Making Of Blade Runner
The making of the original Blade Runner (1982). Go behind the scenes to see Ridley Scott's meticulous nature, Harrison Ford's experience on set, and more from the cast and crew!
Transcript
00:00I always remember the first day was not good because I'd gone in there and the columns
00:13were upside down.
00:16All the columns.
00:17And I'd seen it, I'd even drawn it for him, saying, like this, and I'd put the weight
00:22at the top.
00:23He basically said, well, the only thing I'd like to do is turn the columns upside down.
00:30And I looked at him incredulously, like, what do you mean, turn them upside down?
00:35And he said, just that.
00:37Put that down here.
00:39I said, okay.
00:42And the columns are not supporting a ceiling, but they're just big bastards.
00:45I said, look, without damaging the floor, how long to cover the floor without scratching
00:50it, turn each column over.
00:52He said, you know, we should do it at 12 o'clock.
00:55I went to the first AD, told them, this is at 7 in the morning, come back at 2 o'clock
01:01and we'll be ready to shoot.
01:03The director wants a change.
01:05Sure made hell for the construction crew, you know, because they had to come in here
01:09and, you know, this is all block and fall stuff.
01:11Turn them around, boom, like that.
01:14And then the floor, God, the amount of time they spent polishing this floor and just wax,
01:20and they could not get the really high gloss and then they'd pull it out.
01:24And so each square was like two by two and they were polishing those things.
01:29At 2 o'clock in the afternoon when everybody came back from lunch, Ridley was a happy camper.
01:34The columns were upside down.
01:36Everything else was in place and they shot.
01:37It was worth turning the columns over, because otherwise all that stuff would have been at
01:41the top of the shot.
01:44Those eyes are one of a kind.
01:46It's like Rutger's character.
01:48It's like, if you could see what I could see with my eyes, you know, that's Ridley Scott.
01:53And Ridley was very demanding.
01:54I mean, from the point of view of the lighting and the acting and the design, and I remember
02:03him saying, put more stuff on her lips, put more stuff on her lips, keep putting that
02:08stuff on her lips, no, no, no, more.
02:10I'd heard later that Ridley wanted me to stay in my little cubicle dressing room because
02:15he didn't want me to have too much interaction with everyone.
02:19So I mean, that could have been part of the manipulation.
02:25Ridley, who also came from a lot of commercial background, was constantly trying to add a
02:30kind of scintillating visual stimulation to scenes.
02:35A good example would be in Terrell's office and we're sitting there in this big set and
02:40we're struggling with our part of it, which is the front projection out the windows.
02:44The live-action guys are struggling with the weird lighting stuff and Ridley's saying,
02:47well, I want this light to be like, whoosh, up against the wall, and we're saying, well,
02:52what's motivating that?
02:53Is it raining?
02:54Is the floor wet?
02:55And he says, no, it's just gotta, you know, it's just gotta happen.
02:59And so I thought, well, if that's what Ridley wants, that's what he should have.
03:03And when you look at the movie, you do have to ask, well, what's all that about?
03:07Is that something coming in the window from some atmospheric thing going on inside?
03:11You don't need to explain it, but Ridley had this, has always had this incredible sensitivity
03:17to all kinds of ways to create visual stimulation.
03:21After the first day of shooting, Doc Erickson came to me and said, we're now five days behind,
03:29which was not what I wanted to hear, but I mean, Ridley was dealing with the smoke and
03:34the mirrors and the this and that and columns and so on and so forth.
03:37In the meantime, Harrison's just sitting there waiting to act and getting pissed off because
03:43he's not being called to the set to act in the scene.
03:47The reason I was so thrilled about having Ridley is he's got the very best eye in the
03:51business, and that comes with a price, which is the time and the effort that he has to
03:57put into it.
03:58So he'd often be sitting up in the sky on a crane doing the last book on the table position
04:04when Harrison was sort of seething and not being told what to do, and Ridley didn't think
04:10it was necessary to tell him what to do.
04:14Harrison always, up to this point, had been dealing with directors, for instance, like
04:19Francis Ford Coppola, working with Steven Spielberg, and working with George Lucas.
