PAUL M. SAMMON - author of "FUTURE NOIR: THE MAKING OF BLADE RUNNER" interviewed by Netrunner, July 2002. Chapter 1 of Future Noir ends, "To answer those questions, perhaps we should first pick up a Bible, and then turn to an old, old line. One which opens the Gospel of St. John and will serve as the proper introduction to Future Noir as well: 'In the beginning was the Word...' " With such an introduction to a book which some have described not just as the best book on Blade Runner, but one of the best film books ever written, it is no surprise that it has become known as the "BR Bible". *********************************************************** N: Paul, thank you very much for talking with me about Blade Runner and Future Noir - our favourite movie and your wonderful book that besides being a fascinating read, actually enhances the viewing of Blade Runner. Take us back to the beginning: please introduce us to the Paul M. Sammon circa 1981. PS: Which one? The personal Paul or the professional Paul M.? They're two entirely different people, you know (laughs). Let's start with my public persona. 1981 was an exciting time for me. I'd spent the Seventies breaking into film and writing, which are the dual careers I've somehow managed to maintain since then, and by the early 1980's I'd gained a fairly secure toehold in both professions. I then spent the rest of that decade hopping upwards, from perch to perch. So by 1981, I'd already earned some minor name recognition. Particularly in film journalism, and mainly because I was prolific. I'd also been lucky enough to lay the foundations of the style I still depend on today. Yet the majority of the other literary work I produced during that period, which was more mainstream, was also, in hindsight, pretty ephemeral. By that I mean that, well, there seems to be very few people today who recall that, during the late 70's and early 80's, the "Paul M. Sammon" byline was regularly appearing in a fairly diverse variety of publications. I was writing for The Los Angeles Times, The American Cinematographer, Omni, Muscle and Fitness, Marvel Comics Special Editions, Seacoast, Rolling Stone, etc., etc., etc. A whole spectrum of publications. And I was examining topics that touched on everything. But that's my nature; I'm a living definition of the term "eclectic." For instance, one month I'd write about technologies utilizing precisely focused laser beams to restore Renaissance art - by literally vaporizing the grime that had accreted on the surface of canvasses without damaging the paintings beneath - to subjects like the Islamic culture of Mindanao, the southernmost island of the Philippines, and how that culture was impacting on the rest of the country, which is Catholic. All of those pieces seem forgotten today. On the other hand, I'm REALLY glad most people don't know that I wrote pornographic novels in the early 1970's, to support myself through college (laughs). N: They do now! (laughs) PS: Anyway, the earliest professional writing I did which seems to have possessed the longest shelf life is the film journalism I cranked out during that period. It's strange, but I still get complimented by perfect strangers about work I published decades ago. Folks will come up to me during a book signing, or while I'm working on a film, and say, "Hey, I read that article you did for American Cinematographer back in 1984 on The Killing Fields. Nice job!" (laughs) Or someone else will tell me, "Remember that series of pieces you did on the making of Conan The Barbarian for Cinefantastique in 1981 and '82?" The Cinefex website also recently posted an article I wrote for them in 1982, titled "Turn On Your Heartlight: The Making of E.T." Which means that my early work is now reaching a new generation through an entirely different medium. So I guess that the movie articles and film histories I was churning out back in the early 80's, the ones concerning motion pictures I passionately cared about, struck some deeply personal chords inside my readers as well. Apparently, they still do. For which I'm very grateful. That pretty well covers the journalism I did circa 1982. As for my other career, the film work I've done... well, by 1981, I was working in Universal Picture's marketing department; producing and directing short promotional films, helping to organize ad campaigns, doing electronic press kits for Universal's ad/pub department. Plus, I was traveling to dozens of science fiction, fantasy, horror, comic book and Star Trek conventions, solely to publicize Universal genre films. I then spent the rest of the 80's broadening my marketing expertise and working my way up the corporate ladder. That initially began at Universal, as I've said. Then I worked for a variety of other studios - MGM, the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, Disney, Orion Pictures. Eventually, I became a Vice President of Special Promotions. That was a studio position I could easily have capitalized on, had I chosen to continue wriggling through the corporate subculture. But by the early 1990's I'd realized I didn't want to be a "suit" anymore. For one thing, nothing kills a true love of film faster than working within the studios which produce them. And I'd seen far too many men and women who'd spent their lives working within studios drop dead of heart attacks or strokes shortly after their retirement. So I pulled away from that system, and devoted my time to independent film and television production. One result of that decision was a little indie feature I wrote, produced and directed - it was an E.T. parody called P.P. The Planetary Pal - as well as three Japanese television series I coproduced during the early 1990's. Which, unfortunately, is exactly when Japan's bubble economy burst. I've also always been gadget-obsessed, so when the first wave of computer-generated effects hit Hollywood, I did a few shows as a CGI Supervisor. Then I finally decided that, of all the different areas I'd been exploring, my favorite thing was simply working on a film set. In any number of positions. Still photographer, publicist, effects supervisor, 2nd unit director, producer, writer, whatever. The last big-budget feature I crewed on, I guess, would be Starship Troopers, Verhoeven's parody of Heinlein's classic SF novel. I was on that one for about a year, year-and-a-half. Mostly as a special effects still photographer. Oh, and I authored a Making Of Starship Troopers book, too, for Boulevard Books. That came out in 1997, right after Future Noir. And because of that book, I was on the Starship sets nearly every day, just like Blade Runner. I really enjoyed working on Starship Troopers, mainly because one of my best friends, Jon Davison, was producing that, and because it was based on a book I'd read and adored as a kid, and because it gave me a chance to work with Phil Tippett again. Phil's a special effects maestro who's incredibly sharp and very, very funny; we met during the first RoboCop, which was one of my films when I was working at Orion as a studio suit. N: Didn't you also have a walk-on in Starship Troopers? PS: That's right! Paul Verhoeven gave me a bit part. I'm the guy who pushes that cow into a room with the Warrior Bug, who then proceeds to rip the cow apart. That was a fun afternoon; I enjoyed the opportunity to perform with a sweet-tempered, highly professional cow named Sarah... (laughs). Finally, as far as my personal life goes - I hope I'm not boring you here. N: Not at all. PS: Okay. Well, you asked for it. Back in 1982, I was doing many of the same things I'm doing today. Reading, voraciously. Watching every type of film imaginable. Getting into trouble. Playing guitar. Traveling. Shooting photographs. Writing. Lecturing. Living unconventionally. Grappling with the existential paradoxes of the universe. All that nonsense. N: What exactly did you think you were getting into when you got the assignment from Cinefantastique (and associated articles in Omni) to follow the filming of Blade Runner? Did you ever think it would lead to a book? PS: Never. And I really had no idea of what to initially expect from the people who were making BR. See, I'd already been around the film business long enough to know that the tone of each project, its overall personality, differs from movie to movie. Which means that sometimes a production company can be warm and accommodating, while other times it can be cold and uncooperative. Or everything in between. Those kinds of variables greatly influence what a journalist is able to pull out of a production - facts, set visits, interviews, or photos. All of which, of course, shapes the final piece you're supposed to write. So when I first contacted Brighton Productions, the one-shot corporation Michael Deeley set up to produce Blade Runner, the only thing I knew to expect was the unexpected - there were a lot of different ways Brighton could've responded to me. Thankfully, both Deeley and Ridley Scott seemed to sense early on that I was going to approach the history of their project with the same seriousness and dedication they were applying to the making of their film. The bottom line was, I got lucky on BR. I was fortunate enough to deal with extremely talented filmmakers who trusted me enough to let me go about my work in the way I thought best suited their picture. That basically meant pestering everyone. Mercilessly (laughs). There's always been a curious love/hate relationship between Hollywood and film journalists, you know. The people involved with the actual creation of a film - its cast and crew - usually treat entertainment journalists relatively well. Unless you're absolutely incompetent. Or a jerk. Or someone with an ax to grind. I mean, filmmakers usually want their movie to get exposure; that way audiences can get enough advance word on a project so that, when it finally comes out, they'll remember that advance word and want to see the picture. Conversely, the people involved with the distribution and marketing of a film - studios and publicists - want to control whatever you write as much as possible, at least in the sense of keeping any controversial or negative aspects of the production away from the press. Studios and publicists can also be very, um, counterproductive concerning the process of photo approval, especially when they withhold illustrations they feel shouldn't see print before a film is released. That approach has only gotten worse, by the way, which makes me grateful that I actually work in the film industry most of the time now, instead of just writing about it. Because today's journalists typically have to pass through so many layers of approval just to get a handful of stills that the process drives them right up the wall. N: What was your initial approach to doing the Omni and Cinefantastique articles and what were your first impressions of BR? PS: Well, before I'd acquainted myself with the nuts and bolts of the production, I'd initially felt that I'd be lucky to just get a few readable articles out of the thing. I mean, the Phil Dick angle was a given - that's one of the reasons I accepted the assignment in the first place. I'd been reading and loving the quintessential strangeness of Dick's prose since my adolescence. "What, they're making the first motion picture based on a story by Philip K. Dick? And you want me to write about it? I'm there!" So I knew that I'd at least get a Dickian-slanted piece out of this assignment. As for my initial thoughts about Blade Runner itself, well, who knew? Don't forget, this was the early 1980's. Hollywood's infatuation with science fiction at that point was resulting in far too many mega-productions with super special effects and dismal everything else. So I went into the Brighton office's that first day...well, not exactly expecting the worst, but prepared to accept it. Then I read BR's script, and met Ridley and visited the art department. And it quickly became clear to me that Blade Runner was sincerely striving to achieve something special; its approach was going to be anything but your stereotypically banal "sci-fi adventure". It all looked very, very promising. That's when I started to lobby Fred Clarke, the late editor of Cinefantastique - Fred wasn't an easy guy to deal with, but I'm still saddened by his suicide - to allow me to compose a full-blown cover story on Blade Runner. Fred resisted that pitch at first, as I recall. In fact, I had to convince him that the story behind the making of BR was worth a 25,000-word article and dozens of color photographs. But once production started, and Warner Brothers and Brighton were kind enough to allow me to forward some advance Blade Runner art on to Clarke, Fred came around to my way of thinking. N: So how exactly did those early articles eventually lead to a book on the making of Blade Runner? PS: As I've mentioned, I never initially saw my BR reportage in terms of a book. You see, I've always been an active person, professionally and personally. Still am; physically, I'm somewhat hyper, and I can't stand wasted time. Not that I necessarily feel that sitting out in the garden watching house finches build bird nests is wasting time. I don't mean that at all. But, religiously speaking, I'm sort of a suspicious agnostic who's still inclined to suspect that once your life is over, it's OVER. That's it. No heaven, no hell, no Mothership, no reincarnation, no second chance. So my initial BR writings were only tiny blips on an ongoing "career radar screen", so to speak. I loved being around the picture while it was being made, yeah. And I loved writing about it. But then I moved on. Yet, for some reason, I couldn't shake BR out of my head. It became sort of a mental splinter, one I couldn't ignore or get rid of. Why? Because, very early on, and like other viewers after me, I'd begun to sense the different layers scattered throughout the film. Plus, I'd already started to gain a rep as "Mr. Blade Runner," this walking repository of BR lore. So, over time, I began writing other pieces about the film. And one day, critical mass was achieved. That was the afternoon I called up Ridley Scott and my literary agent, Lori Perkins, and said, "Look, I'm toying