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Enhance 224 on 76...
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BEEPING
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FRAMES CLICKING
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Enhance. Stop.
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You have all the tools, colours, toys -
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everything at your disposal -
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to transport you to an imaginary world.
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People's patience and their willingness to persevere
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tended to erode as we went on shooting nights in smoke.
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It was a bitch, working every night, all night long, often in the rain.
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So it wasn't the most pleasant shoot.
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The tension and the atmosphere created was absolutely palpable.
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It was enormous - overwhelming, beautiful, enormous, great.
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And, er, I was living there.
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I don't think some of these people on the crew really understood
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how far Ridley was pushing the medium.
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The chaos of that production - everybody hating it,
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people don't want to be in movies after they've worked on that movie -
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it's like all those things informed this in a magical way, I guess.
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When it first came out, it was too intense to let in the darkness
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and the poverty and the projection of what life would be like in 2019.
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What Ridley created was this multilayered, very intense
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investigation into how that world might be.
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How do you prepare the audience for seeing something very different?
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Now, time has prepared them.
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It was so dark, and so intense and so beautifully constructed...
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I was absolutely about co-ordinating beauty,
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shot by shot had to be great. My weapon was that camera.
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I'll get what I wanted.
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And if you're there with me, great. If you're not with me, too bad.
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In 1975, I thought I would produce a movie.
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and this guy, Jim Maxwell, who's a close friend and knows me well,
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he says, "You know Philip K Dick?" I said no.
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"There's a book called Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" I read it. I didn't like it that much.
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But I thought, "OK, that's commercial. Here's a throughline."
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You know, bureaucratic detective chasing androids.
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My friend, Brian Kelly, had 5,000 or something and said,
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"You could get an option, that might be a good commercial project to get behind
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"and make some money." That's all we were talking about.
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So I wrote five pages, what I thought could be a structure.
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And he took that to Michael Deeley. I didn't know Michael Deeley.
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And Brian came back and said, "Michael Deeley says it sucks."
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Then he came back with a script,
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which wasn't terrific, but it was interesting.
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The very first draft that he did was much smaller in scale.
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It was probably a low budget, one-room kind of motion picture.
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This was a small movie, that's how I wanted to do it. This rooms...
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A strange movie, but it's, you know,
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a face-to-face movie. People are talking.
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And I had this dream of actors, you know,
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the right kind of actors, and actors' director.
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Hampton saw the novel as reflecting a lot of real world current concerns.
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And one of the largest motivating factors was the ecological concern that is in the original novel.
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The intellectual aspects of the screenplay
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were taken from my response to the death of animal life on this planet
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and what that meant - that's probably the thing that saw me through it, the first draft.
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And then, finally, when I was really looking for something,
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Brian popped back in again with another script.
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The way he put it was he'd got several studios interested,
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but because I was a friend, he'd let me have a crack at it. I read it and it was darn good.
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24 hours later, it was like, "Can we meet?"
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And they wanted to do it!
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The title we finally settled on was Dangerous Days, which I loved,
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because it was very much in tune with the much more romantic script that Hampton had written.
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I was dead set against it, but I figured I could get a vote in later.
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But go ahead and they'll finance, we'll call it Dangerous Days for the time being.
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And then Michael Deeley came up with Blade Runner. I'd used it already.
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You know, it's a term that I got from reading Burroughs.
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He had a little book. It was called Blade Runner.
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It was a matter now of getting into it.
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We tried to get Ridley from the outset, but he was at that point planning to do Dune.
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I was attracted to Dune, because it was beyond what I'd done on Alien,
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which was kind of hardcore kind of horror film, and Dune
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would be a step, very strongly - very, very strongly -
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in the direction of Star Wars. So Michael Deeley had come to see me.
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"I've got this script Blade Runner," I said, "I don't really want to do another science fiction,
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"but I'll read it." And I read the script, and I turned it down.
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At this point, something rather sad happened, which was that Ridley's older brother died.
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I know it had a tremendous effect
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on sort of his emotional state at that time.
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The Blade Runner idea had stuck with me.
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So I'd called up Deeley saying, basically, "Where are you with it?"
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"We're nowhere." All right.
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"I've re-read it. I think it's interesting
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"and will make the basis of a very good futuristic, urban film noir."
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He said, "Let's have a look at the material," and he did.
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And we were off. It was a very exciting moment, of course,
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for suddenly you had a talent attached to the thing.
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First thing I did was, I talked to Alan Ladd Jr, who's an old friend, who had a deal at Warner Bros.
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And we thought it was a terrific script.
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And we put it into production almost right away.
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And then we needed our seven million. And that came
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from a company which consisted of Jerry Perenchio and Bud Yorkin.
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People were always submitting scripts to us. And by the time
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they got to us, cos we weren't, at that point, in the picture business,
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they had been shopped all over town and most of them
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were pretty uninteresting and things we didn't want to get involved with.
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And, somehow, this script for Blade Runner ended up on my desk.
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And I read it, and I loved it.
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We saw the storyboards, we saw, we loved all the toys
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and the look that Ridley had in mind for it.
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It really was futuristic, and, erm, I thought it could be a big smash hit.
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It was such a brand-new way of trying to do all the things
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they were going to do on this - special effects and so forth -
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everyone was worried about how many months will it take, or how many years, to make it.
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They put up 7 million, and they chose to take a fee -
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admittedly a deferred fee, but a fee of 1.5 million - as guarantors of completion.
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So if the picture went over 21 million, 22 million, whatever,
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they'd have to provide that amount, which gave them a lot of rights.
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It gave more rights than we'd have given if we'd had time to negotiate, which we didn't, we had two weeks.
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As we were trying to put together the budget,
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I was talking continuously with Hampton Fancher,
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so evolution of the world was growing.
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And we'd work all day, every day, I think, I don't know how long, but it felt like weeks.
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Ridley started asking questions, you know, of the script, with Hampton,
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and started to say, "Well, you know, what is the world that we're in?"
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"What's outside the window?" You know. I said,
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"Er...what do you mean?" "But there's a world."
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They never move outside the apartment, it's very interior.
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I want to take them outside the door. Once we go outside the door,
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this world has to support the thesis that she's android, humanoid, robot.
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Ridley's a gold mine to work with.
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He's just got beautiful notions.
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You have to be discreet as a writer or he'll go write an encyclopedia.
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And he said, "Hampton, I have to be frank, you're taking a lot..." They used to call me Happen Faster.
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I was constantly saying, "That won't work, it's not commercial, it's too vague, it's not cinematic."
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So I was really being the hard man to Hampton's romantic.
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I think Hampton got a bit precious about doing things,
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and it was always a bit of a drama when or if things changed?
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I remember having an argument with Ridley, and Ridley went into the bedroom and sat down on a bed.
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I'm following him, I said, "Ridley, we can't do that." And he wouldn't argue with me!
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We got it up to a point where Hampton was just getting exhausted.
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I was angry and I walked out by the pool, and Ivor,
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lovely, wonderful Ivor came out, and he tried to tell me.
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He didn't come right out and say it, but he says,
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"If you don't do it..." I remember he reverted to street talk, kind of.
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He says, "I know me man," you know, "he'll do something."
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This was difficult in a way, because Hampton had been in it from the very start.
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And he was credited as an executive producer, which he'd remain, of course, but, um...
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his days, for the time being, were over.
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I get this call that Ridley would like to talk to me
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about Blade Runner. So they flew me down to LA
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and put me in the Chateau Marmont in this terrific suite.
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And I read the script - two hours or something like that, sitting there -
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and I was knocked out, I thought it was a great script.
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So Ridley and Michael came over, and said, "Well, what did you think?"
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And I said, "I thought it was terrific, I can't make this any better than it is or anything,"
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which...and they both sort of chuckled.
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Michael said, "Oh, Ridley has a few ideas,"
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in that Michael way. And, er...I got hired.
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MUSIC: "One More Kiss, Dear" by Don Percival
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There was a Christmas dinner I was invited to at Ivor's house.
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And we sat down,
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he put the script in front of me on the plate.
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He says, "This is the new script." And I said, "What new script?"
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And he told me. He said, "This is David Peoples'."
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I said, "Who's that?" I couldn't hear anything.
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I stood up, because I was going to cry. My whole world fell apart.
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What's anybody going to be? Incredibly hurt, because, um,
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you know, what he'd written was fantastic.
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And suddenly to have somebody else come in and take over your baby...
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Michael Deeley's so diplomatic.
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I remember, he said, "Yes, your things are very elegant.
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"But this is what we need to do to make the movie. Now we're making a movie, Hampton."
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I was writing for them and they were thrilled that I was so fast.
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And they'd had Hampton, but of course,
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Hampton had only done like God knows how many drafts for them, and he...
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That stuff is wearing and everything,
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so we're talking about Hampton after, you know, 10 drafts, I don't know.
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"Hampton, why don't you try this or that?" That stuff makes you crazy.
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It made me crazy in the short time I was there.
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Initially, he did what Ridley asked, which, at that time, we needed.
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We needed to put the damn script to bed, because everybody, every time something changes,
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there are kind of domino repercussions.
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Ridley found that much later, with the final Hampton script,
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after Hampton had done everything that he thought Ridley wanted,
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it still didn't have what Ridley finally felt he could only get from David Peoples,
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which was a much harder edge, and really the character, the nature of the film that you see today.
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I was completely wrong, Ridley totally right, and Peoples was definitely totally right.
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Deckard's character is not described in the script.
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Any actor could play it, really.
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It was up to the casting to tell about the character.
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We looked at various people. One who seemed very attractive was Harrison Ford,
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because he hadn't played this sort of person, really,
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and he'd had some very good training under some good directors.
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I liked Harrison Ford always. The conversations
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the first time I saw him about... And, of course, we saw Star Wars.
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I was impressed with Star Wars, because that's not easy to do, what he did.
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Errol Flynn didn't do it as good as he did it, and that's hard.
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I knew he was in London,
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doing this new thing Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
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Barbara Hershey was who initially suggested to Hampton Fancher
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that Harrison Ford was someone to consider.
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Barbara calls Spielberg, "What's that like editing that film?"
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Spielberg says, "Huge star now."
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The boys - Michael, Ridley - fly to London to look at dailies.
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He just looked fantastic and we just thought he was wonderful.
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Erm, we were convinced.
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I remember that I read a script, which I thought was, er,
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er, interesting,
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er, at the first version that I read of it,
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of the film, had some issues, I had some issues with.
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That there was a voiceover narration attached to the original script.
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And I said to Ridley that I played a detective who does no detecting.
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How about we take some of this information that's in the voiceovers and put it into scenes?
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And so that the audience could discover the information,
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discover the character, through seeing him in the context of what he does.
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And some of that survived and some of it didn't.
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We spent a couple of weeks sitting around my kitchen table trying to find ways to accomplish that.
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With our meetings that followed in Los Angeles, he got
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carried along with the enthusiasm of A, doing another science fiction,
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because he's on a really good roll now - Star Wars, Indiana Jones -
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so whatever it is, it's really exotic, OK?
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Harrison has that loose, wonderful, devil-may-care smile and attitude.
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And he has a wonderful presence, he's a good athlete.
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Harrison's naturally laconic - dry wit,
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and, um, smart. So you'd better be ready.
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When we were casting, and Ridley was looking at different actors,
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I made him sit down in the screening room and look at Katie Tippel,
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Soldier of Orange and Turkish Delight.
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And I said, "This is Batty.
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"You've got to realise that." And he said, "Absolutely."
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And he actually cast Rutger without ever having met him.
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He came in, because he was always a weird dresser, this guy.
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He was a big man, and he was wearing
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a puce nylon jump suit, with one piece, zip-up.
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A Kenzo sweater that had a big fox across the shoulder with two red eyes.
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He had already cut his hair the way he thought Batty should look, the short pointed blond hair.
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And he was wearing green, floral kind of Elton John sunglasses.
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And I said, "Ridley, I can assure you that the guy is Batty."
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And, of course, obviously, it was Rutger playing a joke on Ridley, or maybe he wasn't.
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The talk about character was, I think it was almost in the second talk we had,
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before I got signed on, where I explained to him, you know,
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what I thought would be interesting for the character,
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basically saying, "Can I put in all the things that don't belong there?"
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The things that are so amazing about people, you know -
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sense of poetry, sense of humour, sense of sexuality, sense of soul.
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And Ridley said, you know, "I like all of them. Keep them in.
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"We'll work with them. We'll find a way to get, you know, get them out in different scenes."
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In those days, different from today, we actually did real studio screen tests.
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And they were quite elaborate and quite expensive.
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And you had a short crew in to shoot them and, obviously,
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Ridley was not convinced that any one of our young women was the girl to go with.
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My agent called me with this strange request.
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He said, "There's this director,
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"Ridley Scott, he's doing this sci-fi picture, Blade Runner,
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"and he wants you to be Harrison Ford."
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I said, "What do you mean? What are you talking about?"
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He said, "They need to test a bunch of girls to be his love interest and another girl in this picture,
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"and he thinks you bear some resemblance or something."
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So I agreed to do it and it turned out to be
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'a lot of fun. Met Ridley. We went to the Warner Bros stage,
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'and he had blocked every girl
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'for the same thing, so I was basically feeding them, so it'd be an equal treatment kind of deal.
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'The only girl who departed from the blocking and everything right away was Sean Young, who says,
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' "We're not doing it this way." I said, "Oh, this is great." '
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She reminded me of Vivien Leigh for some bizarre reason.
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And I always thought that acerbic toughness that Vivien Leigh had,
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apart from being extremely beautiful and quirky, was an intelligence, was what she needed.
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I think he recognised that he could make
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a classic beauty type of picture, you know, with me in it.
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I like what she did a lot, um, they were less enamoured.
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She looked beautiful,
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but I wasn't absolutely convinced about her as an actress.
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Harrison was probably looking for somebody...
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I think he was nervous about a first-timer.
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I think he probably did it being, "What about her? What about her?"
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We went through a bit of that. He wasn't thrilled, no.
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Once it's on, it's on. Harrison's a consummate professional. Once it's it, that's it. You go.
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When I got the part, I realised I'd have to live up
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to the responsibility of playing the part, and I was pretty young,
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and it was very unknown to me what would be expected of me.
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So I was probably a little scared.
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She just came across so perfectly, so period and so right and utterly beautiful.
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She could be an android, she may still be an android, for all I know!
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I remember the first audition was in a small trailer
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on the 20th Century lot. Originally, in the screenplay,
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Pris was supposed to be sort of dangling on these rings,
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you know, the gymnastic rings.
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And there wasn't any kind of gymnastic stuff incorporated
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into the fight, it was just taking place in a gymnasium.
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And I had been a gymnast as a kid in school,
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so I suggested to Ridley I could do gymnastics and maybe I could put that into the fight sequence.
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- And so, I remember he asked me to show him what gymnastics meant...
- SHE LAUGHS
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..and what that was! And so I did like a back walk over or something in the trailer, and that was it.
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I met Daryl, and Daryl was pretty well it. I liked Daryl immediately on meeting her.
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She's kind of perfect physically. She's bright, she's got this quirky
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- side to her.
- Everybody who was screen testing
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got to create their own character, you know, had days to meet
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with the make-up team and the wardrobe team.
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And I had seen Werner Hertzog's Nosferatu, and I remembered the kind of puttied-out eyebrows
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and the black circle, you know, black, hollow eyes of Klaus Kinski.
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And so I was inspired by it that, kind of, and so I puttied out
294
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my eyebrows and did that sort of black thing on my eyes.
295
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The screen test process was an entire day and night.
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It was very, very well and thoroughly produced,
297
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and there were four other women who were testing for the part,
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all completely different from me.