04:23There was a commonality among all three of them, which was all three of them very much
04:27pulled Harrison into the creative process of building that character.
04:33Ridley felt that Harrison was perfectly capable of doing everything he had to do and knew
04:36how to do it, and Ridley, meanwhile, was composing the picture.
04:41There's a part of you that wants to be totally in sync with the director's ambition, and
04:47then there's a perverse part of you that says, you know what, it doesn't really matter.
04:53What matters is being there, and participating truthfully in whatever the relationships and
05:03the scenes are, and fuck it, it's just a movie, let him worry about it.
05:11Maybe Ridley was giving me more attention than he was giving Harrison because he was
05:15making the assumption that he didn't need that.
05:18Harry was never happy on that show, he never was, not really.
05:23The only time he was happy was if it was going to be close to wrapped, you know, then he was happy.
05:33In the case of the first property master who departed, it was over the mug on the desk
05:40in the Holden interview.
05:42The prop guy brought in two or three pens, and maybe three or four mugs, and Ridley wanted
05:49to see more, and he couldn't figure out, well, why would you want to see more?
05:52It's like only a mug, and it's only a pen.
05:55I took the prop guy aside and said, go buy like a hundred mugs, go buy like a hundred pens.
06:02What do you care?
06:03Just go buy, don't you see what's going on here?
06:05Because I could see what was going on.
06:07He wanted to see every mug ever made before he chose that mug.
06:15We had our man of Havana, so to speak, there on the set every day and watching it, and
06:23we saw some of the rushes.
06:24Bud was more involved, but Ridley's a perfectionist, and Ridley came from the world of commercial,
06:31doing commercials from England, and he was very, very successful.
06:35He's very meticulous, that's what his genius is, and I don't take anything away from him,
06:40but it starts to slow down when you start to take many, many takes of certain scenes,
06:46and we did.
06:48We started out, we were a few weeks behind, within a few weeks, so I thought things could
06:57start to take off.
06:59Presumed behind closed doors, he started getting twitchy, like after the first week of shooting,
07:02when we were like two or three days behind, and then after the first couple of weeks shooting
07:06Terrell's room, suddenly we went back and started reshooting them, and I would have
07:09thought he went apoplectic, because, you know, they had put an X amount of money, and they
07:14were guaranteeing completion.
07:15You know, Jesus, I mean, I would imagine him getting pretty irate.
07:20I remember Ridley heard that they were upset at the number of takes he's done once, when
07:25they were watching dailies, and Ridley got very angry, and in retrospect, I think Ridley
07:30was sending a message back to them, in his own way.
07:34He was having a tantrum and stuff, and I think he was letting them know, don't fuck with
07:39me.
07:40What I saw, I liked.
07:42I did think, you know, when I told this to Ridley, I thought he'd printed way too many
07:48takes in those days, and shot too many takes, I didn't think he needed, I thought, now obviously
07:55he was looking for something in every one, and he and I sat, actually a couple of times,
08:00and I said, explain to me, because I don't quite understand it, tell me why this 16th
08:05take was the best one out of this whole group, and he would, in his own way, he would explain
08:12why he wanted it, and there was a lot of film that was used.
08:18Yeah, there'd be irritation.
08:19I'd do seven takes, and why is he doing seven takes?
08:22I know people who do 40 takes, but seven takes in those days was not inordinate at all.
08:27I was definitely very different, that's why I'd been very successful as a commercial maker,
08:33everyone would look at things in a different light, and put things in a different way,
08:36so they hadn't seen that before, that's why you're hiring me, and I think that went on,
08:41definitely, and that's, you know, hypnosure.
08:44Ridley's a very strong-minded, knows what he wants, knows the look, and when you're
08:48trying to do a project that's this different, and you've got the studio, Laddie on the one
08:53side, and then Ridley, and nothing ever gets made without having its difficulties.
09:01All I remember in Ridley's making, Blade Runner, anger, anger at people not understanding
09:07his process or how he worked.
09:08A lot of people don't bother to understand what is it that he's trying to do, and I think
09:14that's what happened at the time.
09:15There was a lot of nervousness, you know, and there was a lot of competition within
09:19themselves, and I think people made a lot of it in the beginning.
