âtotally bummed outâ when he read Fancherâs last draft, telling Ridley Scott, âThis is brilliant; there is nothing I can do to make it better.â But Scott, not for the last time, persevered. âHeâs very demanding,â says Peoples. âHe has something in mind and he goes after it.â
Scott had Peoples, in the writerâs words, âmove away from Deckard in a lot of jeopardy to a plot involving clues, like âChinatown.â â Peoples also worked on the humanity of Deckardâs adversaries, and, in fact, helped by his daughter, who told him about the biological term replicate, he came up with the androidsâ new name: replicants. The change was necessary because Scott thought the sturdy science-fiction term android was a clichĂ© and half-seriously decreed that anybody who used it on the set would get his head broken with a baseball bat.
Just as Peoples was starting to work, he was informed that âa bit of a hiccupâ had developed. After having invested more than $2 million in the project, Filmways abruptly pulled out. This set off a frantic scramble to secure financing and distribution for the project, then slated to cost in the neighborhood of $20 million.
âFor two weeks, Larry Paull and I did presentations to every studio in town,â remembers art director Snyder. âRidley and Michael Deeley kept making the point that they werenât trying to do âStar Wars,â they were trying something else, and the distributors kept saying, âYou should be so lucky as to do âStar Wars.â â â
Finally a complex, three-cornered deal was announced early in 1981. Though the Ladd Co. would release the film (through Warner Bros.), their financial stake would be fixed. According to Deeley, the Ladd Co. put in $8.5 million while foreign rights were sold to Hong Kong film mogul Run Run Shaw for another $8.5 million. To cover the rest, Deeley sent the script over to the three partners at Tandem Productions â Norman Lear, Jerry Perenchio and Bud Yorkin â to see if they were interested in the video and other ancillary rights.
Though they differ on the amount of money initially involved (Yorkin says it was $1.5 million, Deeley $4 million) both men agree on two points. First, without those dollars, however many there were, âBlade Runnerâ would never have been made. And Perenchio and Yorkin, in industry parlance, took the place of a completion bond company: If âBlade Runnerâ went over budget, they agreed to pay whatever it took to finish the picture. And that agreement gave them, not the Ladd Co. or Warner Bros. or even Ridley Scott, effective final cut of the movie.
Next, the casting fell into place. Harrison Ford, star of âStar Warsâ and the as-yet-unreleased âRaiders of the Lost Ark,â was signed as Deckard. Sean Young, a 20-year-old actress with what cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth described as âwonderful, light, creamy, highly reflective skin,â had exactly the look Scott wanted; she was signed as Rachal. International star Rutger Hauer became Roy Batty, the leader of the replicant band Deckard was to track down.
Shooting was scheduled to begin on March 9, 1981, and last for 15 weeks, and in the beginning, all was sweetness and light. That first day, Yorkin sent Deeley a note: âI know that we are embarking upon a project that you have worked a long time on and that is going to be everything you have dreamed of.â
That Ridley Scott did not work in a way anyone on the crew had ever experienced became obvious the very first day of shooting. The elaborate set for the Tyrell Corp. office, complete with nearly 6,000 square feet of polished black marble and six enormous columns, was to be used first. âIt was a very pristine set. Everyone was standing around in their socks,â production designer Paull remembers, âand Ridley walked in, took a look at the middle columns and said, âLetâs turn them upside down,â â a decision that meant a major delay.
âRidley literally changed everything. I canât think of one set we went into and shot the way we found it,â Snyder says. âIt was brutal.â Adds Paull: âWorking with him was the first time in my career as a designer that the paint was still wet as the cameras were rolling.â
Trained at Londonâs prestigious Royal College of Art, with extensive experience as a set designer, Scott directed thousands of commercials (including Chanelâs haunting âShare the Fantasyâ spots). Even then, he had a reputation for possessing what production executive Katherine Haber describes as âan eye that was totally and utterly brilliant.â
âMost directors are hyphenates,â explains Snyder. âThey can be actor-directors or editor-directors. Because Ridley was an art director-director, he spent the majority of his time with the art department.â In fact, when Snyder was first introduced as the filmâs art director, Scott, in a hint of things to come, shot a look at the man and said simply, âToo bad for you, chap.â
As he had on âAlien,â where heâd worked with artist H.R. Giger, the director decided to bring in a conceptual illustrator to, as he put it in advertising terminology, âspitball with.â The man chosen was Syd Mead, an industrial designer with a futuristic bent who had created visuals for such companies as U.S. Steel and the Ford Motor Co. Originally hired merely to design the filmâs cars, Mead put backgrounds in his sketches that intrigued Scott, and soon Mead, the director, Paull and Snyder were involved in conceptualizing the future.
