Dangerous Days: On the Edge of Blade Runner

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0:00:02 > 0:00:04Enhance 224 on 76...

0:00:04 > 0:00:07BEEPING

0:00:10 > 0:00:13FRAMES CLICKING

0:00:20 > 0:00:22Enhance. Stop.

0:00:38 > 0:00:43You have all the tools, colours, toys -

0:00:43 > 0:00:45everything at your disposal -

0:00:45 > 0:00:48to transport you to an imaginary world.

0:00:48 > 0:00:51People's patience and their willingness to persevere

0:00:51 > 0:00:55tended to erode as we went on shooting nights in smoke.

0:00:55 > 0:01:01It was a bitch, working every night, all night long, often in the rain.

0:01:01 > 0:01:03So it wasn't the most pleasant shoot.

0:01:05 > 0:01:12The tension and the atmosphere created was absolutely palpable.

0:01:12 > 0:01:17It was enormous - overwhelming, beautiful, enormous, great.

0:01:17 > 0:01:20And, er, I was living there.

0:01:20 > 0:01:23I don't think some of these people on the crew really understood

0:01:23 > 0:01:26how far Ridley was pushing the medium.

0:01:26 > 0:01:30The chaos of that production - everybody hating it,

0:01:30 > 0:01:34people don't want to be in movies after they've worked on that movie -

0:01:34 > 0:01:38it's like all those things informed this in a magical way, I guess.

0:01:38 > 0:01:42When it first came out, it was too intense to let in the darkness

0:01:42 > 0:01:48and the poverty and the projection of what life would be like in 2019.

0:01:48 > 0:01:52What Ridley created was this multilayered, very intense

0:01:52 > 0:01:56investigation into how that world might be.

0:01:56 > 0:02:02How do you prepare the audience for seeing something very different?

0:02:02 > 0:02:05Now, time has prepared them.

0:02:05 > 0:02:11It was so dark, and so intense and so beautifully constructed...

0:02:11 > 0:02:15I was absolutely about co-ordinating beauty,

0:02:15 > 0:02:18shot by shot had to be great. My weapon was that camera.

0:02:18 > 0:02:20I'll get what I wanted.

0:02:20 > 0:02:25And if you're there with me, great. If you're not with me, too bad.

0:02:39 > 0:02:42In 1975, I thought I would produce a movie.

0:02:42 > 0:02:47and this guy, Jim Maxwell, who's a close friend and knows me well,

0:02:47 > 0:02:49he says, "You know Philip K Dick?" I said no.

0:02:49 > 0:02:54"There's a book called Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" I read it. I didn't like it that much.

0:02:54 > 0:02:58But I thought, "OK, that's commercial. Here's a throughline."

0:02:58 > 0:03:01You know, bureaucratic detective chasing androids.

0:03:01 > 0:03:04My friend, Brian Kelly, had 5,000 or something and said,

0:03:04 > 0:03:08"You could get an option, that might be a good commercial project to get behind

0:03:08 > 0:03:12"and make some money." That's all we were talking about.

0:03:12 > 0:03:15So I wrote five pages, what I thought could be a structure.

0:03:15 > 0:03:19And he took that to Michael Deeley. I didn't know Michael Deeley.

0:03:19 > 0:03:23And Brian came back and said, "Michael Deeley says it sucks."

0:03:23 > 0:03:25Then he came back with a script,

0:03:25 > 0:03:28which wasn't terrific, but it was interesting.

0:03:28 > 0:03:32The very first draft that he did was much smaller in scale.

0:03:32 > 0:03:36It was probably a low budget, one-room kind of motion picture.

0:03:36 > 0:03:40This was a small movie, that's how I wanted to do it. This rooms...

0:03:40 > 0:03:43A strange movie, but it's, you know,

0:03:43 > 0:03:46a face-to-face movie. People are talking.

0:03:46 > 0:03:49And I had this dream of actors, you know,

0:03:49 > 0:03:52the right kind of actors, and actors' director.

0:03:52 > 0:03:57Hampton saw the novel as reflecting a lot of real world current concerns.

0:03:57 > 0:04:04And one of the largest motivating factors was the ecological concern that is in the original novel.

0:04:04 > 0:04:07The intellectual aspects of the screenplay

0:04:07 > 0:04:11were taken from my response to the death of animal life on this planet

0:04:11 > 0:04:16and what that meant - that's probably the thing that saw me through it, the first draft.

0:04:16 > 0:04:19And then, finally, when I was really looking for something,

0:04:19 > 0:04:21Brian popped back in again with another script.

0:04:21 > 0:04:25The way he put it was he'd got several studios interested,

0:04:25 > 0:04:29but because I was a friend, he'd let me have a crack at it. I read it and it was darn good.

0:04:29 > 0:04:3324 hours later, it was like, "Can we meet?"

0:04:33 > 0:04:35And they wanted to do it!

0:04:36 > 0:04:40The title we finally settled on was Dangerous Days, which I loved,

0:04:40 > 0:04:46because it was very much in tune with the much more romantic script that Hampton had written.

0:04:46 > 0:04:50I was dead set against it, but I figured I could get a vote in later.

0:04:50 > 0:04:55But go ahead and they'll finance, we'll call it Dangerous Days for the time being.

0:04:55 > 0:04:59And then Michael Deeley came up with Blade Runner. I'd used it already.

0:04:59 > 0:05:03You know, it's a term that I got from reading Burroughs.

0:05:03 > 0:05:06He had a little book. It was called Blade Runner.

0:05:06 > 0:05:08It was a matter now of getting into it.

0:05:08 > 0:05:13We tried to get Ridley from the outset, but he was at that point planning to do Dune.

0:05:13 > 0:05:17I was attracted to Dune, because it was beyond what I'd done on Alien,

0:05:17 > 0:05:22which was kind of hardcore kind of horror film, and Dune

0:05:22 > 0:05:26would be a step, very strongly - very, very strongly -

0:05:26 > 0:05:32in the direction of Star Wars. So Michael Deeley had come to see me.

0:05:32 > 0:05:37"I've got this script Blade Runner," I said, "I don't really want to do another science fiction,

0:05:37 > 0:05:41"but I'll read it." And I read the script, and I turned it down.

0:05:42 > 0:05:48At this point, something rather sad happened, which was that Ridley's older brother died.

0:05:48 > 0:05:51I know it had a tremendous effect

0:05:51 > 0:05:55on sort of his emotional state at that time.

0:05:58 > 0:06:01The Blade Runner idea had stuck with me.

0:06:01 > 0:06:04So I'd called up Deeley saying, basically, "Where are you with it?"

0:06:04 > 0:06:06"We're nowhere." All right.

0:06:06 > 0:06:09"I've re-read it. I think it's interesting

0:06:09 > 0:06:15"and will make the basis of a very good futuristic, urban film noir."

0:06:15 > 0:06:18He said, "Let's have a look at the material," and he did.

0:06:18 > 0:06:22And we were off. It was a very exciting moment, of course,

0:06:22 > 0:06:25for suddenly you had a talent attached to the thing.

0:06:25 > 0:06:31First thing I did was, I talked to Alan Ladd Jr, who's an old friend, who had a deal at Warner Bros.

0:06:31 > 0:06:34And we thought it was a terrific script.

0:06:34 > 0:06:38And we put it into production almost right away.

0:06:38 > 0:06:41And then we needed our seven million. And that came

0:06:41 > 0:06:46from a company which consisted of Jerry Perenchio and Bud Yorkin.

0:06:46 > 0:06:50People were always submitting scripts to us. And by the time

0:06:50 > 0:06:55they got to us, cos we weren't, at that point, in the picture business,

0:06:55 > 0:06:57they had been shopped all over town and most of them

0:06:57 > 0:07:01were pretty uninteresting and things we didn't want to get involved with.

0:07:01 > 0:07:05And, somehow, this script for Blade Runner ended up on my desk.

0:07:05 > 0:07:08And I read it, and I loved it.

0:07:08 > 0:07:11We saw the storyboards, we saw, we loved all the toys

0:07:11 > 0:07:15and the look that Ridley had in mind for it.

0:07:15 > 0:07:20It really was futuristic, and, erm, I thought it could be a big smash hit.

0:07:20 > 0:07:27It was such a brand-new way of trying to do all the things

0:07:27 > 0:07:30they were going to do on this - special effects and so forth -

0:07:30 > 0:07:35everyone was worried about how many months will it take, or how many years, to make it.

0:07:35 > 0:07:40They put up 7 million, and they chose to take a fee -

0:07:40 > 0:07:45admittedly a deferred fee, but a fee of 1.5 million - as guarantors of completion.

0:07:45 > 0:07:48So if the picture went over 21 million, 22 million, whatever,

0:07:48 > 0:07:52they'd have to provide that amount, which gave them a lot of rights.

0:07:52 > 0:07:58It gave more rights than we'd have given if we'd had time to negotiate, which we didn't, we had two weeks.

0:07:58 > 0:08:02As we were trying to put together the budget,

0:08:02 > 0:08:05I was talking continuously with Hampton Fancher,

0:08:05 > 0:08:09so evolution of the world was growing.

0:08:09 > 0:08:14And we'd work all day, every day, I think, I don't know how long, but it felt like weeks.

0:08:14 > 0:08:19Ridley started asking questions, you know, of the script, with Hampton,

0:08:19 > 0:08:24and started to say, "Well, you know, what is the world that we're in?"

0:08:24 > 0:08:27"What's outside the window?" You know. I said,

0:08:27 > 0:08:31"Er...what do you mean?" "But there's a world."

0:08:31 > 0:08:34They never move outside the apartment, it's very interior.

0:08:34 > 0:08:37I want to take them outside the door. Once we go outside the door,

0:08:37 > 0:08:44this world has to support the thesis that she's android, humanoid, robot.

0:08:44 > 0:08:47Ridley's a gold mine to work with.

0:08:47 > 0:08:49He's just got beautiful notions.

0:08:49 > 0:08:53You have to be discreet as a writer or he'll go write an encyclopedia.

0:08:53 > 0:08:58And he said, "Hampton, I have to be frank, you're taking a lot..." They used to call me Happen Faster.

0:08:58 > 0:09:04I was constantly saying, "That won't work, it's not commercial, it's too vague, it's not cinematic."

0:09:04 > 0:09:08So I was really being the hard man to Hampton's romantic.

0:09:08 > 0:09:11I think Hampton got a bit precious about doing things,

0:09:11 > 0:09:14and it was always a bit of a drama when or if things changed?

0:09:14 > 0:09:20I remember having an argument with Ridley, and Ridley went into the bedroom and sat down on a bed.

0:09:20 > 0:09:24I'm following him, I said, "Ridley, we can't do that." And he wouldn't argue with me!

0:09:24 > 0:09:29We got it up to a point where Hampton was just getting exhausted.

0:09:29 > 0:09:32I was angry and I walked out by the pool, and Ivor,

0:09:32 > 0:09:35lovely, wonderful Ivor came out, and he tried to tell me.

0:09:35 > 0:09:38He didn't come right out and say it, but he says,

0:09:38 > 0:09:42"If you don't do it..." I remember he reverted to street talk, kind of.

0:09:42 > 0:09:46He says, "I know me man," you know, "he'll do something."

0:09:46 > 0:09:50This was difficult in a way, because Hampton had been in it from the very start.

0:09:50 > 0:09:56And he was credited as an executive producer, which he'd remain, of course, but, um...

0:09:56 > 0:09:59his days, for the time being, were over.

0:09:59 > 0:10:04I get this call that Ridley would like to talk to me

0:10:04 > 0:10:09about Blade Runner. So they flew me down to LA

0:10:09 > 0:10:12and put me in the Chateau Marmont in this terrific suite.

0:10:12 > 0:10:16And I read the script - two hours or something like that, sitting there -

0:10:16 > 0:10:19and I was knocked out, I thought it was a great script.

0:10:19 > 0:10:23So Ridley and Michael came over, and said, "Well, what did you think?"

0:10:23 > 0:10:28And I said, "I thought it was terrific, I can't make this any better than it is or anything,"

0:10:28 > 0:10:31which...and they both sort of chuckled.

0:10:31 > 0:10:35Michael said, "Oh, Ridley has a few ideas,"

0:10:35 > 0:10:39in that Michael way. And, er...I got hired.

0:10:39 > 0:10:44MUSIC: "One More Kiss, Dear" by Don Percival

0:10:44 > 0:10:49There was a Christmas dinner I was invited to at Ivor's house.

0:10:49 > 0:10:52And we sat down,

0:10:52 > 0:10:55he put the script in front of me on the plate.

0:10:55 > 0:10:59He says, "This is the new script." And I said, "What new script?"

0:10:59 > 0:11:02And he told me. He said, "This is David Peoples'."

0:11:02 > 0:11:04I said, "Who's that?" I couldn't hear anything.

0:11:04 > 0:11:08I stood up, because I was going to cry. My whole world fell apart.

0:11:08 > 0:11:12What's anybody going to be? Incredibly hurt, because, um,

0:11:12 > 0:11:15you know, what he'd written was fantastic.

0:11:15 > 0:11:20And suddenly to have somebody else come in and take over your baby...

0:11:20 > 0:11:22Michael Deeley's so diplomatic.

0:11:22 > 0:11:27I remember, he said, "Yes, your things are very elegant.

0:11:27 > 0:11:32"But this is what we need to do to make the movie. Now we're making a movie, Hampton."

0:11:32 > 0:11:36I was writing for them and they were thrilled that I was so fast.

0:11:36 > 0:11:38And they'd had Hampton, but of course,

0:11:38 > 0:11:43Hampton had only done like God knows how many drafts for them, and he...

0:11:43 > 0:11:46That stuff is wearing and everything,

0:11:46 > 0:11:51so we're talking about Hampton after, you know, 10 drafts, I don't know.

0:11:51 > 0:11:55"Hampton, why don't you try this or that?" That stuff makes you crazy.

0:11:55 > 0:11:58It made me crazy in the short time I was there.

0:11:58 > 0:12:01Initially, he did what Ridley asked, which, at that time, we needed.

0:12:01 > 0:12:06We needed to put the damn script to bed, because everybody, every time something changes,

0:12:06 > 0:12:09there are kind of domino repercussions.

0:12:09 > 0:12:12Ridley found that much later, with the final Hampton script,

0:12:12 > 0:12:16after Hampton had done everything that he thought Ridley wanted,

0:12:16 > 0:12:21it still didn't have what Ridley finally felt he could only get from David Peoples,

0:12:21 > 0:12:27which was a much harder edge, and really the character, the nature of the film that you see today.

0:12:27 > 0:12:33I was completely wrong, Ridley totally right, and Peoples was definitely totally right.

0:12:35 > 0:12:39Deckard's character is not described in the script.

0:12:39 > 0:12:42Any actor could play it, really.

0:12:42 > 0:12:45It was up to the casting to tell about the character.