09:24Everybody already anticipated before shooting, oh, he's not gonna like us, he's gonna be
09:27unhappy with us, because he thinks American crews are not good.
09:29I don't think he really sat there and said, I don't think American crews are not good.
09:32He wanted everyone to be at their best.
09:35I realized I couldn't bring in the people I'm used to, because of the union.
09:40So I'm not locking the union, that's the way it goes.
09:42And so, being new on the block here, I had to learn the process of, I couldn't use this,
09:47couldn't use that.
09:48You know, I didn't want, I'm used to being my own operator.
09:53There's nothing worse when you've done two and a half thousand commercials, and I know
09:57I've got a very good eye, in three seconds I can give you a set-up of having walked in
10:01a room without you even seeing it before.
10:03So I don't like discussion, I know exactly what I want, I want to walk in and say, do
10:08it.
10:09That's the director's job.
10:10The director's not meant to stand there and consult with half a dozen people in the room.
10:15The term director means direct, mate, do the job.
10:21Tell me, Mark.
10:26Hello.
10:27Action.
10:28Action.
10:29And, what can he do for you?
10:32Can the maker repair what he makes?
10:35My first day was the scene where I had to strangle my father, or whatever I did to my
10:42father-maker.
10:44And, I'd never been on a production like this, you know, 250 people, had no idea who everybody
10:53was.
10:54You know, got there at six in the morning, and seeing this develop so slowly, and start
11:00to shoot a scene one day, and end up with the scene being shot three days later, not
11:05knowing where you started again.
11:07It was a shock, but the great part about the shock was that, you know, there were some
11:12brilliant people at work.
11:14The DOP was wonderful to see him, how he would just paint, you know, with his light.
11:21And, it took him hours sometimes.
11:24Jordan came with his team, which I thought was fine, because he's a great cameraman.
11:28And, he came with two really good operators.
11:31And, so I thought, well, I can't operate.
11:34I would line up as much as possible.
11:36I like to line up like that.
11:38That's what I do.
11:39That's what I normally do.
11:40It's more efficient, and it's faster.
11:42On any film, people get frustrated.
11:45And, you have an artistic director that sees it his own way.
11:52And, he's definitely the one driving the show.
11:58Jordan wasn't in the best of health.
12:01So, it was frustrating for him, because he couldn't jump up and be with Ridley.
12:07He just wasn't physically able.
12:09For a number of years, my father had suffered from a disease that we eventually found out was Parkinson's.
12:16That progressively, through the course of the movie, it took its toll.
12:21And, for the last month or so of the movie, he was in a wheelchair.
12:25Ridley, to his credit, saw past the illness, and made a very bold choice in going with Jordan.
12:40Intense.
12:41That's the best way to describe it.
12:42We had our scenes together.
12:44You have Lucifer, very, very long life.
12:46I want more life.
12:48He's very intense.
12:50Looked him right in the eye.
12:51He looked me in the eye.
12:52We went at it, and it was great.
12:53Rooker's naturally theatrical.
12:55I mean, in a good way.
12:57He understands the theater of it all.
12:59Take five.
13:05I want more life.
13:10The facts of life.
13:12Then the whole kill, that was a major sort of a deal.
13:16Because they had made an extra sort of head.
13:19I think it was a $20,000 head of Terrell.
13:23That was one of the prosthetics that was made.
13:25And it was made so that it could be crunched.
13:28They never used it.
13:30What we did is I ran some tubes up behind the ear.
13:34And when they did this...
13:37Primitive, about as primitive as you can get.
13:40You know, a bulb and a tube and some blood.
13:43And the blood squirted.
13:45Tyrone was a replicant as well.
13:48When he got his eyes squeezed out and his head squeezed out.
13:54Nuts, bolts, springs.
13:56And that was the idea that he was another front.
13:59And another form of Nexus 6, I guess.
14:03And that would trigger me to go to the next floor.
14:08And in the next floor in the pyramid of glass would be...
14:12Mr. Maker himself, dead for four years.
14:16And so I designed this sarcophagus.
14:20And Barry was supposed to be there looking at his Maker.