Though Dickâs novel was set in 1992, the script had updated things to 2020 (finally changed to 2019 so it didnât sound so much like an eye chart). Scott, whoâd been attracted to the film because of a chance to design a city-oriented future, knew he wanted to avoid âthe diagonal zipper and silver-hair syndromeâ a la âLoganâs Run.â Based on his experiences with urban excess in New York and the Orient, âBlade Runnerâ was going to be the present only much more so, âHong Kong on a bad day,â Scott says, a massive, teeming, on-the-verge-of-collapse city that the director at one point was going to call âSan Angeles.â
âThis was not a science-fiction film so much as a period piece,â Paull explains. âBut it would be 40 years from now, not 40 years ago.â
The key design concept came to be called retrofitting, the idea being that once cities start to seriously break down, no one would bother to start new construction from scratch. Rather, such essentials as electrical and ventilation systems would simply be added onto the exteriors of older buildings, giving them a clunky, somehow menacing look. Progress and decay would exist hand in hand, and the cityâs major buildings, like the massive, Mayan-inspired pyramid that houses the Tyrell Corp., would tower miles above the squalor below.
Though Mead and the director were involved in conceptualizing the future, the task of actually building it fell to Paull and Snyder. âOur job was not just design or dreaming,â recalls Snyder, âit was to stand something up for principal photography.â Which meant, among other tasks, renting some of the neon signs from the recently completed âOne From the Heartâ and salvaging spare parts from an Air Force base in Tucson. âSyd would do these illustrations, but you had to do it, you had to finesse it if things didnât work,â Paull adds. âThat was the tough, tough part.â
The New York street, on the back lot of what was then the Burbank Studios, was built for Warner Bros. in 1929. Once populated by Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney, it became the arena for Scottâs painstaking artistry. Someone who sees a film as âa 700-layer cake,â Scott is, in producer Deeleyâs apt phrase, âa pointillist, creating things out of masses of tiny dots, like Seurat.â
Almost immediately, Scott began the time-consuming, very gradual piling of precise detail upon precise detail. The never-to-be-seen magazines on the barely glimpsed newsstands had futuristic headlines such as âGuard Dogs You Never Feed.â Hundreds of highball glasses were examined before a single one was selected as a minor prop. Screenwriter David Peoples remembers sinking into a chair in Deckardâs apartment and realizing with a jolt that âthis was not like a movie set, this was like somebodyâs apartment, like somebody lived there. It was stunning that way.â
With so much attention paid to the visuals, it was inevitable that the actors would get shorter shrift. Edward James Olmos, who played a policeman, welcomed the opportunity to be left on his own to create a street language for his character, and Rutger Hauer was happy to be allowed to improve some of his dialogue, resulting in his wonderful closing line about memories being âlost in time, like tears in the rain.â But M. Emmet Walsh, who also played a policeman, complained to Snyder that âby the time you guys get finished lighting, weâre lucky if we have time for three takes.â Ford was, by several accounts, frustrated to be dealing with a director who was, as one observer put it, âhappier to be sitting on a crane looking through the camera than talking to him.â
Invariably, though, dealing with Scott was hardest on âBlade Runnerâsâ crew. âHis view of what was finished work,â Deeley explains, âwas different than everyone elseâs. If there was something not right in the top right-hand corner, the crew would say, âNo oneâs looking up there.â But Ridley was looking up there.â
And, says Snyder, âWhen you didnât get it with Ridley, you were gone.â The original physical-effects people were fired just before principal photography commenced; the original set decorator was dismissed because Scott didnât like the look of some crucial department-store windows. âTo get the detail I wanted to get,â Scott said in a post-shooting interview, âyou do become a relatively unpopular fellow.â
What brought to a head all this pressure, compounded by the threat of a directorsâ strike, was an impolitic interview Scott gave to the Manchester Guardian. âHe said how much more he enjoyed working with English crews; they all called him âGuvânor,â and did what he wanted,â remembers Katherine Haber. âA copy of the story was left in Ridleyâs trailer, and by the next morning 150 copies had been Xeroxed and distributed.â Almost immediately, the crew declared a T-shirt war.