299
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And I just looked around and thought, "Oh, my God, I've made myself into a monster."
300
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And everybody else looked so beautiful!
301
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I was asked at the end of the days, you know, who I thought was the best,
302
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and I said, "Well, it's hands-down Daryl Hannah."
303
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At the end of all these tests, Ridley said, "I think we've got a role in this for you."
304
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And I said, "What would that be?" "He's a guy who kind of interviews these replicas at the beginning.
305
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"I'll call your agent and explain." I said, "Fine." So I got home,
306
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got a call, was offered this role of Holden, which I thought was terrific.
307
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Definitely the femme fatale.
308
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I mean, I sort of really fit right into that.
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So of course I was going to be cast as someone that was slightly dangerous.
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I thought she was a very impressive combination of physical power, feminism to great sexuality.
311
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She was really powerful. Physically, as a whole physical female type, she's great.
312
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- If you're going to cast an Amazon, there she is.
- Very athletic - of all of them, the most athletic
313
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and the most able to perform whatever feats had to be performed.
314
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She was superwoman. She was built to be as strong as a man.
315
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And I mean, like, almost machine-like, and yet there was a femininity there.
316
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And Ridley and I talked about this a lot. She was just a survivor.
317
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Eddie I'd known for a long time, and I brought him in to meet with Ridley and it was Eddie's idea
318
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to play a multinational, multi-ethnic, multilingual character,
319
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who had a vocabulary of his own.
320
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That was tricky, because Eddie was saying, "What's this Cityspeak?"
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So Eddie, God bless him, drove me crazy, coming up with ideas of Esperanto and rhythms of speech
322
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that actually vaguely dovetailed and made sense
323
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in to what he had to say in terms of the drama.
324
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He was absolutely obsessed with getting that right.
325
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As long as he went along with
326
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my understanding of what was going to be happening,
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which was the culturalisation of Los Angeles,
328
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in a way that people wouldn't be expecting,
329
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and he went with it right from the start.
330
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He would be very, very Hispanic, could almost be dressed as if he was a well-to-do drug dealer,
331
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and in fact was the man who did all the dirty work for the department.
332
00:23:24,240 --> 00:23:26,680
The word Gaff is a good name, actually.
333
00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:34,560
Today, as we look back on it, it was an extraordinary cast.
334
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Then, it was a cast who I knew, and who Ridley was meeting,
335
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and who Ridley would guide through the film.
336
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He brought out the best qualities in his performers.
337
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It may not have always been the most pleasant process,
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but on the other hand, he coaxed, and very gently manipulated performances
339
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from these people that, in some instances, I think they've rarely topped.
340
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I saw a very large canvas,
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I saw a very eclectic canvas,
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where, basically, we were going to make our own rules.
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Artistic direction, set design, I think generally, was one massive challenge. That evolution
344
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told us it had to be this amount of money, to make it on a backlot.
345
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Michael had a saying that, "When Ridley takes out the pencil, it's hundreds of dollars,
346
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"and when he takes out a pen, it's thousands of dollars.
347
00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:59,000
Ridley was over here punting around for people to work on this film that he's agreed to do.
348
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I went over and had a meeting with Michael Deeley, Ridley Scott, Ivor Powell and John Rogers,
349
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and got the script, handed it to me, called Dangerous Days.
350
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Isn't it fortunate it wasn't used?
351
00:25:11,080 --> 00:25:17,520
And, er, took it home, and started to do sketches and started to submit work to Ridley,
352
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and then, Lawrence Paull was hired. I was the first hire on the staff.
353
00:25:21,920 --> 00:25:29,000
A futurist, Syd Mead, was one of the great illustrators of industrial objects.
354
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Cars, electric irons, apartments, skyscrapers,
355
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cityscapes. And I brought him in for a meeting and said, "Look,
356
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"we've got to go it this way, on the backlot, the best we can on a limited budget.
357
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"I can't make things. I would never have the budget to do that."
358
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That's why the idea of retro-fitting things came about.
359
00:25:50,760 --> 00:25:55,360
It would have to be retroed to the surface of the backlot,
360
00:25:55,360 --> 00:26:02,320
which had traditional buildings, upon which we would put pipes and ducts and air conditioning.
361
00:26:02,320 --> 00:26:06,280
So it was by necessity we had to design it that way.
362
00:26:06,280 --> 00:26:09,840
This is a rather different art department situation.
363
00:26:09,840 --> 00:26:13,360
Ridley's in charge of the art department on this picture.
364
00:26:13,360 --> 00:26:17,160
Not to diminish the art department or the art director or whatever,
365
00:26:17,160 --> 00:26:18,800
but one is inevitably, in a way,
366
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because Ridley's so on top of it and he's micro-managing the art department.
367
00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:27,480
Those guys had to work hard to do what Ridley wanted and they had to be very efficient.
368
00:26:27,480 --> 00:26:30,000
But it was Ridley who decided what it would be.
369
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:34,480
I knew that he had been an art director and I knew that was probably a good thing,
370
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that he understood, and it would mean that,
371
00:26:37,320 --> 00:26:43,600
unlike some pictures where a lot of money and focus is placed on the script and the performances,
372
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which is a good thing, that a fair amount of emphasis would be placed on the look of the film.
373
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I was hired to work one-to-one with the director, Ridley.
374
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After all, he's God. The director is God on a film.
375
00:26:57,720 --> 00:27:03,360
So I worked, essentially, for his approval through this staff structure overlay
376
00:27:03,360 --> 00:27:07,720
who would then, you know, make the thing look like Ridley had approved.
377
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:12,200
One of the troubles we got into with Syd Mead was he became so important to the film,
378
00:27:12,200 --> 00:27:16,280
he'd only originally been hired for a few days at 1,500 bucks a day.
379
00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:21,560
Suddenly he was on the thing for weeks. And that was one factor in going over budget.
380
00:27:21,560 --> 00:27:26,320
Sid designed this whole world, but he designed not just what would be the matte paintings,
381
00:27:26,320 --> 00:27:30,040
but conceived what the streets and the neon would look like
382
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:32,080
what the lighting would look like,
383
00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:35,640
and what it would look like drenched in grizzly, oil-soaked rain,
384
00:27:35,640 --> 00:27:39,200
then designed the vehicles as well, so the whole thing knit together.
385
00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:42,440
Sid wasn't really the production designer, but was the stylist.
386
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:46,400
I think it was a really smart decision to get someone
387
00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:49,920
who didn't have just an idea about the future,
388
00:27:49,920 --> 00:27:53,720
but he was someone who was an industrial designer and illustrator
389
00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:59,040
who was designing products for the future for people who were going to manufacture them.
390
00:27:59,040 --> 00:28:02,280
We were evolving what the future would be with Larry Paull,
391
00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:05,400
my production designer, I hadn't worked with him before.
392
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:07,800
I think he thought I was absolutely crazy.
393
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:10,640
But because I could draw, it'd help a lot.
394
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:18,000
The big advantage we had was the famous actors' strike that lasted for months
395
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:22,040
and the fact that, because I don't think we would have ever been able
396
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:27,400
to finesse the designs that we were developing in the art department,
397
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:33,640
finesse the technical aspect of it, had there not been an actors' strike. We needed the time.
398
00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:38,160
So, consequently, we were in pre-production for nine months or nine and a half months,
399
00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:42,160
which is as long as I've ever been on pre-production on a film.
400
00:28:42,160 --> 00:28:46,880
Everybody in the art department was tickled to work on Ridley Scott's film following Alien.
401
00:28:46,880 --> 00:28:50,640
We all thought, "OK, we're doing this picture about replicants
402
00:28:50,640 --> 00:28:54,680
"and the future and flying cars. Whoa, we're doing Alien II.
403
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:57,120
"We get to walk down that same road."
404
00:28:57,120 --> 00:29:02,080
Everybody got turned around and said, "No, wait, we're not doing Alien II,
405
00:29:02,080 --> 00:29:07,520
"we're doing something completely different, and it is the future, but it's not that far in the future."
406
00:29:07,520 --> 00:29:14,040
Michael Deeley said, "At 3.00pm, I want all the drawings on the wall, Ridley will look at all of them."
407
00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:20,040
So Michael Deeley and Ridley were walking around, I was standing with Larry Paull, you know, terrified,
408
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:25,840
and walking around looking at the drawings, and as if we had left the room,
409
00:29:25,840 --> 00:29:31,440
he looked at Michael and he said, "Well, you know, it's never really all what you want, is it?"
410
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:34,000
He said, "You never get what you want."
411
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:39,520
Because there was so much to do and, I think, at the peak,
412
00:29:39,520 --> 00:29:44,920
we had 400 plus or minus carpenters, painters, plasterers.
413
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:49,760
I mean, there were so many people working on the show that it was just a job managing all that,
414
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:54,160
which was under the jurisdiction of the construction department,
415
00:29:54,160 --> 00:29:59,280
but someone needed to be the liaison between what was being built and what was being designed.
416
00:29:59,280 --> 00:30:05,400
Some of those streets have been used in westerns, I mean, for decades. They're very visually familiar.
417
00:30:05,400 --> 00:30:08,440
When I walked on that backlot, it's what it looks like now.
418
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:11,640
When you walk on there, that's what it looks like.
419
00:30:11,640 --> 00:30:17,040
it can only be limited, so it's limited to, I think, two, maybe three storeys, mostly two.
420
00:30:17,040 --> 00:30:22,960
So it's not tall enough. So, in those days, because I hadn't got digital CGI or anything,
421
00:30:22,960 --> 00:30:25,720
the decision to do it at night makes a lot of sense.
422
00:30:25,720 --> 00:30:28,160
Because I was a designer, I'm up there often.
423
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:30,160
I'm all over Larry, God bless him.
424
00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:33,400
I've never seen anything like it.
425
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:38,600
I quite honestly never had seen sets built like that.
426
00:30:38,600 --> 00:30:43,360
It was just an amazing, an amazing amount of, er...
427
00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:45,520
of construction that had to be done.
428
00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:49,960
Jerry Perenchio and Bud Yorkin came to the Burbank hangar.
429
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:53,760
We were manufacturing the cars and the furniture.
430
00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:56,920
They walked in and saw this entire hangar filled with people
431
00:30:56,920 --> 00:30:59,840
and I could see the blood drain out of Bud Yorkin's face.
432
00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:04,000
He had no idea what was going on. He couldn't believe it.
433
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:06,400
"You're making chairs! What are you making?
434
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:09,600
"Buy a chair, Buy a table. What are you making?"
435
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:14,080
But it was all beautifully designed museum pieces that you can't buy.
436
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:19,600
The caveat when I was going to do the show was it was not going to be a big movie
437
00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:25,600
and I was told that the only set that I would be designing,
438
00:31:25,600 --> 00:31:29,960
because the rest would be all location, would be the street.
439
00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:33,840
Everything else was going to be done live location.
440
00:31:33,840 --> 00:31:38,280
And, you know, given what's going on in the film business and so forth
441
00:31:38,280 --> 00:31:42,320
and so on, you say, "Uh-huh, yes." By the time I got on the film,
442
00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:47,080
there was a location manager on the film already, that the production manager had hired,
443
00:31:47,080 --> 00:31:50,600
and there were two locations that Ridley liked in LA.
444
00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:56,160
One was the Bradbury building and the other was Union Station.
445
00:31:56,160 --> 00:32:01,200
The Bradbury building turned out to be the hotel where one of our key characters lived
446
00:32:01,200 --> 00:32:04,080
and Union Station turned out to be the police station.
447
00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:10,120
I think, funny enough, it took somebody not to come from LA to actually do it in LA,
448
00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:13,360
because I'm new, I haven't seen this before, and I'm going,
449
00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:17,120
"Wow, that's good and that's good. And the Bradbury's great
450
00:32:17,120 --> 00:32:20,960
and we put a cheap canopy on. I even brought the columns from the studio,
451
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:23,600
cos they're only styrofoam. The Bradbury building,
452
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:26,840
"Oh, everyone in TV uses that," and I said, basically,
453
00:32:26,840 --> 00:32:30,800
"Back off. I'll use it and shoot it in a way you haven't seen before."
454
00:32:34,600 --> 00:32:37,440
I went out a couple of nights, and we certainly went out
455
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:40,640
when they weren't shooting and saw the sets and everything
456
00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:47,720
and right on down the line, from the scenery, the costumes, the entire thing, I think it speaks for itself.
457
00:32:47,720 --> 00:32:53,960
The people at the studio would walk by or walk through the set as it was being built.
458
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:59,560
They'd walk through the set and walk away shaking their heads, saying, "What are these people doing?"
459
00:32:59,560 --> 00:33:05,600
I never chuck away the set or the proscenium or the landscape.
460
00:33:05,600 --> 00:33:09,200
The set is the landscape and to me, in all my work,
461
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:12,840
the landscape and proscenium is a character.
462
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:15,440
Sometimes to the irritation of some actors,
463
00:33:15,440 --> 00:33:20,320
always to the irritation of critics, who'd tear me apart for many movies
464
00:33:20,320 --> 00:33:23,880
before I realised, you know what, I have a real advantage.
465
00:33:23,880 --> 00:33:28,000
I can actually conceive a world, a universe and carry it out so it's real.
466
00:33:36,200 --> 00:33:38,840
I always remember the first day was not good,
467
00:33:38,840 --> 00:33:43,720
because I got in there and the columns were upside down.
468
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:47,160
All the columns, and I'd seen it, I'd even drawn it for them.
469
00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:50,240
saying, "Like this," and I'd put the weight at the top.
470
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:56,880
He basically said, "Well, the only thing I'd like to do is turn the columns upside down."
471
00:33:56,880 --> 00:33:59,160
And I looked at him incredulously,
472
00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:02,560
like, "What do you mean turn them upside down?"
473
00:34:02,560 --> 00:34:06,160
And he said, "Just that. Put that down here."
474
00:34:06,160 --> 00:34:08,200
I said, "OK."
475
00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:12,440
I went to the first AD, told them, this is at 7 in the morning,
476
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:15,880
"Come back at two o'clock and we'll be ready to shoot.
477
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:18,880
"The director wants a change." At two in the afternoon,
478
00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:22,400
when everybody came back from lunch, Ridley was a happy camper.
479
00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:26,920
The columns were upside down, everything else was in place, and they shot.
480
00:34:26,920 --> 00:34:32,040
It was worth turning them over, otherwise that stuff would've been at the top, out of the shot.
481
00:34:32,040 --> 00:34:34,240
Ridley was very demanding.
482
00:34:34,240 --> 00:34:37,920
I mean, from the point of view of the lighting
483
00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:41,840
and the design. I remember him saying, "Put more stuff on her lips.
484
00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:46,200
"Put more stuff on her lips, keep putting that stuff on her. No, no, no. More."
485
00:34:46,200 --> 00:34:51,000
'I'd heard later that Ridley wanted me to stay in my little cubicle dressing room,
486
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:55,400
'because he didn't want me to have too much interaction with everyone.
487
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:59,960
'So, I mean, that could've been part of the manipulation.'
488
00:34:59,960 --> 00:35:03,680
Ridley was constantly trying to add a kind of, er,
489
00:35:03,680 --> 00:35:08,480
scintillating visual stimulation to scenes.
490
00:35:08,480 --> 00:35:11,000
A good example would be in Tyrell's office.
491
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:15,440
We're in this big set struggling with our part, the front projection out the windows.
492
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:18,960
The live action guys are struggling with the weird lighting stuff
493
00:35:18,960 --> 00:35:23,080
and Ridley's saying, "Well, I want this light to be like up against the wall."
494
00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:26,600
We said, "What's motivating that? Is it raining? Is the floor wet?"