14:23And I had him standing off to the right of the little painting I did.
14:27With this sort of Mayan kind of capsule that he'd come out of.
14:31The entrance to the crypt.
14:34That was never filmed, either.
14:43Harrison was supposed to be having this on-screen love affair with Rachel.
14:49And Sean Young was very young and extremely inexperienced.
14:53And Ridley, I think, was more or less talking Sean through her performance to a certain extent.
15:00And Sean and Harrison just did not click on any level.
15:09Any time you're doing a love scene, it's tricky.
15:12First of all, I feel for the actors having to do it.
15:14It's really uncomfortable.
15:17And you can't really let go.
15:20Because that's not what you're doing. It's not very professional.
15:24So it's a waltz.
15:26It's actually a delicate waltz to find out what should it be.
15:29How far should it go.
15:31And where's enough enough.
15:33We scrapped an idea, Ridley did, where they put a piece of tape around my legs.
15:39And they greased up my legs.
15:41And then it got all over the costumes.
15:43And then it didn't work.
15:44And they're trying to grab my legs.
15:45And the whole grabbing leg thing.
15:47And pulling my skirt up.
15:48And getting it all over the costumes.
15:49People just complained.
15:50And it just didn't work.
15:51So we scrapped it.
15:52So they cleaned my legs up.
15:53And then we did something else.
15:54But then Ridley told him to push me.
15:58And I remember being really surprised about that.
16:01And I also remember Harrison being, I think I was crying afterwards too.
16:06And I remember Harry going to the side.
16:10Like I was sitting on that ledge where the blinds were behind me.
16:13And we did the scene.
16:14And he went over to the corner there.
16:16And he turned away from me.
16:17And he took his pants.
16:18And he mooned me.
16:19Because he was trying to make me laugh.
16:21Because I was going.
16:23And I looked up and he was mooning me.
16:25And I think I started laughing.
16:27And I think what he was trying to say was, hey, it's not that bad, kid.
16:31Sean had a very interesting part to play.
16:36Maybe one of the most interesting parts in the movie.
16:39She understood what was going on.
16:42She did, I think, a good job.
16:44Harrison was always the great technician.
16:48I mean, no, kid, you have to sit here.
16:50Your face has to be here.
16:51You have to be here.
16:52You have to move over that way.
16:53Back up.
16:54Come here.
16:55He always knew exactly what to do.
16:56And very much a technician in terms of lighting and talking.
17:01I remember we had a metronome that was supposed to sort of create a rhythm.
17:05And we had this metronome going.
17:07And he went over it.
17:08And he went like that.
17:09And he stopped it.
17:10I said, why did you do that?
17:11And he says, well, I don't feel like looping it, kid.
17:14And I was like, what's looping?
17:16I had no idea of anything.
17:18So he was very much kind of teaching me the, well, making fun of me more.
17:23But, you know, pointing out my errors.
17:28Harrison never left his dressing room unless he was shooting.
17:30So there wasn't a whole lot of interaction with any of us in Harrison and or Ridley in Harrison.
17:35And it did seem to, when Harrison came, he came prepared to work and that there wasn't a lot of dialogue.
17:40I think that's fair to say between the two.
17:42Maybe all of that unhappiness actually helped him, you know,
17:46to at least subliminally convey, you know, Deckard's own desperation and his own unhappiness with his own lot in life.
17:53Because Blade Runner, for better or worse, is one of Harrison Ford's signature performances.
17:59I think it's one of his best performances.
18:05Harrison Ford is probably one of the smartest actors I've ever worked with.
18:09Top of the line, A, for what they can do, but B, they're able to do it because they're smart.
18:15It's not just intuition, they work it out, you know.
18:18Sometimes they don't comprehend what I do for a living on a big movie.
18:22My performance is as important as any other performance of any person in that film, particularly the star.
18:27My film, the film that I make at the end of the day is my movie.
18:31It may be a team thing as well, but I'm taking the knocks, I'm taking the bashes.
18:36And probably I've developed it, etc., etc., so yes, it's my movie.
18:39And I'm inviting people to come in and do it, and that's what a director is.