0:12:45 > 0:12:49We looked at various people. One who seemed very attractive was Harrison Ford,

0:12:49 > 0:12:52because he hadn't played this sort of person, really,

0:12:52 > 0:12:55and he'd had some very good training under some good directors.

0:12:55 > 0:13:00I liked Harrison Ford always. The conversations

0:13:00 > 0:13:05the first time I saw him about... And, of course, we saw Star Wars.

0:13:05 > 0:13:09I was impressed with Star Wars, because that's not easy to do, what he did.

0:13:09 > 0:13:14Errol Flynn didn't do it as good as he did it, and that's hard.

0:13:14 > 0:13:15I knew he was in London,

0:13:15 > 0:13:18doing this new thing Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

0:13:18 > 0:13:22Barbara Hershey was who initially suggested to Hampton Fancher

0:13:22 > 0:13:26that Harrison Ford was someone to consider.

0:13:26 > 0:13:31Barbara calls Spielberg, "What's that like editing that film?"

0:13:31 > 0:13:35Spielberg says, "Huge star now."

0:13:35 > 0:13:40The boys - Michael, Ridley - fly to London to look at dailies.

0:13:40 > 0:13:43He just looked fantastic and we just thought he was wonderful.

0:13:43 > 0:13:45Erm, we were convinced.

0:13:45 > 0:13:50I remember that I read a script, which I thought was, er,

0:13:50 > 0:13:52er, interesting,

0:13:52 > 0:13:56er, at the first version that I read of it,

0:13:56 > 0:14:00of the film, had some issues, I had some issues with.

0:14:00 > 0:14:05That there was a voiceover narration attached to the original script.

0:14:05 > 0:14:10And I said to Ridley that I played a detective who does no detecting.

0:14:10 > 0:14:17How about we take some of this information that's in the voiceovers and put it into scenes?

0:14:17 > 0:14:20And so that the audience could discover the information,

0:14:20 > 0:14:25discover the character, through seeing him in the context of what he does.

0:14:25 > 0:14:28And some of that survived and some of it didn't.

0:14:28 > 0:14:34We spent a couple of weeks sitting around my kitchen table trying to find ways to accomplish that.

0:14:34 > 0:14:37With our meetings that followed in Los Angeles, he got

0:14:37 > 0:14:41carried along with the enthusiasm of A, doing another science fiction,

0:14:41 > 0:14:45because he's on a really good roll now - Star Wars, Indiana Jones -

0:14:45 > 0:14:49so whatever it is, it's really exotic, OK?

0:14:49 > 0:14:56Harrison has that loose, wonderful, devil-may-care smile and attitude.

0:14:56 > 0:15:01And he has a wonderful presence, he's a good athlete.

0:15:01 > 0:15:05Harrison's naturally laconic - dry wit,

0:15:05 > 0:15:10and, um, smart. So you'd better be ready.

0:15:12 > 0:15:15When we were casting, and Ridley was looking at different actors,

0:15:15 > 0:15:19I made him sit down in the screening room and look at Katie Tippel,

0:15:19 > 0:15:22Soldier of Orange and Turkish Delight.

0:15:22 > 0:15:24And I said, "This is Batty.

0:15:24 > 0:15:27"You've got to realise that." And he said, "Absolutely."

0:15:27 > 0:15:31And he actually cast Rutger without ever having met him.

0:15:31 > 0:15:34He came in, because he was always a weird dresser, this guy.

0:15:34 > 0:15:37He was a big man, and he was wearing

0:15:37 > 0:15:42a puce nylon jump suit, with one piece, zip-up.

0:15:42 > 0:15:47A Kenzo sweater that had a big fox across the shoulder with two red eyes.

0:15:47 > 0:15:52He had already cut his hair the way he thought Batty should look, the short pointed blond hair.

0:15:52 > 0:15:57And he was wearing green, floral kind of Elton John sunglasses.

0:15:57 > 0:16:03And I said, "Ridley, I can assure you that the guy is Batty."

0:16:03 > 0:16:08And, of course, obviously, it was Rutger playing a joke on Ridley, or maybe he wasn't.

0:16:08 > 0:16:12The talk about character was, I think it was almost in the second talk we had,

0:16:12 > 0:16:16before I got signed on, where I explained to him, you know,

0:16:16 > 0:16:20what I thought would be interesting for the character,

0:16:20 > 0:16:25basically saying, "Can I put in all the things that don't belong there?"

0:16:25 > 0:16:29The things that are so amazing about people, you know -

0:16:29 > 0:16:38sense of poetry, sense of humour, sense of sexuality, sense of soul.

0:16:38 > 0:16:42And Ridley said, you know, "I like all of them. Keep them in.

0:16:42 > 0:16:49"We'll work with them. We'll find a way to get, you know, get them out in different scenes."

0:16:52 > 0:16:57In those days, different from today, we actually did real studio screen tests.

0:16:57 > 0:17:00And they were quite elaborate and quite expensive.

0:17:00 > 0:17:04And you had a short crew in to shoot them and, obviously,

0:17:04 > 0:17:10Ridley was not convinced that any one of our young women was the girl to go with.

0:17:10 > 0:17:13My agent called me with this strange request.

0:17:13 > 0:17:15He said, "There's this director,

0:17:15 > 0:17:19"Ridley Scott, he's doing this sci-fi picture, Blade Runner,

0:17:19 > 0:17:21"and he wants you to be Harrison Ford."

0:17:21 > 0:17:24I said, "What do you mean? What are you talking about?"

0:17:24 > 0:17:29He said, "They need to test a bunch of girls to be his love interest and another girl in this picture,

0:17:29 > 0:17:33"and he thinks you bear some resemblance or something."

0:17:33 > 0:17:35So I agreed to do it and it turned out to be

0:17:35 > 0:17:39'a lot of fun. Met Ridley. We went to the Warner Bros stage,

0:17:39 > 0:17:41'and he had blocked every girl

0:17:41 > 0:17:46'for the same thing, so I was basically feeding them, so it'd be an equal treatment kind of deal.

0:17:46 > 0:17:52'The only girl who departed from the blocking and everything right away was Sean Young, who says,

0:17:52 > 0:17:55' "We're not doing it this way." I said, "Oh, this is great." '

0:17:55 > 0:17:58She reminded me of Vivien Leigh for some bizarre reason.

0:17:58 > 0:18:04And I always thought that acerbic toughness that Vivien Leigh had,

0:18:04 > 0:18:10apart from being extremely beautiful and quirky, was an intelligence, was what she needed.

0:18:10 > 0:18:14I think he recognised that he could make

0:18:14 > 0:18:18a classic beauty type of picture, you know, with me in it.

0:18:20 > 0:18:26I like what she did a lot, um, they were less enamoured.

0:18:26 > 0:18:27She looked beautiful,

0:18:27 > 0:18:31but I wasn't absolutely convinced about her as an actress.

0:18:31 > 0:18:34Harrison was probably looking for somebody...

0:18:34 > 0:18:36I think he was nervous about a first-timer.

0:18:36 > 0:18:40I think he probably did it being, "What about her? What about her?"

0:18:40 > 0:18:43We went through a bit of that. He wasn't thrilled, no.

0:18:43 > 0:18:48Once it's on, it's on. Harrison's a consummate professional. Once it's it, that's it. You go.

0:18:48 > 0:18:51When I got the part, I realised I'd have to live up

0:18:51 > 0:18:54to the responsibility of playing the part, and I was pretty young,

0:18:54 > 0:18:58and it was very unknown to me what would be expected of me.

0:18:58 > 0:19:00So I was probably a little scared.

0:19:00 > 0:19:05She just came across so perfectly, so period and so right and utterly beautiful.

0:19:05 > 0:19:09She could be an android, she may still be an android, for all I know!

0:19:11 > 0:19:16I remember the first audition was in a small trailer

0:19:16 > 0:19:20on the 20th Century lot. Originally, in the screenplay,

0:19:20 > 0:19:24Pris was supposed to be sort of dangling on these rings,

0:19:24 > 0:19:26you know, the gymnastic rings.

0:19:26 > 0:19:29And there wasn't any kind of gymnastic stuff incorporated

0:19:29 > 0:19:33into the fight, it was just taking place in a gymnasium.

0:19:33 > 0:19:35And I had been a gymnast as a kid in school,

0:19:35 > 0:19:40so I suggested to Ridley I could do gymnastics and maybe I could put that into the fight sequence.

0:19:40 > 0:19:46- And so, I remember he asked me to show him what gymnastics meant... - SHE LAUGHS

0:19:46 > 0:19:52..and what that was! And so I did like a back walk over or something in the trailer, and that was it.

0:19:52 > 0:19:57I met Daryl, and Daryl was pretty well it. I liked Daryl immediately on meeting her.

0:19:57 > 0:20:02She's kind of perfect physically. She's bright, she's got this quirky

0:20:02 > 0:20:06- side to her. - Everybody who was screen testing

0:20:06 > 0:20:09got to create their own character, you know, had days to meet

0:20:09 > 0:20:12with the make-up team and the wardrobe team.

0:20:12 > 0:20:19And I had seen Werner Hertzog's Nosferatu, and I remembered the kind of puttied-out eyebrows

0:20:19 > 0:20:23and the black circle, you know, black, hollow eyes of Klaus Kinski.

0:20:23 > 0:20:27And so I was inspired by it that, kind of, and so I puttied out

0:20:27 > 0:20:31my eyebrows and did that sort of black thing on my eyes.

0:20:31 > 0:20:36The screen test process was an entire day and night.

0:20:36 > 0:20:40It was very, very well and thoroughly produced,

0:20:40 > 0:20:45and there were four other women who were testing for the part,

0:20:45 > 0:20:48all completely different from me.

0:20:48 > 0:20:53And I just looked around and thought, "Oh, my God, I've made myself into a monster."

0:20:53 > 0:20:57And everybody else looked so beautiful!

0:20:57 > 0:21:01I was asked at the end of the days, you know, who I thought was the best,

0:21:01 > 0:21:04and I said, "Well, it's hands-down Daryl Hannah."

0:21:04 > 0:21:09At the end of all these tests, Ridley said, "I think we've got a role in this for you."

0:21:09 > 0:21:15And I said, "What would that be?" "He's a guy who kind of interviews these replicas at the beginning.

0:21:15 > 0:21:19"I'll call your agent and explain." I said, "Fine." So I got home,

0:21:19 > 0:21:23got a call, was offered this role of Holden, which I thought was terrific.

0:21:28 > 0:21:30Definitely the femme fatale.

0:21:30 > 0:21:34I mean, I sort of really fit right into that.

0:21:34 > 0:21:40So of course I was going to be cast as someone that was slightly dangerous.

0:21:40 > 0:21:47I thought she was a very impressive combination of physical power, feminism to great sexuality.

0:21:47 > 0:21:52She was really powerful. Physically, as a whole physical female type, she's great.

0:21:52 > 0:21:58- If you're going to cast an Amazon, there she is.- Very athletic - of all of them, the most athletic

0:21:58 > 0:22:02and the most able to perform whatever feats had to be performed.

0:22:02 > 0:22:07She was superwoman. She was built to be as strong as a man.

0:22:07 > 0:22:14And I mean, like, almost machine-like, and yet there was a femininity there.

0:22:14 > 0:22:18And Ridley and I talked about this a lot. She was just a survivor.

0:22:20 > 0:22:26Eddie I'd known for a long time, and I brought him in to meet with Ridley and it was Eddie's idea

0:22:26 > 0:22:31to play a multinational, multi-ethnic, multilingual character,

0:22:31 > 0:22:34who had a vocabulary of his own.

0:22:34 > 0:22:38That was tricky, because Eddie was saying, "What's this Cityspeak?"

0:22:38 > 0:22:45So Eddie, God bless him, drove me crazy, coming up with ideas of Esperanto and rhythms of speech

0:22:45 > 0:22:50that actually vaguely dovetailed and made sense

0:22:50 > 0:22:53in to what he had to say in terms of the drama.

0:22:53 > 0:22:56He was absolutely obsessed with getting that right.

0:22:56 > 0:22:59As long as he went along with

0:22:59 > 0:23:02my understanding of what was going to be happening,

0:23:02 > 0:23:05which was the culturalisation of Los Angeles,

0:23:05 > 0:23:10in a way that people wouldn't be expecting,

0:23:10 > 0:23:14and he went with it right from the start.

0:23:14 > 0:23:19He would be very, very Hispanic, could almost be dressed as if he was a well-to-do drug dealer,

0:23:19 > 0:23:24and in fact was the man who did all the dirty work for the department.

0:23:24 > 0:23:26The word Gaff is a good name, actually.

0:23:30 > 0:23:34Today, as we look back on it, it was an extraordinary cast.

0:23:34 > 0:23:40Then, it was a cast who I knew, and who Ridley was meeting,

0:23:40 > 0:23:43and who Ridley would guide through the film.

0:23:44 > 0:23:47He brought out the best qualities in his performers.

0:23:47 > 0:23:50It may not have always been the most pleasant process,

0:23:50 > 0:23:55but on the other hand, he coaxed, and very gently manipulated performances

0:23:55 > 0:23:59from these people that, in some instances, I think they've rarely topped.

0:24:15 > 0:24:18I saw a very large canvas,

0:24:18 > 0:24:20I saw a very eclectic canvas,

0:24:20 > 0:24:25where, basically, we were going to make our own rules.

0:24:27 > 0:24:32Artistic direction, set design, I think generally, was one massive challenge. That evolution

0:24:32 > 0:24:36told us it had to be this amount of money, to make it on a backlot.

0:24:38 > 0:24:44Michael had a saying that, "When Ridley takes out the pencil, it's hundreds of dollars,

0:24:44 > 0:24:47"and when he takes out a pen, it's thousands of dollars.

0:24:54 > 0:24:59Ridley was over here punting around for people to work on this film that he's agreed to do.

0:24:59 > 0:25:04I went over and had a meeting with Michael Deeley, Ridley Scott, Ivor Powell and John Rogers,

0:25:04 > 0:25:08and got the script, handed it to me, called Dangerous Days.

0:25:08 > 0:25:11Isn't it fortunate it wasn't used?

0:25:11 > 0:25:17And, er, took it home, and started to do sketches and started to submit work to Ridley,

0:25:17 > 0:25:21and then, Lawrence Paull was hired. I was the first hire on the staff.

0:25:21 > 0:25:29A futurist, Syd Mead, was one of the great illustrators of industrial objects.

0:25:29 > 0:25:32Cars, electric irons, apartments, skyscrapers,

0:25:32 > 0:25:37cityscapes. And I brought him in for a meeting and said, "Look,

0:25:37 > 0:25:42"we've got to go it this way, on the backlot, the best we can on a limited budget.

0:25:42 > 0:25:46"I can't make things. I would never have the budget to do that."

