Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner Page #2

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science fiction, I've just finished one.

But I'll read it." And I read the script,

which was Hampton Fancher.

It was called Dangerous Days.

And I turned it down.

Ridley Scott was going to be

the original director on Dune...

...and Dino De Laurentiis hired him,

and their sets were being built.

They were gonna shoot it, and

it was going to be based on the novel...

...and it was going to be

this large-scale science-fiction film.

I was attracted to Dune because it was

beyond what I'd done on Alien...

...which was kind of hardcore

kind of horror film.

And Dune would be a step,

very strongly...

...very, very strongly.

In the direction of Star Wars.

At this point,

something rather sad happened...

...which was that

Ridley's older brother died.

Died rather young, obviously.

And Ridley was in some depression.

He really had to get to work.

He wanted to do something, because

when he's working, he's working.

To be faced with, you know...

...a brother dying of cancer...

...and then to die, it can often...

I think what happened is maybe

the lack of control over that...

...kind of created a darkness.

I remember, you know,

him talking about Frank...

...his older brother, from time to time,

and I knew that they were very close.

And...

...I know it had

a tremendous effect...

...on sort of

his emotional state at that time.

It's a strange coincidence that he's doing

a film that is, on the whole, very dark...

...about creation, about control.

And also losing the control

and losing the battle over death.

I think we were shooting

a commercial.

I remember sort of having persuaded

him, saying. "Look, let me read it."

And I think I was reading it on the train

while we were traveling to the location.

I said. "Listen, I think-l'

Because everything else

was kind of not working out right...

...I said. "Listen, I think you should

give this, you know, a second thought."

You know. "I really think this

is powerful, and, you know, emotional...

...and really interesting."

The Blade Runner idea

had stuck with me.

So I'd called up Deeley saying, basically.

"Where are you with it?"

"We're nowhere."

"All right, I've re-read it. We...

I think it's interesting.

It'll make the basis of a very good...

...futuristic, urban film noir."

He said. "Let's have a look

at the material, and he did.

And we were off.

It was a very exciting moment,

of course...

...for suddenly,

you had a talent attached to the thing.

We then went to Filmways,

which had just been taken over...

...by a former Universal person.

Raphael Etkes.

Very nice guy. An old friend of mine.

We were with Filmways, which

Michael had found a person for that.

But, of course, his conception of what

the budget of this film would be...

...at that particular point

was way off-course.

We were way down in terms of

our target of where we would be.

We'd spent about

2 and a half million...

...by the time it became perfectly clear

that the world we were building...

...was much bigger than 12 and a half

million dollars. Much, much bigger.

And this put Raphi in a jam...

...because he couldn't allocate

more than that to this picture.

It was an old company, a small one,

and they didn't have that much money.

I know we were beginning to feel

that something wasn't right...

...and then suddenly

one read in the trades...

...that Filmways

was in financial trouble.

And suddenly we sort of said, well,

you know. "Sh*t. We're in trouble...

...and we need to find another backer."

So we sort of set up this room...

...with all our sort of artwork

and God knows what, you know...

...like a kind of package,

and sort of...

...these VIPs from other studios

were kind of wheeled in...

...and given the executive treatment

to see if we could get them interested...

...in taking the movie over.

But we were building sets...

We started to have these meetings...

...dog-and-pony shows

with all the distributors...

...and we met with MGM...

...with United Artists,

who was on the brink of bankruptcy...

And we were building sets and

finding locations and all the rest of it.

And we had an entire crew

that needed to be paid.

We felt it would collapse if

we didn't do something very, very fast.

First thing I did was I talked

to Alan Ladd. Jr., who's an old friend...

...who had a deal at Warner Bros.

And we thought

it was a terrific script...

...and we put it into production

almost right away.

The way it worked was that

Warner Bros., through Alan Ladd...

...put up 7 and a half

or 7 million, roughly 7 million...

...against U.S, distribution rights.

Of theatrical, not television or DVDs

or any of those things.

"Would you like to invest in that?"

He said. "Let me read the script."

And he got right back to us and said.

"Yes, I do want to invest."

He said. "What kind of movies

do you have that I could invest in?"

We said. "Well, there's one we're doing

called Blade Runner with Ridley Scott.

Would you like to invest in that?"

He said. "Let me read the script."

And he got right back to us and said.

"Yes, I do want to invest."

And then we needed

the last 7 million.

And that came from a company

which consisted of...

...Jerry Perenchio. Bud Yorkin

and another partner...

...who didn't want to

come into the venture and didn't.

Tandem Productions

was a company...

...that Norman Lear and myself started

probably 15 years before Blade Runner.

And at that time,

we were doing television...

...and motion pictures

at the same time.

People were always

submitting scripts to us.

Movie scripts, mostly television scripts.

And by the time they got to us...

...because we weren't, at that point,

in the picture business...

...they had been shopped

all over town...

...and most of them

were pretty uninteresting...

...and things that we didn't

wanna get involved with.

And somehow the script for

Blade Runner ended up on my desk...

...and I read it, and I loved it.

We saw the storyboards, we saw...

We loved all the toys,

we loved the gun...

...and the look that Ridley

had in mind for it.

The idea was basically one of cloning.

Here we are able to do it genetically.

That's part of the thing

that I liked about it...

...the fact that it really

was futuristic and film noir...

...and I thought

it could be a big smash hit.

I liked Philip Dick, and I was kind of

a sci-fi fan for many, many years.

Never ever dreamt of making one.

It just seemed to me a great relief

just to read something like that...

...and I had no idea

that you could put that on film.

So we got involved in it financially.

They put up $7 million,

and for that...

...they received all the television

and DVD and other such rights...

...to recover their money, and also

a share of the surplus, theatrically.

And...

...they chose to take a fee.

Admittedly, a deferred fee,

but a fee of a million and a half dollars.

It was guarantor's completion.

What happens is that

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