495
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:31,040
He said, "No, it's just got to... You know, it's just got to happen."
496
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:35,800
So I go, "If that's what Ridley wants, that's what he should have." But Ridley has this...
497
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:42,680
has always had this incredible sensitivity to all kinds of ways to create visual stimulation.
498
00:35:44,280 --> 00:35:49,880
After the first day of shooting, Doc Erickson came to me and said, "We're now five days behind,"
499
00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:53,960
which is not what I wanted to hear, but Ridley was dealing with the smoke
500
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:58,480
and the mirrors and the columns and so on and so forth. In the meantime,
501
00:35:58,480 --> 00:36:02,680
Harrison's sitting there waiting to act and getting pissed off,
502
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:07,000
because he's not being called to the set to act in the scene.
503
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:10,040
The reason I was thrilled about having Ridley is he's got
504
00:36:10,040 --> 00:36:13,560
the very best eye in the business. That comes with a price,
505
00:36:13,560 --> 00:36:17,320
which is the time and the effort that he has to put into it.
506
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:23,000
So he'd often be sitting up in the sky on the crane doing the last book on the table position,
507
00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:28,480
when Harrison was sort of seething and not being told what to do.
508
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:32,000
Ridley felt Harrison was perfectly capable
509
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:34,640
of doing everything he had to do, knew how to do it,
510
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:37,600
and Ridley meanwhile was composing the picture.
511
00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:43,520
There's a part of you that wants to be totally in sync with the director's ambition.
512
00:36:43,520 --> 00:36:47,200
Then there's a perverse part of you that says, "You know what?
513
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:51,960
"It doesn't really matter. What matters is being there.
514
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:57,280
"And participating truthfully in whatever the, er,
515
00:36:57,280 --> 00:37:02,320
"the relationships in the scenes are and, er...
516
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:05,760
- "
- BLEEP
- it, it's just a movie. Let him worry about it."
517
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:09,760
Maybe Ridley gave me more attention than he was giving Harrison,
518
00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:12,960
because he was making the assumption that he didn't need that.
519
00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:15,040
Harry was never happy on that show.
520
00:37:15,040 --> 00:37:17,760
He never was. Not really.
521
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:22,600
The only time he was happy was if it was going to be close to wrap, you know? Then he was happy.
522
00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:32,920
We had our man in Havana, so to speak, there
523
00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:37,160
on the set every day and watching it and we saw some of the rushes.
524
00:37:37,160 --> 00:37:41,720
Ridley's a perfectionist and Ridley came from the...
525
00:37:41,720 --> 00:37:46,720
the world of doing commercials, from England, and he was very successful.
526
00:37:46,720 --> 00:37:49,640
And he's very meticulous, that's what his genius is.
527
00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:53,760
And I don't take anything away from him, but it starts to slow down
528
00:37:53,760 --> 00:37:59,320
when you start to take many, many takes of certain scenes. And we did.
529
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:03,840
We started out, we were a few weeks behind within a few weeks,
530
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:09,600
so it was, I, er, thought things could start to take off.
531
00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:14,880
I presume, behind closed doors, he got twitchy like, after the first week, we were 2-3 days behind.
532
00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:17,720
Then, after the first weeks shooting Tyrell's room,
533
00:38:17,720 --> 00:38:22,160
we went back to reshoot them. I'd have thought he went apoplectic,
534
00:38:22,160 --> 00:38:27,200
because they put X amount of money and they were guaranteeing completion, you know? Jesus.
535
00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:30,360
I mean, I would imagine him getting pretty irate.
536
00:38:30,360 --> 00:38:34,000
l thought he printed way too many takes in those days
537
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:37,840
and shot too many takes. I didn't think he needed it.
538
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:41,480
Now, obviously, he was looking for something in every one
539
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:45,960
and he and I sat a couple of times and I explained to him,
540
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:50,960
"I don't quite understand. Tell me why the 16th take was the best one out of this whole group?"
541
00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:56,520
Yeah, there'd be irritation. I'd do seven takes. "Why's he doing that?" I know people who do 40 takes.
542
00:38:56,520 --> 00:39:00,840
But seven takes in those days were not inordinate at all.
543
00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:06,360
I was definitely very different, which is why I've been very successful as a commercial maker,
544
00:39:06,360 --> 00:39:10,680
looking at things in different lights and a different way, so they hadn't seen that before.
545
00:39:10,680 --> 00:39:14,440
It's why you're hiring me. And I think that went on, definitely.
546
00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:18,360
Ridley's a very strong-minded, knows what he wants, knows the look.
547
00:39:18,360 --> 00:39:21,480
And when you're trying to do a project that's this different
548
00:39:21,480 --> 00:39:26,080
and you've got the studio laddie on the one side, then Ridley,
549
00:39:26,080 --> 00:39:30,000
and nothing ever gets made without having its difficulties.
550
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:34,760
A lot of people don't bother to understand what he's trying to do
551
00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:38,520
and I think that's what happened. There was a lot of nervousness,
552
00:39:38,520 --> 00:39:41,560
and a lot of competition within themselves
553
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:44,800
and I think people made a lot of it in the beginning.
554
00:39:44,800 --> 00:39:50,040
Everyone anticipated before shooting, "He won't like us, he thinks American crews are not good."
555
00:39:50,040 --> 00:39:55,440
I don't think he sat there and said, "American crews are not good." He wanted everyone to be at their best.
556
00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:59,680
Being new on the block here, I had to learn the process of,
557
00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:04,960
I couldn't use this, couldn't use that. I'm used to being my own operator.
558
00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:09,000
Jordan came with his team, which was fine, cos he's a great cameraman.
559
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:13,680
And he came with two really good operators and so I thought, "Well, I can't operate."
560
00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:17,280
I would line up as much as possible. I like to line up, so, like that.
561
00:40:17,280 --> 00:40:22,080
That's what I do. That's what I know I'm doing. And that is more efficient and it's faster.
562
00:40:22,080 --> 00:40:24,720
On any film, people get frustrated
563
00:40:24,720 --> 00:40:32,520
and you have an artistic director that sees it his own way and...
564
00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:37,000
he's definitely the one driving the show, um...
565
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:42,040
Jordan wasn't in the best of health, so it was frustrating for him,
566
00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:47,280
because he couldn't be with Ridley. He just wasn't physically able.
567
00:40:47,280 --> 00:40:54,880
For a number of years, my father had suffered from a disease that we eventually found out was Parkinson's
568
00:40:54,880 --> 00:40:59,400
that, progressively through the course of the movie, took its toll
569
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:03,640
and, for the last month or so of the movie, he was in a wheelchair.
570
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:10,880
Ridley, to his credit, saw past the illness and made a very bold choice in going with Jordan.
571
00:41:17,200 --> 00:41:19,760
lntense. That's the best way to describe it.
572
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:21,600
We had our scenes together.
573
00:41:21,600 --> 00:41:25,120
"You lived so very long, Roy." "I want more life" and all.
574
00:41:25,120 --> 00:41:26,800
Very intense.
575
00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:31,200
Looked him right in the eye, he looked me in the eye, we went at it and it was great.
576
00:41:31,200 --> 00:41:34,040
I want more life.
577
00:41:34,040 --> 00:41:36,720
The facts of life.
578
00:41:36,720 --> 00:41:39,960
'Tyrell was a Replicant as well.'
579
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:43,240
When he got his eyes squeezed out and his head squeezed out
580
00:41:43,240 --> 00:41:46,800
nuts, bolts, springs.
581
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:51,120
And that was the idea, he was another front and another form
582
00:41:51,120 --> 00:41:57,360
of Nexus 6, I guess. And that would trigger me to go to the next floor.
583
00:41:57,360 --> 00:42:01,400
In the next floor, in the pyramid of glass would be, you know,
584
00:42:01,400 --> 00:42:05,600
Mr Maker himself, dead for four years.
585
00:42:05,600 --> 00:42:09,520
And so I had to design the sarcophagus, and Batty
586
00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:12,040
was supposed to be there looking at his maker.
587
00:42:12,040 --> 00:42:14,400
And I had him standing off to the right of
588
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:19,000
the little painting I did with the sort of Mayan capsule
589
00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:21,640
he'd come out of, the entrance to the crypt.
590
00:42:21,640 --> 00:42:24,160
That was never filmed either.
591
00:42:29,640 --> 00:42:36,400
Harrison was supposed to be having this on screen love affair with Rachael.
592
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:39,640
And Sean Young was very young and extremely inexperienced
593
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:41,160
and Ridley, I think,
594
00:42:41,160 --> 00:42:45,720
was more or less talking Sean through her performance to a certain extent
595
00:42:45,720 --> 00:42:51,240
and Sean and Harrison just did not click on any level.
596
00:42:54,920 --> 00:42:57,440
Any time you're doing a love scene is tricky.
597
00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:02,600
First of all, I feel for the actors having to do it, saying it's real. Or uncomfortable.
598
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:08,960
You can't really let it fly, let go, because that's not what you're doing. It's not very professional.
599
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:13,600
So it's a waltz, it's actually a delicate waltz to find out what should it be,
600
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:17,360
how far should it go and where's enough enough?
601
00:43:18,720 --> 00:43:21,760
I think Ridley told him to push me.
602
00:43:21,760 --> 00:43:25,320
And I was...I remember being really surprised about that.
603
00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:28,160
I think I was crying afterwards, too.
604
00:43:28,160 --> 00:43:31,960
And I remember Harry going to the side.
605
00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:36,080
I was sitting on that ledge where the blinds were behind me and we did the scene
606
00:43:36,080 --> 00:43:41,120
and he went over to the corner and he turned away from me and took his pants and he mooned me,
607
00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:45,960
cos he was trying to make me laugh, cos I was going, and I looked up and he was mooning me.
608
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:51,280
I think I started laughing, and I think he was trying to say, "Hey, it's not that bad, kid."
609
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:54,520
Sean had a very interesting part to play.
610
00:43:54,520 --> 00:43:58,600
Maybe one of the most interesting parts in the movie.
611
00:43:58,600 --> 00:44:01,640
She understood what was going on.
612
00:44:01,640 --> 00:44:04,480
She did, I think, a good job.
613
00:44:04,480 --> 00:44:07,920
Harrison was always, um, the great technician.
614
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:13,560
"No, kid, you have to sit here. Your face has to be here. Move that way. Back up. Come here."
615
00:44:13,560 --> 00:44:17,520
He always knew exactly what to do and I remember
616
00:44:17,520 --> 00:44:20,560
we had a metronome that was supposed to create a rhythm
617
00:44:20,560 --> 00:44:24,160
and we had this metronome going and he went over and he went like that.
618
00:44:24,160 --> 00:44:26,680
And he stopped it. I said, "Why'd you do that?"
619
00:44:26,680 --> 00:44:31,400
He says, "I don't feel like looping it, kid." You know? I was like, "What's looping?"
620
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:36,560
You know, I had no idea of anything. So he was very much kind of teaching me the...
621
00:44:36,560 --> 00:44:40,320
Well, making fun of me more, but you know, pointing out my errors.
622
00:44:42,040 --> 00:44:47,400
Harrison Ford is probably one of the smartest actors I've ever worked with. Top of the line.
623
00:44:47,400 --> 00:44:51,400
A, for what they can do. But B, they're able to do it,
624
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:55,160
because they're smart. It's not just intuition. They work it out.
625
00:44:55,160 --> 00:44:59,200
Sometimes they don't comprehend what I do for a living on a big movie.
626
00:44:59,200 --> 00:45:04,240
My performance is important as any other performance of any person, particularly the star.
627
00:45:04,240 --> 00:45:07,680
My film, the film that I make at the end of the day, is my movie.
628
00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:10,800
It may be a team thing as well, but I'm taking the knocks.
629
00:45:10,800 --> 00:45:14,320
I'm taking the bashes and probably I've developed it, etc, etc.
630
00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:19,160
So yes, it's my movie and I'm inviting people to do it and that's what a director is.
631
00:45:23,920 --> 00:45:27,960
Downtown LA in front of the Bradbury Building in the middle of the night.
632
00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:32,280
Usually, our call pretty much always was at sunset.
633
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:34,800
We're vampire hours, you know?
634
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:37,440
Also there was, of course, lots of rain.
635
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:41,560
And so one time, when I was running away from JF Sebastian,
636
00:45:42,600 --> 00:45:49,240
I ran and hit the van and my arm went through the window and it wasn't breakaway glass.
637
00:45:49,240 --> 00:45:53,880
I had eight chips or nine chips taken out and there's still some more
638
00:45:53,880 --> 00:45:57,720
floating around, I think, which didn't help doing the back walkovers
639
00:45:57,720 --> 00:46:00,920
and things on the chipped elbow. SHE LAUGHS
640
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:08,440
I'd filmed in the Bradbury Building before, which is very pristine, very clean.
641
00:46:08,440 --> 00:46:10,960
An amazing place.
642
00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:16,000
Great ironwork and so forth that, visually, just is fabulous
643
00:46:16,000 --> 00:46:19,520
and lit it for a set. You know, a lot of backlight.
644
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:24,560
Again, had the xenons passing through, and smoke. It was eerie.
645
00:46:24,560 --> 00:46:28,800
But the amazing part about it is I don't really think
646
00:46:28,800 --> 00:46:33,080
that the Bradbury people understood how Ridley wanted to do it,
647
00:46:33,080 --> 00:46:36,240
because it was, it was a total mess.
648
00:46:36,240 --> 00:46:41,480
In the interior, we had a 65ft truck filled with debris
649
00:46:41,480 --> 00:46:45,840
and we had, of course, rain inside the building. We had rain everywhere.
650
00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:51,280
And what we would have to do, because the building was occupied at the time, we could get it
651
00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:55,400
at 6pm and, at 6am, we had to be out of there
652
00:46:55,400 --> 00:46:58,920
and it had to be clean. So because it looks like
653
00:46:58,920 --> 00:47:02,960
it's decrepit and filthy, we couldn't figure out a way at first,
654
00:47:02,960 --> 00:47:07,640
but then we came up with the idea of we took cork and crumbled up cork,
655
00:47:07,640 --> 00:47:10,760
because it has the same texture and colour as mud and dirt.
656
00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:14,680
So we'd throw cork all over the floors and the rain would absorb it.
657
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:18,240
So the next morning, when you swept everything up it was clean,
658
00:47:18,240 --> 00:47:20,880
and didn't have to be scrubbed with soap and water,
659
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:25,680
because we probably had no more than an hour to get out of the building every day.
660
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:31,920
When I first came onto the set, I walked down the lot through this maze
661
00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:35,400
and saw these signs and buildings and what not.
662
00:47:35,400 --> 00:47:39,920
I said to myself, "Wow, this is astronomical.
663
00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:44,040
"It'll take forever to do this film if it hasn't already." I thought
664
00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:50,040
I was going to go to the studio and see a so-called refrigerated lab.
665
00:47:50,040 --> 00:47:53,280
They shot it in a real fridge, basically. A monster fridge.
666
00:47:53,280 --> 00:47:57,040
Let's say inside was, er, frosty. HE LAUGHS
667
00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:01,000
In a way, it was kind of strange why they did that,
668
00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:04,920
because the conditions were almost uncontrollable.
669
00:48:04,920 --> 00:48:10,160
They could not set the temperature of that freezer to where they could just get the cold
670
00:48:10,160 --> 00:48:14,880
and see the breath coming out and everything looks frozen.
671
00:48:14,880 --> 00:48:19,120
We started off with a couple of arcs in the freezer.
672
00:48:19,120 --> 00:48:23,160
Well, they're carbon arcs. They're actually burning coal
673
00:48:23,160 --> 00:48:29,520
and, after about an hour, people were starting to get ill,
674
00:48:29,520 --> 00:48:34,280
because we were, number one, taking the oxygen out of the air
675
00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:40,520
and the carbon, the smoke from the carbon, people were getting sick.