0:25:46 > 0:25:50That's why the idea of retro-fitting things came about.

0:25:50 > 0:25:55It would have to be retroed to the surface of the backlot,

0:25:55 > 0:26:02which had traditional buildings, upon which we would put pipes and ducts and air conditioning.

0:26:02 > 0:26:06So it was by necessity we had to design it that way.

0:26:06 > 0:26:09This is a rather different art department situation.

0:26:09 > 0:26:13Ridley's in charge of the art department on this picture.

0:26:13 > 0:26:17Not to diminish the art department or the art director or whatever,

0:26:17 > 0:26:18but one is inevitably, in a way,

0:26:18 > 0:26:23because Ridley's so on top of it and he's micro-managing the art department.

0:26:23 > 0:26:27Those guys had to work hard to do what Ridley wanted and they had to be very efficient.

0:26:27 > 0:26:30But it was Ridley who decided what it would be.

0:26:30 > 0:26:34I knew that he had been an art director and I knew that was probably a good thing,

0:26:34 > 0:26:37that he understood, and it would mean that,

0:26:37 > 0:26:43unlike some pictures where a lot of money and focus is placed on the script and the performances,

0:26:43 > 0:26:50which is a good thing, that a fair amount of emphasis would be placed on the look of the film.

0:26:50 > 0:26:54I was hired to work one-to-one with the director, Ridley.

0:26:54 > 0:26:57After all, he's God. The director is God on a film.

0:26:57 > 0:27:03So I worked, essentially, for his approval through this staff structure overlay

0:27:03 > 0:27:07who would then, you know, make the thing look like Ridley had approved.

0:27:07 > 0:27:12One of the troubles we got into with Syd Mead was he became so important to the film,

0:27:12 > 0:27:16he'd only originally been hired for a few days at 1,500 bucks a day.

0:27:16 > 0:27:21Suddenly he was on the thing for weeks. And that was one factor in going over budget.

0:27:21 > 0:27:26Sid designed this whole world, but he designed not just what would be the matte paintings,

0:27:26 > 0:27:30but conceived what the streets and the neon would look like

0:27:30 > 0:27:32what the lighting would look like,

0:27:32 > 0:27:35and what it would look like drenched in grizzly, oil-soaked rain,

0:27:35 > 0:27:39then designed the vehicles as well, so the whole thing knit together.

0:27:39 > 0:27:42Sid wasn't really the production designer, but was the stylist.

0:27:42 > 0:27:46I think it was a really smart decision to get someone

0:27:46 > 0:27:49who didn't have just an idea about the future,

0:27:49 > 0:27:53but he was someone who was an industrial designer and illustrator

0:27:53 > 0:27:59who was designing products for the future for people who were going to manufacture them.

0:27:59 > 0:28:02We were evolving what the future would be with Larry Paull,

0:28:02 > 0:28:05my production designer, I hadn't worked with him before.

0:28:05 > 0:28:07I think he thought I was absolutely crazy.

0:28:07 > 0:28:10But because I could draw, it'd help a lot.

0:28:10 > 0:28:18The big advantage we had was the famous actors' strike that lasted for months

0:28:18 > 0:28:22and the fact that, because I don't think we would have ever been able

0:28:22 > 0:28:27to finesse the designs that we were developing in the art department,

0:28:27 > 0:28:33finesse the technical aspect of it, had there not been an actors' strike. We needed the time.

0:28:33 > 0:28:38So, consequently, we were in pre-production for nine months or nine and a half months,

0:28:38 > 0:28:42which is as long as I've ever been on pre-production on a film.

0:28:42 > 0:28:46Everybody in the art department was tickled to work on Ridley Scott's film following Alien.

0:28:46 > 0:28:50We all thought, "OK, we're doing this picture about replicants

0:28:50 > 0:28:54"and the future and flying cars. Whoa, we're doing Alien II.

0:28:54 > 0:28:57"We get to walk down that same road."

0:28:57 > 0:29:02Everybody got turned around and said, "No, wait, we're not doing Alien II,

0:29:02 > 0:29:07"we're doing something completely different, and it is the future, but it's not that far in the future."

0:29:07 > 0:29:14Michael Deeley said, "At 3.00pm, I want all the drawings on the wall, Ridley will look at all of them."

0:29:14 > 0:29:20So Michael Deeley and Ridley were walking around, I was standing with Larry Paull, you know, terrified,

0:29:20 > 0:29:25and walking around looking at the drawings, and as if we had left the room,

0:29:25 > 0:29:31he looked at Michael and he said, "Well, you know, it's never really all what you want, is it?"

0:29:31 > 0:29:34He said, "You never get what you want."

0:29:36 > 0:29:39Because there was so much to do and, I think, at the peak,

0:29:39 > 0:29:44we had 400 plus or minus carpenters, painters, plasterers.

0:29:44 > 0:29:49I mean, there were so many people working on the show that it was just a job managing all that,

0:29:49 > 0:29:54which was under the jurisdiction of the construction department,

0:29:54 > 0:29:59but someone needed to be the liaison between what was being built and what was being designed.

0:29:59 > 0:30:05Some of those streets have been used in westerns, I mean, for decades. They're very visually familiar.

0:30:05 > 0:30:08When I walked on that backlot, it's what it looks like now.

0:30:08 > 0:30:11When you walk on there, that's what it looks like.

0:30:11 > 0:30:17it can only be limited, so it's limited to, I think, two, maybe three storeys, mostly two.

0:30:17 > 0:30:22So it's not tall enough. So, in those days, because I hadn't got digital CGI or anything,

0:30:22 > 0:30:25the decision to do it at night makes a lot of sense.

0:30:25 > 0:30:28Because I was a designer, I'm up there often.

0:30:28 > 0:30:30I'm all over Larry, God bless him.

0:30:31 > 0:30:33I've never seen anything like it.

0:30:33 > 0:30:38I quite honestly never had seen sets built like that.

0:30:38 > 0:30:43It was just an amazing, an amazing amount of, er...

0:30:43 > 0:30:45of construction that had to be done.

0:30:45 > 0:30:49Jerry Perenchio and Bud Yorkin came to the Burbank hangar.

0:30:49 > 0:30:53We were manufacturing the cars and the furniture.

0:30:53 > 0:30:56They walked in and saw this entire hangar filled with people

0:30:56 > 0:30:59and I could see the blood drain out of Bud Yorkin's face.

0:30:59 > 0:31:04He had no idea what was going on. He couldn't believe it.

0:31:04 > 0:31:06"You're making chairs! What are you making?

0:31:06 > 0:31:09"Buy a chair, Buy a table. What are you making?"

0:31:09 > 0:31:14But it was all beautifully designed museum pieces that you can't buy.

0:31:14 > 0:31:19The caveat when I was going to do the show was it was not going to be a big movie

0:31:19 > 0:31:25and I was told that the only set that I would be designing,

0:31:25 > 0:31:29because the rest would be all location, would be the street.

0:31:29 > 0:31:33Everything else was going to be done live location.

0:31:33 > 0:31:38And, you know, given what's going on in the film business and so forth

0:31:38 > 0:31:42and so on, you say, "Uh-huh, yes." By the time I got on the film,

0:31:42 > 0:31:47there was a location manager on the film already, that the production manager had hired,

0:31:47 > 0:31:50and there were two locations that Ridley liked in LA.

0:31:50 > 0:31:56One was the Bradbury building and the other was Union Station.

0:31:56 > 0:32:01The Bradbury building turned out to be the hotel where one of our key characters lived

0:32:01 > 0:32:04and Union Station turned out to be the police station.

0:32:04 > 0:32:10I think, funny enough, it took somebody not to come from LA to actually do it in LA,

0:32:10 > 0:32:13because I'm new, I haven't seen this before, and I'm going,

0:32:13 > 0:32:17"Wow, that's good and that's good. And the Bradbury's great

0:32:17 > 0:32:20and we put a cheap canopy on. I even brought the columns from the studio,

0:32:20 > 0:32:23cos they're only styrofoam. The Bradbury building,

0:32:23 > 0:32:26"Oh, everyone in TV uses that," and I said, basically,

0:32:26 > 0:32:30"Back off. I'll use it and shoot it in a way you haven't seen before."

0:32:34 > 0:32:37I went out a couple of nights, and we certainly went out

0:32:37 > 0:32:40when they weren't shooting and saw the sets and everything

0:32:40 > 0:32:47and right on down the line, from the scenery, the costumes, the entire thing, I think it speaks for itself.

0:32:47 > 0:32:53The people at the studio would walk by or walk through the set as it was being built.

0:32:53 > 0:32:59They'd walk through the set and walk away shaking their heads, saying, "What are these people doing?"

0:32:59 > 0:33:05I never chuck away the set or the proscenium or the landscape.

0:33:05 > 0:33:09The set is the landscape and to me, in all my work,

0:33:09 > 0:33:12the landscape and proscenium is a character.

0:33:12 > 0:33:15Sometimes to the irritation of some actors,

0:33:15 > 0:33:20always to the irritation of critics, who'd tear me apart for many movies

0:33:20 > 0:33:23before I realised, you know what, I have a real advantage.

0:33:23 > 0:33:28I can actually conceive a world, a universe and carry it out so it's real.

0:33:36 > 0:33:38I always remember the first day was not good,

0:33:38 > 0:33:43because I got in there and the columns were upside down.

0:33:43 > 0:33:47All the columns, and I'd seen it, I'd even drawn it for them.

0:33:47 > 0:33:50saying, "Like this," and I'd put the weight at the top.

0:33:50 > 0:33:56He basically said, "Well, the only thing I'd like to do is turn the columns upside down."

0:33:56 > 0:33:59And I looked at him incredulously,

0:33:59 > 0:34:02like, "What do you mean turn them upside down?"

0:34:02 > 0:34:06And he said, "Just that. Put that down here."

0:34:06 > 0:34:08I said, "OK."

0:34:08 > 0:34:12I went to the first AD, told them, this is at 7 in the morning,

0:34:12 > 0:34:15"Come back at two o'clock and we'll be ready to shoot.

0:34:15 > 0:34:18"The director wants a change." At two in the afternoon,

0:34:18 > 0:34:22when everybody came back from lunch, Ridley was a happy camper.

0:34:22 > 0:34:26The columns were upside down, everything else was in place, and they shot.

0:34:26 > 0:34:32It was worth turning them over, otherwise that stuff would've been at the top, out of the shot.

0:34:32 > 0:34:34Ridley was very demanding.

0:34:34 > 0:34:37I mean, from the point of view of the lighting

0:34:37 > 0:34:41and the design. I remember him saying, "Put more stuff on her lips.

0:34:41 > 0:34:46"Put more stuff on her lips, keep putting that stuff on her. No, no, no. More."

0:34:46 > 0:34:51'I'd heard later that Ridley wanted me to stay in my little cubicle dressing room,

0:34:51 > 0:34:55'because he didn't want me to have too much interaction with everyone.

0:34:55 > 0:34:59'So, I mean, that could've been part of the manipulation.'

0:34:59 > 0:35:03Ridley was constantly trying to add a kind of, er,

0:35:03 > 0:35:08scintillating visual stimulation to scenes.

0:35:08 > 0:35:11A good example would be in Tyrell's office.

0:35:11 > 0:35:15We're in this big set struggling with our part, the front projection out the windows.

0:35:15 > 0:35:18The live action guys are struggling with the weird lighting stuff

0:35:18 > 0:35:23and Ridley's saying, "Well, I want this light to be like up against the wall."

0:35:23 > 0:35:26We said, "What's motivating that? Is it raining? Is the floor wet?"

0:35:27 > 0:35:31He said, "No, it's just got to... You know, it's just got to happen."

0:35:31 > 0:35:35So I go, "If that's what Ridley wants, that's what he should have." But Ridley has this...

0:35:35 > 0:35:42has always had this incredible sensitivity to all kinds of ways to create visual stimulation.

0:35:44 > 0:35:49After the first day of shooting, Doc Erickson came to me and said, "We're now five days behind,"

0:35:49 > 0:35:53which is not what I wanted to hear, but Ridley was dealing with the smoke

0:35:53 > 0:35:58and the mirrors and the columns and so on and so forth. In the meantime,

0:35:58 > 0:36:02Harrison's sitting there waiting to act and getting pissed off,

0:36:02 > 0:36:07because he's not being called to the set to act in the scene.

0:36:07 > 0:36:10The reason I was thrilled about having Ridley is he's got

0:36:10 > 0:36:13the very best eye in the business. That comes with a price,

0:36:13 > 0:36:17which is the time and the effort that he has to put into it.

0:36:17 > 0:36:23So he'd often be sitting up in the sky on the crane doing the last book on the table position,

0:36:23 > 0:36:28when Harrison was sort of seething and not being told what to do.

0:36:28 > 0:36:32Ridley felt Harrison was perfectly capable

0:36:32 > 0:36:34of doing everything he had to do, knew how to do it,

0:36:34 > 0:36:37and Ridley meanwhile was composing the picture.

0:36:37 > 0:36:43There's a part of you that wants to be totally in sync with the director's ambition.

0:36:43 > 0:36:47Then there's a perverse part of you that says, "You know what?

0:36:47 > 0:36:51"It doesn't really matter. What matters is being there.

0:36:51 > 0:36:57"And participating truthfully in whatever the, er,

0:36:57 > 0:37:02"the relationships in the scenes are and, er...

0:37:02 > 0:37:05- "- BLEEP- it, it's just a movie. Let him worry about it."

0:37:05 > 0:37:09Maybe Ridley gave me more attention than he was giving Harrison,

0:37:09 > 0:37:12because he was making the assumption that he didn't need that.

0:37:12 > 0:37:15Harry was never happy on that show.

0:37:15 > 0:37:17He never was. Not really.

0:37:17 > 0:37:22The only time he was happy was if it was going to be close to wrap, you know? Then he was happy.

0:37:28 > 0:37:32We had our man in Havana, so to speak, there

0:37:32 > 0:37:37on the set every day and watching it and we saw some of the rushes.

0:37:37 > 0:37:41Ridley's a perfectionist and Ridley came from the...

0:37:41 > 0:37:46the world of doing commercials, from England, and he was very successful.

0:37:46 > 0:37:49And he's very meticulous, that's what his genius is.

0:37:49 > 0:37:53And I don't take anything away from him, but it starts to slow down

0:37:53 > 0:37:59when you start to take many, many takes of certain scenes. And we did.

0:37:59 > 0:38:03We started out, we were a few weeks behind within a few weeks,

0:38:03 > 0:38:09so it was, I, er, thought things could start to take off.

0:38:09 > 0:38:14I presume, behind closed doors, he got twitchy like, after the first week, we were 2-3 days behind.

0:38:14 > 0:38:17Then, after the first weeks shooting Tyrell's room,

0:38:17 > 0:38:22we went back to reshoot them. I'd have thought he went apoplectic,

0:38:22 > 0:38:27because they put X amount of money and they were guaranteeing completion, you know? Jesus.