with the idea of doing a book on Blade Runner. A definitive book. What do you think?" Lori and Ridley both said they thought it was a great idea. Which was a good thing. Otherwise, you and I wouldn't be talking! (laughs) There's a minor story here, by the way. A little footnote to the film's history I don't believe I've related before. It concerns Syd Mead's preproduction paintings. The ones that were done before filming began. Which you still see today; the most ubiquitous one is this blue-hued illustration of a Spinner flying through a cityscape. Well, that art was first photographed through the efforts of yours truly. Ridley had showed me about a half dozen of Syd's early paintings during BR's prep period, and they were so impressive I immediately got on the horn and managed to convince my Omni editor that her magazine should hire a photographer who could shoot this art in the most flattering way possible. Omni then would be able to use selections of that art to illustrate the articles I was going to write for them. And that's what happened. Omni hired a local professional, I set up the shoot between him and Brighton, and the end result was a lot of fun. For me, anyway. I still remember how we shot Syd's art one afternoon in this little alcove next to Ridley's office, which at the time was located in the old Gower Gulch building, where Brighton was first based. This was before the production company had moved onto the Warners lot. Anyway, I remember setting up this little easel before carefully placing Syd's art on that stand. The pieces themselves were small, about 10 by 15 inches. Next, I helped with the lighting and such, and then stood around while the photographer shot Syd's work on reversal stock, which is what is used to produce transparencies. Then, after those slides were developed, Brighton loved them so much we made extra sets for them and for Warner Brothers. Of course, I also sent a set on to Omni, too. And now, 20 years later, I still see reproductions of those darn things. They pop up everywhere. So there's a little slice of BR I don't think anyone's been served before. N: There were obviously other films being made in Hollywood at the time. Why did CfQ and Omni choose to commission such in-depth "making of" Blade Runner articles, and why were you chosen for the assignment? PS: Well, in Omni's case, it was because their editors felt I could do justice to Philip K. Dick and Ridley Scott, whose careers were merging at this point. Again, I've always been a constant reader and rabid film buff, and was already familiar with Scott and Dick's work by 1980. So Omni must have felt that that familiarity would allow me to knowledgeably report on a film involving both men. Cinefantastique chose me to write about BR because I'd already done a couple of cover stories for them on other movies. Therefore, Fred Clarke knew I was capable of whipping up something about BR for him. But, as I've already said, CfQ originally didn't ask me to do a Blade Runner cover story. And do you mind if I digress for a moment? It's hard to understand this in 2002, given how much slicker and shallower the magazine is now, but back in 1980, Cinefantastique was the Mount Everest of SF film magazines. In terms of intelligence and depth and critical analysis, nothing could touch it; CfQ was the genre's Film Comment. So to be involved with the publication back then was a high compliment. Anyway, another reason I was assigned to report on BR by CfQ was because the rest of their writers were already covering something else! I mean, if you look at the movies that were released in 1982, it's remarkable how many of them were concerned with science fiction and fantasy. Things like Blade Runner, of course, but also John Carpenter's version of The Thing, Milius' Conan the Barbarian, Schrader's Cat People remake, Tron, Spielberg's E.T - a veritable genre avalanche rumbled down the mountain in 1982. And each of these projects was already being covered by a different writer from CfQ. So I got the leftovers - Blade Runner! (laughs) I'd also made it known to Fred Clarke that I was knowledgeable about Ridley Scott's film career. Of course, back in 1980, Ridley had only done two features, Alien and The Duellists, both of which I'd seen. But having caught them made it very easy to claim to be a "Scott Expert"(laughs)! Most of all, though, I emphasized the fact that I was a tremendous admirer of Philip K. Dick. In fact, I still can recall the first time I read a short story of his. That was back around 1961; the story was "The Father Thing," and it made a tremendous impression on me. So much so that it still feels like I first read that thing only 20 minutes ago! So Dick's fiction had totally warped my head. And I guess Fred thought that this phildickian admiration would help give my Blade Runner article a slightly different slant from the other reportage that was bound to appear on BR. Little did we know... (laughs) N: You were witness to the Blade Runner project from a very early stage. Something you had the chance to do was to actually talk with Philip K. Dick, who of course was the author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Blade Runner's source novel. In "The Edge of Blade Runner" documentary, you refer to Dick as having "amphetamine psychosis" - can you expand on that? PS: I think what I actually said - part of my comment was edited out of that program - was that a portion of Phil's paranoia and schizophrenia, his absolute conviction that he'd been burglarized by the CIA or visited by a paranormal entity, seemed, to me, symptomatic of classic amphetamine psychosis. That hypothesis comes from a fairly informed viewpoint: I have a degree in psychology. And on a more practical plane, right after graduating from college, I'd youthfully rebelled against my Catholic/armed forces/military intelligence upbringing for a short while by spending a couple of years as a drug-gobbling street person. All of which is to say that I KNOW drugs. Acid, smack, coke, weed, speed - you name it. And anyone who's been around speed long enough knows that heavy amphetamine usage results in delusional affect and feelings of persecution. Too much speed can literally eat microscopic holes in your brain, in fact. Or, at the very least, it can interfere with the normal neural firing of your brain's dendrites and axons. And Phil told me - many times - that he took a LOT of speed in the Fifties and Sixties. Mainly to help him maintain the tremendous pace at which he was writing during that period. Of course, Phil also told me that during his speed-freak phase he was pushing himself simply to support himself. He was writing all this stuff for the money. So that he could feed himself and his children and pay off the ex-wives he owed alimony to. Anyway, I'm certainly not judgmental about Dick's drug habits - how could I be? Still, when you add all those years of amphetamine abuse to the psyche of a sensitive, highly imaginative individual who also drank and took hallucinogenics... well, let's just say that I wouldn't be at all surprised if that individual displayed erratic behavior. But that was another thing about Phil. He seemed to love acting out. Loved drama. Melodrama. And, as a child, long before he ever hit the speedway, Phil was already seeing doppelgangers standing at his bedside. Which indicates, at least to me, that Dick was probably mildly schizophrenic from birth. The later stresses of trying to make a living as a writer, of trying to find his place in the world, of the almost street-level existence he was forced to endure most of his life...all that and Phil's drug/drink experiments only served, in my opinion, to worsen a preexisting condition. Again, though, I think it's important to point out that everything I've just said pertains to the totality of Philip K. Dick, not to the day-by-day guy I got to know during Blade Runner. As I wrote in Future Noir, the Dick I usually interacted with - the scholar I often talked with and interviewed over the phone, the mentor I visited at his little apartment - was, 90% of the time, an agreeable, uber-articulate, amazingly perceptive, enviably educated man. He also, at least to me, was a very nice man. Phil was nearly always accessible and charming and forthcoming in terms of what I was about, and I was grateful for that. I also liked him personally. So I miss him. What I don't miss were the few times that Phil's other, so-called "alien" personality was in residence. He was at his worst then. Conspiracies were everywhere. You couldn't utter a sentence without Phil icepicking away at every word, as if he were just waiting for the verbal tip-off that you were another enemy. That variety of overly suspicious, unnaturally mistrustful behavior is another symptom of schizophrenia, by the way. On balance, however, I count myself as amazingly fortunate to have met and talked with such a man. Phil was truly extraordinary - and, usually, a gentleman. I really wish he were still with us. It's such a shame he never got to see Blade Runner. N: So, for many years, PKD was a heavy drug user. How do you think that affected his work, or was it perhaps even responsible for some of his ideas? PS: Well, it's important to know that during the latter phase of his life, Dick had given up drugs. Yet he still wrote some superior material. So there's that to consider. Again, I think drugs primarily affected his work in the manner I've already described - speed helped Dick write a lot more pages than most people could crank out without amphetamines, but it also fueled his paranoia. Conversely, I'm sure some of the imagery Dick included in his fiction was drug-induced. It had to be. I mean, I still smoke pot occasionally, right? And despite what endless Republican administrations in my country would have you believe, marijuana actually can occasionally reward you with unexpected images or story points, ones you might never have conjured up while you were straight. Having said that, I'm equally sure that the preponderance of Phil's themes and imagery sprang from his own life. From his imagination and core personality. Phil was very much the philosopher, you know, and a keen social critic. You don't get those traits from drugs - you get them from your genes. As well as from observation, and education and experience. N: In Blade Runner there is a huge neon advertising screen, which at one point shows a young lady popping pills - do you think this is a reference to the drug culture of the future that PKD was suggesting would become more prevalent? PS: I think that moment came from Hampton Fancher and Ridley Scott and David Peoples. Phil literally had no input into Blade Runner's script, other than the fact that it was based on his novel. I mean, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? certainly doesn't contain passages where giant Geisha Girls pop pills on enormous, neon-encrusted blimps inlaid with massive JumboVision screens... Anyway, I think that that Geisha girl/pill-shot was, on one level, Hampton and David and Ridley's acknowledgement of America's drug culture. It also was sort of a little joke, you know? "Here it is, 40 years after 1982, and people are not only still taking drugs, they're doing it because of blimp advertisements!" Then there's the fact that Ridley had a pretty strong idea about the exact nature of the drug that Geisha was taking. He mentioned it to me after filming, during post (production); it was supposed to be a birth-control pill. Of course, this makes perfect sense in the context of Blade Runner's overpopulated universe. Ridley's notion was that the Los Angeles of 2019 was so densely overcrowded, manufacturers would naturally stress birth-control aids at every possible opportunity. Especially during advertisements. N: It is well known that the film differs in some respects quite significantly from the book, particularly with the exclusion of Mercerism. Of course this is inevitable with any translation of book to film, but Fancher and Scott went further than simply making necessary changes. You have written of how PKD finally accepted that Scott's vision was different to that of the book, but was still valid. Was PKD really happy in the end with how Blade Runner was being made? In their background themes, how do you think book and film differ the most? And perhaps more significantly, despite the differences, how do you think the film eventually actually does convey some of PKD's prime themes? PS: Everything you've heard about Dick attending a private screening for him to see a special effects and production reel of BR, and then turning around to say, "This is fantastic! How did you guys match up this movie to the book I had in my head?", is absolutely correct. But prior to that screening, which took place in Marina Del Rey at the EEG facility, Phil had been making truculent noises in certain publications about how Blade Runner was dumbing down or mutilating his book. But Phil knew very little about what was really going on with BR at that point. I think Phil also didn't realize that people like Hampton Fancher - who's this tall, good-looking ex-actor Dick had written off as an aging pretty boy - was actually a man of sophistication and substance. A lover of poetry, drama and literature. A guy who'd tried to option Electric Sheep on the value of its thematic concerns, and the quality of its writing. I also think Phil didn't realize Ridley Scott wasn't your typical assembly-line director, either. Ridley definitely doesn't have to make features, you know; he's more than financially secure with all the commercials he's done. And continues to do. But Ridley loves movies, and he takes his film work seriously. Probably because he views those films - beyond the obvious industry glorification that's involved and the staggering financial remuneration that goes with that - as another, longer-form way of fleshing out the fine art histories and graphic abilities he carries around in his head. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that Philip K. Dick got lucky on his first adaptation; the primary creative people at BR's helm were artists, not hacks. So there's one response to your multi-part question (laughs). Another, where you mention Mercerism, well, that really gets to the heart of the problem of translating novels into films, doesn't it? I mean, it's precisely because of elements like Mercerism and the chickenheads, and the forecast of virtual reality and influential fringe religions, which has helped make Electric Sheep a distinctive literary work. But - and I don't know how many times this has to be said before the immutable reality of the statement sinks in - films and novels are two different art forms. To take the simplest example: films rarely seem to measure up, artistically speaking, against the books they were based upon, right? But think about the unique demands of the two formats for a moment. A novel can spend as many pages as it wants delving into the inner lives of its characters. Yet one page of your typical screenplay translates into one minute of screen time. And most films still cling to the two hours or under rule. So even a relatively slim novel like Electric Sheep, if faithfully adapted, would probably have ran over three hours, once it was translated into a film. What I'm trying to say is that if you loved a book, try to step back for a moment before you condemn its cinematic incarnation. Try to determine whether you're seeing a good movie first, rather than an awkward adaptation of a beloved novel. Because what literature lovers must understand - and I'm one of them, by the way - is that movies are like moving Cliff's Notes. They hit the high points of a novel, simply because of the demands of the medium they're being transferred to. And that's that. So why should anyone be surprised that the work of adapting Electric Sheep into BR went through the same process of compression and deletion that any book-into-movie receives? I'm glad you mentioned the difference in background themes between Blade Runner and Sheep, too. Because, really, this was the most significant point of departure between the two works. Phil portrayed his "andys," or replicants, in Sheep as thinly disguised Nazis. Powerful humans who had absolutely no sense of empathy or emotional connection with what Lincoln called the better aspects of our nature. Therefore, Sheep's replicants were dangerous. Soulless things who were actually Phil's thinly veiled condemnation of what he perceived as an out-of-control culture drifting towards an increasingly selfish, soulless America. However, Ridley Scott viewed his replicants in a totally different light. His favorite phrase was that BR's reps were "supermen who couldn't fly," genuinely superior beings who were being ruthlessly manipulated by their genetic inferiors. That's a huge conceptual difference. And from what I recall, Phil never did agree with that divergence. What's really crazy about their differing points of view, though, was how, at the end of the day, Phil generally agreed with how Hampton and David and Ridley had adapted his book. I specifically asked Dick about this point just a few weeks before he died, in fact. Unfortunately, this was one of the few conversations I didn't tape-record. So I'm going to have to paraphrase here. But what Dick more or less told me was, "Once I saw Rutger Hauer in the test footage and saw how they'd made him look like a perfect Aryan, I realized the people behind Blade Runner knew what I was trying to get at in Sheep. I also saw a decaying metropolis that was falling apart because of humanity's arrogance, and I saw a society where the very nature of the human soul was imperiled because of that arrogance. That's pretty close to what I was saying in Sheep." N: What was the relationship between Dick and Scott like? Was there a relationship? PS: Not really. I could be wrong on this, but I think Phil and Ridley only met once. Face-to-face, anyway. That was after Phil had seen the F/X reel EEG ran for him. Then Ridley showed Phil some BR storyboards and art, and Dick came away impressed by Scott's dedication and intelligence. Before that meeting, Phil had only been contacted by some lower-echelon BR production people, who'd phoned to tell him, among other things, that they didn't like the way he was bad-mouthing the project. You see, Phil had written an article for a local LA publication called Select TV Guide complaining about the quality of Hampton's first two BR script drafts. He hadn't liked those, to put it mildly. Then they'd told him to stop using the word "android", and basically brushed him off. That pissed him off. Now, Dick was already upset that no one from the production or studio had ever called him to let him know that Sheep was being adapted into a film in the first place. So when he finally does gets a call from the production company, and it's a chastising one, well, that was like dropping a road flare into a barrel of napalm. Meanwhile, Ridley was basically ignoring all this - after all, he had a film to make. But I guess Phil started making so much negative noise about the picture that when Ridley finally hit post-production and had a little breathing room, he felt he'd better deal with this issue. So the production invited Dick to the screening of what's called a "red dot reel". I think Ridley mostly did this as a courtesy, by the way. Not just as a PR move. And let's face it - Ridley didn't have to make contact with Phil. Not at all. Dick may have written Blade Runner's source novel, but Phil had had absolutely nothing to do the adaptation of that novel. Dick hadn't written BR's script, Dick hadn't acted as a technical advisor on the film, and Dick had had nothing but bad things to say about Hollywood. So it would have been very easy for Ridley to respond with, "Who is this nut? Tell him to piss off. Let's get on with it." But he didn't. Ridley was courteous enough to arrange something very special for Phil; a LOT of people hadn't seen as much of Blade Runner as Phil Dick did that day. And those people had actually worked on the movie! N: One of PKD's themes that Scott definitely did incorporate is the pervasive paranoia in Blade Runner - the Big Brother implications of the huge eye, the invasive shafts of light, surveillance, etc. How was this so successfully weaved into the film, and did Scott reference other books/films in early research when figuring out how best to achieve it? PS: Jordan Cronenweth once told me that BR's famous shafts of light had been influenced by the same type of lighting scheme Gregg Toland used for Citizen Kane. Look at the Thatcher Library sequence in Kane, for example, and then compare that with the way Scott staged Deckard's visit to Tyrell's office in Blade Runner. Ridley's also repeatedly stated that the claustrophobic, looming quality of his 21st century Los Angeles was heavily influenced by the same type of cramped, expressionistic city that looms so largely in Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Interestingly enough, there also was another cinematic influence on BR that was drawn from a film that's little-known today. That was a 1979 movie titled Agatha, directed by Michael Apted. Agatha had taken a speculative approach to a strange incident in the life of Agatha Christie, the famous mystery writer, who'd simply disappeared for 11 days in 1926 and then reappeared without ever revealing where she'd been. Anyway, part of Agatha's visual palette definitely influenced Blade Runner. I'd suggest that the truly dedicated Blader look that film up - it is available on video. I think they may discover some interesting things there. As for BR's paranoid overtones, well, first you have to realize that Ridley never read all of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. He only read part of it; Ridley stopped after the first forty pages or so. So Scott certainly didn't pull those undertones from Dick's novel. Even so, I think Scott was sharp enough, once he'd studied the final Fancher/Peoples screenplay, to sense the subtle unease these guys had carried over from Dick's book. I also think Ridley was perceptive enough to realize that Blade Runner's essence could be boiled down into a single question - what does it mean to be human? And since Rick Deckard's job was assassinating so-called artificial people, I also think Ridley thought it would be interesting to suggest that this assassin was actually the same type of creature he'd been ordered to kill. That's pretty paranoid, isn't it? To suspect you might be the same type of thing you hate and fear? Finally, there's this fact. As Ridley told me for Future Noir: "I was thinking about the ways physicians, who know so much about and treat so many different diseases, have a habit of needlessly worrying that they might be afflicted with the same disease themselves." So that's where Scott laid Blade Runner's paranoid foundation. As for the eye motif in BR, well, as I've already mentioned, Ridley is, beside a filmmaker, an excellent graphic artist. And artists routinely use visual symbols as metaphorical representations of their painting's subtexts. In BR, one of those subtexts was urban paranoia, and one of the motifs used in the film to represent that was the human eye. To take your example - what's more unnerving than being coldly stared at, like you're some kind of insect? That's what the big eye at the beginning of Blade Runner means to me - here's a film that's watching YOU! Then Ridley carried that eye motif throughout the rest of the movie. I mean, the Voight-Kampff machine studies your eye to determine if you're human, the Replicants' eyes have a flaw that reflects light in an unnatural way, Leon uses disembodied eyes to torture Chew, and, as Ridley was also constantly putting it, the eye is the window to the soul. So there were many times when Blade Runner's eye motif appeared in a menacing, if not downright paranoid, context. As for the omnipresent police presence and ongoing surveillance you see in BR, that was just Ridley commenting on how he perceived the Los Angeles Police Department in the early 80's. He's on record as stating that he already viewed the LAPD of 1982 as a paramilitary outfit. A powerful and sometimes dangerous group with a very high profile. I think he just exaggerated that profile for Blade Runner. N: Colin Kennedy of Empire writes of Minority Report, "...this stands as the best future noir since Blade Runner." A comment echoed by reviewers around the globe. There has been a worldwide upsurge of interest in Philip K. Dick who finally seems to be getting that wider recognition that is so deserved. Added to the PKD-inspired list of BR, TR, MR, Confessions, Screamers and Impostor are the forthcoming Paycheck and A Scanner Darkly, it seems the moviemakers are finding a great source in the works of PKD. What do you think the appeal to them is of Dick's work and why now? Is this a good or a bad thing? Are we creating the world that PKD feared in his dreams and what do you think Dick would have thought of 21st century Earth? PS: Oh, I'm sure Phil would have been horrified and angered by the America of 2002. The political, ethical, and corporate corruption that's nibbled away at everything worthwhile in this country in the 20 years since Dick's death has just been devastating. It's also done a depressingly good job of turning far too many Americans into unself-aware androids. So, yeah. The world Phil feared most isn't around the corner anymore - now it's on our front lawns. I can only hypothesize as to why his work is suddenly so popular in Hollywood, but these things do move in cycles, you know. First something like Blade Runner comes along and introduces the guy's name to the Industry, and then Total Recall makes large, sweaty fistfuls of handy bucks. That gets the powers-that-be thinking, "Hmm, maybe we should snap up the rest of his stuff," and the next thing you know, phildickian cinema is everywhere. But that's just my explanation for the businessmen's interest in his work. Most filmmakers who adapt Dick probably haven't heard of the guy beyond the adaptations either. But I'm sure that at least some of the directors who look at the scripts Dick's prose has generated are intrigued with them for the same reason Dick's early readers were - because they feature strong stories with surreal curlicues. Really, though, it all comes down to profit. I think the main reason we're seeing so many Dick adaptations now is because Hollywood views his stuff as a familiar commodity. A proven one. Pretty ironic that something like that would happen to a person of Phil's persuasion, huh? N: The opening scene of Blade Runner - the Hades landscape, the Eye, the music - is so strong, it is impossible to imagine how the film could start any other way. And yet a few different beginnings were proposed, such as Deckard killing a Rep out in the country, Deckard coming in to L.A. alone on a train, Roy and company waking up on an Off-World dump, etc. How did those lose out in favour of the flaming eye we all know and love? PS: The flaming eye, as you call it, was a late addition to the film. It was also relatively cheap and easy to do. Relatively. The other proposed openings were either discarded because Ridley felt they wouldn't work in the context of the film, or because they were going to be too expensive to put together. Usually the latter (laughs). N: Similarly, there were a number of endings proposed in different script versions as well. Ignoring the tacked-on drive in the countryside that was added to the Original Theatrical Version, how would you describe the process of deciding how to end the film? PS: Well, at the time, Ridley was known for constantly changing his mind. So there were indeed a number of different endings bandied about. One was going to show Deckard and Rachael in a land car being chased by Gaff in a Spinner, while Deckard realized he was a replicant. Another was going to show Rachael and Deckard fleeing the city through this denuded forest, while Deckard spots a unicorn galloping through the trees. But the climax Ridley finally settled on was the shot of Deckard going into his apartment's elevator after realizing, through the finding of Gaff's tinfoil unicorn, that Deckard was a replicant himself. Then the elevator doors were going to close behind Deckard as he stepped in next to Rachael. BOOM! - end