Though everyone involved remembers the shirts slightly differently, the likeliest scenario seems to be that the challenge âYes Guvânor My Assâ appeared on the front, with the sentiment âWill Rogers Never Met Ridley Scottâ emblazoned on the back. To retaliate, and to open lines of communication, the British members of the production team--Scott, Deeley and Haber--came back with shirts that insisted, âXenophobia Sucks.â
Over at Entertainment Effects Group, the special-effects house then run by Douglas Trumbull (whoâd become a legend through his work on â2001: A Space Odysseyâ) and Richard Yuricich, Scottâs perfectionism was also taking its toll. âHe drove the effects people crazy. At the end they were ready to lynch him,â reports Don Shey, editor of Cinefex magazine, who devoted an entire issue to the effects created by Trumbull, Yuricich and David Dryer. âNot only did he beat them to death, it didnât bother him to take a shot that cost a quarter of a million dollars and say, cavalierly, âIt didnât work as well as I thought it would. Iâm cutting it.â â
The effects were memorable for two reasons. One was the unusually close coordination between the effects and the live-action photography, what Trumbull calls âone of the most seamless linkups ever,â ensuring a unified look for the entire production. The other was simply Scottâs eye. âItâs almost trite to say these days, but Ridley Scott had a vision, and âBlade Runnerâ is probably the first and only science-fiction art film,â Shey says.
Scott refused to be rushed. Haber recalls that âheâd fiddle and diddle until it was perfect.â But Scott defends his actions to this day. âIn a way, directors ought to get tunnel vision when theyâre doing a film, or they shouldnât be doing the job.â
Hardly that philosophical about the situation were Bud Yorkin and Jerry Perenchio, the men who had contracted to pay whatever it took to finish the film. Deeley describes what he considered âpanic from the front office, from Bud Yorkin, who somehow felt as a filmmaker himself that there should be a way to restrain the costs. But he was a meat-and-potatoes, âa-picture-is-a-pictureâ guy, not on the same creative wavelength as Ridley.â
Yorkin, a silver-haired man with an air of melancholy, sees it differently. âJerry and I didnât go into this naively. We knew it would be a very difficult shoot, and we left ourselves a pad of $1.5 million to $2 million,â he says. But as the amount of money the pair had to put into the picture rose to something like $5 million, the frustration level escalated.
âWeâre not a studio, but unfortunately we were placed in the position of the heavy that a studio would take,â Yorkin says, still irritated. âWe were two guys taking it out of our own pockets or going to the bank and borrowing it ourselves. Going on the set and watching someone take five hours longer to set up a shot, seeing a lot of money go out of your pocket, that kind of thing one doesnât need unless you have a very good heart.â
The time is early 1982, the cities Denver and Dallas, and the feeling is one of happiness and anticipation as movie fans open their newspapers and see advertisements announcing the sneak preview of a science-fiction epic starring Harrison Ford. The mood inside the theaters is cheerful and expectant, for both of Fordâs previous films have conditioned audiences to expect a lighthearted, action-oriented romp. Instead, the lights go down and what appears is something entirely different.
According to one source, the preview cards filled out after both screenings told the same story: âThis was a film that made demands on an audience that wasnât expecting a movie that made demands on them, an audience somewhat befuddled by the film and very disappointed by the ending.â It wasnât so much that people actively disliked âBlade Runner,â they were simply unprepared for it. Another crisis had arrived.
It was at this point that changes in the filmâs structure were decreed. And though Yorkin says the changes made to the film were a group decision involving the Ladd Co., Warner Bros., Perenchio and the filmmakers, writer Fancher is not alone when he says angrily, âPerenchio and Yorkin came in and shoved people around. They brought in the money that was missing at the end, but they took more than their pound of flesh.â
First, an extensive voice-over was added to help people relate to Harrison Fordâs character and make following the plot easier. According to Haber, after a draft by novelist-screenwriter Darryl Ponicsan was discarded, a TV veteran named Roland Kibbee got the job. As finally written, the voice-over met with universal scorn from the filmmakers, mostly for what Scott characterized as its âIrving the Explainerâ quality.
âYouâre looking at a red door, and itâs telling you itâs a red door,â says film editor Terry Rawlings. âIt was ludicrous.â It sounded so tinny and ersatz that, in a curious bit of film folklore, many members of the team believe to this day that Harrison Ford, consciously or not, did an uninspired reading of it in the hopes it wouldnât be used. And when co-writers Fancher and Peoples, now friends, saw it together, they were so afraid the other had written it that they refrained from any negative comments until months later.
The filmâs ending was equally troublesome. Scott had wanted the film to end on the nicely enigmatic line, âItâs a shame she wonât last forever; but then again, no one does,â as an elevator door closed in front of a fleeing Deckard and Rachal. Scott had also decided he wanted to leave the viewer with a hint that Deckard himself was a replicant. So he had Deckard notice a small origami unicorn on the floor, a unicorn that would hark back to a unicorn dream that he had earlier in the film, making him realize that his very thoughts were programmed.
None of the Ladd Co. executives or Yorkin were impressed. âYou try and explain to some executive what thoughts are,â growls Rawlings. âThey donât have any.â
âIs he or isnât he a replicant? You canât cheat an audience that way. Itâs another confusing moment,â Yorkin says. And so the unicorn dream was never used, and a new, more positive ending line--revealing that Rachal was a replicant without a termination date--was written. To indicate the joy the happy couple had in store for them, scenes of glorious nature were to be shot and added on, but attempts to get proper footage in Utah were foiled by bad weather. Instead, contact was made with Stanley Kubrick and, remembers Rawlings, they ended up with outtakes from âThe Shiningâ: âHelicopter shots of mountain roads, the pieces that are in all the âBlade Runnerâ prints you see everywhere.â
Though he was far from happy with the changes, especially the loss of his beloved unicorn scene, Scott, surprisingly, did not kick up a major fuss. âIt was the first time Iâd experienced the heavy-duty preview process,â Scott recalls, âand I was so daunted by the negative or puzzled reaction, I didnât fight it. I thought, âMy God, maybe Iâve gone too far. Maybe I ought to clarify it.â I got sucked into the process of thinking, âLetâs explain it all.â â
With the voice-over and new ending, âBlade Runnerâ tested better, and the Ladd Co. planned to open it on June 25, the companyâs âlucky dayâ when both âStar Warsâ and âAlienâ had debuted. True, another science-fiction film, a little picture from Universal, was opening a month earlier, but, says Deeley with a wan smile, âwe all thought that âE.T.â would be out of business in a few weeks, that people would be sick of that sentimental rubbish and be looking for something a little harder-edged. It didnât quite work out that way.â
A new blade runner, played by Ryan Gosling, discovers a secret that could plunge whatâs left of society into chaos. The discovery leads him on a quest to find a former blade runner, played by Harrison Ford, who has been missing for 30 years.
Although âBlade Runnerâ opened strongly, it was not embraced by the critics, who took special offense at that voice-over (âShould Be Seen Not Heardâ read one headline). And while âE.T.â went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time, earning more than $300 million, âBlade Runnerâ returned only $14.8 million in rentals. Viewers were reluctant to embrace the filmâs dark genius, and it gradually disappeared. âIt was painful to see it happen,â Rutger Hauer says. âA film that unique pulled out of theaters.â Even âBlade Runnerâsâ legendary visuals could not stand up against the elfin, feel-good lure of its strongest competitor, losing the visual-effects Oscar to âE.T.â
When a film dies in Hollywood, no one expects it to come back to life, and the people around âBlade Runnerâ were resigned to its demise. Michael Deeley felt âso depressed I donât think I ever saw it, never sat through it until the end.â Having successfully fought a bitter battle with Warner Bros. and the Ladd Co. to release Dickâs original novel instead of a quickie novelization as the official tie-in book, agent Russell Galen felt âthat was the end of that.â
But there were still more twists to this plot. âBlade Runnerâsâ availability on video kept it alive in the eyes of the always loyal science-fiction crowd, and gradually, over time, the filmâs visual qualities and the uncanniness with which it had seemed to see the future began to outweigh its narrative flaws. Scott says he saw the interest rise, âAnd I thought, âMy God, we must have misfired somewhere; a lot of people like this movie.â â And not just in this country. In Japan, where the film had always been successful, âI was treated like a king,â art director Snyder reports. âThe fans would be too in awe to even look at you.â The filmâs look began to show up in art direction and design: Terry Gilliamâs âBrazilâ and the stage design for the Rolling Stonesâ Steel Wheels tour were influenced by âBlade Runner.â And when laser discs appeared on the market, âBlade Runnerâ was one of the films that everyone just had to get. It became Voyagerâs top-selling disc immediately upon its release in 1989, never losing the No. 1 spot.
âBlade Runnerâsâ influence has been literary as well. Many people who saw the film ended up reading the novel, making it Dickâs top seller and, according to Galen, sparking the Phillip K. Dick renaissance of the 1980s. Dickâs âWe Can Remember It for You Wholesaleâ became the basis for Arnold Schwarzeneggerâs âTotal Recall,â and âBlade Runner,â along with âRoad Warriorâ and âEscape to New York,â is considered a key progenitor of the latest wrinkle in written science fiction, the darkly futuristic cyberpunk movement.
Yet, if anyone thought about Scottâs original cut of âBlade Runnerâ while all this was going on (and some people did), the accepted wisdom was that it no longer existed. Thatâs what Michael Arick thought when he took over as Warner Bros. director of asset management in 1989, in charge of recovering and restoring material on the studioâs films. Then, in October of that year, there occurred the first of a series of fluky events that would rearrange fate.
âI was in the vault at Todd-AOâs screening room, looking for footage from âGypsy,â when I stumbled on a 70-millimeter print of âBlade Runner,â â Arick remembers. âWhat had probably happened was that no one had remembered to have it picked up after a screening. In order to save it from collectors, I hid it on the lot.â
Several months later, the management at the Cineplex Odeon Fairfax theater was in the midst of a classic-film festival featuring 70-millimeter prints. Having heard through the print grapevine that a 70-millimeter version of âBlade Runnerâ had been spotted, the Fairfax asked for it from Warner Bros. Arick, a supporter of revival theaters, agreed. But neither the Fairfax nor Arick (who had never screened the print in its entirety) knew what they had on their hands.
All this changed dramatically one morning in May. âAnyone who gets up for a 10 a.m. Sunday screening of âBlade Runnerâ really knows the film,â Arick says, âand everyone knew immediately what they were watching. The audience was very rapt from the beginning; the atmosphere was incredible.â The print, almost devoid of the voice-over and lacking the tacked-on ending, was closer to Scottâs original version than anyone ever thought theyâd see again.
Though there was an immediate stir in the film-buff community, Warner Bros. wasnât sure what to do with this new-old version. Scott came over to see it and told Arick that it was in fact not his final cut: The unicorn scene that he had come to love was still missing, and the music over the climactic fight scene was not film composer Vangelisâ work but temporary music lifted from Jerry Goldsmithâs score for âPlanet of the Apes.â The two talked about the possibility of adding the unicorn footage, technically known as a âtrim,â which was languishing in a film-storage facility in London.
What happened instead was that Arick and Warner Bros. parted company (although he continued to advise Scott), and the studio contacted Gary Meyer, executive vice president of the Landmark theater chain, which had earlier expressed interest in âBlade Runner,â and asked if he still wanted to show it. Meyer was enthusiastic; 15 theaters nationwide were booked, including the Nuart in West Los Angeles, and without knowing it wasnât quite true, Warner Bros. created a campaign advertising âThe Original Directorâs Version of the Movie That Was Light Years Ahead of Its Time.â
Scott was not pleased. âAs I understand it, he said, âThis is not my version,â which left Warner Bros. in a real dilemma,â reports Meyer. âMy intuition is that the studio, which might want to hire him in the future, didnât want to alienate him over some two-week repertory booking.â So a compromise was reached. The newly discovered version of âBlade Runnerâ would play in the Nuart and at the Castro in San Francisco, but nowhere else.
With little publicity, âBlade Runnerâ opened at the Nuart last September, and immediately attendance went through the roof. The first week set a house record, and the second week bettered the first. When Hampton Fancher, whose screenplay had started it all, tried to get in, he even showed his passport at the box office to prove who he was. But there was absolutely no room at the inn.
The same pattern of success repeated at the Castro, where its $94,000-plus box-office take in one week made it the top-grossing theater in the country. Encouraged by this, and by lucrative showings of the old voice-over version of âBlade Runnerâ in Houston and Washington, Warner Bros. agreed to pay for the technicians and editing rooms so that Scott could put the film back just the way he wanted it. Which is why, on a weak telephone connection from London a few months ago, there was quiet satisfaction in the directorâs voice when he said, âI finally got me unicorn scene. Ten years later, but I got it.â
The tale of âBlade Runnerâ turns out to be a curious one. No one went bankrupt, no oneâs life was ruined beyond repair, no one never worked in this town again. But the experience illuminated the oldest of Hollywood battles, the one about how much tribute must be paid to art in a multimillion-dollar business where money is always the bottom line. Movie executives have always tried to change films, often destroying any artistic merit on the screen â and in the end, ironically, the mutilated films donât make any more money than the original versions would have. So, the dispute remains contentious â even though everyone agrees that âBlade Runnerâ was so ahead of its time that it wouldnât have been a major hit even if not a frame had been altered.
Still, this was for almost all involved the project of projects, the one that no one has forgotten and that everyone sighs the deepest of sighs over. âEverything on âBlade Runnerâ was a little bigger, a little better,â says Rutger Hauer wistfully. âYou can only be a genius so many times in your life.â
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