0:38:27 > 0:38:30I mean, I would imagine him getting pretty irate.

0:38:30 > 0:38:34l thought he printed way too many takes in those days

0:38:34 > 0:38:37and shot too many takes. I didn't think he needed it.

0:38:37 > 0:38:41Now, obviously, he was looking for something in every one

0:38:41 > 0:38:45and he and I sat a couple of times and I explained to him,

0:38:45 > 0:38:50"I don't quite understand. Tell me why the 16th take was the best one out of this whole group?"

0:38:50 > 0:38:56Yeah, there'd be irritation. I'd do seven takes. "Why's he doing that?" I know people who do 40 takes.

0:38:56 > 0:39:00But seven takes in those days were not inordinate at all.

0:39:00 > 0:39:06I was definitely very different, which is why I've been very successful as a commercial maker,

0:39:06 > 0:39:10looking at things in different lights and a different way, so they hadn't seen that before.

0:39:10 > 0:39:14It's why you're hiring me. And I think that went on, definitely.

0:39:14 > 0:39:18Ridley's a very strong-minded, knows what he wants, knows the look.

0:39:18 > 0:39:21And when you're trying to do a project that's this different

0:39:21 > 0:39:26and you've got the studio laddie on the one side, then Ridley,

0:39:26 > 0:39:30and nothing ever gets made without having its difficulties.

0:39:30 > 0:39:34A lot of people don't bother to understand what he's trying to do

0:39:34 > 0:39:38and I think that's what happened. There was a lot of nervousness,

0:39:38 > 0:39:41and a lot of competition within themselves

0:39:41 > 0:39:44and I think people made a lot of it in the beginning.

0:39:44 > 0:39:50Everyone anticipated before shooting, "He won't like us, he thinks American crews are not good."

0:39:50 > 0:39:55I don't think he sat there and said, "American crews are not good." He wanted everyone to be at their best.

0:39:55 > 0:39:59Being new on the block here, I had to learn the process of,

0:39:59 > 0:40:04I couldn't use this, couldn't use that. I'm used to being my own operator.

0:40:04 > 0:40:09Jordan came with his team, which was fine, cos he's a great cameraman.

0:40:09 > 0:40:13And he came with two really good operators and so I thought, "Well, I can't operate."

0:40:13 > 0:40:17I would line up as much as possible. I like to line up, so, like that.

0:40:17 > 0:40:22That's what I do. That's what I know I'm doing. And that is more efficient and it's faster.

0:40:22 > 0:40:24On any film, people get frustrated

0:40:24 > 0:40:32and you have an artistic director that sees it his own way and...

0:40:32 > 0:40:37he's definitely the one driving the show, um...

0:40:37 > 0:40:42Jordan wasn't in the best of health, so it was frustrating for him,

0:40:42 > 0:40:47because he couldn't be with Ridley. He just wasn't physically able.

0:40:47 > 0:40:54For a number of years, my father had suffered from a disease that we eventually found out was Parkinson's

0:40:54 > 0:40:59that, progressively through the course of the movie, took its toll

0:40:59 > 0:41:03and, for the last month or so of the movie, he was in a wheelchair.

0:41:03 > 0:41:10Ridley, to his credit, saw past the illness and made a very bold choice in going with Jordan.

0:41:17 > 0:41:19lntense. That's the best way to describe it.

0:41:19 > 0:41:21We had our scenes together.

0:41:21 > 0:41:25"You lived so very long, Roy." "I want more life" and all.

0:41:25 > 0:41:26Very intense.

0:41:26 > 0:41:31Looked him right in the eye, he looked me in the eye, we went at it and it was great.

0:41:31 > 0:41:34I want more life.

0:41:34 > 0:41:36The facts of life.

0:41:36 > 0:41:39'Tyrell was a Replicant as well.'

0:41:39 > 0:41:43When he got his eyes squeezed out and his head squeezed out

0:41:43 > 0:41:46nuts, bolts, springs.

0:41:46 > 0:41:51And that was the idea, he was another front and another form

0:41:51 > 0:41:57of Nexus 6, I guess. And that would trigger me to go to the next floor.

0:41:57 > 0:42:01In the next floor, in the pyramid of glass would be, you know,

0:42:01 > 0:42:05Mr Maker himself, dead for four years.

0:42:05 > 0:42:09And so I had to design the sarcophagus, and Batty

0:42:09 > 0:42:12was supposed to be there looking at his maker.

0:42:12 > 0:42:14And I had him standing off to the right of

0:42:14 > 0:42:19the little painting I did with the sort of Mayan capsule

0:42:19 > 0:42:21he'd come out of, the entrance to the crypt.

0:42:21 > 0:42:24That was never filmed either.

0:42:29 > 0:42:36Harrison was supposed to be having this on screen love affair with Rachael.

0:42:36 > 0:42:39And Sean Young was very young and extremely inexperienced

0:42:39 > 0:42:41and Ridley, I think,

0:42:41 > 0:42:45was more or less talking Sean through her performance to a certain extent

0:42:45 > 0:42:51and Sean and Harrison just did not click on any level.

0:42:54 > 0:42:57Any time you're doing a love scene is tricky.

0:42:57 > 0:43:02First of all, I feel for the actors having to do it, saying it's real. Or uncomfortable.

0:43:02 > 0:43:08You can't really let it fly, let go, because that's not what you're doing. It's not very professional.

0:43:08 > 0:43:13So it's a waltz, it's actually a delicate waltz to find out what should it be,

0:43:13 > 0:43:17how far should it go and where's enough enough?

0:43:18 > 0:43:21I think Ridley told him to push me.

0:43:21 > 0:43:25And I was...I remember being really surprised about that.

0:43:25 > 0:43:28I think I was crying afterwards, too.

0:43:28 > 0:43:31And I remember Harry going to the side.

0:43:31 > 0:43:36I was sitting on that ledge where the blinds were behind me and we did the scene

0:43:36 > 0:43:41and he went over to the corner and he turned away from me and took his pants and he mooned me,

0:43:41 > 0:43:45cos he was trying to make me laugh, cos I was going, and I looked up and he was mooning me.

0:43:45 > 0:43:51I think I started laughing, and I think he was trying to say, "Hey, it's not that bad, kid."

0:43:51 > 0:43:54Sean had a very interesting part to play.

0:43:54 > 0:43:58Maybe one of the most interesting parts in the movie.

0:43:58 > 0:44:01She understood what was going on.

0:44:01 > 0:44:04She did, I think, a good job.

0:44:04 > 0:44:07Harrison was always, um, the great technician.

0:44:07 > 0:44:13"No, kid, you have to sit here. Your face has to be here. Move that way. Back up. Come here."

0:44:13 > 0:44:17He always knew exactly what to do and I remember

0:44:17 > 0:44:20we had a metronome that was supposed to create a rhythm

0:44:20 > 0:44:24and we had this metronome going and he went over and he went like that.

0:44:24 > 0:44:26And he stopped it. I said, "Why'd you do that?"

0:44:26 > 0:44:31He says, "I don't feel like looping it, kid." You know? I was like, "What's looping?"

0:44:31 > 0:44:36You know, I had no idea of anything. So he was very much kind of teaching me the...

0:44:36 > 0:44:40Well, making fun of me more, but you know, pointing out my errors.

0:44:42 > 0:44:47Harrison Ford is probably one of the smartest actors I've ever worked with. Top of the line.

0:44:47 > 0:44:51A, for what they can do. But B, they're able to do it,

0:44:51 > 0:44:55because they're smart. It's not just intuition. They work it out.

0:44:55 > 0:44:59Sometimes they don't comprehend what I do for a living on a big movie.

0:44:59 > 0:45:04My performance is important as any other performance of any person, particularly the star.

0:45:04 > 0:45:07My film, the film that I make at the end of the day, is my movie.

0:45:07 > 0:45:10It may be a team thing as well, but I'm taking the knocks.

0:45:10 > 0:45:14I'm taking the bashes and probably I've developed it, etc, etc.

0:45:14 > 0:45:19So yes, it's my movie and I'm inviting people to do it and that's what a director is.

0:45:23 > 0:45:27Downtown LA in front of the Bradbury Building in the middle of the night.

0:45:27 > 0:45:32Usually, our call pretty much always was at sunset.

0:45:32 > 0:45:34We're vampire hours, you know?

0:45:34 > 0:45:37Also there was, of course, lots of rain.

0:45:37 > 0:45:41And so one time, when I was running away from JF Sebastian,

0:45:42 > 0:45:49I ran and hit the van and my arm went through the window and it wasn't breakaway glass.

0:45:49 > 0:45:53I had eight chips or nine chips taken out and there's still some more

0:45:53 > 0:45:57floating around, I think, which didn't help doing the back walkovers

0:45:57 > 0:46:00and things on the chipped elbow. SHE LAUGHS

0:46:02 > 0:46:08I'd filmed in the Bradbury Building before, which is very pristine, very clean.

0:46:08 > 0:46:10An amazing place.

0:46:10 > 0:46:16Great ironwork and so forth that, visually, just is fabulous

0:46:16 > 0:46:19and lit it for a set. You know, a lot of backlight.

0:46:19 > 0:46:24Again, had the xenons passing through, and smoke. It was eerie.

0:46:24 > 0:46:28But the amazing part about it is I don't really think

0:46:28 > 0:46:33that the Bradbury people understood how Ridley wanted to do it,

0:46:33 > 0:46:36because it was, it was a total mess.

0:46:36 > 0:46:41In the interior, we had a 65ft truck filled with debris

0:46:41 > 0:46:45and we had, of course, rain inside the building. We had rain everywhere.

0:46:45 > 0:46:51And what we would have to do, because the building was occupied at the time, we could get it

0:46:51 > 0:46:55at 6pm and, at 6am, we had to be out of there

0:46:55 > 0:46:58and it had to be clean. So because it looks like

0:46:58 > 0:47:02it's decrepit and filthy, we couldn't figure out a way at first,

0:47:02 > 0:47:07but then we came up with the idea of we took cork and crumbled up cork,

0:47:07 > 0:47:10because it has the same texture and colour as mud and dirt.

0:47:10 > 0:47:14So we'd throw cork all over the floors and the rain would absorb it.

0:47:14 > 0:47:18So the next morning, when you swept everything up it was clean,

0:47:18 > 0:47:20and didn't have to be scrubbed with soap and water,

0:47:20 > 0:47:25because we probably had no more than an hour to get out of the building every day.

0:47:27 > 0:47:31When I first came onto the set, I walked down the lot through this maze

0:47:31 > 0:47:35and saw these signs and buildings and what not.

0:47:35 > 0:47:39I said to myself, "Wow, this is astronomical.

0:47:39 > 0:47:44"It'll take forever to do this film if it hasn't already." I thought

0:47:44 > 0:47:50I was going to go to the studio and see a so-called refrigerated lab.

0:47:50 > 0:47:53They shot it in a real fridge, basically. A monster fridge.

0:47:53 > 0:47:57Let's say inside was, er, frosty. HE LAUGHS

0:47:58 > 0:48:01In a way, it was kind of strange why they did that,

0:48:01 > 0:48:04because the conditions were almost uncontrollable.

0:48:04 > 0:48:10They could not set the temperature of that freezer to where they could just get the cold

0:48:10 > 0:48:14and see the breath coming out and everything looks frozen.

0:48:14 > 0:48:19We started off with a couple of arcs in the freezer.

0:48:19 > 0:48:23Well, they're carbon arcs. They're actually burning coal

0:48:23 > 0:48:29and, after about an hour, people were starting to get ill,

0:48:29 > 0:48:34because we were, number one, taking the oxygen out of the air

0:48:34 > 0:48:40and the carbon, the smoke from the carbon, people were getting sick.

0:48:40 > 0:48:45We had to shut down the arcs and literally open up the freezer,

0:48:45 > 0:48:48get all the air out, had fans going.

0:48:48 > 0:48:53The producer was on to Ridley, "That's good enough! That's good enough!" or whatever.

0:48:53 > 0:48:56Like I said, I wouldn't want to work in that atmosphere again.

0:48:56 > 0:49:01It's just too much. Too much was at stake at too short a time.

0:49:05 > 0:49:09The night scenes were all shot on what's called the New York Street set,

0:49:09 > 0:49:13where The Maltese Falcon had been filmed by Warner Bros in the 1940s

0:49:13 > 0:49:18and it was just their standing urban New York type of look.

0:49:18 > 0:49:23To shoot a studio street on Blade Runner, you know, on the Warners lot, would look crap.

0:49:23 > 0:49:30If you look at all the TV series shot on the studio street, it looks like a studio street.

0:49:30 > 0:49:34So wetting it down and having things in heavy rain certainly started to bring it to life.

0:49:34 > 0:49:39The reason why I could not have done those sets in daylight, it wouldn't have looked good.

0:49:39 > 0:49:42They would've looked bad and we'd have to spend more money.

0:49:42 > 0:49:47So, by shooting at night, you save money and it looks better. When it's always raining, it looks better.

0:49:47 > 0:49:52That's what it's about. Why's there always smoke? I haven't got enough money. It looks better.

0:49:52 > 0:49:58So those three elements are always in my armoury - night, wet, smoke.

0:50:03 > 0:50:06I thought the art direction was brilliant

0:50:06 > 0:50:12and the world that was created was very dense and interesting.

0:50:12 > 0:50:17But it was a bitch, working every night and all night long,

0:50:17 > 0:50:19often in the rain.

0:50:19 > 0:50:23So it wasn't the most pleasant shoot.

0:50:23 > 0:50:26There was always dialogue that we were behind schedule.

0:50:26 > 0:50:28I think it all culminated

0:50:28 > 0:50:30when we were shooting on the back lot at night

0:50:30 > 0:50:32with the street exteriors.

0:50:32 > 0:50:35Never less than 13, 14 hours.

0:50:35 > 0:50:37We would shoot all night.

0:50:37 > 0:50:40Kind of the joke was, "Keep your eyes in the East,

0:50:40 > 0:50:41"cos soon as you see that glow,

0:50:41 > 0:50:44"you know we've got only about another hour".

0:50:44 > 0:50:47Some days we never shot.

0:50:47 > 0:50:50And then some days we made two shots a day.

0:50:50 > 0:50:52One was on meal penalty

0:50:52 > 0:50:54and one was at sunrise.

0:50:54 > 0:50:56And that happened more than once.

0:50:58 > 0:51:00You were working inside of a full,

0:51:00 > 0:51:05ongoing environment of sound and special effects.

0:51:05 > 0:51:11The spinners were coming up and down and they had the cranes working, and all the smoke and all the water.

0:51:11 > 0:51:15And that back lot came alive.

0:51:17 > 0:51:20What he was trying to do was just incredible.