of picture. That was the ending Ridley finally decided on. Until he was forced to tack on that faux happy ending with its majestic landscapes. Which, as I'm sure we all know by now, were outtakes from The Shining. N: We only know of some of the things that did not make it into the movie because of your book. You were there on the set of Blade Runner and yet you only started writing Future Noir in 1993. That is a very long gap! You mentioned earlier how the book came about, but why such a long time before it happened? PS: In one way or another, from 1980 onward, I never actually stopped writing about BR. I kept doing an article about it here and there - mostly in long-defunct local publications - and I was constantly being asked and interviewed about the film before I did my book. I also wrote that BR cover story for Video Watchdog in 1993. So it's not quite accurate to think that the book simply sprang into existence 14 years after the film was released. Really, though, there were three primary reasons I finally wrote Future Noir. One was because I felt there was a terrific story about the making of this film that hadn't been told yet. Two, I wanted to let the average person know what happens - what really happens - during the making of a film. I also thought that doing a book on the making of BR might be a sound career move. And it was, thank goodness. N: DADoES is a Science Fiction book (although I might sub-categorise it as "Proto-Cyberpunk"). However, when Fancher's early Dangerous Days script was doing the rounds, it was simply a Sci-Fi movie. One of the terms we now use to refer to Blade Runner is "Future Noir" - the name of your book. Where did that term come from - is it your invention? And at what point did the film turn from being general Science Fiction into Future Noir? PS: Well, first off, thanks for letting me know that fans are calling BR a "future noir." I didn't know that, and it's very flattering. Anyway, I originally thought that the term "Future Noir" perfectly encapsulated BR's dystopian vision. It was also a phrase that had been rattling around in my head for a long, long time, so I felt it an appropriate title for my book; basically, I thought I'd invented the term. But when I started putting FN's bibliography together, I had to rethink that opinion. Because I then came across the phrase "Future Noir" in a review that'd been published during the film's original release! That confused everything. So now I'm not sure. I could have made the term up while the movie was being shot, which is what memory tells me, or I could have read those words somewhere else back in 1982, and then promptly forgotten about it. Anyway, to be honest, I don't really know where the phrase came from. Either way, I think it's as terrific title for that particular book. I give a lot of thought to my titles, you know; they're very important to me. And I try to be different, and slightly poetic, when I come up with one. For instance - around the time BR was originally released, I had a short story published in the old Twilight Zone Magazine, which was titled "In Late December, Before the Storm". That should give you another indication of where I'm coming from, title-wise. But Future Noir's certainly one of my favorite ones. As for BR's metamorphosis from straight sci-fi to future noir, well, that was a fairly linear process. Hampton had originally written a character/mood piece in his first draft, with this small-scale story whose main concerns were ecological (all of Earth's animals were essentially extinct), romantic (the love story between Deckard and Rachael), and philosophical (what does it mean to be human)? Hampton's first screenplay was also dialogue-driven. But once Ridley signed on, he overlaid Fancher's story with this extravagantly elaborate production design that had been heavily influenced by the graphic art in Heavy Metal, a magazine that was dabbling in cyberpunk long before that term was ever coined. The genius of Ridley's design overlay, of course, was that it wasn't just a random, disconnected series of impressive images. Most of that imagery had a point, and a history, and was somehow connected to BR's story. Or its themes or the culture of the imaginary Los Angeles Scott had created for the film. That's one of the reasons I love Blade Runner, by the way - it's not only gorgeous eye candy, it's eye candy with a point. N: Ridley Scott and Hampton Fancher - two creative minds tugging in different directions. You were witness to some of that - was it only occasional, or all the time? What was it like being the observer? PS: Well, the most intimate moments between Hampton and Ridley took place when they were alone together, spitballing ideas for the rewrites. I wasn't there for that. No one was. I did have the opportunity of seeing them interact a few times during prep, however. And the differences between their personalities was the most immediate observation one came away with. Hampton, for instance, was the more emotional of the two; he's a bit larger than life, our Hampton. Slightly flamboyant, and sardonically amusing. But what saves Fancher from being just another handsome Hollywood guy is his mind. He's a surprisingly verbal, well-read fellow - especially for an actor. Fancher has a sincere respect for and knowledge of serious literature. There's a certain sweetness and humor in Hampton's character, too. Plus, the writing style he adopted for Blade Runner was so bizarrely idiosyncratic. Now Ridley's a totally different sort of person. Lower-keyed. More guarded. A guy who keeps most of his cards close to his chest. Which isn't to say that Ridley can't be polite or funny or charming, because he can, and I've witnessed all of those qualities. But when he was shooting Blade Runner, Ridley seemed to basically operate in two modes: either as the CEO or commander-in-chief of this somewhat rebellious army - who couldn't, or didn't want to, tune into his wavelength - or as a formidably gifted artist who endlessly agonized over where to precisely place a prop or smoke pot to complete the perfect shot. In fact, sometimes it was a little jarring to watch Ridley switch from this amiable, down-to-earth guy to a pissed-off captain of industry, who'd wasn't above hollering at people to get their shit together. After awhile, though, I came to realize that, given the line of work he's in, this CEO/military commander/artist-in-residence persona Ridley cultivated at the time worked pretty well for him. That was a shrewd, practical way of making his first film in Hollywood, to present himself as a tough, no-bullshit field marshal who also happened to be an enormously talented artist. N: Could you give us an example of Mr. Scott's harder side? PS: Well, on BR, when he was in his Chief of Staff mode, Ridley could be very tough on certain folks, especially the ones he felt weren't displaying the same level of commitment he'd dedicated himself to. He often was quite stern and matter-of-fact; there wasn't a lot of joking going down on the BR set. Yet I don't think Ridley was acting this way just to be an asshole; it was his way of dealing with the circumstances. For example, Ridley was under a tremendous amount of pressure from Tandem Productions, who'd stepped in and taken over the film when Blade Runner went over budget, and Ridley had a terrible time adjusting to that. I also don't think he was prepared for the fact that, in Hollywood, a director will many times have to explain - or justify - why he wants what he wants. And Ridley's not a talker by nature - he just wants to get the job done, you know? So that was one condition he'd never had to operate under before. And the recent death of his older brother Frank, who'd passed on a couple of years before Blade Runner was released, was still very much on Ridley's mind. Then there were the day-to-day frustrations; much of the time, BR's crew was teetering on the edge of open rebellion, for any number of reasons. Blade Runner also was the first movie Scott had shot in the United States for a major studio on a major studio's lot. And Warners, like all studios, operates under the aegis of incredibly Byzantine union regulations, some of which fly so far away from anything approaching reality that they can drive you totally 'round the bend. So when some people who worked on Blade Runner ask me, "How can you say anything nice about Ridley Scott? The guy was a jerk!", all I can reply is, "Yes, he was. Sometimes. For different reasons. But never to me. That Ridley Scott was always pleasant and helpful and respectful." Twenty years later, he's still that way with me. Why? I still haven't figured that one out. Maybe it was just because I "got" Ridley right away. And stayed out of his way. Or maybe it was due to the fact that we were both tuned to the same wavelength, and understood his frustrations. Besides, I wasn't the only person on that set he got along with. There were others. Although we do seem to have been in the minority... (laughs) N: So where did the tensions between Scott and Fancher come from? PS: Conflicting personalities and different levels of experience. I know Hampton was getting increasingly frustrated with all the rewrites he did, especially since he felt those revisions were weakening the Deckard/Rachael romance angle and the ecological themes he'd originally conceived for his script. Hampton was starting to burn out a little, too. And he definitely wasn't as aware of the politics of rewriting as he should have been - I mean, the basic rule of thumb in this business is, what the director wants, the director gets. But Hampton would sometimes become angry or sad or confused by what was going on, and argue with Ridley about this or that. Meanwhile, Ridley stayed emotionally opaque. Which I'm sure drove Hampton crazy. But if I communicated anything in Future Noir, I hope it was the fact that film business can be incredibly demanding and political and - well, just basically unpleasant! (laughs) N: Tensions carried on throughout the entire film, and you have documented them well in FN (including "Chapter VIII", which was cut out of the book - published on the Web at LA 2019: Off-World). Was this set really tense all the time? Scott comments on his frustration at the constant questioning, "Why are you doing this, because I'm pretty qualified at this point." And he was - director of some good films already, including another all-time SF classic, Alien. Much experienced in film and business and having worked on Blade Runner for most of the year before filming even started. Can you expand on why filming BR was so difficult for him? PS: Well, again, there really is no single answer to that. To begin, you have to realize that this was an important step in Ridley's career. A HUGE step. So I'm sure he felt the weight of that responsibility on his back. Also, we now all know how well-directed Alien was, but back in 1980-1981, a lot of the people Ridley was working with in Hollywood had never heard of him. Yeah, some knew he'd directed Alien - some were even aware that Scott had a reputation as a world-class director of British television commercials. But at the time, Rid was pretty much of an unknown quantity to most of BR's cast and crew. So he had that to contend with. Then, as you say, Ridley constantly had to explain the "why" behind every detail he wanted to include in BR. That REALLY drove him crazy, because Ridley's rather retiring; he'd much rather be doing something than explaining it. Scott also worked very, very slowly in 1981 - it took a lot of time to set up the kind of lighting you saw in Blade Runner - and time is money. Which meant that both the Ladd Company and Tandem Productions were constantly pressuring Scott to drop the artistic shit and hurry the hell up. Overtime also meant nothing to Ridley. Or at least it seemed that way. I mean, Ridley would have shot 24 hours a day if he could've gotten away with it. Unfortunately, most film crews don't want to spend 24 hours on a set (laughs). So the long days and constant retakes took a toll on his support team. Furthermore, during Blade Runner's production phase, Ridley couldn't operate the camera. That was the first time that had happened to him in his career - this was due to another union regulation - and that made him nervous. Mix all this crap in with the various feuds BR's become famous for - between Ridley and certain cast members, between Ridley and the crew, between Ridley and Tandem Productions - and, well, now you know why making BR was so difficult for him! N: How much time did Ridley spend with the actors? PS: Generally speaking? Not a lot. He certainly didn't take the Robert Altman approach. However, a certain sense of distance exists between most directors and their performers in Hollywood anyway. I've worked on more than one film where the director told an actor, "I hired you because you supposedly know what you're doing. So go away and do that. Stop bothering me about motivation; I've got a picture to make." Now, Ridley usually wasn't that blunt or dismissive while directing Blade Runner. But he could be. And to understand why, you first need to know something crucial about Ridley's personality, a character trait I first noticed while he was making BR. This was the fact that, at heart, Ridley Scott is a rather shy man. Not as shy as he used to be, by any means. But besides being shy, Ridley's English. And the English aren't exactly famed for their gregariousness. In fact, Ridley's a little like George Lucas in that respect. Because Lucas is a shy man, too. And it ain't always easy for someone with that kind of personality to direct the type of person who likes to jump up on cocktail tables with a lampshade on their head. Which describes most actors. However, Ridley has mellowed over the years. Consequently, he's more relaxed. And that attitude's a great asset when you're dealing with actors, believe me! N: So are you saying that it was Mr. Scott's personality that prevented him from directing BR's cast? PS: I'm not saying that at all. Ridley most certainly did direct his BR performers. But the way he went about it had a lot to do with who he was directing. But that's the way it usually