676
00:48:40,520 --> 00:48:45,480
We had to shut down the arcs and literally open up the freezer,
677
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:48,120
get all the air out, had fans going.
678
00:48:48,120 --> 00:48:53,600
The producer was on to Ridley, "That's good enough! That's good enough!" or whatever.
679
00:48:53,600 --> 00:48:56,840
Like I said, I wouldn't want to work in that atmosphere again.
680
00:48:56,840 --> 00:49:01,680
It's just too much. Too much was at stake at too short a time.
681
00:49:05,040 --> 00:49:09,480
The night scenes were all shot on what's called the New York Street set,
682
00:49:09,480 --> 00:49:13,960
where The Maltese Falcon had been filmed by Warner Bros in the 1940s
683
00:49:13,960 --> 00:49:18,040
and it was just their standing urban New York type of look.
684
00:49:18,040 --> 00:49:23,880
To shoot a studio street on Blade Runner, you know, on the Warners lot, would look crap.
685
00:49:23,880 --> 00:49:30,080
If you look at all the TV series shot on the studio street, it looks like a studio street.
686
00:49:30,080 --> 00:49:34,880
So wetting it down and having things in heavy rain certainly started to bring it to life.
687
00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:39,640
The reason why I could not have done those sets in daylight, it wouldn't have looked good.
688
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:42,720
They would've looked bad and we'd have to spend more money.
689
00:49:42,720 --> 00:49:47,960
So, by shooting at night, you save money and it looks better. When it's always raining, it looks better.
690
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:52,960
That's what it's about. Why's there always smoke? I haven't got enough money. It looks better.
691
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:58,440
So those three elements are always in my armoury - night, wet, smoke.
692
00:50:03,920 --> 00:50:06,480
I thought the art direction was brilliant
693
00:50:06,480 --> 00:50:12,000
and the world that was created was very dense and interesting.
694
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:17,240
But it was a bitch, working every night and all night long,
695
00:50:17,240 --> 00:50:19,560
often in the rain.
696
00:50:19,560 --> 00:50:23,640
So it wasn't the most pleasant shoot.
697
00:50:23,640 --> 00:50:26,600
There was always dialogue that we were behind schedule.
698
00:50:26,600 --> 00:50:28,000
I think it all culminated
699
00:50:28,000 --> 00:50:30,560
when we were shooting on the back lot at night
700
00:50:30,560 --> 00:50:32,360
with the street exteriors.
701
00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:35,560
Never less than 13, 14 hours.
702
00:50:35,560 --> 00:50:37,600
We would shoot all night.
703
00:50:37,600 --> 00:50:40,120
Kind of the joke was, "Keep your eyes in the East,
704
00:50:40,120 --> 00:50:41,680
"cos soon as you see that glow,
705
00:50:41,680 --> 00:50:44,840
"you know we've got only about another hour".
706
00:50:44,840 --> 00:50:47,600
Some days we never shot.
707
00:50:47,600 --> 00:50:50,640
And then some days we made two shots a day.
708
00:50:50,640 --> 00:50:52,440
One was on meal penalty
709
00:50:52,440 --> 00:50:54,520
and one was at sunrise.
710
00:50:54,520 --> 00:50:56,480
And that happened more than once.
711
00:50:58,200 --> 00:51:00,680
You were working inside of a full,
712
00:51:00,680 --> 00:51:05,360
ongoing environment of sound and special effects.
713
00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:11,800
The spinners were coming up and down and they had the cranes working, and all the smoke and all the water.
714
00:51:11,800 --> 00:51:15,000
And that back lot came alive.
715
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:20,040
What he was trying to do was just incredible.
716
00:51:20,040 --> 00:51:22,440
And I remember, we would sit for eight hours trying to do one set-up.
717
00:51:22,440 --> 00:51:24,320
And you would do it, like, right?
718
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:28,280
And what you're seeing in your eyes, what you're going to see, it's really pretty much that.
719
00:51:28,280 --> 00:51:33,760
But then I remember going to dailies and it's the one film, to this day,
720
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:38,880
where I went to dailies, and I went, "We shot that?" I was shocked.
721
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:49,600
Blade Runner, particularly to fans,
722
00:51:49,600 --> 00:51:53,800
is known as a movie that has some fairly egregious blunders,
723
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:57,640
and one of the most visual of those would be Zhora's death scene,
724
00:51:57,640 --> 00:51:59,480
where Joanna Cassidy as Zhora
725
00:51:59,480 --> 00:52:02,720
is crashing through all these display case windows.
726
00:52:02,720 --> 00:52:06,080
It's like another one of these gigantic oversights,
727
00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:09,560
to put hair on someone that looked nothing like my hair.
728
00:52:09,560 --> 00:52:14,360
I mean, it was basically a wig pulled out of somebody's bag,
729
00:52:14,360 --> 00:52:17,600
and it just never... It never cut it.
730
00:52:17,600 --> 00:52:21,720
She's the double, because I won't risk Joanna running through.
731
00:52:21,720 --> 00:52:23,760
Cos even though you're running through sugar,
732
00:52:23,760 --> 00:52:24,840
that's not plate-glass,
733
00:52:24,840 --> 00:52:27,040
it's got to have been large sheets of sugar glass.
734
00:52:27,040 --> 00:52:30,200
So when you go through that stuff, you could still cut yourself.
735
00:52:30,200 --> 00:52:34,000
That was a very famous stunt woman, by the way, named Lee Pulford.
736
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:37,520
But the problem with her particular scene and moment in the movie
737
00:52:37,520 --> 00:52:38,760
was that, at that time,
738
00:52:38,760 --> 00:52:42,120
that was shot towards the end of principal photography.
739
00:52:42,120 --> 00:52:48,160
And once again, the money issues were bearing down hard on everyone
740
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:51,000
and now we were facing time issues.
741
00:52:51,000 --> 00:52:53,520
Everything was rushed. And you only get one shot at that.
742
00:52:53,520 --> 00:52:55,640
There's not two shots there. That's it.
743
00:52:55,640 --> 00:52:59,720
Now that would probably be digitally done
744
00:52:59,720 --> 00:53:02,120
or I'd shoot that for two nights,
745
00:53:02,120 --> 00:53:05,000
minimum, where, once you make that mess and you tidy up,
746
00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:07,400
you've got to move off and do something else.
747
00:53:07,400 --> 00:53:11,120
That time I was invited down, I was on the set, man, and it's like,
748
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:13,160
I saw Yorkin and those guys
749
00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:18,640
on Ridley and on Deeley, and it was not pretty.
750
00:53:18,640 --> 00:53:21,400
In particular, I remember one night when we were shooting,
751
00:53:21,400 --> 00:53:23,880
which was a difficult sequence, Zhora getting shot,
752
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:26,840
and I remember Bud Yorkin was down there just wanting to know,
753
00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:30,760
expletives apart, why we were going so slowly
754
00:53:30,760 --> 00:53:33,160
and what the hell, you know,
755
00:53:33,160 --> 00:53:36,920
was going on, and pointing his finger pretty aggressively at Ridley.
756
00:53:36,920 --> 00:53:44,120
As a director, I really had empathy for what he was going through and I knew it was a huge task and so forth.
757
00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:47,120
I never liked the idea of producing.
758
00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:48,680
I only produced, in my life,
759
00:53:48,680 --> 00:53:52,440
two pictures that I produced and didn't direct.
760
00:53:52,440 --> 00:54:00,080
And that's very frustrating for anybody as a director because the directors don't want to just produce.
761
00:54:00,080 --> 00:54:06,040
I think Bud secretly wanted to direct it himself. And if he had,
762
00:54:06,040 --> 00:54:08,520
it would be obviously, a very different movie.
763
00:54:08,520 --> 00:54:11,640
There was conversations like that that lead nowhere
764
00:54:11,640 --> 00:54:15,480
cos we stood by Ridley and said, "You've got to finish the movie".
765
00:54:15,480 --> 00:54:18,880
"That's what we bought and that's what we're paying for".
766
00:54:18,880 --> 00:54:22,000
I was warned a couple of times to speed up and that's about it.
767
00:54:22,000 --> 00:54:26,400
I said, "I can, I will speed up if I can but, unfortunately, these are big set-ups".
768
00:54:26,400 --> 00:54:32,560
And he wanted to do what he had to do. You know, reminded me of George C Scott and The Hustler.
769
00:54:32,560 --> 00:54:36,320
"I'm talking about money", you know, or whatever. "You owe me money!"
770
00:54:36,320 --> 00:54:40,760
I think we went through that 20 million, we went through the 20 million, and all of a sudden,
771
00:54:40,760 --> 00:54:43,360
somebody's tapping on your shoulder and saying...
772
00:54:43,360 --> 00:54:46,200
So then you start paying a little closer attention
773
00:54:46,200 --> 00:54:49,640
when you have to start writing the cheques yourself, so to speak.
774
00:54:49,640 --> 00:54:52,600
He was completion guarantor and they put a lot of money into a movie.
775
00:54:52,600 --> 00:54:56,360
And if you try to see it from his point of view, you know,
776
00:54:56,360 --> 00:54:58,640
what the hell was going on? You know, why?
777
00:54:58,640 --> 00:55:00,440
Why were we so far behind schedule?
778
00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:04,240
You know, we were supposedly, you know, professional film-makers, etc.
779
00:55:04,240 --> 00:55:10,400
I would never, ever deliberately ignore a budget and just say, you know, "Let's just spend the money".
780
00:55:10,400 --> 00:55:14,000
I just don't function that way. It drives me crazy to go over budget.
781
00:55:14,000 --> 00:55:16,960
I hate that. For me to go over schedule, I hate that.
782
00:55:16,960 --> 00:55:21,320
And I think one of the important things is, when you're shooting, particularly from my point of view,
783
00:55:21,320 --> 00:55:25,520
I'm one of those directors who always must be told
784
00:55:25,520 --> 00:55:31,280
where I am financially, what I've got to do, but be told early enough so I can do something about it.
785
00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:34,240
My job is to get what I promised I'm going to get.
786
00:55:34,240 --> 00:55:39,400
And that's why it was good for any investor, as they probably will have discovered by now.
787
00:55:48,800 --> 00:55:51,600
There was a sequence where they wanted to do hand to feet,
788
00:55:51,600 --> 00:55:54,240
hand to feet, flip flop gymnastic things across there
789
00:55:54,240 --> 00:55:57,120
and wind up straddled on Harrison Ford.
790
00:55:57,120 --> 00:56:00,760
So I had this girl that, her and I'd be rehearsing at nights
791
00:56:00,760 --> 00:56:04,880
for, I don't know, in the gymnasium, and she goes down pretty good.
792
00:56:04,880 --> 00:56:09,000
Well, in about, I'll say 20 minutes, Ridley had her totally worn out.
793
00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:14,240
She was over in the corner, gasping for air. She'd done it I don't know how many times.
794
00:56:14,240 --> 00:56:16,720
And they came to me and they said, "We've got a problem here".
795
00:56:16,720 --> 00:56:19,880
And I said, "Yeah, well, go shoot something else or go to lunch or what not"
796
00:56:19,880 --> 00:56:21,680
"and I'll have a guy here after lunch".
797
00:56:21,680 --> 00:56:23,560
And so I brought him in in the afternoon.
798
00:56:26,680 --> 00:56:28,640
One of them was a guy, actually,
799
00:56:28,640 --> 00:56:31,840
and kind of quite a stocky kind of wider guy than me,
800
00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:33,520
not shaped the same at all.
801
00:56:33,520 --> 00:56:36,680
A rehearsal for Ridley was really doing it.
802
00:56:36,680 --> 00:56:40,120
Not, "I'll do this and this and this". You really did it.
803
00:56:40,120 --> 00:56:41,920
Flip flop, flip flop, hit the wall.
804
00:56:41,920 --> 00:56:46,360
You know, and then slide down the wall, 15 times or whatever it was, you know.
805
00:56:48,360 --> 00:56:50,240
Harrison insisted that, you know,
806
00:56:50,240 --> 00:56:53,120
when I'm supposed to be shoving my fingers up his nose
807
00:56:53,120 --> 00:56:55,920
and lifting his head up and throwing him back down,
808
00:56:55,920 --> 00:56:57,120
that I actually do it.
809
00:56:57,120 --> 00:57:00,560
You know, like, I was, like, trying to sort of gently, you know,
810
00:57:00,560 --> 00:57:03,440
pretend, and he was like, "No, you've got to just do it".
811
00:57:03,440 --> 00:57:05,880
And his nose was bleeding and it was gnarly.
812
00:57:05,880 --> 00:57:09,760
But, you know, it was sort of, the only way to do it is just to go for it.
813
00:57:09,760 --> 00:57:14,000
And at one point, actually, we had to do sort of a reshoot
814
00:57:14,000 --> 00:57:16,640
of some of my close-ups. And I was really stunned
815
00:57:16,640 --> 00:57:19,280
because I had been... I mean, it was a gnarly fight.
816
00:57:19,280 --> 00:57:25,200
I was really fighting and I was sure really hurting Harrison as well.
817
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:29,560
And he really wanted me to be grimacing and mugging and, you know...
818
00:57:29,560 --> 00:57:36,400
And so we re-did the close-up of it so that I could be looking a little bit more horrific, I guess.
819
00:57:41,600 --> 00:57:45,200
Any long picture is exhausting for everybody on it.
820
00:57:45,200 --> 00:57:48,760
So once that patience goes, then people get very snappy.
821
00:57:48,760 --> 00:57:51,000
The gulf between Ridley's way of working
822
00:57:51,000 --> 00:57:54,760
and a lot of members of the crew, who'd been, in some cases,
823
00:57:54,760 --> 00:57:58,800
lolling around studios for years, began to become apparent.
824
00:57:58,800 --> 00:58:02,120
The crew that we had was a fast crew.
825
00:58:02,120 --> 00:58:04,160
They were a thorough crew and a professional crew.
826
00:58:04,160 --> 00:58:07,600
All departments, props, wardrobe, make-up, hair,
827
00:58:07,600 --> 00:58:09,000
everybody was fabulous.
828
00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:11,600
And I've worked with these people subsequently,
829
00:58:11,600 --> 00:58:13,240
on a variety of other shows.
830
00:58:13,240 --> 00:58:16,680
But everybody worked exceedingly hard
831
00:58:16,680 --> 00:58:19,120
and was right there on the dime.
832
00:58:19,120 --> 00:58:22,960
One afternoon, we saw somebody handing out these free T-shirts,
833
00:58:22,960 --> 00:58:29,520
which had a rather defiant or revolutionary statement addressed towards Ridley.
834
00:58:29,520 --> 00:58:33,720
And this had come about because, most unfortunately,
835
00:58:33,720 --> 00:58:36,960
somebody had filched from his trailer a British newspaper article
836
00:58:36,960 --> 00:58:40,440
in which they'd asked whether he'd rather work in England or in America.
837
00:58:40,440 --> 00:58:42,760
Now, working for an English paper, you say "England".
838
00:58:42,760 --> 00:58:45,920
You know, in England, I'm so, you know, known here,
839
00:58:45,920 --> 00:58:50,000
crews are more liable to say, "Ready when you are, guv". That's it.
840
00:58:50,000 --> 00:58:51,280
That is it.
841
00:58:51,280 --> 00:58:54,520
Really upset the crew. Really upset the crew.
842
00:58:54,520 --> 00:58:57,760
And so I did what was called "the T-shirt wars".
843
00:58:57,760 --> 00:59:00,760
Katie Haber said, "They made T-shirts and they're wearing them tomorrow".
