Q&A: Ridley Scott on Blade Runner

Thursday, September 27, 2007 | 08:30 PM

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Attention Blade Runner junkies: The offline Wired interview with Ridley Scott, which I mentioned in this weekend's linkfest, is now online.

As we noted previously, the latest version of Blade Runner is in theaters in October, with a 5 DVD disc set to follow next year.

Here's the Ubiq-cerpt:™

"It's a classic tale of failure and redemption, the kind of story Hollywood loves to tell.

Fresh off his second successful movie, an up-and-coming director takes a chance on a dark tale of a 21st-century cop who hunts humanlike androids. But he runs over budget, and the financiers take control, forcing him to add a ham-fisted voice-over and an absurdly cheery ending. The public doesn't buy it. The director's masterpiece plays to near-empty theaters, ultimately retreating to the art-house circuit as a cult oddity.

That's where we left Ridley Scott's future-noir epic in 1982. But a funny thing happened over the next 25 years. Blade Runner's audience quietly multiplied. An accidental public showing of a rough-cut work print created surprise demand for a re-release, so in 1992 Scott issued his director's cut. He silenced the narration, axed the ending, and added a twist — a dream sequence suggesting that Rick Deckard, the film's protagonist, is an android, just like those he was hired to dispatch.

But the director didn't stop there. As the millennium turned, he continued polishing: erasing stray f/x wires, trimming shots originally extended to accommodate the voice-over, even rebuilding a scene in which the stunt double was obvious. Now he's ready to release Blade Runner: The Final Cut, which will hit theaters in Los Angeles and New York in October, with a DVD to follow in December.

At age 69, Ridley Scott is finally satisfied with his most challenging film. He's still turning out movies at a furious pace — American Gangster, with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, is due in November — building on an extraordinary oeuvre that includes Alien, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down. But he seems ready to accept Blade Runner as his crowning achievement. In his northern English accent, he describes its genesis and lasting influence. And, inevitably, he returns to the darkness that pervades his view of the future — the shadows that shield Deckard from a reality that may be too disturbing to face."

Other goodies:  An interactive look at the Cultural Influences Before and After the Film in the Blade Runner Nexus , and a full transcript and Audio of Wired's Interview with Ridley Scott.

Its a must read for fans -- even if Ridley gets whether Deckard is a replicant or a human wrong . . .


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Source:
Q&A: Ridley Scott Has Finally Created the Blade Runner He Always Imagined   
By Ted Greenwald  09.26.07 | 4:00 PM
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/15-10/ff_bladerunner

Thursday, September 27, 2007 | 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack (0)
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Comments

Just goes to show that even M-TV directors who graduate to mega-productions in the sky never really lose their penny ante history and inability to see the big picture: Making Deckard a replicant not only diminishes the tension and ambiguity between him and those he hunts but renders moot the ambiguity and tension between him and the one he loves.

In the end we can not (apparently) escape who we are and Ridley Scott only serves to become another case in point. Too bad - the first Director's Cut was closer to the appropriate resolution, his 'new' cut is actually more of a redaction, a concession to his gritty, reductionist past.

Posted by: RW | Sep 27, 2007 10:01:12 PM

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