goes anyway. One thing you never hear about Ridley Scott is the fact that he can be rather gentle in the way he handles certain actors. I definitely saw instances of that on the set. And that came as a surprise, because, as I've said, Ridley could also be a very tough cookie. Then, on the other hand, Ridley cultivated a pretty fruitful give-and-take environment with some of his BR actors, too. That certainly was the case with Rutger Hauer. But then there's that strained relationship he had with - N: Harrison Ford? PS: Exactly. Actually, I think Ridley was a little disappointed by the fact that he and Harrison didn't get along. I mean, I'd already been observing this show long before Ford was hired, and Ridley had been constantly going on and on about how much he admired Harrison's work and how he thought Ford was the perfect Rick Deckard. Ridley also used to say that he felt Harrison was a bit of an underappreciated actor back then. I'm sure he doesn't think that now! N: We know that at the time Ridley Scott wasn't as good at managing actors as he later learned he needed to be, and that Ford was someone who wanted direction and participation. But really, it's been 20 years now - Scott has effectively apologized for the difficulties. Isn't it time that Harrison came forward to admit to what so many, including Scott, have said? That Blade Runner is one of his best films? PS: A lot of the hardships people suffered while making Blade Runner became highly personalized. There's still some residual bitterness over that. Yes, even after 20 years! BR was a very, very difficult shoot to get through; things were rough on that set, man. Now, I can't speak for Ford, but I think it's fairly obvious that, besides being a consummate pro, Harrison's a very private person. A guy who just doesn't get off on routinely revealing his innermost self to the media. To which I say, good for him! But I do know that Ford looks back on BR as being a highly unpleasant experience, for any number of reasons. For instance, I think Harrison felt that Deckard was an underdeveloped character, and that Ridley was placing more emphasis on the sets than he was on the people populating those sets. Ford also really wanted to get in there with Ridley creatively, you know? He really wanted to discuss this Deckard guy with Ridley, to see what they could come up with together. But Ridley was usually off on a crane or scaffolding somewhere, lining up a shot (laughs). And then there was the Rutger factor; I mean, Rutger was like this human tornado, you know? So perhaps Ford felt the emphasis shifting away from Deckard and Rachael to Batty and the replicants, which I'm sure wouldn't have made him happy. Plus Ford was well aware of all the arguments going on between Scott and Tandem. Additionally, he hated the way the voiceover was written, he disliked working with Sean Young, and Harrison must have been disappointed by the way audiences initially shunned Blade Runner. After all, that turning away meant, to a certain extent, that they were shunning him. I'm sure there were other things Ford couldn't stomach about BR either. With all that, I'm not surprised that Harrison Ford's been so quiet about BR all these years. Still, I do wish, like you and many others, that he'd just sit down someday with someone he trusts and talk freely about the picture. After all, Ford's perspective is the biggest missing piece of the BR puzzle. Then again, Harrison probably doesn't feel it's professional to air personal grievances in the press. Or, to backtrack, perhaps Ford still hasn't found a journalist he feels he can trust, one who'll record his side of the story without embellishing or twisting the facts. Who knows? Personally, I think the saddest part of all is how Harrison seems unaware of just how good he was in BR. His portrayal of Deckard is certainly nothing to be ashamed of; in fact, like yourself, I think it's one of his best performances. And we're not the only ones. N: When did you notice Harrison Ford and Sean Young not getting along? Do you know why that was? PS: I guess the politest response would be to say that Sean and Harrison just didn't seem to click, personally or professionally. Ford's an intelligent man with a deeply engrained work ethic, you know - he does what he does with great focus and integrity. Sean, on the other hand, was new to the business then. A little green. What's interesting is how the real-life tensions between those two actors carried over into characters they portrayed in the film. In a positive way. I mean, I think the personal issues Sean and Harry were dealing with behind the scenes added an interesting edge to BR's Deckard/Rachael romance. N: Despite the difficulties, one of the reasons Blade Runner was made so well was the superb talent enlisted in every area. Was this the philosophy from the beginning or was some of it just lucky? PS: Very little of what made BR great had anything to do with luck. One of the reasons a Ridley Scott film is always so impressive is because he hand-picks the best people to work on them. Ridley's a producer as well as a director, you know. So he's always aware of who's the current top dog, in terms of being the best actor or technician. So, for Blade Runner, he went after - and got - some of the finest filmmakers then available in Hollywood. Harrison, of course, but also guys like Jordan Cronenweth, who shot the film, and Vangelis, who scored it. Or Syd Mead, the concept designer. Or Doug Trumbull, who did the special effects. They were all individually chosen by Ridley. And Scott doesn't only hire the best, he demands the best. He can be a hard taskmaster. But he's harder on himself than anyone else. Again, though, if you can realize where he's coming from, then you can also roll along with his demands. My take on the issue is that all Ridley's trying to do, in every film he makes, is to maximize his resources in order to create the best picture possible. N: Jean "Moebius" Giraud. One of the original talents behind Métal Hurlant and subsequent Heavy Metal magazines that Ridley Scott used as inspiration. Scott reportedly wanted him on the film, but he was unavailable at the time. Yet he is listed on the IMDb as an uncredited member of the costume design team. He worked as a concept artist on Scott's film, Alien and was a production designer alongside Syd Mead on Tron. I have always wondered exactly what his involvement with Blade Runner really was. Did he visit the set? Was he involved in any of the creation? Did you meet him? PS: The answers to your last three questions, at least as far as I'm aware of, are no, marginally, and no. I'm fairly sure Moebius never visited the BR set, and that he didn't submit any designs for the film. I've certainly never met him. Ridley did once show me some of the beautiful, large-format art Moebius contributed for the Nostromo crew's uniforms and "samurai" spacesuits in Alien, which Ridley seemed very proud to have. Then again, Ridley's always been impressed with Moebius's style. Indeed, a lot of the Ridleygrams Scott drew during BR to show his art department looked very much like Moebius art. That was intentional; Ridley was aping Giraud's style, to explain to the production how he wanted Blade Runner to look. Which was like an adult comic book. That's a phrase Scott constantly used to describe the film while it was being prepped, by the way. An adult comic book. There also once was a story in Heavy Metal which had been illustrated by Moebius and written by Dan O'Bannon called, I think, "The Long Tomorrow". That was a futuristic detective story set in a crowded, beehive-like metropolis. I know Ridley was aware of that piece as well. I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to how much that influenced BR. But let me swerve off the road again for a second. Since you mentioned using the IMDb, or Internet Movie Database for research, well, my advice has always been, "Take what you read there with a grain of salt." Or maybe an entire salt mine. Because a distressingly disproportionate amount of info on the IMDb is inaccurate. Just plain wrong. IMDb usually gets the broad strokes right, but if you go to that site for the finer dabs of paint, the more obscure details of a production - beware. N: Another missing person - have you found out yet who played Abdul Ben-Hassan? PS: Nope. He's still M.I.A. The problem is, Abdul had a very small part. A day player's, really. And he may - may - have had his real voice dubbed over by another performer during looping. Which has made tracking down Abdul even more troublesome. But I'm still on the case. N: A few background questions about general life on set. What was the catering like? What was the standard meal there? Did anybody use "Eddie's" language a lot on set? What did sets smell like? Did you resort to wearing a facemask like some of the crew? PS: The catering on most shoots, especially higher-budgeted ones, is almost always good. You're usually served two meals a day, and the menu on BR ran the usual gamut; eggs, potatoes, breakfast meats, cereals, juices, steaks, pasta, fish, salads, vegetables, stuffed peppers, deserts, the whole nine yards. The funny thing about catering, though, is that no matter how good the cooks or menus are, eventually the crew starts thinking they're being served the same thing too often. Then the grumbling starts. But providing your cast and crew with good food is very, very important - what was it Napoleon said about armies winning wars with their stomachs, not their weapons? You have to keep your people well-fed. That not only insures that you'll keep a cast and crew's strength up - making films is exhausting - but it goes a long way towards maintaining their good will, too. As for Eddie Olmos and the bit player who portrayed the cop who arrested Deckard at the noodle bar, they were the only two people I ever saw getting into Cityspeak. I mean, a lot of the Cityspeak phrasing came from Olmos' own linguistic research, right? And Eddie was really the only one who got to speak it at any length in the film. Therefore, there wasn't much reason for the other performers to be too interested in Cityspeak. Besides, technical dialogue, the scientific jargon you hear on Star Trek, for example, is hard enough for most actors to memorize and recite. Just imagine them trying to master something like Cityspeak! Now, how did the set smell? Well, the Warners backlot, the "X" intersection and New York street where the BR sets were built, usually exuded two distinct aromas - smoke and water. Sometimes it seemed like there were rainbars or smokers being used for every damn shot in Blade Runner. So after awhile the backlot started to smell a little, uh, mildew-y. Scott's crew used so many different kinds of smoke and charcoal and incense that those odors seeped into everything. Specific aromas also popped up during specific scenes. Like the noodle bar; you had the fragrance of fish heads, boiled noodles, rice, coffee and God knows what else wafting around that set. And yeah, sometimes I HAD to wear a facemask, again because of the rain and soot. Blade Runner wasn't the worst "smoke experience" I've had on a set, though. That honor would have to go to David Lynch's Dune, which I worked on back in 1982-84. David didn't think the usual smoke effects were reading darkly enough on film. So he started burning automobile and truck tires - big ones! - during some miniature and live-action shots. Which was awful! You just haven't lived until you've spent 12 hours breathing burning tires, and then another picking bits of crispy rubber out of your hair when you get back to your hotel room. But hey - David got his blacks! N: This seems a good point to drop in that most annoying and intriguing of questions - is Deckard a Replicant? [audible groan]. Right at the beginning of FN, you make the comment, "Maybe now people will stop asking us if Deckard is a replicant!" Guess again! :) Even though Scott has been saying it for years, it was still reported in mainstream news when he stated it again in the Channel 4 documentary. But the debate continues unabated. There is no doubt that BR is Ridley Scott's film and that he did a stunning job. But the associated debate is whether a director can dictate how people view his creation - or does the creation become an entity unto itself, separated from those who made it? Another factor is that, back in 1982, Scott said in interviews that he wanted to suggest that Deckard might be a Replicant - something that seems to be reflected in your own description of events. In the end, is it not more interesting to have the question than to "know" the answer? PS: That's a good point. I agree that the ambiguity of Deckard's true nature is far more interesting than simply inserting a scene where a character blurts out, "C'mere, you fuckin' android!" What I do find amusing and more than a little exasperating about this issue, though, is how some BR fans simply won't accept the facts of this matter. I mean, Ridley first told me in 1980 - 1980! - that he thought it would be interesting to suggest Deckard was a replicant. Of course, 18 years later, Ridley began telling interviewers that he'd always meant Deckard to be a replicant. Well, maybe Ridley was being a little disingenuous. Or maybe he'd just forgotten the reality of the situation. Because I never heard Scott ever come right out and say, at least while the film was being made, "Yeah, this cop is a replicant." The words I recall were, "He might be a replicant." I do know that Ridley argued with Harrison over this point, because Ford never wanted Deckard to be anything but a flawed human being who was redeemed through love and an understanding of the replicants plight. However, having said that, I also think Ridley himself probably inwardly felt that Deckard was an artificial human. Why else include the daydream/tinfoil unicorn tie-in? Of course, the galloping unicorn footage was one of the last things filmed for the picture, so perhaps Ridley had come down more squarely on the side of the "Deck as Rep" issue by then. Anyway, I don't remember him ever explicitly stating that, yeah, Deckard is a replicant. Not while the film was being made. Ridley