844
00:59:00,760 --> 00:59:04,200
And I said, "What is it about?" She said, "That article you did". I said, "What article?"
845
00:59:04,200 --> 00:59:06,400
Somebody had actually got the article from England,
846
00:59:06,400 --> 00:59:08,560
printed a pile of them and put them on the tea trolley.
847
00:59:09,520 --> 00:59:13,080
Michael and I sat down with Ridley, and said, "What can we do to smooth this over?
848
00:59:13,080 --> 00:59:16,400
"Because, obviously, we can't make a film with everybody hating you".
849
00:59:16,400 --> 00:59:20,600
I think Deeley came up with the phrase, "Xenophobia Sucks".
850
00:59:20,600 --> 00:59:23,400
He said, "Well, xenophobia means fear of strangers,
851
00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:27,000
"and basically what's going on is, these people don't understand you
852
00:59:27,000 --> 00:59:30,560
"and they don't understand the way you work". So if we put something
853
00:59:30,560 --> 00:59:33,200
on a T-shirt that makes people come up to US and say,
854
00:59:33,200 --> 00:59:36,720
"What does it mean?", it'll sort of smooth over a lot of rough edges.
855
00:59:36,720 --> 00:59:39,800
I put on the green T-shirt the next morning,
856
00:59:39,800 --> 00:59:43,760
with "Xenophobia Sucks" on it, with "Guv" on my hat,
857
00:59:43,760 --> 00:59:45,560
and walked onto the set.
858
00:59:45,560 --> 00:59:47,920
I bought and paid for the T-shirt.
859
00:59:47,920 --> 00:59:53,160
As I put mine on and went to walk out of the trailer door, who's the first one to see me? Ridley.
860
00:59:53,160 --> 00:59:56,920
I said, "Right, morning, Harrison, we're going to do this."
861
00:59:56,920 --> 01:00:02,280
There was this, and there was all these people standing there in their shirts, which I completely ignored,
862
01:00:02,280 --> 01:00:03,800
and didn't say a word about it.
863
01:00:03,800 --> 01:00:08,680
And, they ignored me and we got on with the first scene, with all of us wearing this ridiculous gear,
864
01:00:08,680 --> 01:00:13,120
and by mid-morning the t-shirts started to disappear and by lunchtime they were all gone.
865
01:00:13,120 --> 01:00:16,600
These were guys, you know, who were one's friends.
866
01:00:16,600 --> 01:00:21,200
I couldn't think of a crew member that wasn't doing his absolute best, but, suddenly,
867
01:00:21,200 --> 01:00:23,280
you get all sorts of talking behind the scenes
868
01:00:23,280 --> 01:00:26,280
and here's this foreign director, "Who the hell does he think he is?"
869
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:29,000
"These limeys are over here...", and this, that and the other.
870
01:00:29,000 --> 01:00:35,440
They were tired and you could see that they didn't feel appreciated.
871
01:00:35,440 --> 01:00:40,440
You know, I would say to Ridley, "Go talk to these people, for God sakes!
872
01:00:40,440 --> 01:00:43,280
"Tell them how great they're doing, because, you know,
873
01:00:43,280 --> 01:00:47,640
"everyone is devoted to you but they're devoted through fear."
874
01:00:48,640 --> 01:00:51,160
The only way you knew if you were working
875
01:00:51,160 --> 01:00:55,040
was if you got a call sheet at the end of the day and your name was still on it.
876
01:00:55,040 --> 01:00:57,960
Cos people just all the time disappeared.
877
01:00:57,960 --> 01:01:02,680
On the property room door, there was a list of people who said they'd had enough and they quit.
878
01:01:02,680 --> 01:01:05,200
And we kept a roster of everybody who quit the film.
879
01:01:05,200 --> 01:01:07,640
It can be tough on a set and it can be long hours.
880
01:01:07,640 --> 01:01:11,320
And I remember some pretty long hours on that show.
881
01:01:11,320 --> 01:01:13,480
So what?
882
01:01:13,480 --> 01:01:16,880
I'm sorry, but sometimes work is gruelling
883
01:01:16,880 --> 01:01:20,880
and I don't think PR is there to whine about,
884
01:01:20,880 --> 01:01:25,400
"Ah, you know, it destroyed my life and it was so gruelling."
885
01:01:25,400 --> 01:01:26,920
It was a tough shoot.
886
01:01:26,920 --> 01:01:29,640
We were doing something very special.
887
01:01:29,640 --> 01:01:33,520
To most of the crew, this was just a job.
888
01:01:33,520 --> 01:01:35,200
To a few of us,
889
01:01:35,200 --> 01:01:38,000
this was...special.
890
01:01:38,000 --> 01:01:40,720
This was really... It was magic time.
891
01:01:40,720 --> 01:01:42,520
There was tension from time to time
892
01:01:42,520 --> 01:01:44,640
and there were times when there wasn't.
893
01:01:44,640 --> 01:01:52,680
I think every big, ambitious movie has tension involved.
894
01:01:55,520 --> 01:01:58,520
Eventually we shot that sequence on the back lot of Warner Brothers,
895
01:01:58,520 --> 01:02:01,080
with the jump from one building to the other,
896
01:02:01,080 --> 01:02:04,720
in the building that we could position the way we wanted.
897
01:02:04,720 --> 01:02:07,440
I'd laid out the distance of the building
898
01:02:07,440 --> 01:02:11,160
and I'd jumped it on the ground many, many times and it was fine.
899
01:02:11,160 --> 01:02:14,440
And I'd put a rope on the other side that was blended into the building,
900
01:02:14,440 --> 01:02:18,000
where you couldn't see, where I could get a hold of the rope and hang onto it.
901
01:02:18,000 --> 01:02:21,840
Then we go all ready to do it, again it was at night and it was smoking
902
01:02:21,840 --> 01:02:24,760
and it was raining and there was a mess.
903
01:02:24,760 --> 01:02:29,840
So it came time to do the jump and I made a long run and made the jump.
904
01:02:29,840 --> 01:02:34,320
I was about half way and I could see I wasn't going to make it.
905
01:02:34,320 --> 01:02:36,800
I best thing I could do, I threw out my arm and I hooked one of
906
01:02:36,800 --> 01:02:40,000
these rafters under my arm and that kept me on the building.
907
01:02:40,000 --> 01:02:43,720
They liked it so well they wanted me to do it two or three more times, I can't remember.
908
01:02:43,720 --> 01:02:48,760
So every time I had to hook my arm. I had a big bruise under my arm, but we made the jump.
909
01:02:52,720 --> 01:02:56,920
I had a great rapport with stunt guys cos I ride horses, I fence,
910
01:02:56,920 --> 01:02:59,480
I do some martial arts and that sort of stuff.
911
01:02:59,480 --> 01:03:02,760
And I always watch them, see how they prepare, watch what they do.
912
01:03:02,760 --> 01:03:08,680
It might have been 30 feet from the floor to the top, so we had an air bag at the bottom.
913
01:03:08,680 --> 01:03:10,640
So if you didn't make it...
914
01:03:10,640 --> 01:03:15,680
If I remember correctly, the guy that doubled Rutger, the first jump he made, he didn't make it.
915
01:03:15,680 --> 01:03:18,040
He hit and bounced off and went to the airbag.
916
01:03:18,040 --> 01:03:21,520
Another stunt guy comes in. He does the same thing.
917
01:03:21,520 --> 01:03:26,720
Now we're at five o'clock in the morning and we've got an hour and I'm saying to Ridley, "Ridley,
918
01:03:26,720 --> 01:03:32,280
"if you put the building, and the building were it's own wheels, "if you give me a foot closer,
919
01:03:32,280 --> 01:03:35,200
"I swear it's not impossible for me, I can do this."
920
01:03:35,200 --> 01:03:37,080
And he's desperate by now.
921
01:03:37,080 --> 01:03:40,200
So, he goes, "OK, let's do it."
922
01:03:40,200 --> 01:03:42,400
And then we did one take and I jumped.
923
01:03:45,520 --> 01:03:49,200
Rutger did this one, big, bargey hop,
924
01:03:49,200 --> 01:03:54,000
with a dove in his hand. Cos he came to me and said, "I thought, 'symbol of peace', is this OK?"
925
01:03:54,000 --> 01:03:57,840
I'm going, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, go on, the light's getting blue."
926
01:03:57,840 --> 01:04:03,640
What if I take a dove with me and then when I die, I just hold onto the dove for the last bit?
927
01:04:03,640 --> 01:04:07,160
And then, when I die, just let it go and that's it.
928
01:04:07,160 --> 01:04:09,960
Poof, end of story and then the dove can act for me.
929
01:04:09,960 --> 01:04:13,960
That was the visual part of death.
930
01:04:13,960 --> 01:04:15,240
Up to this moment in the film,
931
01:04:15,240 --> 01:04:18,480
it's been in a metropolis that's constantly overcast,
932
01:04:18,480 --> 01:04:21,360
and raining, dark and gloomy and, all of a sudden,
933
01:04:21,360 --> 01:04:26,160
you do a shot where you see the dove flying up into a clear, blue sky
934
01:04:26,160 --> 01:04:31,480
which is a daylight shot and there's just some clouds of steam around and stuff like that.
935
01:04:31,480 --> 01:04:35,360
This was a matter of something that had happened during the filming.
936
01:04:35,360 --> 01:04:39,800
The dove that they had got wet because of all this constant rain
937
01:04:39,800 --> 01:04:45,160
and when he was releasing it to let it go, the dove was so wet, it couldn't fly.
938
01:04:45,160 --> 01:04:49,240
So instead of flying off Rutger's lap into the sky and then following it up,
939
01:04:49,240 --> 01:04:51,960
the dove just literally hopped out of Rutger's lap
940
01:04:51,960 --> 01:04:54,960
and waddled across the roof, you know, out of the frame.
941
01:04:56,480 --> 01:04:59,040
There was a real page of opera talk,
942
01:04:59,040 --> 01:05:03,200
that is bad in any script, I don't care how you look at it.
943
01:05:03,200 --> 01:05:06,800
This was hi-tech speak that had very little bearing
944
01:05:06,800 --> 01:05:10,120
on anything that the movie had shown you before,
945
01:05:10,120 --> 01:05:13,960
so I just put a knife in it and I did this at night
946
01:05:13,960 --> 01:05:16,120
and I didn't know if Ridley was OK with it.
947
01:05:36,560 --> 01:05:39,640
Like most actors aware that this is his death scene coming up,
948
01:05:39,640 --> 01:05:43,400
this is his kind of moment and they suddenly start getting pretty tenacious
949
01:05:43,400 --> 01:05:46,240
about what they want to shoot and what they want covered.
950
01:05:46,240 --> 01:05:48,880
I think he was quite demanding at that time of Ridley.
951
01:05:48,880 --> 01:05:51,320
I came out with two lines
952
01:05:51,320 --> 01:05:57,880
that had some sort of off-worldly feel to it and some poetry in it.
953
01:05:57,880 --> 01:06:01,840
And then I came up with the line, at four o'clock in the morning,
954
01:06:01,840 --> 01:06:04,320
"All those moments will be lost in time like tears of rain."
955
01:06:05,080 --> 01:06:08,800
'I brought it to the set and Ridley liked it.'
956
01:06:10,720 --> 01:06:18,280
Rutger is big and bold and interesting, as an actor.
957
01:06:18,280 --> 01:06:20,880
I had a great time working with him.
958
01:06:20,880 --> 01:06:25,920
Some of the scenes we had together are some of the most satisfying...
959
01:06:27,440 --> 01:06:30,160
..professional moments I've ever had.
960
01:06:31,360 --> 01:06:37,920
'I think the two characters depend on each other in a dramatic sense.
961
01:06:37,920 --> 01:06:42,720
'So, I was very grateful to have his capacity and his strength
962
01:06:42,720 --> 01:06:45,360
'and his focus to work with.'
963
01:06:47,920 --> 01:06:51,240
The last two days were actually a nightmare because we had only two days.
964
01:06:51,240 --> 01:06:55,240
They were definitely cutting off the money and we wouldn't be able to shoot beyond that.
965
01:06:55,240 --> 01:06:57,120
We still had rather a lot of work to do.
966
01:06:57,120 --> 01:07:02,680
The last day of shooting was 27 or 28 hours.
967
01:07:02,680 --> 01:07:07,160
We must have gone to work at five in the afternoon or something like that
968
01:07:07,160 --> 01:07:09,080
and we shot all night and, of course,
969
01:07:09,080 --> 01:07:11,960
everybody thought we'd finish when the light comes up
970
01:07:11,960 --> 01:07:13,480
cos you can't shoot any more.
971
01:07:13,480 --> 01:07:17,640
We were really, really dying. We were absolutely in the water here,
972
01:07:17,640 --> 01:07:19,840
swimming with the sharks around us.
973
01:07:19,840 --> 01:07:24,680
I knew, by then, it would be April, May, June - I'd got dawn coming in,
974
01:07:24,680 --> 01:07:28,280
5, 4.45, so it's going to go blue. It's going blue, in fact,
975
01:07:28,280 --> 01:07:31,360
there's a beautiful light cos it is blue. That's dawn.
976
01:07:31,360 --> 01:07:35,760
When the sun came up, the suits were all standing off to the side,
977
01:07:35,760 --> 01:07:38,080
there was, like, four guys in suits.
978
01:07:38,080 --> 01:07:41,280
So the sun came up and they were all smiling and all that,
979
01:07:41,280 --> 01:07:43,880
"Oh, it's great, we can pull the plug now."
980
01:07:43,880 --> 01:07:48,160
Ridley said, "I'm not finished yet," cos the death scene was incomplete.
981
01:07:48,160 --> 01:07:50,360
Michael Deeley came over to me
982
01:07:50,360 --> 01:07:53,400
and said, "Listen, we got to keep going."
983
01:07:53,400 --> 01:07:58,000
And so what we decided to do was literally take chain-saws
984
01:07:58,000 --> 01:08:01,360
and saws and cut the set out of the street
985
01:08:01,360 --> 01:08:04,800
and put it in vehicles and fork-lifts
986
01:08:04,800 --> 01:08:09,440
and move that set piece, with the roof top, down to the stage.
987
01:08:10,960 --> 01:08:15,760
Everybody was just beat and we still had all the wet, all the dirt,
988
01:08:15,760 --> 01:08:18,360
all the smoke, everything going on.
989
01:08:18,360 --> 01:08:22,120
And when we finally cut on the last shot,
990
01:08:22,120 --> 01:08:26,880
it was, from top to bottom, it was, "Let's get out of here".
991
01:08:26,880 --> 01:08:29,000
And everybody walked away.
992
01:08:29,000 --> 01:08:36,200
For the first time in weeks, my excellent Scottie dog and I drove home in daylight,
993
01:08:36,200 --> 01:08:38,840
thinking the whole nightmare was over.
994
01:08:38,840 --> 01:08:45,080
But we were not aware of what was lurking in our mailboxes the next day
995
01:08:45,080 --> 01:08:46,920
which was a communication
996
01:08:46,920 --> 01:08:50,640
from the lawyers representing Perenchio and Yorkin,
997
01:08:50,640 --> 01:08:56,560
invoking their right, since we were 10% over budget, to discharge us from the picture.
998
01:08:56,560 --> 01:08:59,760
I know they had the right to and I think it was done out of pique.
999
01:08:59,760 --> 01:09:02,000
I think that Perenchio was so cross with us
1000
01:09:02,000 --> 01:09:06,600
because he'd had to pay up on his guarantee of completion that he wanted to punish us.
1001
01:09:06,600 --> 01:09:11,120
We ran over budget, needless to say, and it was one of those things.