18:44I found it really easy and very encouraging to do what you feel, go ahead.
18:49And then if he liked it, he'd just smile and be very happy.
18:53And maybe then, if he liked it, he'd even ask you to do something else, you know.
18:57Because that was fun, let's do something further, you know.
19:00I can't imagine an actor not liking it.
19:04Deckard, it's good to see you, old buddy.
19:14Downtown L.A. in front of the Bradbury Building.
19:17In the middle of the night, usually our call pretty much always was at sunset.
19:22We were vampire hours, you know.
19:25I was, you know, kind of buried in a pile of trash, much like the screen test.
19:30And kind of met J.F. Sebastian the first time.
19:35And also there was, of course, lots of rain.
19:39And so one time when I was kind of running away from J.F. Sebastian, I ran and hit the van.
19:46And my arm went through the window, and it wasn't breakaway glass, so I still have a scar.
19:53It's a little bit keloided, so you can see it.
19:56But I had like eight chips or nine chips taken out of there.
20:00And there's still some more floating around in there, I think.
20:03Which didn't help doing the back walkovers and things on the chipped elbow.
20:11I had filmed in the Bradbury Building before, which is very pristine, very clean.
20:18An amazing place.
20:20Great ironwork and so forth that visually just is fabulous.
20:25And lit it for a set, you know, a lot of backlight.
20:29Again, had the xenons passing through and smoke.
20:32It was eerie.
20:34But the amazing part about it is, I don't really think that the Bradbury people understood how Ridley wanted to do it.
20:42Because it was a total mess.
20:46In the interior, we had a 65-foot truck filled with debris.
20:51And we had, of course, rain inside the building.
20:54We had rain everywhere.
20:56And what we would have to do, because the building was occupied at the time,
21:00we could get it at 6 o'clock at night.
21:02And at 6 o'clock in the morning, we had to be out of there and it had to be clean.
21:07So because it looks like it's decrepit and filthy, we couldn't figure out a way at first.
21:13But then we came up with the idea if we took cork and crumbled up cork,
21:18because it has the same texture and color as mud and dirt.
21:21So we'd throw cork all over the floors and the rain would absorb it.
21:26So the next morning when you swept everything up, it was clean and didn't have to be scrubbed with soap and water.
21:32Because we probably had no more than an hour to get out of the building every day.
21:39When I first came onto the set, I walked down a lot through this maze and saw these signs and buildings and whatnot.
21:47And I said to myself, wow, this is astronomical.
21:51It's going to take forever to do this film if it hasn't already.
21:55I thought I was going to go to the studio and see a so-called refrigerated lab.
22:02They shot it in a real fridge, basically, a monster fridge, let's say.
22:06And so it was frosty.
22:10That was cold in that meat locker, boy.
22:12And I don't know how long it took before the cameras would freeze,
22:15but you had to really be in and out after maybe 20 minutes, half an hour or something like that.
22:19The oil would all freeze up and the damn things.
22:21In a way, it was kind of strange why they did that because the conditions were almost uncontrollable.
22:27They could not set the temperature of that freezer to where they could just get the cold and see the breath coming out.
22:35And everything looks frozen.
22:38We started off with a couple of arcs in the freezer.
22:42Well, they're carbon arcs.
22:45They're actually burning coal.
22:47And after about an hour, people were sniffing around.
22:53And about another hour, people were starting to get ill
22:59because we were, number one, taking the oxygen out of the air.
23:04And the carbon, the smoke from the carbon, people were getting sick.
23:10We had to shut down the arcs and literally,
23:14open up the freezer, get all the air out, had fans going.
23:18The lights were not working.
23:20And people were yelling what they're going to do and bring the lights out and the camera.
23:25And the producer was on to Ridley.
23:28That's good enough. That's good enough or whatever.
23:31Like I said, I wouldn't want to work in that atmosphere again.
23:34It's just too much.
23:36Too much was at stake at too short a time.
23:40Probably one of the most unique experiences on a backlot, for sure, that I've ever seen.
23:45All of the night scenes on Blade Runner, which were long,
23:49there were approximately 33 days of night.
23:52The night scenes were all shot on what's called the New York street set.