0:51:20 > 0:51:22And I remember, we would sit for eight hours trying to do one set-up.

0:51:22 > 0:51:24And you would do it, like, right?

0:51:24 > 0:51:28And what you're seeing in your eyes, what you're going to see, it's really pretty much that.

0:51:28 > 0:51:33But then I remember going to dailies and it's the one film, to this day,

0:51:33 > 0:51:38where I went to dailies, and I went, "We shot that?" I was shocked.

0:51:47 > 0:51:49Blade Runner, particularly to fans,

0:51:49 > 0:51:53is known as a movie that has some fairly egregious blunders,

0:51:53 > 0:51:57and one of the most visual of those would be Zhora's death scene,

0:51:57 > 0:51:59where Joanna Cassidy as Zhora

0:51:59 > 0:52:02is crashing through all these display case windows.

0:52:02 > 0:52:06It's like another one of these gigantic oversights,

0:52:06 > 0:52:09to put hair on someone that looked nothing like my hair.

0:52:09 > 0:52:14I mean, it was basically a wig pulled out of somebody's bag,

0:52:14 > 0:52:17and it just never... It never cut it.

0:52:17 > 0:52:21She's the double, because I won't risk Joanna running through.

0:52:21 > 0:52:23Cos even though you're running through sugar,

0:52:23 > 0:52:24that's not plate-glass,

0:52:24 > 0:52:27it's got to have been large sheets of sugar glass.

0:52:27 > 0:52:30So when you go through that stuff, you could still cut yourself.

0:52:30 > 0:52:34That was a very famous stunt woman, by the way, named Lee Pulford.

0:52:34 > 0:52:37But the problem with her particular scene and moment in the movie

0:52:37 > 0:52:38was that, at that time,

0:52:38 > 0:52:42that was shot towards the end of principal photography.

0:52:42 > 0:52:48And once again, the money issues were bearing down hard on everyone

0:52:48 > 0:52:51and now we were facing time issues.

0:52:51 > 0:52:53Everything was rushed. And you only get one shot at that.

0:52:53 > 0:52:55There's not two shots there. That's it.

0:52:55 > 0:52:59Now that would probably be digitally done

0:52:59 > 0:53:02or I'd shoot that for two nights,

0:53:02 > 0:53:05minimum, where, once you make that mess and you tidy up,

0:53:05 > 0:53:07you've got to move off and do something else.

0:53:07 > 0:53:11That time I was invited down, I was on the set, man, and it's like,

0:53:11 > 0:53:13I saw Yorkin and those guys

0:53:13 > 0:53:18on Ridley and on Deeley, and it was not pretty.

0:53:18 > 0:53:21In particular, I remember one night when we were shooting,

0:53:21 > 0:53:23which was a difficult sequence, Zhora getting shot,

0:53:23 > 0:53:26and I remember Bud Yorkin was down there just wanting to know,

0:53:26 > 0:53:30expletives apart, why we were going so slowly

0:53:30 > 0:53:33and what the hell, you know,

0:53:33 > 0:53:36was going on, and pointing his finger pretty aggressively at Ridley.

0:53:36 > 0:53:44As a director, I really had empathy for what he was going through and I knew it was a huge task and so forth.

0:53:44 > 0:53:47I never liked the idea of producing.

0:53:47 > 0:53:48I only produced, in my life,

0:53:48 > 0:53:52two pictures that I produced and didn't direct.

0:53:52 > 0:54:00And that's very frustrating for anybody as a director because the directors don't want to just produce.

0:54:00 > 0:54:06I think Bud secretly wanted to direct it himself. And if he had,

0:54:06 > 0:54:08it would be obviously, a very different movie.

0:54:08 > 0:54:11There was conversations like that that lead nowhere

0:54:11 > 0:54:15cos we stood by Ridley and said, "You've got to finish the movie".

0:54:15 > 0:54:18"That's what we bought and that's what we're paying for".

0:54:18 > 0:54:22I was warned a couple of times to speed up and that's about it.

0:54:22 > 0:54:26I said, "I can, I will speed up if I can but, unfortunately, these are big set-ups".

0:54:26 > 0:54:32And he wanted to do what he had to do. You know, reminded me of George C Scott and The Hustler.

0:54:32 > 0:54:36"I'm talking about money", you know, or whatever. "You owe me money!"

0:54:36 > 0:54:40I think we went through that 20 million, we went through the 20 million, and all of a sudden,

0:54:40 > 0:54:43somebody's tapping on your shoulder and saying...

0:54:43 > 0:54:46So then you start paying a little closer attention

0:54:46 > 0:54:49when you have to start writing the cheques yourself, so to speak.

0:54:49 > 0:54:52He was completion guarantor and they put a lot of money into a movie.

0:54:52 > 0:54:56And if you try to see it from his point of view, you know,

0:54:56 > 0:54:58what the hell was going on? You know, why?

0:54:58 > 0:55:00Why were we so far behind schedule?

0:55:00 > 0:55:04You know, we were supposedly, you know, professional film-makers, etc.

0:55:04 > 0:55:10I would never, ever deliberately ignore a budget and just say, you know, "Let's just spend the money".

0:55:10 > 0:55:14I just don't function that way. It drives me crazy to go over budget.

0:55:14 > 0:55:16I hate that. For me to go over schedule, I hate that.

0:55:16 > 0:55:21And I think one of the important things is, when you're shooting, particularly from my point of view,

0:55:21 > 0:55:25I'm one of those directors who always must be told

0:55:25 > 0:55:31where I am financially, what I've got to do, but be told early enough so I can do something about it.

0:55:31 > 0:55:34My job is to get what I promised I'm going to get.

0:55:34 > 0:55:39And that's why it was good for any investor, as they probably will have discovered by now.

0:55:48 > 0:55:51There was a sequence where they wanted to do hand to feet,

0:55:51 > 0:55:54hand to feet, flip flop gymnastic things across there

0:55:54 > 0:55:57and wind up straddled on Harrison Ford.

0:55:57 > 0:56:00So I had this girl that, her and I'd be rehearsing at nights

0:56:00 > 0:56:04for, I don't know, in the gymnasium, and she goes down pretty good.

0:56:04 > 0:56:09Well, in about, I'll say 20 minutes, Ridley had her totally worn out.

0:56:09 > 0:56:14She was over in the corner, gasping for air. She'd done it I don't know how many times.

0:56:14 > 0:56:16And they came to me and they said, "We've got a problem here".

0:56:16 > 0:56:19And I said, "Yeah, well, go shoot something else or go to lunch or what not"

0:56:19 > 0:56:21"and I'll have a guy here after lunch".

0:56:21 > 0:56:23And so I brought him in in the afternoon.

0:56:26 > 0:56:28One of them was a guy, actually,

0:56:28 > 0:56:31and kind of quite a stocky kind of wider guy than me,

0:56:31 > 0:56:33not shaped the same at all.

0:56:33 > 0:56:36A rehearsal for Ridley was really doing it.

0:56:36 > 0:56:40Not, "I'll do this and this and this". You really did it.

0:56:40 > 0:56:41Flip flop, flip flop, hit the wall.

0:56:41 > 0:56:46You know, and then slide down the wall, 15 times or whatever it was, you know.

0:56:48 > 0:56:50Harrison insisted that, you know,

0:56:50 > 0:56:53when I'm supposed to be shoving my fingers up his nose

0:56:53 > 0:56:55and lifting his head up and throwing him back down,

0:56:55 > 0:56:57that I actually do it.

0:56:57 > 0:57:00You know, like, I was, like, trying to sort of gently, you know,

0:57:00 > 0:57:03pretend, and he was like, "No, you've got to just do it".

0:57:03 > 0:57:05And his nose was bleeding and it was gnarly.

0:57:05 > 0:57:09But, you know, it was sort of, the only way to do it is just to go for it.

0:57:09 > 0:57:14And at one point, actually, we had to do sort of a reshoot

0:57:14 > 0:57:16of some of my close-ups. And I was really stunned

0:57:16 > 0:57:19because I had been... I mean, it was a gnarly fight.

0:57:19 > 0:57:25I was really fighting and I was sure really hurting Harrison as well.

0:57:25 > 0:57:29And he really wanted me to be grimacing and mugging and, you know...

0:57:29 > 0:57:36And so we re-did the close-up of it so that I could be looking a little bit more horrific, I guess.

0:57:41 > 0:57:45Any long picture is exhausting for everybody on it.

0:57:45 > 0:57:48So once that patience goes, then people get very snappy.

0:57:48 > 0:57:51The gulf between Ridley's way of working

0:57:51 > 0:57:54and a lot of members of the crew, who'd been, in some cases,

0:57:54 > 0:57:58lolling around studios for years, began to become apparent.

0:57:58 > 0:58:02The crew that we had was a fast crew.

0:58:02 > 0:58:04They were a thorough crew and a professional crew.

0:58:04 > 0:58:07All departments, props, wardrobe, make-up, hair,

0:58:07 > 0:58:09everybody was fabulous.

0:58:09 > 0:58:11And I've worked with these people subsequently,

0:58:11 > 0:58:13on a variety of other shows.

0:58:13 > 0:58:16But everybody worked exceedingly hard

0:58:16 > 0:58:19and was right there on the dime.

0:58:19 > 0:58:22One afternoon, we saw somebody handing out these free T-shirts,

0:58:22 > 0:58:29which had a rather defiant or revolutionary statement addressed towards Ridley.

0:58:29 > 0:58:33And this had come about because, most unfortunately,

0:58:33 > 0:58:36somebody had filched from his trailer a British newspaper article

0:58:36 > 0:58:40in which they'd asked whether he'd rather work in England or in America.

0:58:40 > 0:58:42Now, working for an English paper, you say "England".

0:58:42 > 0:58:45You know, in England, I'm so, you know, known here,

0:58:45 > 0:58:50crews are more liable to say, "Ready when you are, guv". That's it.

0:58:50 > 0:58:51That is it.

0:58:51 > 0:58:54Really upset the crew. Really upset the crew.

0:58:54 > 0:58:57And so I did what was called "the T-shirt wars".

0:58:57 > 0:59:00Katie Haber said, "They made T-shirts and they're wearing them tomorrow".

0:59:00 > 0:59:04And I said, "What is it about?" She said, "That article you did". I said, "What article?"

0:59:04 > 0:59:06Somebody had actually got the article from England,

0:59:06 > 0:59:08printed a pile of them and put them on the tea trolley.

0:59:09 > 0:59:13Michael and I sat down with Ridley, and said, "What can we do to smooth this over?

0:59:13 > 0:59:16"Because, obviously, we can't make a film with everybody hating you".

0:59:16 > 0:59:20I think Deeley came up with the phrase, "Xenophobia Sucks".

0:59:20 > 0:59:23He said, "Well, xenophobia means fear of strangers,

0:59:23 > 0:59:27"and basically what's going on is, these people don't understand you

0:59:27 > 0:59:30"and they don't understand the way you work". So if we put something

0:59:30 > 0:59:33on a T-shirt that makes people come up to US and say,

0:59:33 > 0:59:36"What does it mean?", it'll sort of smooth over a lot of rough edges.

0:59:36 > 0:59:39I put on the green T-shirt the next morning,

0:59:39 > 0:59:43with "Xenophobia Sucks" on it, with "Guv" on my hat,

0:59:43 > 0:59:45and walked onto the set.

0:59:45 > 0:59:47I bought and paid for the T-shirt.

0:59:47 > 0:59:53As I put mine on and went to walk out of the trailer door, who's the first one to see me? Ridley.

0:59:53 > 0:59:56I said, "Right, morning, Harrison, we're going to do this."

0:59:56 > 1:00:02There was this, and there was all these people standing there in their shirts, which I completely ignored,

1:00:02 > 1:00:03and didn't say a word about it.

1:00:03 > 1:00:08And, they ignored me and we got on with the first scene, with all of us wearing this ridiculous gear,

1:00:08 > 1:00:13and by mid-morning the t-shirts started to disappear and by lunchtime they were all gone.

1:00:13 > 1:00:16These were guys, you know, who were one's friends.

1:00:16 > 1:00:21I couldn't think of a crew member that wasn't doing his absolute best, but, suddenly,

1:00:21 > 1:00:23you get all sorts of talking behind the scenes

1:00:23 > 1:00:26and here's this foreign director, "Who the hell does he think he is?"

1:00:26 > 1:00:29"These limeys are over here...", and this, that and the other.

1:00:29 > 1:00:35They were tired and you could see that they didn't feel appreciated.

1:00:35 > 1:00:40You know, I would say to Ridley, "Go talk to these people, for God sakes!

1:00:40 > 1:00:43"Tell them how great they're doing, because, you know,

1:00:43 > 1:00:47"everyone is devoted to you but they're devoted through fear."

1:00:48 > 1:00:51The only way you knew if you were working

1:00:51 > 1:00:55was if you got a call sheet at the end of the day and your name was still on it.

1:00:55 > 1:00:57Cos people just all the time disappeared.

1:00:57 > 1:01:02On the property room door, there was a list of people who said they'd had enough and they quit.

1:01:02 > 1:01:05And we kept a roster of everybody who quit the film.

1:01:05 > 1:01:07It can be tough on a set and it can be long hours.

1:01:07 > 1:01:11And I remember some pretty long hours on that show.

1:01:11 > 1:01:13So what?

1:01:13 > 1:01:16I'm sorry, but sometimes work is gruelling

1:01:16 > 1:01:20and I don't think PR is there to whine about,

1:01:20 > 1:01:25"Ah, you know, it destroyed my life and it was so gruelling."

1:01:25 > 1:01:26It was a tough shoot.

1:01:26 > 1:01:29We were doing something very special.

1:01:29 > 1:01:33To most of the crew, this was just a job.

1:01:33 > 1:01:35To a few of us,

1:01:35 > 1:01:38this was...special.

1:01:38 > 1:01:40This was really... It was magic time.

1:01:40 > 1:01:42There was tension from time to time

1:01:42 > 1:01:44and there were times when there wasn't.

1:01:44 > 1:01:52I think every big, ambitious movie has tension involved.

1:01:55 > 1:01:58Eventually we shot that sequence on the back lot of Warner Brothers,

1:01:58 > 1:02:01with the jump from one building to the other,

1:02:01 > 1:02:04in the building that we could position the way we wanted.

1:02:04 > 1:02:07I'd laid out the distance of the building

1:02:07 > 1:02:11and I'd jumped it on the ground many, many times and it was fine.

1:02:11 > 1:02:14And I'd put a rope on the other side that was blended into the building,

1:02:14 > 1:02:18where you couldn't see, where I could get a hold of the rope and hang onto it.

1:02:18 > 1:02:21Then we go all ready to do it, again it was at night and it was smoking

1:02:21 > 1:02:24and it was raining and there was a mess.

1:02:24 > 1:02:29So it came time to do the jump and I made a long run and made the jump.