1002
01:09:11,120 --> 01:09:13,480
It happens, I guess, in motion pictures
1003
01:09:13,480 --> 01:09:17,960
and particularly in one that was as difficult as this was to make.
1004
01:09:17,960 --> 01:09:20,880
When they wanted to remove Ridley from the film, I said,
1005
01:09:20,880 --> 01:09:23,400
"Wait a minute, there's no way.
1006
01:09:23,400 --> 01:09:27,640
"He's got to finish this film, because we bought a Ridley Scott film."
1007
01:09:27,640 --> 01:09:32,520
That became very difficult for us I remember Jerry Perenchio coming in
1008
01:09:32,520 --> 01:09:36,280
and saying, "Now we can put this film exactly how we want it."
1009
01:09:36,280 --> 01:09:38,880
I said, "That won't be too easy, because
1010
01:09:38,880 --> 01:09:40,680
"everything has been broken down,
1011
01:09:40,680 --> 01:09:44,400
"because I'm working with the sound crews" at the time, which it hadn't.
1012
01:09:44,400 --> 01:09:50,520
I was trying to tap dance around this situation because I knew that Ridley would come back.
1013
01:09:50,520 --> 01:09:54,840
You don't fire a director unless he's done some horrible thing.
1014
01:09:54,840 --> 01:09:58,560
It didn't have the slightest effect. I mean, the job continued to be done.
1015
01:09:58,560 --> 01:10:02,240
So Ridley was on the picture all the way through, nobody went anywhere.
1016
01:10:02,240 --> 01:10:04,520
There's a lot of forgiveness in it all.
1017
01:10:04,520 --> 01:10:08,760
And over a period of time, you just realise that you are doing something
1018
01:10:08,760 --> 01:10:13,160
that is so different, so special, so unique.
1019
01:10:13,160 --> 01:10:15,600
You've done a man's job, sir.
1020
01:10:17,320 --> 01:10:19,520
But are you sure you are a man?
1021
01:10:21,920 --> 01:10:24,080
I think everyone who worked on that film,
1022
01:10:24,080 --> 01:10:26,560
when they realised what had been accomplished,
1023
01:10:26,560 --> 01:10:28,960
was extremely proud that they were involved.
1024
01:10:28,960 --> 01:10:32,480
And all of those skirmishes that take place,
1025
01:10:32,480 --> 01:10:37,120
to the point of making it better, not just getting on people for ego's sake.
1026
01:10:37,120 --> 01:10:39,360
Cos I don't really think Ridley does that.
1027
01:10:39,360 --> 01:10:41,160
He doesn't deal directly with ego.
1028
01:10:41,160 --> 01:10:45,480
He deals with, "What's going to be the best damn thing we can put on the screen?"
1029
01:10:45,480 --> 01:10:47,960
The fact of it is that, in our going over budget,
1030
01:10:47,960 --> 01:10:51,840
at least it can be said that the money was, is on the screen.
1031
01:10:51,840 --> 01:10:54,360
No doubt, um...
1032
01:10:54,360 --> 01:10:57,760
It's not the usual thing of just misplanning.
1033
01:10:57,760 --> 01:11:00,080
It's just that it's up there.
1034
01:11:15,400 --> 01:11:19,680
I look at Blade Runner as the last analogue science-fiction movie made,
1035
01:11:19,680 --> 01:11:23,120
because we didn't have all the advantages that people have now.
1036
01:11:23,120 --> 01:11:26,480
And I'm glad we didn't, because there's nothing artificial about it.
1037
01:11:26,480 --> 01:11:28,920
There's no computer-generated images in the film.
1038
01:11:28,920 --> 01:11:32,240
The things that pervaded us during the whole production was,
1039
01:11:32,240 --> 01:11:35,720
"How do we pull rabbits out of hats here? How do we do more for less?"
1040
01:11:35,720 --> 01:11:38,480
I always remember them coming off, going, "Wow!"
1041
01:11:38,480 --> 01:11:42,520
They nearly got me involved in special effects in a big way.
1042
01:11:42,520 --> 01:11:46,040
It was, er, plain, old-fashioned filmmaking
1043
01:11:46,040 --> 01:11:52,240
with C-stands and gaffer's tape and running the big 65mm cameras.
1044
01:11:52,240 --> 01:11:54,400
In retrospect, this is probably
1045
01:11:54,400 --> 01:11:59,000
one of the last great in-camera special effects movies ever done!
1046
01:12:01,320 --> 01:12:04,120
In the late seventies, there was kind of a resurgence.
1047
01:12:04,120 --> 01:12:06,840
As far as visual effects went, it was like a rebirth,
1048
01:12:06,840 --> 01:12:10,160
because there was a large void the decade and a half before that.
1049
01:12:10,160 --> 01:12:11,640
There were effects in some films,
1050
01:12:11,640 --> 01:12:13,400
but there wasn't enough infrastructure
1051
01:12:13,400 --> 01:12:15,720
to do a large film like Star Wars or Close Encounters.
1052
01:12:15,720 --> 01:12:17,240
The ground was changing, you know.
1053
01:12:17,240 --> 01:12:21,640
Suddenly, we had motion-control cameras and, suddenly, computers had reared their head.
1054
01:12:21,640 --> 01:12:23,880
But, as we were doing Blade Runner,
1055
01:12:23,880 --> 01:12:28,120
I did have personal connection with Dougie Trumbull and, er,
1056
01:12:28,120 --> 01:12:33,800
Richard Yuricich and I know I had a part in persuading Richard, you know, to do the movie.
1057
01:12:33,800 --> 01:12:35,680
It was a very small film at the time.
1058
01:12:35,680 --> 01:12:41,080
It was about 2 million, and it was about 50-56 shots.
1059
01:12:41,080 --> 01:12:47,880
They had based it on doing a like number of shots to Alien, which really wasn't enough for this film.
1060
01:12:47,880 --> 01:12:51,800
And the more Ridley got into it, the grander his vision, I think, expanded.
1061
01:12:52,800 --> 01:12:57,160
It's not like, "Spend all the money you guys have and make it look as good as you can."
1062
01:12:57,160 --> 01:13:02,000
It was like, "Do more with very little money and very little time."
1063
01:13:02,000 --> 01:13:03,920
And that was kind of fun.
1064
01:13:03,920 --> 01:13:07,080
Well, part of what really worked for Blade Runner was the fact
1065
01:13:07,080 --> 01:13:10,520
that we were all stupid and didn't know too much about miniatures,
1066
01:13:10,520 --> 01:13:13,720
and some of the choices we made I would never have dared make now,
1067
01:13:13,720 --> 01:13:15,880
although they're actually good choices.
1068
01:13:15,880 --> 01:13:18,200
We worked to the concept.
1069
01:13:18,200 --> 01:13:22,280
And you never design a visual effects shot to have the audience go,
1070
01:13:22,280 --> 01:13:26,200
"Oh, wow, what a neat visual effects shot. "What a great design."
1071
01:13:26,200 --> 01:13:28,160
It always has to tell the story.
1072
01:13:28,160 --> 01:13:34,080
And fortunately, in the case of Blade Runner, one of the protagonists was the city, was the environment.
1073
01:13:34,080 --> 01:13:37,680
People had to live in this very oppressive environment
1074
01:13:37,680 --> 01:13:40,640
and that is one of the key characters in the story.
1075
01:13:40,640 --> 01:13:44,240
The good thing is that there was pollution as part of the story.
1076
01:13:44,240 --> 01:13:48,520
Pollution's not good, but there was going to be lots of aerial perspective and haze
1077
01:13:48,520 --> 01:13:51,200
and that was all part of the, the scene.
1078
01:13:57,760 --> 01:14:00,320
I like to get in there, cos I like to see what the lighting was.
1079
01:14:00,320 --> 01:14:02,680
And I pushed hard for smoke.
1080
01:14:02,680 --> 01:14:05,640
When you're shooting things that are only ten feet away from you,
1081
01:14:05,640 --> 01:14:07,760
and it has to look like it's two or three miles,
1082
01:14:07,760 --> 01:14:11,600
the only way to build up the sense of aerial perspective at that time
1083
01:14:11,600 --> 01:14:14,080
was to fill the miniature room full of smoke
1084
01:14:14,080 --> 01:14:17,840
and create things blurring off and greying off into the distance.
1085
01:14:17,840 --> 01:14:20,800
It was a very different time for visual effects.
1086
01:14:20,800 --> 01:14:25,320
It was all optical composites, and quality was a major concern.
1087
01:14:25,320 --> 01:14:30,840
And many times, instead of doing it as an optical composite, we would do multiple exposures, which was risky,
1088
01:14:30,840 --> 01:14:35,800
because you'd shoot one pass, roll the film back, shoot another pass, roll the film back,
1089
01:14:35,800 --> 01:14:38,240
and I remember a couple times, they'd open up the camera
1090
01:14:38,240 --> 01:14:40,440
and there'd be nothing but shredded film inside.
1091
01:14:40,440 --> 01:14:43,920
That opening shot, I think, had 17 passes.
1092
01:14:43,920 --> 01:14:49,520
So they ran it, stopped, wound it back, ran it again, wound it back.
1093
01:14:49,520 --> 01:14:53,600
Very tricky work. If you make one mistake, you have to start over.
1094
01:14:53,600 --> 01:14:58,400
And that's where guys like Dave come in and make that magic happen.
1095
01:14:58,400 --> 01:15:04,800
We learned early on that, even though we planned to work at a certain scale on the miniatures,
1096
01:15:04,800 --> 01:15:08,920
that that really wasn't going to work. What we had to do was work the same way that Ridley worked.
1097
01:15:08,920 --> 01:15:12,320
You'd go into a large stage, take the brightest light you've got,
1098
01:15:12,320 --> 01:15:14,240
shine it back at where the camera sits
1099
01:15:14,240 --> 01:15:16,440
and then start putting stuff in front of it
1100
01:15:16,440 --> 01:15:18,240
and add lots of smoke into the room.
1101
01:15:18,240 --> 01:15:21,560
And so, I started composing miniature shots that way
1102
01:15:21,560 --> 01:15:24,400
and that's when it really started to happen.
1103
01:15:28,120 --> 01:15:34,400
What most people are amazed at - a lot of those sets were no bigger than 12 feet by 12 feet.
1104
01:15:34,400 --> 01:15:36,840
You know, we weren't shooting on very large stages.
1105
01:15:36,840 --> 01:15:42,200
And this one shot, spiralling down onto the roof of the precinct tower, we wanted to get the camera up
1106
01:15:42,200 --> 01:15:45,160
and the camera simply wouldn't boom up that high either.
1107
01:15:45,160 --> 01:15:47,960
So we brought the whole miniature down to the camera,
1108
01:15:47,960 --> 01:15:51,200
basically by tilting it onto an oblique angle on its side,
1109
01:15:51,200 --> 01:15:54,760
so that the camera could reach high enough to get that aerial shot
1110
01:15:54,760 --> 01:15:58,520
and be far enough back from the tops of the building at the same time.
1111
01:15:58,520 --> 01:16:01,720
In those days, in the case of some of the visual effects
1112
01:16:01,720 --> 01:16:04,960
work on that movie, we used a process called matte painting.
1113
01:16:04,960 --> 01:16:07,240
And matte painting is a technique
1114
01:16:07,240 --> 01:16:10,160
that is used to alter the look of a location
1115
01:16:10,160 --> 01:16:11,680
or a set in a motion picture.
1116
01:16:11,680 --> 01:16:15,840
It's a combination of painted artwork
1117
01:16:15,840 --> 01:16:18,240
and live action photography.
1118
01:16:18,240 --> 01:16:20,560
That is even beyond digital.
1119
01:16:20,560 --> 01:16:22,720
I mean, it's better than anything,
1120
01:16:22,720 --> 01:16:26,920
because it's photography that is shot and exposed at the same time.
1121
01:16:26,920 --> 01:16:32,200
The matte painting's exposed with the live action photography,
1122
01:16:32,200 --> 01:16:34,760
so it just is on one piece of film.
1123
01:16:34,760 --> 01:16:37,200
There are, like, really not paintings in this film.
1124
01:16:37,200 --> 01:16:41,440
There's portions of paintings and some shots might have had five or six paintings
1125
01:16:41,440 --> 01:16:44,680
where a section was burnt in that could've been fluorescence.
1126
01:16:44,680 --> 01:16:51,000
Well, in the Tyrell office, there was a painting for the exterior where the pyramid had to be finished going up.
1127
01:16:51,000 --> 01:16:57,560
Those shots all came together real well. I really like seeing Sean walk through the sun ball,
1128
01:16:57,560 --> 01:17:01,400
because that was all rotoscoped and it was a very scary shot.
1129
01:17:01,400 --> 01:17:04,160
It's a beautiful shot. It's my favourite in the film.
1130
01:17:04,160 --> 01:17:08,760
And you watch the film, and you know it's an effect, but you just don't perceive it as an effect.
1131
01:17:08,760 --> 01:17:12,400
You're in the Tyrell Corporation office and you just fall into it.
1132
01:17:16,560 --> 01:17:18,840
Everything was really done.
1133
01:17:18,840 --> 01:17:22,400
cos you can feel that when you watch a film. I think when you see a film,
1134
01:17:22,400 --> 01:17:26,120
and it's an in-camera effect, it feels real.
1135
01:17:27,640 --> 01:17:32,040
For me, there was an interesting thing that happened, because I knew,
1136
01:17:32,040 --> 01:17:35,880
and we knew, how few visual effects shots we had in the movie.
1137
01:17:35,880 --> 01:17:40,400
Compared to Star Wars or Close Encounters or anybody else's, you know, big effects movies.
1138
01:17:40,400 --> 01:17:42,560
There was like a third of the number of shots.
1139
01:17:42,560 --> 01:17:46,160
But the fact that the effects shots didn't stick out like a sore thumb,
1140
01:17:46,160 --> 01:17:49,160
they were just integrated into this big, amazing event,
1141
01:17:49,160 --> 01:17:52,680
that it seemed like there were more effects shots than there were.
1142
01:17:54,960 --> 01:17:56,720
Katy Haber gave me a call and said,
1143
01:17:56,720 --> 01:18:01,040
"Ridley wants you to meet Philip Dick and can he come down and see it?"
1144
01:18:01,040 --> 01:18:03,320
So we went into the screening room.
1145
01:18:03,320 --> 01:18:08,240
And Katy had said, "Just tie together ten minutes of your better shots and run them."
1146
01:18:08,240 --> 01:18:14,280
So the Vangelis music started to play, the seats started to rumble and we ran through the thing.
1147
01:18:14,280 --> 01:18:19,240
The lights came back up, Philip Dick turned around and looked right through the back of my head.
1148
01:18:19,240 --> 01:18:23,240
And he said, "How is this possible? How did this happen?
1149
01:18:23,240 --> 01:18:25,560
"It's like you guys hardwired my brain.
1150
01:18:25,560 --> 01:18:27,720
"That's what I saw when I was writing that story.
1151
01:18:27,720 --> 01:18:29,880
"I don't understand this. How can this happen?"
1152
01:18:29,880 --> 01:18:35,360
He was completely blown away, could not believe it,
1153
01:18:35,360 --> 01:18:39,200
that something so serious was happening with his book.
1154
01:18:47,000 --> 01:18:52,040
Ridley and I decided to see this film before we showed it to Tandem on our own.
1155
01:18:52,040 --> 01:18:57,040
So we sit there, the lights go down and we never said a word through the entire film.
1156
01:18:57,040 --> 01:19:00,360
And when the lights came up, Ridley said...
1157
01:19:00,360 --> 01:19:05,280
- "I think it's marvellous, but what the
- BLEEP
- does it mean?"