always said, at least to me, that he thought it would be far more provocative to imply Deckard was an artificial being. That way audiences would have something to mull over and talk about after the lights came up. To respond to your other query, I agree with you - some films definitely take on lives of their own. Sure, the director and writer and actors and cinematographer stamp their own personalities on a project. But there's something almost mystical about the way a film can then exhibit a separate identity of its own. It's almost like alchemy, you know? Transforming lifeless light and celluloid into a uniquely individual, subtly living thing. But to get back to the Ford as replicant debate - as I wrote in Future Noir, it depends on which version of Blade Runner you see. I think that that experience will influence your decision more than anything. The original theatrical release, for instance, certainly makes a strong case for Deckard being human. But the inclusion of the unicorn shot in the Director's Cut more or less suggests that he is a Replicant. My advice is - keep arguing. Then make your own decision. N: I was surprised no one referenced Future Noir when Ridley brought this issue up again a few years ago. PS: Me too. That was really a wake-up call for me. I mean, the manner in which the mainstream media approached this issue, as if it was something brand-new, made me realize that the mainstream probably wasn't aware of Future Noir. Yet if you're a responsible, informed journalist, how could you not know that an entire book had already been written about this film? A book that had a separate, stand-alone section that addressed the Replicant debate at great length? And Future Noir certainly wasn't the first written reference to address this issue, either. I mean, come on! The first time I mentioned it in print was back in 1981, for Christ's sake. Later on, I repeated that hypothesis for my Video Watchdog piece. Yet not a single mainstream news channel or magazine mentioned these facts, or even seemed aware of them. That's sort of depressing, you know, on any number of levels. Especially as it indicates how shabbily corporate networks and major news outlets must conduct their "research" before they do a story. If they do any research at all. Anyway, want to know my personal take on this "Deckard as Replicant" controversy? I still think it's more fun, and challenging, to realize that Harrison might be an android... even if the Director's Cut clearly indicates that he is one. N: I quite agree that the "nature of Deckard" question is more interesting than the answer, but the debate will no doubt continue regardless of anyone's answers! (laughs maniacally) N: Blade Runner is not simply a "cult classic" - it now regularly appears in Top 100 film lists and is particularly popular in the UK, where it graced the Top 10 of a few major "Favourite Films of the 20th Century" surveys. Why is that Paul? And did you have any idea back in 1982 that it would become such a classic? PS: Well, to begin, I'm not quite sure that BR's totally escaped its cult status yet. Sure, it's easy to assume that the film is better known, especially with all of these "Best Of" lists floating around, not to mention all the BR-devoted books and websites and fans. But honestly, your average moviegoer could give a shit. Go ahead - stop somebody in the street and ask them, "Ever hear of a movie called Blade Runner?" Most of the time you'll be rewarded with a blank look. Or, at best, they'll say, "Yeah, I dimly seem to recall something called that." And how can I make such a statement? Because, for years now, I've been asking many, many different strangers the same question. And I usually get the responses I've just detailed. It's a little game I sometimes play when I first meet someone - "Ever heard of BR?" So I think it's important to keep in mind that you may be preaching to the choir when you're trying to assess BR's overall recognition factor with other fans of the film. I mean, it's the job of film critics to know cinema history, right? So of course they'd be aware of BR. Just as a film buff or SF film enthusiast or SF literature fan would be. However, these are only splinter groups in a much larger culture - the mainstream, if you will. And the mainstream is far more aware of any Star Wars film than it is of BR. As for why BR is now making "Best Of' lists, well, the superficial response would be to cite its influential production design. Which, for the most part, still looks fresh and dazzling today. But the real reason the film continues to build in popularity is due to its tone, its characters, and its complexity. For instance, with BR, Ridley improved upon a strategy he'd used in Alien; that is, to create a fantastically detailed yet realistic future world, and then to populate that world with believable characters. In that sense, BR is Alien cubed - here are all these crazy things like Spinners and Espers surrounding people who are depressed, or arrogant, or manipulative, or confused - hey, just like the real people we meet every day! But that's only part of the equation. As BR unfolds, you realize that, even though it's set in 2019, it's actually forecasting many of the same dilemmas facing us now. Overcrowding. The police state. Cloning. Corporate dominance and corruption. Creating technology that serves our darkest interests. The film additionally touches on elemental questions, the big ones. Who am I? What am I? How do I deal with violence? Love? Freedom? And why the hell do I only have "X" days to live? Anyway, I think audiences recognize and respond to all this, even if it's only on the intuitive level. BR is among the handful of great science fiction films that challenges you to think, instead of just showing you intricately choreographed light-saber battles. Of course, these concerns are chiefly cerebral ones. But BR isn't simply a Kubrickian exercise. Although I gotta tell ya, I'm still surprised by how few critics recognize the extent to which Blade Runner resembles a Stanley Kubrick picture. Anyway, I also think audiences really love the mood of BR. It's so intensely melancholic. So sad, so infused with forlorn nostalgia. But then, in the midst of this gloom, a sequence will suddenly come along that, in purely kinetic or visual terms, just totally blows you away. Furthermore, watching BR only once is like taking a single bite out of a seven-course meal. I mean, there's always something going on in the background or the corners of the frame, some little detail or activity you barely half-register. Still, those details pique your curiosity, so you want to see it again. I obviously can go on and on about this (laughs). As that little mantra in Starship Troopers goes do you want to know more? N: Certainly! PS: Okay. Blade Runner treats its audience with respect; it isn't contemptuous of a viewer's head or heart. It also sucks you in and doesn't let go until the lights come up. It's very well paced. And of course there's Vangelis' music - what an incredible score! So BR isn't the D.O.A. product of the sterile Hollywood assembly line. It's truly unique, truly alive in that way only great films can be. One other reason? BR's characters. They're vivid and quirky, yet at the same time demonstrably human. I mean, take Deckard's drinking. He drinks a lot in BR. Yet it's possible that Deckard's alcoholism is basically a way of insulating himself from this hellish city where he's stuck in an awful job he doesn't like. Now, who hasn't found themselves in a similar situation in their own life? That's another example of what I meant when I mentioned the multiple layers in this film. I mean, Deckard's taste for liquor can be read as more than an acknowledgement of all of those hard-drinking, two-fisted, two-dimensional stereotypes you find in most detective films - although it's a nod to that convention too. Anyway, perhaps the most concise reasons why BR is finally making all these "Best Of" lists could be summed up as: Great story. Good characters. Astonishing sets. Amazing special effects. Gorgeous cinematography. Serious concerns. Truly bizarre set pieces. Wonderful music. And emotions. Genuinely affecting ones. I mean, every time I watch that scene in Deckard's apartment, where his callousness and verbal cruelty towards Rachael results in her finding out that she's a replicant, that everything she's ever trusted and believed in about her "life" is totally false, that all her memories are artificial ones hardwired into her brain - well, when Sean cries during that moment, I cry too. N: There were changes imposed on the film due to early test screenings. Do test screenings work? If you take a film that is aimed at a certain group of people and show it to a general audience, surely it is obvious you are going to get a large chunk of the audience saying they don't get it? If you try to make a film for such a general audience, do you not end up with the homogenized and empty films that dominate Hollywood? PS: Absolutely. But you have to understand the studio mindset and a few other variables. Occasionally you will hear a studio exec state otherwise but believe me, the vast majority of them do not give the tiniest of shits about the quality of the films they release. Good, bad, mediocre - who cares? Just so long as it's marketable, and profitable. That observation comes from someone who worked within the studio system for well over a decade, by the way. In fact, I distinctly remember that the first shock I had when I initially started in the system was how so very, very few upper echelon studio execs really cared about movies. Or even knew much about them. It was like working alongside a corporation of plumbers, you know? It was just another job to them. Here's another example. I was talking with a good friend of mine, an indie film director, not too long ago; we were basically sitting around swapping war stories. Then he mentioned a mutual acquaintance, another director whose overriding desire had always been to work within the studio system. And this guy had gotten his wish; he's been working on studio films for nearly 25 years now. Anyway, my friend said he'd once asked this acquaintance what he thought the two most important things a director working on a studio film could do to make his position as comfortable as possible. Number one, this guy replied, was to make sure your first day's dailies looked good; that way, the studio would assume you were doing what they were paying you for, and turn their attention elsewhere. The second most important thing was to always remember that the studios didn't care about how hard you were working or how hard you were trying to make a good film. All they wanted was a marketable product. Therefore, test screenings are very important to the studios, since they're convinced that these events are the first indicator as to whether you've created that product. But these screenings are inherently flawed. As you just said, if you test a film that's specifically targeted at a certain group - let's say young women - what do you think the response is going to be from the young men in the test audience who had no idea that they were going to see a romantic comedy? That's the first flaw; often, test audiences have little to no idea of what kind of movie they're going to be previewing. So you've already skewed your results. Furthermore, I know of very few directors who like test screenings. Some of them will put on an agreeable public face about the experience and say, "Yes, these screenings help us weed out what audiences don't like." Privately, though, they loathe the process. I mean, some studios and directors first decide to make a film based on the quality of its script. So why fuck with that after the fact? The answer, of course, is to try to find a way to squeeze a few more bucks out of your pocket. But the end result often slices away at the very qualities that got the film made in the first place; the first things to go are the little details and connective tissue that gave that script its unique voice. And god help the film that confuses a test audience. A good example of that one would be - well, how do you think Ridley Scott felt after all those 18 year olds turned in their response cards following BR's initial test screenings in Denver and Dallas? I mean, here was an audience that knew very little about the kind of film they were going to see; they'd just assumed, because Harrison Ford was in it, that Blade Runner was another action picture ala Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Which it most definitely is not. So it's no wonder that that audience said they were depressed and confused by the film, especially by its ambiguous ending. A response that led to that ridiculous, ride-into-the-sunset climax being grafted onto BR at the last moment. Now, maybe if test screenings were more generalized - do you like or dislike this film? - I'd be more forgiving of the process. At least that single question would give you an early indication as to how your movie was going to be received. Even if the response might have been tainted by the fact that you simply drew in a bored or inappropriate audience that was pissed off because the theater's air conditioning wasn't working that night. To be completely even-handed, though, sometimes test screenings actually do work to a film's advantage. RoboCop, for instance. That movie originally ended with a little montage of scenes showing that the Nancy Allen character had survived her wounds and was recuperating in a hospital, followed by another MediaBreak about the arrest of the obnoxious TV comic who keeps saying, "I'd buy that for a dollar!", followed by a shot of Robo sitting in his TurboCruiser prowling the streets of Detroit. Well, all that was dropped after Robo's test audience said they felt the film should end right after Robo's asked his name by Dan O'Herlihy, and Peter Weller replies, "Murphy." That test audience was right; it was a better ending. But that sort of helpfulness is rare. Test screenings can now result in so many changes - deletions, additions, new endings - that you have to wonder why they made the original film in the first