1:02:29 > 1:02:34I was about half way and I could see I wasn't going to make it.

1:02:34 > 1:02:36I best thing I could do, I threw out my arm and I hooked one of

1:02:36 > 1:02:40these rafters under my arm and that kept me on the building.

1:02:40 > 1:02:43They liked it so well they wanted me to do it two or three more times, I can't remember.

1:02:43 > 1:02:48So every time I had to hook my arm. I had a big bruise under my arm, but we made the jump.

1:02:52 > 1:02:56I had a great rapport with stunt guys cos I ride horses, I fence,

1:02:56 > 1:02:59I do some martial arts and that sort of stuff.

1:02:59 > 1:03:02And I always watch them, see how they prepare, watch what they do.

1:03:02 > 1:03:08It might have been 30 feet from the floor to the top, so we had an air bag at the bottom.

1:03:08 > 1:03:10So if you didn't make it...

1:03:10 > 1:03:15If I remember correctly, the guy that doubled Rutger, the first jump he made, he didn't make it.

1:03:15 > 1:03:18He hit and bounced off and went to the airbag.

1:03:18 > 1:03:21Another stunt guy comes in. He does the same thing.

1:03:21 > 1:03:26Now we're at five o'clock in the morning and we've got an hour and I'm saying to Ridley, "Ridley,

1:03:26 > 1:03:32"if you put the building, and the building were it's own wheels, "if you give me a foot closer,

1:03:32 > 1:03:35"I swear it's not impossible for me, I can do this."

1:03:35 > 1:03:37And he's desperate by now.

1:03:37 > 1:03:40So, he goes, "OK, let's do it."

1:03:40 > 1:03:42And then we did one take and I jumped.

1:03:45 > 1:03:49Rutger did this one, big, bargey hop,

1:03:49 > 1:03:54with a dove in his hand. Cos he came to me and said, "I thought, 'symbol of peace', is this OK?"

1:03:54 > 1:03:57I'm going, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, go on, the light's getting blue."

1:03:57 > 1:04:03What if I take a dove with me and then when I die, I just hold onto the dove for the last bit?

1:04:03 > 1:04:07And then, when I die, just let it go and that's it.

1:04:07 > 1:04:09Poof, end of story and then the dove can act for me.

1:04:09 > 1:04:13That was the visual part of death.

1:04:13 > 1:04:15Up to this moment in the film,

1:04:15 > 1:04:18it's been in a metropolis that's constantly overcast,

1:04:18 > 1:04:21and raining, dark and gloomy and, all of a sudden,

1:04:21 > 1:04:26you do a shot where you see the dove flying up into a clear, blue sky

1:04:26 > 1:04:31which is a daylight shot and there's just some clouds of steam around and stuff like that.

1:04:31 > 1:04:35This was a matter of something that had happened during the filming.

1:04:35 > 1:04:39The dove that they had got wet because of all this constant rain

1:04:39 > 1:04:45and when he was releasing it to let it go, the dove was so wet, it couldn't fly.

1:04:45 > 1:04:49So instead of flying off Rutger's lap into the sky and then following it up,

1:04:49 > 1:04:51the dove just literally hopped out of Rutger's lap

1:04:51 > 1:04:54and waddled across the roof, you know, out of the frame.

1:04:56 > 1:04:59There was a real page of opera talk,

1:04:59 > 1:05:03that is bad in any script, I don't care how you look at it.

1:05:03 > 1:05:06This was hi-tech speak that had very little bearing

1:05:06 > 1:05:10on anything that the movie had shown you before,

1:05:10 > 1:05:13so I just put a knife in it and I did this at night

1:05:13 > 1:05:16and I didn't know if Ridley was OK with it.

1:05:36 > 1:05:39Like most actors aware that this is his death scene coming up,

1:05:39 > 1:05:43this is his kind of moment and they suddenly start getting pretty tenacious

1:05:43 > 1:05:46about what they want to shoot and what they want covered.

1:05:46 > 1:05:48I think he was quite demanding at that time of Ridley.

1:05:48 > 1:05:51I came out with two lines

1:05:51 > 1:05:57that had some sort of off-worldly feel to it and some poetry in it.

1:05:57 > 1:06:01And then I came up with the line, at four o'clock in the morning,

1:06:01 > 1:06:04"All those moments will be lost in time like tears of rain."

1:06:05 > 1:06:08'I brought it to the set and Ridley liked it.'

1:06:10 > 1:06:18Rutger is big and bold and interesting, as an actor.

1:06:18 > 1:06:20I had a great time working with him.

1:06:20 > 1:06:25Some of the scenes we had together are some of the most satisfying...

1:06:27 > 1:06:30..professional moments I've ever had.

1:06:31 > 1:06:37'I think the two characters depend on each other in a dramatic sense.

1:06:37 > 1:06:42'So, I was very grateful to have his capacity and his strength

1:06:42 > 1:06:45'and his focus to work with.'

1:06:47 > 1:06:51The last two days were actually a nightmare because we had only two days.

1:06:51 > 1:06:55They were definitely cutting off the money and we wouldn't be able to shoot beyond that.

1:06:55 > 1:06:57We still had rather a lot of work to do.

1:06:57 > 1:07:02The last day of shooting was 27 or 28 hours.

1:07:02 > 1:07:07We must have gone to work at five in the afternoon or something like that

1:07:07 > 1:07:09and we shot all night and, of course,

1:07:09 > 1:07:11everybody thought we'd finish when the light comes up

1:07:11 > 1:07:13cos you can't shoot any more.

1:07:13 > 1:07:17We were really, really dying. We were absolutely in the water here,

1:07:17 > 1:07:19swimming with the sharks around us.

1:07:19 > 1:07:24I knew, by then, it would be April, May, June - I'd got dawn coming in,

1:07:24 > 1:07:285, 4.45, so it's going to go blue. It's going blue, in fact,

1:07:28 > 1:07:31there's a beautiful light cos it is blue. That's dawn.

1:07:31 > 1:07:35When the sun came up, the suits were all standing off to the side,

1:07:35 > 1:07:38there was, like, four guys in suits.

1:07:38 > 1:07:41So the sun came up and they were all smiling and all that,

1:07:41 > 1:07:43"Oh, it's great, we can pull the plug now."

1:07:43 > 1:07:48Ridley said, "I'm not finished yet," cos the death scene was incomplete.

1:07:48 > 1:07:50Michael Deeley came over to me

1:07:50 > 1:07:53and said, "Listen, we got to keep going."

1:07:53 > 1:07:58And so what we decided to do was literally take chain-saws

1:07:58 > 1:08:01and saws and cut the set out of the street

1:08:01 > 1:08:04and put it in vehicles and fork-lifts

1:08:04 > 1:08:09and move that set piece, with the roof top, down to the stage.

1:08:10 > 1:08:15Everybody was just beat and we still had all the wet, all the dirt,

1:08:15 > 1:08:18all the smoke, everything going on.

1:08:18 > 1:08:22And when we finally cut on the last shot,

1:08:22 > 1:08:26it was, from top to bottom, it was, "Let's get out of here".

1:08:26 > 1:08:29And everybody walked away.

1:08:29 > 1:08:36For the first time in weeks, my excellent Scottie dog and I drove home in daylight,

1:08:36 > 1:08:38thinking the whole nightmare was over.

1:08:38 > 1:08:45But we were not aware of what was lurking in our mailboxes the next day

1:08:45 > 1:08:46which was a communication

1:08:46 > 1:08:50from the lawyers representing Perenchio and Yorkin,

1:08:50 > 1:08:56invoking their right, since we were 10% over budget, to discharge us from the picture.

1:08:56 > 1:08:59I know they had the right to and I think it was done out of pique.

1:08:59 > 1:09:02I think that Perenchio was so cross with us

1:09:02 > 1:09:06because he'd had to pay up on his guarantee of completion that he wanted to punish us.

1:09:06 > 1:09:11We ran over budget, needless to say, and it was one of those things.

1:09:11 > 1:09:13It happens, I guess, in motion pictures

1:09:13 > 1:09:17and particularly in one that was as difficult as this was to make.

1:09:17 > 1:09:20When they wanted to remove Ridley from the film, I said,

1:09:20 > 1:09:23"Wait a minute, there's no way.

1:09:23 > 1:09:27"He's got to finish this film, because we bought a Ridley Scott film."

1:09:27 > 1:09:32That became very difficult for us I remember Jerry Perenchio coming in

1:09:32 > 1:09:36and saying, "Now we can put this film exactly how we want it."

1:09:36 > 1:09:38I said, "That won't be too easy, because

1:09:38 > 1:09:40"everything has been broken down,

1:09:40 > 1:09:44"because I'm working with the sound crews" at the time, which it hadn't.

1:09:44 > 1:09:50I was trying to tap dance around this situation because I knew that Ridley would come back.

1:09:50 > 1:09:54You don't fire a director unless he's done some horrible thing.

1:09:54 > 1:09:58It didn't have the slightest effect. I mean, the job continued to be done.

1:09:58 > 1:10:02So Ridley was on the picture all the way through, nobody went anywhere.

1:10:02 > 1:10:04There's a lot of forgiveness in it all.

1:10:04 > 1:10:08And over a period of time, you just realise that you are doing something

1:10:08 > 1:10:13that is so different, so special, so unique.

1:10:13 > 1:10:15You've done a man's job, sir.

1:10:17 > 1:10:19But are you sure you are a man?

1:10:21 > 1:10:24I think everyone who worked on that film,

1:10:24 > 1:10:26when they realised what had been accomplished,

1:10:26 > 1:10:28was extremely proud that they were involved.

1:10:28 > 1:10:32And all of those skirmishes that take place,

1:10:32 > 1:10:37to the point of making it better, not just getting on people for ego's sake.

1:10:37 > 1:10:39Cos I don't really think Ridley does that.

1:10:39 > 1:10:41He doesn't deal directly with ego.

1:10:41 > 1:10:45He deals with, "What's going to be the best damn thing we can put on the screen?"

1:10:45 > 1:10:47The fact of it is that, in our going over budget,

1:10:47 > 1:10:51at least it can be said that the money was, is on the screen.

1:10:51 > 1:10:54No doubt, um...

1:10:54 > 1:10:57It's not the usual thing of just misplanning.

1:10:57 > 1:11:00It's just that it's up there.

1:11:15 > 1:11:19I look at Blade Runner as the last analogue science-fiction movie made,

1:11:19 > 1:11:23because we didn't have all the advantages that people have now.

1:11:23 > 1:11:26And I'm glad we didn't, because there's nothing artificial about it.

1:11:26 > 1:11:28There's no computer-generated images in the film.

1:11:28 > 1:11:32The things that pervaded us during the whole production was,

1:11:32 > 1:11:35"How do we pull rabbits out of hats here? How do we do more for less?"

1:11:35 > 1:11:38I always remember them coming off, going, "Wow!"

1:11:38 > 1:11:42They nearly got me involved in special effects in a big way.

1:11:42 > 1:11:46It was, er, plain, old-fashioned filmmaking

1:11:46 > 1:11:52with C-stands and gaffer's tape and running the big 65mm cameras.

1:11:52 > 1:11:54In retrospect, this is probably

1:11:54 > 1:11:59one of the last great in-camera special effects movies ever done!

1:12:01 > 1:12:04In the late seventies, there was kind of a resurgence.

1:12:04 > 1:12:06As far as visual effects went, it was like a rebirth,

1:12:06 > 1:12:10because there was a large void the decade and a half before that.

1:12:10 > 1:12:11There were effects in some films,

1:12:11 > 1:12:13but there wasn't enough infrastructure

1:12:13 > 1:12:15to do a large film like Star Wars or Close Encounters.

1:12:15 > 1:12:17The ground was changing, you know.

1:12:17 > 1:12:21Suddenly, we had motion-control cameras and, suddenly, computers had reared their head.

1:12:21 > 1:12:23But, as we were doing Blade Runner,

1:12:23 > 1:12:28I did have personal connection with Dougie Trumbull and, er,

1:12:28 > 1:12:33Richard Yuricich and I know I had a part in persuading Richard, you know, to do the movie.

1:12:33 > 1:12:35It was a very small film at the time.

1:12:35 > 1:12:41It was about 2 million, and it was about 50-56 shots.

1:12:41 > 1:12:47They had based it on doing a like number of shots to Alien, which really wasn't enough for this film.

1:12:47 > 1:12:51And the more Ridley got into it, the grander his vision, I think, expanded.

1:12:52 > 1:12:57It's not like, "Spend all the money you guys have and make it look as good as you can."

1:12:57 > 1:13:02It was like, "Do more with very little money and very little time."

1:13:02 > 1:13:03And that was kind of fun.

1:13:03 > 1:13:07Well, part of what really worked for Blade Runner was the fact

1:13:07 > 1:13:10that we were all stupid and didn't know too much about miniatures,

1:13:10 > 1:13:13and some of the choices we made I would never have dared make now,

1:13:13 > 1:13:15although they're actually good choices.

1:13:15 > 1:13:18We worked to the concept.

1:13:18 > 1:13:22And you never design a visual effects shot to have the audience go,

1:13:22 > 1:13:26"Oh, wow, what a neat visual effects shot. "What a great design."

1:13:26 > 1:13:28It always has to tell the story.

1:13:28 > 1:13:34And fortunately, in the case of Blade Runner, one of the protagonists was the city, was the environment.

1:13:34 > 1:13:37People had to live in this very oppressive environment

1:13:37 > 1:13:40and that is one of the key characters in the story.

1:13:40 > 1:13:44The good thing is that there was pollution as part of the story.

1:13:44 > 1:13:48Pollution's not good, but there was going to be lots of aerial perspective and haze

1:13:48 > 1:13:51and that was all part of the, the scene.

1:13:57 > 1:14:00I like to get in there, cos I like to see what the lighting was.

1:14:00 > 1:14:02And I pushed hard for smoke.

1:14:02 > 1:14:05When you're shooting things that are only ten feet away from you,

1:14:05 > 1:14:07and it has to look like it's two or three miles,

1:14:07 > 1:14:11the only way to build up the sense of aerial perspective at that time

1:14:11 > 1:14:14was to fill the miniature room full of smoke

1:14:14 > 1:14:17and create things blurring off and greying off into the distance.

1:14:17 > 1:14:20It was a very different time for visual effects.

1:14:20 > 1:14:25It was all optical composites, and quality was a major concern.

1:14:25 > 1:14:30And many times, instead of doing it as an optical composite, we would do multiple exposures, which was risky,

1:14:30 > 1:14:35because you'd shoot one pass, roll the film back, shoot another pass, roll the film back,

1:14:35 > 1:14:38and I remember a couple times, they'd open up the camera

1:14:38 > 1:14:40and there'd be nothing but shredded film inside.

1:14:40 > 1:14:43That opening shot, I think, had 17 passes.