23:56And this, of course, is where the Maltese Falcon had been filmed by Werner Bernstein.
24:00And this is where the Maltese Falcon had been filmed.
24:03were all shot on what's called the New York street set.
24:06And this, of course, is where the Maltese Falcon had been filmed by Werner Brothers in the 1940s.
24:10And it was just their standing urban New York type of look.
24:15To shoot a studio street on Blade Runner, you know, on the Warner's lot, would look crap.
24:21If you look at all the TV series and things and see where they've shot on the studio street,
24:25and it all just looks like a studio street.
24:27So wetting it down and having things in heavy rain, you know,
24:31certainly started to bring it to life.
24:33The reason why I could not have done those sets in daylight,
24:36they wouldn't have looked good.
24:38They would have looked pretty bad, and we would have had to spend more money.
24:41So by shooting at night, you save money, and it looks better.
24:45And it's always raining, it looks better. That's what it's about.
24:48And why is there always smoke? Because I haven't got enough money, it looks better.
24:52So those three elements are always my armory. Night, wet, smoke.
25:02Blade Runner
25:08Someone on the crew once said that if you walked on the Blade Runner set,
25:11you felt like you were at a Pennsylvania coal mine.
25:13And that's very true, because the crew had all these white painter's masks on,
25:17and they had soot all over their face, and they had the little painter's goggles on.
25:20And everyone was tired, and it stank, and it was mildewed, and it was wet.
25:25The smoke, ugh. They had beehive smoke.
25:29Basically, you're looking for an urban area in 2020 that is just,
25:34the sun never shines, perpetual fog and drizzle.
25:38Blade Runner had tons of atmospherics.
25:41A lot of it was at night, smoke and all of it.
25:43And the crew would be walking around with gas masks on,
25:46because they'd been breathing this stuff 20 hours a day, you know,
25:49for weeks and weeks and weeks.
25:51I was outside a stage. It was full of smoke, too.
25:54Ridley came out to smoke his cigar or something, and I looked at him,
25:57I said, Ridley, do you have smoke in your house?
26:00He laughed. He said, no, not really.
26:03But, you know, it was a very good effect.
26:07I thought the art direction was brilliant,
26:09and the world that was created was very dense and interesting.
26:14Part of the look of the film had to do with the fact that it was shot outside at night.
26:21But it was a bitch working every night and all night long, often in the rain.
26:30So it wasn't the most pleasant shoot.
26:33Action, please. Action, everybody.
26:37Anybody that watches the picture knows that we were doused with water day in and day out.
26:42And that meant we had to have twice as many costumes,
26:46because every time they got soaked, you had to reshoot the damn scene again.
26:51You had to put on another costume. You couldn't wait to dry up.
26:54There was always dialogue that we were behind schedule.
26:57I think it all culminated when we were shooting on the back lot at night with the street exteriors.
27:03Never less than 13, 14 hours.
27:06We would shoot all night.
27:08Kind of the joke was, keep your eyes in the east,
27:11because as soon as you see that glow, you know we've got only about another hour.
27:16Some days we never shot.
27:18And then some days we made two shots a day.
27:22One was on meal penalty, and one was at sunrise.
27:26And that happened more than once.
27:29What he did, which was the first time I had been allowed to experience it,
27:34was that he ran, he had huge voices of theaters, speakers, on top of the buildings.
27:41And so when he would start the scene and get the understanding of what the reality of that moment was,
27:48he'd play the sound score.
27:50Evangelis had already given him some temp stuff,
27:54and he'd blast it into the street,
27:58so that you were working inside of a full, ongoing environment of sound and special effects.
28:05The spinners were coming up and down,
28:07and they had the cranes working, and all the smoke, and all the water.
28:12And that backlog came alive.
28:18What he was trying to do was just incredible.
28:20And I remember we would sit for eight hours trying to do one setup.
28:23And you would do it, right?
28:25And you could pretty much, what you're seeing in your eyes, what you're going to see,
28:28it's really pretty much that.
28:30But then I remember going to Daly's,
28:32and it's the one film to this day where I went to Daly's and I went,
28:37we shot that?
28:39I was shocked.