place. N: Some aspects of Blade Runner are darkly prophetic of the world we now inhabit. L.A. 2019 is a futuristic city filled with a multicultural society trying to live in a polluted atmosphere with huge billboards advertising what appear to be drugs. Genetic research has created something that touches on the very essence of what we consider socially acceptable. What elements of the "future vision" of BR do you now see as becoming or have already become reality? PS: You've just named a clutch of them. Ubiquitous adverts. Rampant drug use - sanctioned drug use. Have you seen any of the TV commercials that are currently running on the American networks, the ones that are used to advertise prescription drugs like Nexium? That's an acid reflux treatment. And it's a prescription drug, not an over-the-counter medication. Those adverts are funded by global pharmaceutical companies, and they're all over the airwaves now. There certainly weren't any commercials like that back in 1982! BR also predicted LA's teeming multiculturalism, although it focused on the wrong ethnic group - Runner indicated that Los Angeles would become dominated by Asians, when in fact it's the Latino community that's achieved that distinction. So far. As for LA's smog problem, well, that's actually lessened since 1982. On the other hand, BR predicted profound weather changes in LA. Changes brought on by industrial pollution, which in the film took the form of acid rain. We may not have acid rain here yet, but LA most certainly seems to be receiving less and less rainfall each season, which some climatologists claim is directly related to global warming. Then there's the overcrowding and homelessness you see in BR. That's probably the most obvious prophecy that became a later reality. I mean, just cruise through downtown LA some night to see how close we are to 2019 here in 2002! Finally, there's the way BR nailed the police corruption we constantly suffer from in this city; the L.A.P.D. portrayed in BR seems to have a dangerous contempt for what Captain Bryant calls "little people". All I have to say is, does the name Rodney King strike a bell? But that's the worth of social commentary in science fiction. The way certain SF books and films present alarming futuristic societies by simply expanding upon, or extrapolating from, contemporary cultural reality. N: You are very well traveled - how do you think Blade Runner is perceived around the world? Indeed, how much has it influenced the world? When visiting the Akihabara ("Electric City") area of Tokyo I was stunned with the juxtaposition of large futuristic electronics stores with the large market around the corner - small, downbeat stalls selling electronic components - so very reminiscent of Animoid Row. Do you think the essence of Blade Runner already exists in Japan? PS: Not only does it already exist in Japan - where I spent three years as a boy, by the way, living on a Naval base - BR's essence existed in Japan before the film was made. Ridley's gone on record, in fact, about that one. He's stated that he purposefully incorporated elements of the glitzy/crowded environment of Tokyo's Ginza district into the look of Animoid Row. So there's an example of the film using a preexisting reality. However, the film has influenced the real world in other, subtler ways. For example, the type of font used for Blade Runner's logo wasn't at all well-known before the film's release, and now that font is everywhere. Architects have also written papers detailing how BR's buildings seem to have become increasingly mirrored in structures found today. As far as being well-traveled, yeah, you're right. I love to travel. I do a lot of it, too, both inside and beyond the borders of this country. And virtually everywhere I go, Blade Runner is as revered, at least by the subgroups we discussed earlier, as it is here in America. For example, I've given talks on the film throughout most of Western Europe. Germany, England, Italy and so on, and each presentation has always been well-attended. In fact, I did a BR talk last November (2001) in Bremen, Germany, for this remarkable annual graphic arts/film/digital symposium called Profile Intermedia. Over 1500 people showed up. Japan loves the film too. So interest in BR certainly exists in industrialized foreign countries. I'm pretty sure a large Blade Runner fan base doesn't exist in Africa or India or the Middle East, though... (laughs). Then again, who knows? The film seems to catch on wherever it's available. Perhaps those parts of the world treasure it too. N: As prophetic as some aspects of Blade Runner seem to be, it also seems quite evident that there is only a minute possibility of us living Off-World and having Replicants by 2019! In fact, do you think we would ever develop anything remotely like Replicants? A strong tendency in Cyberpunk fiction that is beginning to be reflected in real life is to enhance ourselves while creating robots to do specific tasks. PS: You just brought up one of my pet peeves. I've said it before and I'll say it again, but most science fiction pictures make the mistake of presenting wildly speculative advancements and technologies within a time frame that's much too close to our own. Spielberg's Minority Report is a good example of that. I'm damn sure we're not going to have automatic superhighways capable of sending remote-controlled vehicles up and down the sides of buildings fifty years from now! Same problem with BR - I don't see replicants being created by 2019, either. Much less Off-world colonies. I mean, we'll probably have landed a few more unmanned rovers on Mars by then, but that'll pretty much be it. What I do see happening fairly soon involves the medical establishment using genetic research and selective breeding to enhance our own physicality, while also coming up with viable procedures that result in organ cloning. That may not be as far off as we think. You know, inventing methods that result in artificially-created kidneys, spleens, lungs, whatever. Not entire brains, though. The human brain is far too complex an organ to simply reproduce like a photocopy, at least at this point. Which, again, is not to say that this won't happen; I just think that brain cloning will occur much farther down the timeline than pop culture predicts. On the other hand, I absolutely believe that we eventually will produce living replicas of ourselves. The question is, what form will those "replicants" take? Will they be just like us? Better than us? Or will they basically be mindless bodies you keep in communal storage somewhere, until you need your next liver transplant? Anyway, my gut feeling is that human cloning is inevitable; the genie's already out of that particular bottle, and there ain't no way to force it back in. Again, though, it's more of a matter of when these things will happen. I'm certain it won't be by 2019, though. Especially if the goddamn Republican Party is still in control of this country (laughs). N: Ridley Scott still thinks, "It is one of the best movies I've ever made." He has made some good films since, but nothing with the intellectual or visual depth. What was different about Blade Runner? PS: Have you had the chance to read Ridley Scott: Close-Up yet? The little career monograph I wrote about his work back in 1999? There's a chapter in there that answers your question, I think. It's in the Legend chapter. In that section, Ridley said he felt overwhelmed by self-doubt after BR failed at the box-office, that he suffered a crisis of self-confidence. Because Rid really thought that he'd nailed what he was after with that film, and then BR tanked at the box office. So perhaps Ridley has intentionally steered away from more intelligent, complex stories like Blade Runner since then because he's either wary of getting burned again or now feels that a film like that will never connect with a mass audience. These observations are pure speculation on my part, however. That's really the sort of question Ridley should answer himself. But, you know, the movies Ridley has made after BR haven't exactly been stupid ones. Nay, nay, I say; they've actually been pretty smart. Even Hannibal, which I consider his weakest work, was invested with a subtle intelligence. But then, Ridley's a very intelligent filmmaker. That's one of the reasons I enjoy his films so much. N: What recent Scott film do you think is one of his better works? PS: Gladiator! It has problems, sure. Still, I love that film! Its story and characterizations, its spectacle and performances, its detailing and music - there's something inherently honorable in that movie. And the depth of feeling in it... wow! I also love Gladiator's overwhelming melancholy, its haunting sense of loss. Which is very much like Blade Runner's! And of course the combat scenes, both in and out of the arena, are amazing. I just wish there were more of them. N: Future Noir seems to reflect the way Blade Runner was made - while it tells a story, it is also multi-layered with great depth of detail. Just like the film, there always seems to be some new nuance that I find every time I dip into it. How much did you consciously attempt to parallel the approach of the movie in your writing? PS: I very consciously attempted to ape the film's visual density with a corresponding barrage of literary detail. I mean, if you're going to write about a film as complex as Blade Runner, why do a book that isn't as intricate as its subject? But that's the way I've always approached film history, you know. When my editors allow it (laughs). The analogy I use is that, if I'm given my head, I'll automatically adopt an approach that's very similar to the "scorched earth" policy America used during the Vietnam War. In other words, once I pass through a village, there's very little left behind me. N: Talking of writing, what do you think of Jeter's "sequels" to DADoES/Blade Runner? PS: I like the second one better than the first. First, though, I have to tell you that I'd been reading Jeter's work before he did those sequels, and already had a great deal of respect for his talents. Jeter's one hell of a writer. He's found his own voice, he's more than technically proficient, and there's this edgy, unnerving undertone running through his prose that's very hard to shake off. Part of that last quality, I'm sure, comes from the fact that Jeter's not an ivory-tower writer. For example, at certain points in his life, Jeter was a probation officer and a supervisor of a juvenile correction facility. I'm sure those real-world experiences have influenced the darkness in his work. Anyway, and I know it sounds like I'm gushing here, but Jeter truly has done some excellent, excellent work. His horror fiction, for instance. Ever read Dr. Adder? Or Soul Eater? I mean, fuck! And those are just two examples of a very singular talent. That's why I was a bit disappointed when I read The Edge of Human, Jeter's first BR sequel. It just didn't jell for me. Jeter's high level of craftsmanship was certainly on display, and Edge did incorporate the Dickian themes of deception, conspiracy, and the nature of reality. But overall, I thought Edge had plot and characterization problems. It also felt a little... thin. So that one didn't work for me. However, I enjoyed Jeter's second BR novel. Replicant Night seemed not only more of a "Jeter" book, it also seemed more in tune with BR's original harmonics, and the authorial voice of Philip K. Dick. Still, I don't think I'd rush out to adapt either book as the first cinematic BR sequel. That comment has nothing to do with Jeter, by the way; as I've said, I think he's a wonderful writer. He can certainly kick my literary ass! It's just that I feel that the "true" sequel to Blade Runner has yet to see print, in either novel or screenplay form. Then again, the beauty of Blade Runner lies in its originality. Any cinematic BR sequel would have to work very hard to match the freshness of its approach, or the remarkable fusion of collaborators that earmarked the original. Otherwise, it's going to wind up falling into the trap of diminishing returns. Which usually happens to sequels anyway. Or to sequels to sequels. N: Do you think there could ever be a (good) film sequel to Blade Runner? If so, what might it involve? PS: Who knows? I mean, the personal, legal and political tangles behind this film have pretty much ruled out the possibility of any cinematic sequel. Although, lately, clouds do seem to be lifting off of that particularly stormy horizon. So perhaps BR2 - the movie - will get the greenlight someday. But first, it's going to have to have an intelligent, adult, hard-edged script. It's also going to have to bypass any number of practical hurdles. Harrison Ford, for example. He's 20 years older, and his fee is much higher than the one he received for doing BR back in 1982. So right away you'd have age and budget issues to contend with. And where would you go with this sequel's production design? I mean, BR broke the mold in the way it visually presented a fully realized future society. Topping that would be a very tough assignment. On the other hand, would you even want to? Perhaps, as Ridley has said, the true sequel to BR shouldn't occur on earth at all - maybe it should take place on an Off-World colony. Or perhaps someone should write a screenplay suggesting that Deckard is actually a Nexus 7. And immortal, to boot. Now there's a subtext you could run with. N: Sequels aside, do you think anything like BR will ever be made again, given the industry's apparent preference for CGI as opposed to "hands-on" SFX? PS: Well, technically speaking, contemporary SF films mix digital effects with "real" miniatures and other hands-on effects all the time. Attack of the Clones is the first example that springs to mind; everyone's gone on and on about the CG work in that movie, but Clones also used model cities and special makeup effects, you know. The wonderful thing about Hollywood is that occasionally, despite all efforts to the contrary, an intelligent, thoughtful film manages to slip through the back door and into your local multiplex. So sure, something approaching Blade Runner's quality is