1158
01:19:05,280 --> 01:19:09,000
And we knew then that we had some restructuring to do
1159
01:19:09,000 --> 01:19:11,880
and a lot of work to make this thing work.
1160
01:19:11,880 --> 01:19:18,360
It didn't mean changing everything around, it meant getting into each of the scenes and developing them more.
1161
01:19:18,360 --> 01:19:22,160
I think it was four hours long. And there was a three-page scene I'd written
1162
01:19:22,160 --> 01:19:26,920
that was now 14 minutes long, right? I mean, it was quite startling,
1163
01:19:26,920 --> 01:19:30,480
but it was also magical and awesome and stunning.
1164
01:19:32,000 --> 01:19:36,000
Bud and I and Robin French, who was one of our partners, we spent,
1165
01:19:36,000 --> 01:19:38,720
I think, six weeks in England with Ridley,
1166
01:19:38,720 --> 01:19:40,560
you know, cutting the film.
1167
01:19:40,560 --> 01:19:43,920
And doing all the special effects and whatever else and it was...
1168
01:19:43,920 --> 01:19:45,800
You know, it was a lot of tug of wars,
1169
01:19:45,800 --> 01:19:48,160
what should stay in, what shouldn't stay in.
1170
01:19:48,160 --> 01:19:51,560
They would come over to see things and...
1171
01:19:51,560 --> 01:19:55,160
the trouble is, no matter what we did, they didn't like it.
1172
01:19:55,160 --> 01:20:00,680
Took out a ton of things that I felt were necessary and we had to cut the film down.
1173
01:20:00,680 --> 01:20:02,880
We also had a legal right at that time
1174
01:20:02,880 --> 01:20:05,080
that Warner Bros had the right to...
1175
01:20:05,080 --> 01:20:09,200
Anything from over two hours, they could take out if they wanted to.
1176
01:20:09,200 --> 01:20:11,720
What you reading?
1177
01:20:11,720 --> 01:20:14,040
Old favourite - Treasure Island.
1178
01:20:14,040 --> 01:20:17,600
'I think the first scene to be dropped was the Holden hospital scene.
1179
01:20:17,600 --> 01:20:19,800
'Basically, there was lots of trimming going on.
1180
01:20:19,800 --> 01:20:23,760
'You know, taking things out. When he comes back,'
1181
01:20:23,760 --> 01:20:30,240
having been beaten by Leon and he takes her back to his place,
1182
01:20:30,240 --> 01:20:31,800
he's washing at the sink
1183
01:20:31,800 --> 01:20:35,000
and it was much, much longer and sort of hypnotic.
1184
01:20:35,000 --> 01:20:37,080
She just wanted to look at him.
1185
01:20:37,080 --> 01:20:39,080
You had far more detail of him washing
1186
01:20:39,080 --> 01:20:42,840
and the blood coming from his mouth and she slowly got closer and closer.
1187
01:20:42,840 --> 01:20:45,720
And that was wonderful.
1188
01:20:45,720 --> 01:20:50,320
And the scene where he kisses her against the wall, that was more sort of, er...
1189
01:20:50,320 --> 01:20:52,480
It was more sensuous at one time.
1190
01:20:52,480 --> 01:20:56,840
It becomes sort of violent now, because it's been cut down.
1191
01:20:58,800 --> 01:20:59,840
Towards the end,
1192
01:20:59,840 --> 01:21:02,720
I know on Blade Runner we were sort of thinking about the next movie
1193
01:21:02,720 --> 01:21:04,920
and there was this project that we were working on,
1194
01:21:04,920 --> 01:21:08,080
which was called Legend, affectionately known as Leg End.
1195
01:21:09,760 --> 01:21:13,800
I wanted it to work like the thoughts of his.
1196
01:21:13,800 --> 01:21:18,880
So he would pick up a photograph, he would then start looking at it
1197
01:21:18,880 --> 01:21:23,800
and remembering and you'd see this unicorn running through the forest coming towards you.
1198
01:21:23,800 --> 01:21:26,560
It'd come right up the camera and it would shake its head.
1199
01:21:26,560 --> 01:21:31,040
And as it shook its head, I cut to him shaking his head like shaking that thought away.
1200
01:21:31,040 --> 01:21:36,600
And it just made it such a lyrical piece and...magic.
1201
01:21:36,600 --> 01:21:42,880
To this moment, when he comes flying through the, I had no idea what was it, nor did anybody in the film.
1202
01:21:42,880 --> 01:21:46,280
Now, when they run his cut, you look at that and you say,
1203
01:21:46,280 --> 01:21:48,600
"Well, what does that unicorn mean?"
1204
01:21:48,600 --> 01:21:52,800
I remember them saying, "If it doesn't mean anything, we're going to cut it out."
1205
01:21:52,800 --> 01:21:58,560
So they were throwing away things that were there for reasons.
1206
01:21:58,560 --> 01:22:03,840
I mean, it's all tied together in the final frames of the film, when he lifts up the unicorn,
1207
01:22:03,840 --> 01:22:09,200
the fact that they know that his thought pattern works with unicorns, it's one of his memories.
1208
01:22:09,200 --> 01:22:11,320
Could he be a replicant? Could he be?
1209
01:22:11,320 --> 01:22:13,040
That was trimmed down.
1210
01:22:13,040 --> 01:22:17,560
I mean, all the subtleties were taken out. That's the thing about filmmaking anyway.
1211
01:22:17,560 --> 01:22:21,160
Most of the things that go first when they think a thing's too long are the subtleties.
1212
01:22:21,160 --> 01:22:24,160
Do you know, the terrible thing about Blade Runner
1213
01:22:24,160 --> 01:22:28,400
was it was being made for people who didn't understand what it was about.
1214
01:22:28,400 --> 01:22:31,480
When we finally screened the picture in Denver, and we got the cards,
1215
01:22:31,480 --> 01:22:33,840
a lot of the people said they couldn't understand it.
1216
01:22:33,840 --> 01:22:36,280
It was unintelligible. They couldn't follow this...
1217
01:22:36,280 --> 01:22:40,000
They didn't know what the people were saying. It was kind of a different language.
1218
01:22:40,000 --> 01:22:41,640
HE USES CITYSPEAK
1219
01:22:41,640 --> 01:22:43,840
Too much confusion at this point,
1220
01:22:43,840 --> 01:22:46,480
saying, "What's this? What's that? What's Cityspeak?
1221
01:22:46,480 --> 01:22:49,920
"I don't understand this. What's he saying?" And I'm going, "Oh, God!"
1222
01:22:49,920 --> 01:22:55,800
Bud and I insisted that we do... we put some voiceover, with, um,
1223
01:22:55,800 --> 01:23:00,800
with Harrison to clarify some of, you know, to move the thing forward.
1224
01:23:00,800 --> 01:23:04,920
And I know this, Ridley never agreed to that and never liked it.
1225
01:23:06,440 --> 01:23:10,560
It wasn't their idea, it was our idea. It was, "I am not stupid."
1226
01:23:10,560 --> 01:23:13,480
I looked at the results and said, "This ain't working.
1227
01:23:13,480 --> 01:23:18,960
I agree with you, but what can we do? How about voiceover?"
1228
01:23:18,960 --> 01:23:20,880
"OK, yeah, let's do it."
1229
01:23:20,880 --> 01:23:22,920
HARRISON FORD: Now, is "farfetched" in or out?
1230
01:23:22,920 --> 01:23:24,320
This is reel three, section one.
1231
01:23:24,320 --> 01:23:25,600
Take one.
1232
01:23:25,600 --> 01:23:27,680
It didn't help me any.
1233
01:23:27,680 --> 01:23:29,520
Neither did the flake from the bathtub.
1234
01:23:29,520 --> 01:23:32,800
Nothing helped, not even booze.
1235
01:23:32,800 --> 01:23:34,600
I was restless and hungry.
1236
01:23:34,600 --> 01:23:36,960
I needed the streets and I needed food.
1237
01:23:36,960 --> 01:23:38,640
- RIDLEY ON INTERCOM:
- 'OK.'
1238
01:23:38,640 --> 01:23:40,600
Pretty weird. Pretty weird.
1239
01:23:40,600 --> 01:23:43,320
BEEPING The flake.
1240
01:23:43,320 --> 01:23:46,240
Maybe it was a scale. A fish scale.
1241
01:23:47,760 --> 01:23:49,320
Real or artificial?
1242
01:23:49,320 --> 01:23:52,880
-This is bizarre. Goddamn, this is bizarre.
1243
01:23:52,880 --> 01:23:55,520
- 'Um, why?'
- I don't know.
1244
01:23:55,520 --> 01:23:58,560
'I never believed it was going to be used.'
1245
01:23:58,560 --> 01:24:03,040
And, er, when I started talking to Ridley about it,
1246
01:24:03,040 --> 01:24:06,640
it turned out that they were, they were things
1247
01:24:06,640 --> 01:24:09,600
that he was not out of sympathy with.
1248
01:24:09,600 --> 01:24:13,280
And he's right. He said, "This doesn't sound right." And I said, "No, you're right."
1249
01:24:13,280 --> 01:24:17,760
So we tried every which way to rewrite, except it was difficult to write.
1250
01:24:17,760 --> 01:24:22,720
We couldn't actually land on what he should actually talk about.
1251
01:24:22,720 --> 01:24:29,120
It's a romanticised view of being, internalizing what's in his mind.
1252
01:24:29,120 --> 01:24:30,520
What would he be thinking?
1253
01:24:30,520 --> 01:24:37,320
Turned out Ridley and Warner Bros had some issues with the voiceover narration
1254
01:24:37,320 --> 01:24:44,480
and the final versions of the narration were done without Ridley.
1255
01:24:44,480 --> 01:24:47,200
And I missed him.
1256
01:24:47,200 --> 01:24:49,840
We all went to London to do the cutting, to do the postproduction,
1257
01:24:49,840 --> 01:24:50,880
and when we were away,
1258
01:24:50,880 --> 01:24:53,720
that's when they sneaked in and did the voiceover.
1259
01:24:53,720 --> 01:25:01,360
I was obliged by, um, by my contract to supply that voiceover narration.
1260
01:25:01,360 --> 01:25:05,360
And on the last one, I went in and I thought,
1261
01:25:05,360 --> 01:25:10,680
"Simply do it. Do it the best you can and go home,"
1262
01:25:10,680 --> 01:25:13,960
because I had arduously argued through other versions
1263
01:25:13,960 --> 01:25:17,600
to try and get the best version that we could of the narration,
1264
01:25:17,600 --> 01:25:20,320
even though I didn't think it was necessary.
1265
01:25:20,320 --> 01:25:23,800
- VOICEOVER SESSION:
- All right, go ahead.
- Testing one, two, three.
1266
01:25:23,800 --> 01:25:27,960
Gaff had been there. He'd let Rachael live.
1267
01:25:27,960 --> 01:25:29,840
He had nothing to fear from Bryant,
1268
01:25:29,840 --> 01:25:32,080
but a lot to fear from me if he'd killed her.
1269
01:25:32,080 --> 01:25:34,240
-I don't like that, let's start again.
1270
01:25:34,240 --> 01:25:35,280
- Excuse me.
- Yeah.
1271
01:25:35,280 --> 01:25:37,160
Didn't you say that bothered you?
1272
01:25:37,160 --> 01:25:40,400
- No, but I...
- I thought you said that was getting in your way.
1273
01:25:40,400 --> 01:25:41,440
No, sir, not...
1274
01:25:41,440 --> 01:25:43,800
I'm sorry, I heard you wrong. Go ahead, then.
1275
01:25:43,800 --> 01:25:47,680
Only after that had been dissected from the film
1276
01:25:47,680 --> 01:25:51,520
that I got any pleasure out of seeing that movie.
1277
01:25:51,520 --> 01:25:53,520
- Rolling now?
- Yeah.
1278
01:25:53,520 --> 01:25:58,920
Once I knew that people were not getting with it, the fact is, if you are ahead of your time,
1279
01:25:58,920 --> 01:26:03,840
then that's...that's as bad as being behind the times, nearly.
1280
01:26:03,840 --> 01:26:05,680
You've still got the same problem.
1281
01:26:05,680 --> 01:26:11,120
And so, I'm all about trying to fix the problem, so I'm always there to try and say, "Right, what can we do?
1282
01:26:11,120 --> 01:26:14,360
"Shit's not really working." I think it was Jerry's team said,
1283
01:26:14,360 --> 01:26:18,040
"You know, it's that dark ending, we need a happy ending."
1284
01:26:20,480 --> 01:26:23,120
They decided to try to get
1285
01:26:23,120 --> 01:26:26,400
some widescreen shots of really nice-looking nature.
1286
01:26:26,400 --> 01:26:30,440
I was sent to shoot it with a cameraman. So it was just him and I.
1287
01:26:30,440 --> 01:26:33,640
And we were flying around in a helicopter for six days.
1288
01:26:33,640 --> 01:26:38,800
But when we got back, you couldn't see anything, because there was a lot of cloud and a lot of snow.
1289
01:26:38,800 --> 01:26:41,240
So everything we shot was completely useless.
1290
01:26:41,240 --> 01:26:46,480
Ridley, being a fan of Stanley Kubrick's, remembered the footage that opens The Shining.
1291
01:26:46,480 --> 01:26:48,880
If I know Stanley, Stanley doesn't fly.
1292
01:26:48,880 --> 01:26:50,640
He has never gone to Montana,
1293
01:26:50,640 --> 01:26:55,360
so he must have done a blanket shoot of every peak in Montana for The Shining,
1294
01:26:55,360 --> 01:26:57,360
using the best helicopter crew.
1295
01:26:57,360 --> 01:27:00,160
I'll bet you he's got weeks of helicopter footage.
1296
01:27:00,160 --> 01:27:05,400
He was very receptive, he loved Alien, he liked, he really sort of admired Ridley,
1297
01:27:05,400 --> 01:27:09,080
and said, "Yeah, yeah, but, you know, as long as there's no footage used
1298
01:27:09,080 --> 01:27:14,040
"that's actually in The Shining, there's a lot of outtakes, etc, and if it's any good, fine."
1299
01:27:19,920 --> 01:27:24,160
Within about 17 hours, I had six weeks of helicopter footage.
1300
01:27:24,160 --> 01:27:28,920
It's a getting away shot, where I had to shoot them on the road, and I did it,
1301
01:27:28,920 --> 01:27:34,360
because I figured it might actually affect what I thought the outcome of the movie would be negative.
1302
01:27:34,360 --> 01:27:36,200
I'd better deal with it.
1303
01:27:36,200 --> 01:27:39,520
I didn't know how long we'd have together.
1304
01:27:39,520 --> 01:27:41,040
Who does?
1305
01:27:47,760 --> 01:27:50,800
One of the great things the experiences that would follow for me
1306
01:27:50,800 --> 01:27:53,120
would be scoring at Marble Arch with Vangelis.
1307
01:27:53,120 --> 01:27:56,760
And most of that, every night, I'd go to Vangelis' studio
1308
01:27:56,760 --> 01:28:03,120
and it would be him and maybe one assistant, that's it, in a big, barn-like place behind Marble Arch.
1309
01:28:03,120 --> 01:28:07,040
When I would arrive, he'd go, "Come, listen to this."
1310
01:28:07,040 --> 01:28:09,440
And he would actually say, "Watch."
1311
01:28:09,440 --> 01:28:13,760
And he would actually play, physically, what his recording was.
1312
01:28:13,760 --> 01:28:17,360
And as he's doing it, he's looking at me, and he's doing that.
1313
01:28:17,360 --> 01:28:21,560
And it was watching this evolution of this great music.