1:14:43 > 1:14:49So they ran it, stopped, wound it back, ran it again, wound it back.

1:14:49 > 1:14:53Very tricky work. If you make one mistake, you have to start over.

1:14:53 > 1:14:58And that's where guys like Dave come in and make that magic happen.

1:14:58 > 1:15:04We learned early on that, even though we planned to work at a certain scale on the miniatures,

1:15:04 > 1:15:08that that really wasn't going to work. What we had to do was work the same way that Ridley worked.

1:15:08 > 1:15:12You'd go into a large stage, take the brightest light you've got,

1:15:12 > 1:15:14shine it back at where the camera sits

1:15:14 > 1:15:16and then start putting stuff in front of it

1:15:16 > 1:15:18and add lots of smoke into the room.

1:15:18 > 1:15:21And so, I started composing miniature shots that way

1:15:21 > 1:15:24and that's when it really started to happen.

1:15:28 > 1:15:34What most people are amazed at - a lot of those sets were no bigger than 12 feet by 12 feet.

1:15:34 > 1:15:36You know, we weren't shooting on very large stages.

1:15:36 > 1:15:42And this one shot, spiralling down onto the roof of the precinct tower, we wanted to get the camera up

1:15:42 > 1:15:45and the camera simply wouldn't boom up that high either.

1:15:45 > 1:15:47So we brought the whole miniature down to the camera,

1:15:47 > 1:15:51basically by tilting it onto an oblique angle on its side,

1:15:51 > 1:15:54so that the camera could reach high enough to get that aerial shot

1:15:54 > 1:15:58and be far enough back from the tops of the building at the same time.

1:15:58 > 1:16:01In those days, in the case of some of the visual effects

1:16:01 > 1:16:04work on that movie, we used a process called matte painting.

1:16:04 > 1:16:07And matte painting is a technique

1:16:07 > 1:16:10that is used to alter the look of a location

1:16:10 > 1:16:11or a set in a motion picture.

1:16:11 > 1:16:15It's a combination of painted artwork

1:16:15 > 1:16:18and live action photography.

1:16:18 > 1:16:20That is even beyond digital.

1:16:20 > 1:16:22I mean, it's better than anything,

1:16:22 > 1:16:26because it's photography that is shot and exposed at the same time.

1:16:26 > 1:16:32The matte painting's exposed with the live action photography,

1:16:32 > 1:16:34so it just is on one piece of film.

1:16:34 > 1:16:37There are, like, really not paintings in this film.

1:16:37 > 1:16:41There's portions of paintings and some shots might have had five or six paintings

1:16:41 > 1:16:44where a section was burnt in that could've been fluorescence.

1:16:44 > 1:16:51Well, in the Tyrell office, there was a painting for the exterior where the pyramid had to be finished going up.

1:16:51 > 1:16:57Those shots all came together real well. I really like seeing Sean walk through the sun ball,

1:16:57 > 1:17:01because that was all rotoscoped and it was a very scary shot.

1:17:01 > 1:17:04It's a beautiful shot. It's my favourite in the film.

1:17:04 > 1:17:08And you watch the film, and you know it's an effect, but you just don't perceive it as an effect.

1:17:08 > 1:17:12You're in the Tyrell Corporation office and you just fall into it.

1:17:16 > 1:17:18Everything was really done.

1:17:18 > 1:17:22cos you can feel that when you watch a film. I think when you see a film,

1:17:22 > 1:17:26and it's an in-camera effect, it feels real.

1:17:27 > 1:17:32For me, there was an interesting thing that happened, because I knew,

1:17:32 > 1:17:35and we knew, how few visual effects shots we had in the movie.

1:17:35 > 1:17:40Compared to Star Wars or Close Encounters or anybody else's, you know, big effects movies.

1:17:40 > 1:17:42There was like a third of the number of shots.

1:17:42 > 1:17:46But the fact that the effects shots didn't stick out like a sore thumb,

1:17:46 > 1:17:49they were just integrated into this big, amazing event,

1:17:49 > 1:17:52that it seemed like there were more effects shots than there were.

1:17:54 > 1:17:56Katy Haber gave me a call and said,

1:17:56 > 1:18:01"Ridley wants you to meet Philip Dick and can he come down and see it?"

1:18:01 > 1:18:03So we went into the screening room.

1:18:03 > 1:18:08And Katy had said, "Just tie together ten minutes of your better shots and run them."

1:18:08 > 1:18:14So the Vangelis music started to play, the seats started to rumble and we ran through the thing.

1:18:14 > 1:18:19The lights came back up, Philip Dick turned around and looked right through the back of my head.

1:18:19 > 1:18:23And he said, "How is this possible? How did this happen?

1:18:23 > 1:18:25"It's like you guys hardwired my brain.

1:18:25 > 1:18:27"That's what I saw when I was writing that story.

1:18:27 > 1:18:29"I don't understand this. How can this happen?"

1:18:29 > 1:18:35He was completely blown away, could not believe it,

1:18:35 > 1:18:39that something so serious was happening with his book.

1:18:47 > 1:18:52Ridley and I decided to see this film before we showed it to Tandem on our own.

1:18:52 > 1:18:57So we sit there, the lights go down and we never said a word through the entire film.

1:18:57 > 1:19:00And when the lights came up, Ridley said...

1:19:00 > 1:19:05- "I think it's marvellous, but what the- BLEEP- does it mean?"

1:19:05 > 1:19:09And we knew then that we had some restructuring to do

1:19:09 > 1:19:11and a lot of work to make this thing work.

1:19:11 > 1:19:18It didn't mean changing everything around, it meant getting into each of the scenes and developing them more.

1:19:18 > 1:19:22I think it was four hours long. And there was a three-page scene I'd written

1:19:22 > 1:19:26that was now 14 minutes long, right? I mean, it was quite startling,

1:19:26 > 1:19:30but it was also magical and awesome and stunning.

1:19:32 > 1:19:36Bud and I and Robin French, who was one of our partners, we spent,

1:19:36 > 1:19:38I think, six weeks in England with Ridley,

1:19:38 > 1:19:40you know, cutting the film.

1:19:40 > 1:19:43And doing all the special effects and whatever else and it was...

1:19:43 > 1:19:45You know, it was a lot of tug of wars,

1:19:45 > 1:19:48what should stay in, what shouldn't stay in.

1:19:48 > 1:19:51They would come over to see things and...

1:19:51 > 1:19:55the trouble is, no matter what we did, they didn't like it.

1:19:55 > 1:20:00Took out a ton of things that I felt were necessary and we had to cut the film down.

1:20:00 > 1:20:02We also had a legal right at that time

1:20:02 > 1:20:05that Warner Bros had the right to...

1:20:05 > 1:20:09Anything from over two hours, they could take out if they wanted to.

1:20:09 > 1:20:11What you reading?

1:20:11 > 1:20:14Old favourite - Treasure Island.

1:20:14 > 1:20:17'I think the first scene to be dropped was the Holden hospital scene.

1:20:17 > 1:20:19'Basically, there was lots of trimming going on.

1:20:19 > 1:20:23'You know, taking things out. When he comes back,'

1:20:23 > 1:20:30having been beaten by Leon and he takes her back to his place,

1:20:30 > 1:20:31he's washing at the sink

1:20:31 > 1:20:35and it was much, much longer and sort of hypnotic.

1:20:35 > 1:20:37She just wanted to look at him.

1:20:37 > 1:20:39You had far more detail of him washing

1:20:39 > 1:20:42and the blood coming from his mouth and she slowly got closer and closer.

1:20:42 > 1:20:45And that was wonderful.

1:20:45 > 1:20:50And the scene where he kisses her against the wall, that was more sort of, er...

1:20:50 > 1:20:52It was more sensuous at one time.

1:20:52 > 1:20:56It becomes sort of violent now, because it's been cut down.

1:20:58 > 1:20:59Towards the end,

1:20:59 > 1:21:02I know on Blade Runner we were sort of thinking about the next movie

1:21:02 > 1:21:04and there was this project that we were working on,

1:21:04 > 1:21:08which was called Legend, affectionately known as Leg End.

1:21:09 > 1:21:13I wanted it to work like the thoughts of his.

1:21:13 > 1:21:18So he would pick up a photograph, he would then start looking at it

1:21:18 > 1:21:23and remembering and you'd see this unicorn running through the forest coming towards you.

1:21:23 > 1:21:26It'd come right up the camera and it would shake its head.

1:21:26 > 1:21:31And as it shook its head, I cut to him shaking his head like shaking that thought away.

1:21:31 > 1:21:36And it just made it such a lyrical piece and...magic.

1:21:36 > 1:21:42To this moment, when he comes flying through the, I had no idea what was it, nor did anybody in the film.

1:21:42 > 1:21:46Now, when they run his cut, you look at that and you say,

1:21:46 > 1:21:48"Well, what does that unicorn mean?"

1:21:48 > 1:21:52I remember them saying, "If it doesn't mean anything, we're going to cut it out."

1:21:52 > 1:21:58So they were throwing away things that were there for reasons.

1:21:58 > 1:22:03I mean, it's all tied together in the final frames of the film, when he lifts up the unicorn,

1:22:03 > 1:22:09the fact that they know that his thought pattern works with unicorns, it's one of his memories.

1:22:09 > 1:22:11Could he be a replicant? Could he be?

1:22:11 > 1:22:13That was trimmed down.

1:22:13 > 1:22:17I mean, all the subtleties were taken out. That's the thing about filmmaking anyway.

1:22:17 > 1:22:21Most of the things that go first when they think a thing's too long are the subtleties.

1:22:21 > 1:22:24Do you know, the terrible thing about Blade Runner

1:22:24 > 1:22:28was it was being made for people who didn't understand what it was about.

1:22:28 > 1:22:31When we finally screened the picture in Denver, and we got the cards,

1:22:31 > 1:22:33a lot of the people said they couldn't understand it.

1:22:33 > 1:22:36It was unintelligible. They couldn't follow this...

1:22:36 > 1:22:40They didn't know what the people were saying. It was kind of a different language.

1:22:40 > 1:22:41HE USES CITYSPEAK

1:22:41 > 1:22:43Too much confusion at this point,

1:22:43 > 1:22:46saying, "What's this? What's that? What's Cityspeak?

1:22:46 > 1:22:49"I don't understand this. What's he saying?" And I'm going, "Oh, God!"

1:22:49 > 1:22:55Bud and I insisted that we do... we put some voiceover, with, um,

1:22:55 > 1:23:00with Harrison to clarify some of, you know, to move the thing forward.

1:23:00 > 1:23:04And I know this, Ridley never agreed to that and never liked it.

1:23:06 > 1:23:10It wasn't their idea, it was our idea. It was, "I am not stupid."

1:23:10 > 1:23:13I looked at the results and said, "This ain't working.

1:23:13 > 1:23:18I agree with you, but what can we do? How about voiceover?"

1:23:18 > 1:23:20"OK, yeah, let's do it."

1:23:20 > 1:23:22HARRISON FORD: Now, is "farfetched" in or out?

1:23:22 > 1:23:24This is reel three, section one.

1:23:24 > 1:23:25Take one.

1:23:25 > 1:23:27It didn't help me any.

1:23:27 > 1:23:29Neither did the flake from the bathtub.

1:23:29 > 1:23:32Nothing helped, not even booze.

1:23:32 > 1:23:34I was restless and hungry.

1:23:34 > 1:23:36I needed the streets and I needed food.

1:23:36 > 1:23:38- RIDLEY ON INTERCOM: - 'OK.'

1:23:38 > 1:23:40Pretty weird. Pretty weird.

1:23:40 > 1:23:43BEEPING The flake.

1:23:43 > 1:23:46Maybe it was a scale. A fish scale.

1:23:47 > 1:23:49Real or artificial?

1:23:49 > 1:23:52-This is bizarre. Goddamn, this is bizarre.

1:23:52 > 1:23:55- 'Um, why?'- I don't know.

1:23:55 > 1:23:58'I never believed it was going to be used.'

1:23:58 > 1:24:03And, er, when I started talking to Ridley about it,

1:24:03 > 1:24:06it turned out that they were, they were things

1:24:06 > 1:24:09that he was not out of sympathy with.

1:24:09 > 1:24:13And he's right. He said, "This doesn't sound right." And I said, "No, you're right."

1:24:13 > 1:24:17So we tried every which way to rewrite, except it was difficult to write.

1:24:17 > 1:24:22We couldn't actually land on what he should actually talk about.

1:24:22 > 1:24:29It's a romanticised view of being, internalizing what's in his mind.

1:24:29 > 1:24:30What would he be thinking?

1:24:30 > 1:24:37Turned out Ridley and Warner Bros had some issues with the voiceover narration

1:24:37 > 1:24:44and the final versions of the narration were done without Ridley.

1:24:44 > 1:24:47And I missed him.

1:24:47 > 1:24:49We all went to London to do the cutting, to do the postproduction,

1:24:49 > 1:24:50and when we were away,

1:24:50 > 1:24:53that's when they sneaked in and did the voiceover.

1:24:53 > 1:25:01I was obliged by, um, by my contract to supply that voiceover narration.

1:25:01 > 1:25:05And on the last one, I went in and I thought,

1:25:05 > 1:25:10"Simply do it. Do it the best you can and go home,"

1:25:10 > 1:25:13because I had arduously argued through other versions

1:25:13 > 1:25:17to try and get the best version that we could of the narration,

1:25:17 > 1:25:20even though I didn't think it was necessary.

1:25:20 > 1:25:23- VOICEOVER SESSION: - All right, go ahead. - Testing one, two, three.

1:25:23 > 1:25:27Gaff had been there. He'd let Rachael live.

1:25:27 > 1:25:29He had nothing to fear from Bryant,

1:25:29 > 1:25:32but a lot to fear from me if he'd killed her.

1:25:32 > 1:25:34-I don't like that, let's start again.

1:25:34 > 1:25:35- Excuse me.- Yeah.

1:25:35 > 1:25:37Didn't you say that bothered you?

1:25:37 > 1:25:40- No, but I...- I thought you said that was getting in your way.

1:25:40 > 1:25:41No, sir, not...

1:25:41 > 1:25:43I'm sorry, I heard you wrong. Go ahead, then.

1:25:43 > 1:25:47Only after that had been dissected from the film

1:25:47 > 1:25:51that I got any pleasure out of seeing that movie.

1:25:51 > 1:25:53- Rolling now?- Yeah.

1:25:53 > 1:25:58Once I knew that people were not getting with it, the fact is, if you are ahead of your time,

1:25:58 > 1:26:03then that's...that's as bad as being behind the times, nearly.

1:26:03 > 1:26:05You've still got the same problem.

1:26:05 > 1:26:11And so, I'm all about trying to fix the problem, so I'm always there to try and say, "Right, what can we do?