bound to come along. And don't forget, Hollywood isn't the only filmmaking entity - there's also the American indie and international filmmaking communities to consider. Those groups produce quality work all the time. To take one example, look at Japan's recent spate of smart, stylish horror films. Cure, Ring, Audition, Ghost Actress (which is also titled Don't Look Up), Pulse... I mean, each of those is a pretty damned impressive piece of work. Then again, do I think we're likely to soon see a new spate of big-budgeted American projects like Blade Runner? A popular series of movies which would weld the bottomless resources of a major studio to the deeper sensibilities of a low-budget art film? No way. I mean, BR did that, but it was a fluke. So don't hold your breath. N: A couple of years ago you said, "I'd really, really love to have an expanded edition of Future Noir out in bookstores by 2002, to tie in with the film's twentieth anniversary." And we would love to read it. Will we be seeing it? With the 300 excluded pages reinstated? And updates on all that has happened since, including the making of the Special Edition? PS: At this point, nothing's definite. I have begun work on an expanded edition, which includes most of the previously deleted stuff along with a great deal of new material. Including, as you say, information on the making of the Special Edition. The problem seems to be, at this point anyway, that certain departments within my publishing company need to be convinced that okaying such an expanded work would be in their best economic interests. I happen to think it would. So do a lot of other people. But... Tell you what. You really want to see an expanded Future Noir? Then write a letter or send an email to HarperCollins in New York. Or circulate a petition. Publishers do listen to their readerships, you know - especially if they hear enough noise from them. In fact, a certain level of insistence from fans of the original Future Noir demanding an expanded edition just might carry enough weight to tip the scales in my favor. Anyway, in the meantime, I continue to explore the issue at my end. I'm rarin' to go, believe me. By the way, if you don't mind, since we're talking about publishers, I'd like to put in a good word for my United Kingdom publishers, Orion Media. Orion has just been a super company to work with. Friendly, supportive, extremely professional. They've also, in my opinion, designed the best dust jacket of all the Future Noir foreign editions; I mean, the book's been reprinted in Japan, Spain, Italy, the USA and so on. But Orion's the only company that's come up with a cover that, I feel, does justice to the film and my book. So not only are they great to work with, Orion also has taste! They published the Alien and Aliens screenplay books I edited a couple of years ago. So buy Orion books! I can't say enough good things about those people. N: In some ways, the forced excising of chunks of your book parallels what happened to Blade Runner. Given that there are further difficulties now that look likely to delay the release of the Blade Runner Special Edition DVD set until 2003, it seems the complications continue. Could you explain the BR rights situation to us - we're very confused. PS: You're not the only one! (laughs) BR's rights situation has always been something of a quagmire. You have a major studio involved (Warner Brothers), a major production company (Scott Free), and a separate entity called The Blade Runner Partnership. There's also some interpersonal friction going on. The good news is that various attorneys from these three entities are still talking to each other. So maybe we're moving forwards, towards a final resolution on this issue. But you've also brought up something I'd like to correct. You see, I think there may be a misperception about how Future Noir's 300 pages went missing. HarperCollins never arbitrarily said, "Cut this! Cut that!" In fact, my editor on Future Noir, Caitlin Blasdell, was uncommonly supportive of the book while I was writing it. The problem was, I turned in a manuscript you could have used to ballast an oil tanker. So the edits I made came about from the result of a mutual understanding - I and my publisher both knew that, if the manuscript had been kept at its original length, HarperCollins would have had to jack up the price of Future Noir far beyond its present cost. It's simple economics - more pages, more paper. Which costs more money. So FN's "missing" 300 pages basically came down to a financial issue, as do most things in America. Which was upsetting, if legitimate. I do understand and respect the business end of publishing/filmmaking, you know, far more than some might think. It's only fair, right? I mean, if you're in business with someone who's willing to bankroll your project, then part of your responsibility is to be as fiscally responsible as possible while you're creating that project. I'm not saying you should tweak your creative elements because some MBA doesn't like or understand them. What I'm saying is that it's both wise and fair for you to explore the most cost-effective ways of conjuring up those elements. After all, I didn't pay the bills for Future Noir - HarperCollins did! But...! (laughs) You knew that was coming, right? Anyway, the near-crippling problem I had with this massive pruning job was the time frame I was given to accomplish it in. That was very, very narrow. Future Noir would be a far better book, in my opinion, if I'd had more than a few days to finish the necessary nips and tucks. That's why I always cringe a bit when someone compliments me on the book. I had to cut appendices and compress chapters and rewrite material so quickly that the end result, I fear, more closely resembles a first draft than a finished work. Now, don't get me wrong - I do think that I'd done a man's job on Future Noir, as Gaff would say. Particularly considering the last-minute curve ball that was thrown at my head. But that's another reason I so want to do an expanded edition - in my opinion, the original still needs work! N: Getting back to Blade Runner, did the Money Men have any creative influence on the film, apart from saying certain things could not be done because the budget wasn't there? PS: Oh, sure. Some of these money men, as you call them, loathed the film. Just hated it. So there was always that roadblock to contend with. They also didn't understand concepts like the unicorn, which was one reason it was dropped from the film. The addition of BR's faux happy ending definitely was the result of financial pressure. But never forget - the primary strength of the money men has always been their power to say, "We don't have the cash for that." N: Charlie de Lauzirika (producer of the upcoming Blade Runner Special Edition DVD) said in interview that you and he still chat. Given that and your long-standing relationship with Ridley Scott, it would be no surprise to us if your involvement with Blade Runner continues even now. Have you done or were you asked to do ... ummm ... anything for the BR:SE? PS: Yes. You see, Charlie and I do speak. Quite often, in fact. I like to think of him as a pal, in fact, as well as a collaborator. I also wish I could tell you everything there is to know about the Special Edition. But, if I did, various people would hold me down, cut off my testicles with a rusty scalpel, and serve them up in a soup bowl. So all I can say is that, yes, I am involved in the BR DVD, and have been for some time. I'm also as frustrated as everyone else that it isn't out yet! N: Do you have any information or speculation on the Special Edition that you can share with us? Do you think it will finally put some issues to rest, (e.g. the Workprint)? PS: Again - this particular DVD remains an extremely sensitive and political topic. The issues surrounding it are so fluid and volatile that, even if I were to give you some specific information today, that data would probably change tomorrow. I do have faith in Ridley and Charlie and the other key players who are working on this DVD, though. I mean, one reason it's taking so long is that everyone wants to do the best job possible. And my gut feeling is that it will appear. Eventually. It also should be one hell of a package. N: Do you have any souvenirs from Blade Runner itself? PS: I sure do. A variety of things. Like some original BR miniatures - one's a Spinner that was on top of the police HQ building, another's an elevator from the Tyrell Pyramid. I also have some sketches and prep art and storyboards that various people were kind enough to donate for my archives, and many different versions of the script. I also bought just about all of the spin-off merchandise that appeared during the film's initial release - the Blue Dolphin sketchbook and scrapbook, the BR Souvenir magazine, you name it. I even have a set of the ERTL die-cast BR vehicles; still unopened, still in their original box. I've other BR-related items, too. But maybe I'd better stop while I'm ahead. (laughs) N: As much as we love Blade Runner, there is of course a great deal more to life than talking about this one film. What can you tell us about Paul M. Sammon's busy life in 2002? PS: You've already described it - busy! I spent most of 2001, for example, working on a TV series for the Public Broadcasting System. It's called "Madison Heights." I was primarily a still photographer on that one, although I also snagged a part and got to play actor for a day. I've acted in a lot of the films I've worked on, strangely enough. Although "acting's" probably too grandiose a term to describe what I've done - the parts I get are usually walk-ons or bits. In Starship Troopers, as I've said, I play the guy who pushes this cow into a Warrior Bug's holding pen. You can also spot me in movies like RoboCop 2, Xtro: Watch the Skies, Mockingbird Don't Sing, and a bunch of other things... if you know where to look. N: What have you been up to more recently? PS: Well, in the last half-year or so, I spent a month by myself in Colorado, near the city of Telluride, writing an original screenplay a producer is interested in. I'm also suddenly in demand as a talking head for TV shows and DVD supplements - you can see me in the new RoboCop and Starship Troopers special edition DVD's, for example. Additionally, the American Movie Classics cable channel here in the States has begun using me as a consultant, and Channel 4 in Great Britain just interviewed me as part of a TV special they're doing on SF films. That should air sometime in the U.K. later this year. Then I've been doing the usual lectures, like the one I mentioned in Bremen. I also took my wife to Amsterdam for the first time, after which we spent a week in Sloane Square, my favorite place to stay in London. I've also been to Brussels, Las Vegas, San Diego, Berlin, San Francisco... I'm like that old Beach Boys song - I get around! On the literary front, beside the script I mentioned, it looks like my long-delayed book on the making of the Alien films may finally be coming out. Then there's a book I'm collaborating on with a very good photographer, as well as another book I'm writing about a very special breed of Hollywood celebrity. I'd also like to edit a collection of the first and last versions of the Blade Runner script in book form, but I'm still tied up with untangling the usual licensing and legal knots on that one. Finally, I'm expanding Ridley Scott: Close-Up. I was originally under a mandate to deliver a 45,000 word manuscript for that project, but since Ridley's done three movies since then and is now prepping two more, I think it deserves a complete overhaul. That's about it, I think - wait, it isn't! Once I finish my script, if it doesn't fly, I intend on turning it into a novel. My fictional output has been pretty sparse over the years, although I have had a number of short stories and novellas published. One of my favorite efforts along those lines was something I did back in 1995. That was titled "The Wedding Party"; it appeared in a paperback anthology edited by Peter Straub, called Peter Straub's Ghosts. But I've been itching to do a novel for awhile now - a non-porno novel (laughs) - so I'm really looking forward to getting around to that. Then there's a slew of other upcoming DVD projects I'm involved with, as well as a multi-part documentary I'm starting up. But it's too soon to say anything more about those projects. They're still vaporware. N: Finally, what is the single best thing that Blade Runner has brought into your life? PS: My book! (laughs) I also was amazingly fortunate to have had the opportunity to observe the making of a classic. Secondly, Blade Runner gave me the opportunity to craft a "making of" book that I passionately cared about, and poured a lot of man-hours into. I've also been touched by those Future Noir readers who've told me that they not only enjoyed the information the book contains, but the manner in which I presented that information. Because, you see, I very much wanted to humanize the making of Blade Runner. Just as I wanted to give people not involved in the film industry the chance to understand how difficult, and complex, the process of making any movie is. N: Thank you so much for answering our questions. It has been a joy and a privilege to chat with you. PS: Thank you! Have a better one. The End Reading Paul's extensive discourse should have kept you busy for a while, but now you've reached the end, you'll probably want to read even more! So here are a couple of places where you can: 2019: Off-World - Read the "missing" Chapter VIII of Future Noir: http://scribble.com/uwi/br/fn/ BladeZone - Read Gary Willoughby's interview of Paul in 2000: http://bladezone.com/contents/publications/interviews/paul-sammon/ You want to read more? Well you do have your own copy of Future Noir don't you? Available at all good book stores. Already have the book? STILL not enough? Well maybe we will eventually get a new, expanded release with all the information that couldn't be prised into the first edition, plus updates in the continuing saga of Blade Runner, including the production of the Blade Runner Special Edition DVD? 90 44