1314
01:28:21,560 --> 01:28:25,360
I was in London when the movie was getting scored by Vangelis,
1315
01:28:25,360 --> 01:28:29,720
so I'd seen a lot of the footage and I just... I mean,
1316
01:28:29,720 --> 01:28:31,600
it just made me weep. The beauty of it was...
1317
01:28:31,600 --> 01:28:33,160
It was just extraordinary.
1318
01:28:33,160 --> 01:28:40,920
Ridley talking about his images and how he wanted this to be and what he wanted it to look like.
1319
01:28:40,920 --> 01:28:45,240
And it all happened and it was... It was very sweet to see that come together.
1320
01:28:45,240 --> 01:28:49,160
I knew somewhere in there was not, shouldn't be a disappointment.
1321
01:28:49,160 --> 01:28:52,160
I knew somewhere that I had done something pretty good.
1322
01:28:52,160 --> 01:28:55,880
It was then about, "Well, I've done it.
1323
01:28:55,880 --> 01:28:57,720
I don't know what else to do."
1324
01:28:57,720 --> 01:29:01,640
So we released it and the rest is history.
1325
01:29:10,240 --> 01:29:12,440
It was a very tough subject matter.
1326
01:29:12,440 --> 01:29:16,880
You're talking about replicants, robots, if you will.
1327
01:29:16,880 --> 01:29:19,760
I mean, when you think what's happened between then and now.
1328
01:29:19,760 --> 01:29:23,640
It became so convoluted, what people thought of the picture.
1329
01:29:23,640 --> 01:29:25,200
There were people who thought
1330
01:29:25,200 --> 01:29:27,600
it was the greatest picture they've ever seen
1331
01:29:27,600 --> 01:29:31,520
and there were others that said, "What the hell was it about?"
1332
01:29:31,520 --> 01:29:35,280
This was a study of the future and I don't think, at the time,
1333
01:29:35,280 --> 01:29:37,280
people wanted to see the future,
1334
01:29:37,280 --> 01:29:39,760
especially like predicted in the film.
1335
01:29:43,000 --> 01:29:47,680
We finally did the cut, and we screened it out at MGM in one of the screening rooms out there,
1336
01:29:47,680 --> 01:29:50,280
just with five or six people.
1337
01:29:50,280 --> 01:29:54,560
And I guess it was because we were involved with it, you know.
1338
01:29:54,560 --> 01:29:56,480
It was, part of it was our baby.
1339
01:29:56,480 --> 01:29:59,120
But I remember when the lights went up, I said,
1340
01:29:59,120 --> 01:30:00,600
"It's going to be a smash!"
1341
01:30:00,600 --> 01:30:05,280
It was a premiere out in Hollywood, at Sunset Boulevard or something.
1342
01:30:05,280 --> 01:30:09,400
And I could literally feel the crack that went through the audience.
1343
01:30:09,400 --> 01:30:13,080
It was either "Whoa!" or "Ugh!"
1344
01:30:13,080 --> 01:30:14,880
There was no middle, no in between.
1345
01:30:15,960 --> 01:30:19,200
It opened on a Friday night. It was huge, the numbers were huge.
1346
01:30:19,200 --> 01:30:23,800
And then the word of mouth just that weekend petered out, so Saturday business fell off,
1347
01:30:23,800 --> 01:30:28,960
Sunday business fell off and, of course, the guys at the studios live and die by the opening weekend.
1348
01:30:28,960 --> 01:30:32,080
I guess they called Bud, and then Bud called me. And he said,
1349
01:30:32,080 --> 01:30:35,600
"In the tank. It's a disappointment."
1350
01:30:35,600 --> 01:30:38,280
I went into the theatre,
1351
01:30:38,280 --> 01:30:42,480
and there were probably three other people in the theatre with me.
1352
01:30:42,480 --> 01:30:45,240
I had already, you know, read reviews,
1353
01:30:45,240 --> 01:30:50,640
which, for the most part, was not entirely positive, to say the least.
1354
01:30:50,640 --> 01:30:53,040
I felt really, really disappointed
1355
01:30:53,040 --> 01:30:55,320
that people didn't seem to get it.
1356
01:30:57,880 --> 01:31:01,600
That point in my life, when I saw Blade Runner for the first time,
1357
01:31:01,600 --> 01:31:06,520
I was really profoundly affected by the bleakness of it all and I...
1358
01:31:06,520 --> 01:31:10,360
I didn't really like it very much as a moviegoing experience.
1359
01:31:10,360 --> 01:31:12,200
As a visual, filmic experience,
1360
01:31:12,200 --> 01:31:15,640
I thought the whole thing was completely extraordinary.
1361
01:31:15,640 --> 01:31:20,760
For me, it still emotionally falls short of total satisfaction,
1362
01:31:20,760 --> 01:31:25,160
because I just think there is, there is there's an emotional logic
1363
01:31:25,160 --> 01:31:27,160
and a sort of a narrative logic
1364
01:31:27,160 --> 01:31:31,120
that doesn't run as true as I feel that it should do. And, in a sense,
1365
01:31:31,120 --> 01:31:35,480
I felt that what we made was an incredibly beautiful looking,
1366
01:31:35,480 --> 01:31:39,920
as one would expect with Rid, but it's almost like an art movie.
1367
01:31:39,920 --> 01:31:43,840
It was the first science fiction art film. And I think that's a good way to describe it.
1368
01:31:43,840 --> 01:31:47,960
It is a futuristic film, it's a science fiction film. But it's beautifully put together.
1369
01:31:47,960 --> 01:31:52,720
And you really saw a future that looked very different from the futures you had seen before.
1370
01:31:52,720 --> 01:31:54,440
About a future that looked very believable.
1371
01:31:54,440 --> 01:31:55,480
Not only was it different,
1372
01:31:55,480 --> 01:31:57,600
it didn't look like it was different just to be different.
1373
01:31:57,600 --> 01:31:59,600
It looked like someone had actually figured it out.
1374
01:32:09,840 --> 01:32:12,480
We were absolutely disappointed in the opening.
1375
01:32:12,480 --> 01:32:14,520
But it was Bob Dingilian who said to me afterwards,
1376
01:32:14,520 --> 01:32:17,480
"Can you only imagine how bad it would have been
1377
01:32:17,480 --> 01:32:19,280
"if we didn't do what we did?"
1378
01:32:19,280 --> 01:32:25,680
Everybody was expecting a heroic follow up to Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Wars
1379
01:32:25,680 --> 01:32:29,160
and the way it was advertised on television,
1380
01:32:29,160 --> 01:32:34,880
with only the visual effects shots of a flying car going over a futuristic city,
1381
01:32:34,880 --> 01:32:39,840
doesn't prepare you for the traumatic, emotional side
1382
01:32:39,840 --> 01:32:41,720
that there is in the film,
1383
01:32:41,720 --> 01:32:45,440
that kind of leaves you sort of broken.
1384
01:32:45,440 --> 01:32:50,400
There were people in the trade papers at the time,
1385
01:32:50,400 --> 01:32:53,120
starting around the winter of 1981,
1386
01:32:53,120 --> 01:32:57,880
predicting that the summer of '82 would have such casualties,
1387
01:32:57,880 --> 01:33:01,440
simply by the fact that there was so much product coming in all at once
1388
01:33:01,440 --> 01:33:04,080
that they wouldn't be able to find their audience.
1389
01:33:04,080 --> 01:33:05,880
People were over the seventies,
1390
01:33:05,880 --> 01:33:08,600
and there was a lot of depressing stuff coming out,
1391
01:33:08,600 --> 01:33:11,800
and what they wanted to see was a slice of, er... of utopia.
1392
01:33:11,800 --> 01:33:13,960
People wanted to see happy movies.
1393
01:33:13,960 --> 01:33:21,240
And Ridley came out with an amazing, brilliantly executed future of an absolute dystopia.
1394
01:33:21,240 --> 01:33:24,720
There's absolutely no question why that movie failed.
1395
01:33:24,720 --> 01:33:27,600
In those days, people were making Logan's Run,
1396
01:33:27,600 --> 01:33:31,080
with Michael York dressed in a white suit and a silly hat
1397
01:33:31,080 --> 01:33:33,600
being chased around the place, you know.
1398
01:33:33,600 --> 01:33:37,680
Chased around white corridors, because that's the future.
1399
01:33:37,680 --> 01:33:40,000
This wasn't what we were doing at all.
1400
01:33:44,440 --> 01:33:46,720
There really wasn't that much of a lag time
1401
01:33:46,720 --> 01:33:50,760
between its theatrical failure and its rediscovery on cable and cassette.
1402
01:33:50,760 --> 01:33:57,200
The early eighties were also the dawn of home video and this was a profoundly altering technology.
1403
01:33:57,200 --> 01:34:02,360
Audiences suddenly started to realise that, you know, when they saw it on their home TV set,
1404
01:34:02,360 --> 01:34:05,080
and when they could pause it or stop it or go back,
1405
01:34:05,080 --> 01:34:10,760
when they could actually manipulate the film just as Deckard manipulates Roy Batty's photograph,
1406
01:34:10,760 --> 01:34:14,680
then they suddenly realised what an accomplishment it was.
1407
01:34:14,680 --> 01:34:19,840
The fact that the film has been underground for so long...
1408
01:34:19,840 --> 01:34:22,960
has given it a very special status.
1409
01:34:22,960 --> 01:34:26,520
On Thursday nights, on the Lower East Side - this is about '83 now -
1410
01:34:26,520 --> 01:34:28,760
they're having midnight showings
1411
01:34:28,760 --> 01:34:31,000
on Thursday nights of Blade Runner.
1412
01:34:31,000 --> 01:34:33,760
And then, I knew it was going to become something
1413
01:34:33,760 --> 01:34:35,280
and history bears it out.
1414
01:34:35,280 --> 01:34:40,400
We're sitting here, what, 25 years after the release
1415
01:34:40,400 --> 01:34:43,080
and you go up, there are all kinds of websites,
1416
01:34:43,080 --> 01:34:48,680
there are people all over the world that are interested in, "Was Harrison Ford a replicant or not?"
1417
01:34:48,680 --> 01:34:53,800
and that self-generating kind of thing that's generated by fan appeal that you can't buy.
1418
01:34:53,800 --> 01:34:59,480
When I started studying Blade Runner around 15-16, and watching it on television on my worn-out VHS tape,
1419
01:34:59,480 --> 01:35:04,520
I mean, I think I pretty much threaded that thing down trying to figure out Ridley's lighting,
1420
01:35:04,520 --> 01:35:07,840
his lens choices, his focal lengths, the way he composed things,
1421
01:35:07,840 --> 01:35:12,560
where he decided to do darkness and light and contrast and silhouettes and things like that.
1422
01:35:12,560 --> 01:35:17,040
Blade Runner is almost a playbook, I feel, for filmmaking of the last 30 years.
1423
01:35:17,040 --> 01:35:19,800
There's a lot of times when we're talking in writers' rooms
1424
01:35:19,800 --> 01:35:22,480
or in production meetings or with studio execs or whatever
1425
01:35:22,480 --> 01:35:24,920
and you'll talk about a Blade Runner look,
1426
01:35:24,920 --> 01:35:27,400
you know, a Blade Runner feel of the future.
1427
01:35:27,400 --> 01:35:30,640
And that, boom, it just sort of defines a certain iconography.
1428
01:35:30,640 --> 01:35:34,440
I noticed that, more and more and more, there were dark nights with rainy,
1429
01:35:34,440 --> 01:35:36,880
steamy drains and actually lots of stuff.
1430
01:35:36,880 --> 01:35:39,160
I'm going, "That's from Blade Runner,"
1431
01:35:39,160 --> 01:35:43,160
And then I suddenly realised it was taking a huge impact.
1432
01:35:43,160 --> 01:35:50,520
It wasn't till 1990, when the work print leaked out, at that Fairfax 70mm film festival,
1433
01:35:50,520 --> 01:35:53,440
that people realised, "Oh, there's yet another version
1434
01:35:53,440 --> 01:35:56,320
"and what's up with all these versions of Blade Runner?"
1435
01:35:56,320 --> 01:35:59,640
And that's when the troubled history of the film started to get out
1436
01:35:59,640 --> 01:36:03,680
and people realised that Ridley's vision for the film had been diluted somewhat,
1437
01:36:03,680 --> 01:36:08,640
with the process of test screenings and getting the film more palatable for a mainstream audience.
1438
01:36:08,640 --> 01:36:10,640
It had been diminished.
1439
01:36:10,640 --> 01:36:16,360
All of this is kind of a process of people coming to realise what an exceptional film this is.
1440
01:36:16,360 --> 01:36:19,680
And a lot of different things have to happen before it really catches on.
1441
01:36:19,680 --> 01:36:23,640
The initial screenings, everything, it's like a snowball effect.
1442
01:36:23,640 --> 01:36:27,200
And people, either they saw it in the re-release in theatres or they rented it,
1443
01:36:27,200 --> 01:36:30,680
but more and more people decided to reacquaint themselves with Blade Runner.
1444
01:36:30,680 --> 01:36:33,280
And when you reacquaint yourself with it, you fall in love with it.
1445
01:36:37,320 --> 01:36:45,560
This movie, to me, embodies the elegance, the power and the uniqueness
1446
01:36:45,560 --> 01:36:48,360
of a film experience.
1447
01:36:48,360 --> 01:36:55,120
And then, the film-making itself is, the images and the sound and the music,
1448
01:36:55,120 --> 01:36:58,960
it's eight of those ten layers of storytelling. That's the difference.
1449
01:36:58,960 --> 01:37:01,000
It's pure cinema.
1450
01:37:03,440 --> 01:37:06,960
Blade Runner is essentially a cautionary piece.
1451
01:37:06,960 --> 01:37:08,640
It's telling us to beware.
1452
01:37:08,640 --> 01:37:11,000
It's telling us, "Look where we're headed.
1453
01:37:11,000 --> 01:37:13,880
"Look what we can do to each other. Don't be a replicant.
1454
01:37:13,880 --> 01:37:17,960
"Don't be someone who just follows orders and shoots women in the back.
1455
01:37:17,960 --> 01:37:23,400
"Be someone who has a monitor on your own empathic pulse. Be human."
1456
01:37:27,160 --> 01:37:32,960
We're in a movie business where most movies are disposable commodities. They're the summer blockbuster.
1457
01:37:32,960 --> 01:37:37,160
I'm not going to name what they are, but they come and go in weeks and, "bye-bye",
1458
01:37:37,160 --> 01:37:40,520
nobody wants to resurrect them, nobody wants to see them again.
1459
01:37:40,520 --> 01:37:45,920
So the ones that are really, truly well-made, the kind of Casablancas of science fiction,
1460
01:37:45,920 --> 01:37:48,680
survive and get seen over and over.
1461
01:37:50,400 --> 01:37:55,800
The intensity of his perfectionism on this movie made the movie.
1462
01:37:55,800 --> 01:37:59,120
This is a master at his best.
1463
01:38:00,640 --> 01:38:04,280
I was absolutely about co-ordinating beauty.
1464
01:38:04,280 --> 01:38:06,080
It was shot by shot had to be great.
1465
01:38:06,080 --> 01:38:10,040
What I'm expecting from you will be very high.
1466
01:38:10,040 --> 01:38:11,640
You're not going to be wasted.
1467
01:38:11,640 --> 01:38:14,680
I've chosen you, cos I know you're really good at what you do
1468
01:38:14,680 --> 01:38:17,600
and I'm going to actually push you like crazy.
1469
01:38:17,600 --> 01:38:19,240
I'm going to get the best!
1470
01:38:52,080 --> 01:38:55,120
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
1471
01:38:55,120 --> 01:38:58,160
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk
139049
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