1:26:11 > 1:26:14"Shit's not really working." I think it was Jerry's team said,

1:26:14 > 1:26:18"You know, it's that dark ending, we need a happy ending."

1:26:20 > 1:26:23They decided to try to get

1:26:23 > 1:26:26some widescreen shots of really nice-looking nature.

1:26:26 > 1:26:30I was sent to shoot it with a cameraman. So it was just him and I.

1:26:30 > 1:26:33And we were flying around in a helicopter for six days.

1:26:33 > 1:26:38But when we got back, you couldn't see anything, because there was a lot of cloud and a lot of snow.

1:26:38 > 1:26:41So everything we shot was completely useless.

1:26:41 > 1:26:46Ridley, being a fan of Stanley Kubrick's, remembered the footage that opens The Shining.

1:26:46 > 1:26:48If I know Stanley, Stanley doesn't fly.

1:26:48 > 1:26:50He has never gone to Montana,

1:26:50 > 1:26:55so he must have done a blanket shoot of every peak in Montana for The Shining,

1:26:55 > 1:26:57using the best helicopter crew.

1:26:57 > 1:27:00I'll bet you he's got weeks of helicopter footage.

1:27:00 > 1:27:05He was very receptive, he loved Alien, he liked, he really sort of admired Ridley,

1:27:05 > 1:27:09and said, "Yeah, yeah, but, you know, as long as there's no footage used

1:27:09 > 1:27:14"that's actually in The Shining, there's a lot of outtakes, etc, and if it's any good, fine."

1:27:19 > 1:27:24Within about 17 hours, I had six weeks of helicopter footage.

1:27:24 > 1:27:28It's a getting away shot, where I had to shoot them on the road, and I did it,

1:27:28 > 1:27:34because I figured it might actually affect what I thought the outcome of the movie would be negative.

1:27:34 > 1:27:36I'd better deal with it.

1:27:36 > 1:27:39I didn't know how long we'd have together.

1:27:39 > 1:27:41Who does?

1:27:47 > 1:27:50One of the great things the experiences that would follow for me

1:27:50 > 1:27:53would be scoring at Marble Arch with Vangelis.

1:27:53 > 1:27:56And most of that, every night, I'd go to Vangelis' studio

1:27:56 > 1:28:03and it would be him and maybe one assistant, that's it, in a big, barn-like place behind Marble Arch.

1:28:03 > 1:28:07When I would arrive, he'd go, "Come, listen to this."

1:28:07 > 1:28:09And he would actually say, "Watch."

1:28:09 > 1:28:13And he would actually play, physically, what his recording was.

1:28:13 > 1:28:17And as he's doing it, he's looking at me, and he's doing that.

1:28:17 > 1:28:21And it was watching this evolution of this great music.

1:28:21 > 1:28:25I was in London when the movie was getting scored by Vangelis,

1:28:25 > 1:28:29so I'd seen a lot of the footage and I just... I mean,

1:28:29 > 1:28:31it just made me weep. The beauty of it was...

1:28:31 > 1:28:33It was just extraordinary.

1:28:33 > 1:28:40Ridley talking about his images and how he wanted this to be and what he wanted it to look like.

1:28:40 > 1:28:45And it all happened and it was... It was very sweet to see that come together.

1:28:45 > 1:28:49I knew somewhere in there was not, shouldn't be a disappointment.

1:28:49 > 1:28:52I knew somewhere that I had done something pretty good.

1:28:52 > 1:28:55It was then about, "Well, I've done it.

1:28:55 > 1:28:57I don't know what else to do."

1:28:57 > 1:29:01So we released it and the rest is history.

1:29:10 > 1:29:12It was a very tough subject matter.

1:29:12 > 1:29:16You're talking about replicants, robots, if you will.

1:29:16 > 1:29:19I mean, when you think what's happened between then and now.

1:29:19 > 1:29:23It became so convoluted, what people thought of the picture.

1:29:23 > 1:29:25There were people who thought

1:29:25 > 1:29:27it was the greatest picture they've ever seen

1:29:27 > 1:29:31and there were others that said, "What the hell was it about?"

1:29:31 > 1:29:35This was a study of the future and I don't think, at the time,

1:29:35 > 1:29:37people wanted to see the future,

1:29:37 > 1:29:39especially like predicted in the film.

1:29:43 > 1:29:47We finally did the cut, and we screened it out at MGM in one of the screening rooms out there,

1:29:47 > 1:29:50just with five or six people.

1:29:50 > 1:29:54And I guess it was because we were involved with it, you know.

1:29:54 > 1:29:56It was, part of it was our baby.

1:29:56 > 1:29:59But I remember when the lights went up, I said,

1:29:59 > 1:30:00"It's going to be a smash!"

1:30:00 > 1:30:05It was a premiere out in Hollywood, at Sunset Boulevard or something.

1:30:05 > 1:30:09And I could literally feel the crack that went through the audience.

1:30:09 > 1:30:13It was either "Whoa!" or "Ugh!"

1:30:13 > 1:30:14There was no middle, no in between.

1:30:15 > 1:30:19It opened on a Friday night. It was huge, the numbers were huge.

1:30:19 > 1:30:23And then the word of mouth just that weekend petered out, so Saturday business fell off,

1:30:23 > 1:30:28Sunday business fell off and, of course, the guys at the studios live and die by the opening weekend.

1:30:28 > 1:30:32I guess they called Bud, and then Bud called me. And he said,

1:30:32 > 1:30:35"In the tank. It's a disappointment."

1:30:35 > 1:30:38I went into the theatre,

1:30:38 > 1:30:42and there were probably three other people in the theatre with me.

1:30:42 > 1:30:45I had already, you know, read reviews,

1:30:45 > 1:30:50which, for the most part, was not entirely positive, to say the least.

1:30:50 > 1:30:53I felt really, really disappointed

1:30:53 > 1:30:55that people didn't seem to get it.

1:30:57 > 1:31:01That point in my life, when I saw Blade Runner for the first time,

1:31:01 > 1:31:06I was really profoundly affected by the bleakness of it all and I...

1:31:06 > 1:31:10I didn't really like it very much as a moviegoing experience.

1:31:10 > 1:31:12As a visual, filmic experience,

1:31:12 > 1:31:15I thought the whole thing was completely extraordinary.

1:31:15 > 1:31:20For me, it still emotionally falls short of total satisfaction,

1:31:20 > 1:31:25because I just think there is, there is there's an emotional logic

1:31:25 > 1:31:27and a sort of a narrative logic

1:31:27 > 1:31:31that doesn't run as true as I feel that it should do. And, in a sense,

1:31:31 > 1:31:35I felt that what we made was an incredibly beautiful looking,

1:31:35 > 1:31:39as one would expect with Rid, but it's almost like an art movie.

1:31:39 > 1:31:43It was the first science fiction art film. And I think that's a good way to describe it.

1:31:43 > 1:31:47It is a futuristic film, it's a science fiction film. But it's beautifully put together.

1:31:47 > 1:31:52And you really saw a future that looked very different from the futures you had seen before.

1:31:52 > 1:31:54About a future that looked very believable.

1:31:54 > 1:31:55Not only was it different,

1:31:55 > 1:31:57it didn't look like it was different just to be different.

1:31:57 > 1:31:59It looked like someone had actually figured it out.

1:32:09 > 1:32:12We were absolutely disappointed in the opening.

1:32:12 > 1:32:14But it was Bob Dingilian who said to me afterwards,

1:32:14 > 1:32:17"Can you only imagine how bad it would have been

1:32:17 > 1:32:19"if we didn't do what we did?"

1:32:19 > 1:32:25Everybody was expecting a heroic follow up to Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Wars

1:32:25 > 1:32:29and the way it was advertised on television,

1:32:29 > 1:32:34with only the visual effects shots of a flying car going over a futuristic city,

1:32:34 > 1:32:39doesn't prepare you for the traumatic, emotional side

1:32:39 > 1:32:41that there is in the film,

1:32:41 > 1:32:45that kind of leaves you sort of broken.

1:32:45 > 1:32:50There were people in the trade papers at the time,

1:32:50 > 1:32:53starting around the winter of 1981,

1:32:53 > 1:32:57predicting that the summer of '82 would have such casualties,

1:32:57 > 1:33:01simply by the fact that there was so much product coming in all at once

1:33:01 > 1:33:04that they wouldn't be able to find their audience.

1:33:04 > 1:33:05People were over the seventies,

1:33:05 > 1:33:08and there was a lot of depressing stuff coming out,

1:33:08 > 1:33:11and what they wanted to see was a slice of, er... of utopia.

1:33:11 > 1:33:13People wanted to see happy movies.

1:33:13 > 1:33:21And Ridley came out with an amazing, brilliantly executed future of an absolute dystopia.

1:33:21 > 1:33:24There's absolutely no question why that movie failed.

1:33:24 > 1:33:27In those days, people were making Logan's Run,

1:33:27 > 1:33:31with Michael York dressed in a white suit and a silly hat

1:33:31 > 1:33:33being chased around the place, you know.

1:33:33 > 1:33:37Chased around white corridors, because that's the future.

1:33:37 > 1:33:40This wasn't what we were doing at all.

1:33:44 > 1:33:46There really wasn't that much of a lag time

1:33:46 > 1:33:50between its theatrical failure and its rediscovery on cable and cassette.

1:33:50 > 1:33:57The early eighties were also the dawn of home video and this was a profoundly altering technology.

1:33:57 > 1:34:02Audiences suddenly started to realise that, you know, when they saw it on their home TV set,

1:34:02 > 1:34:05and when they could pause it or stop it or go back,

1:34:05 > 1:34:10when they could actually manipulate the film just as Deckard manipulates Roy Batty's photograph,

1:34:10 > 1:34:14then they suddenly realised what an accomplishment it was.

1:34:14 > 1:34:19The fact that the film has been underground for so long...

1:34:19 > 1:34:22has given it a very special status.

1:34:22 > 1:34:26On Thursday nights, on the Lower East Side - this is about '83 now -

1:34:26 > 1:34:28they're having midnight showings

1:34:28 > 1:34:31on Thursday nights of Blade Runner.

1:34:31 > 1:34:33And then, I knew it was going to become something

1:34:33 > 1:34:35and history bears it out.

1:34:35 > 1:34:40We're sitting here, what, 25 years after the release

1:34:40 > 1:34:43and you go up, there are all kinds of websites,

1:34:43 > 1:34:48there are people all over the world that are interested in, "Was Harrison Ford a replicant or not?"

1:34:48 > 1:34:53and that self-generating kind of thing that's generated by fan appeal that you can't buy.

1:34:53 > 1:34:59When I started studying Blade Runner around 15-16, and watching it on television on my worn-out VHS tape,

1:34:59 > 1:35:04I mean, I think I pretty much threaded that thing down trying to figure out Ridley's lighting,

1:35:04 > 1:35:07his lens choices, his focal lengths, the way he composed things,

1:35:07 > 1:35:12where he decided to do darkness and light and contrast and silhouettes and things like that.

1:35:12 > 1:35:17Blade Runner is almost a playbook, I feel, for filmmaking of the last 30 years.

1:35:17 > 1:35:19There's a lot of times when we're talking in writers' rooms

1:35:19 > 1:35:22or in production meetings or with studio execs or whatever

1:35:22 > 1:35:24and you'll talk about a Blade Runner look,

1:35:24 > 1:35:27you know, a Blade Runner feel of the future.

1:35:27 > 1:35:30And that, boom, it just sort of defines a certain iconography.

1:35:30 > 1:35:34I noticed that, more and more and more, there were dark nights with rainy,

1:35:34 > 1:35:36steamy drains and actually lots of stuff.

1:35:36 > 1:35:39I'm going, "That's from Blade Runner,"

1:35:39 > 1:35:43And then I suddenly realised it was taking a huge impact.

1:35:43 > 1:35:50It wasn't till 1990, when the work print leaked out, at that Fairfax 70mm film festival,

1:35:50 > 1:35:53that people realised, "Oh, there's yet another version

1:35:53 > 1:35:56"and what's up with all these versions of Blade Runner?"

1:35:56 > 1:35:59And that's when the troubled history of the film started to get out

1:35:59 > 1:36:03and people realised that Ridley's vision for the film had been diluted somewhat,

1:36:03 > 1:36:08with the process of test screenings and getting the film more palatable for a mainstream audience.

1:36:08 > 1:36:10It had been diminished.

1:36:10 > 1:36:16All of this is kind of a process of people coming to realise what an exceptional film this is.

1:36:16 > 1:36:19And a lot of different things have to happen before it really catches on.

1:36:19 > 1:36:23The initial screenings, everything, it's like a snowball effect.

1:36:23 > 1:36:27And people, either they saw it in the re-release in theatres or they rented it,

1:36:27 > 1:36:30but more and more people decided to reacquaint themselves with Blade Runner.

1:36:30 > 1:36:33And when you reacquaint yourself with it, you fall in love with it.

1:36:37 > 1:36:45This movie, to me, embodies the elegance, the power and the uniqueness

1:36:45 > 1:36:48of a film experience.

1:36:48 > 1:36:55And then, the film-making itself is, the images and the sound and the music,

1:36:55 > 1:36:58it's eight of those ten layers of storytelling. That's the difference.

1:36:58 > 1:37:01It's pure cinema.

1:37:03 > 1:37:06Blade Runner is essentially a cautionary piece.

1:37:06 > 1:37:08It's telling us to beware.

1:37:08 > 1:37:11It's telling us, "Look where we're headed.

1:37:11 > 1:37:13"Look what we can do to each other. Don't be a replicant.

1:37:13 > 1:37:17"Don't be someone who just follows orders and shoots women in the back.

1:37:17 > 1:37:23"Be someone who has a monitor on your own empathic pulse. Be human."

1:37:27 > 1:37:32We're in a movie business where most movies are disposable commodities. They're the summer blockbuster.

1:37:32 > 1:37:37I'm not going to name what they are, but they come and go in weeks and, "bye-bye",

1:37:37 > 1:37:40nobody wants to resurrect them, nobody wants to see them again.

1:37:40 > 1:37:45So the ones that are really, truly well-made, the kind of Casablancas of science fiction,

1:37:45 > 1:37:48survive and get seen over and over.

1:37:50 > 1:37:55The intensity of his perfectionism on this movie made the movie.

1:37:55 > 1:37:59This is a master at his best.

1:38:00 > 1:38:04I was absolutely about co-ordinating beauty.

1:38:04 > 1:38:06It was shot by shot had to be great.

1:38:06 > 1:38:10What I'm expecting from you will be very high.

1:38:10 > 1:38:11You're not going to be wasted.

1:38:11 > 1:38:14I've chosen you, cos I know you're really good at what you do

1:38:14 > 1:38:17and I'm going to actually push you like crazy.

1:38:17 > 1:38:19I'm going to get the best!

1:38:52 > 1:38:55Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

1:38:55 > 1:38:58E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk