Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner Page #3

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they come out with a budget...

Let's say just for the sake of argument

the budget was a million dollars.

...And if they started to go over

to $1,200,000".

...or 1.300.000,

whatever it would be...

...there had to be somebody that

would put in that completion money...

...that would pick up

the $300,000 that they were over.

So if the picture went over 21.

22 million, whatever it was...

...then they would

have to provide that amount...

...which gave them a lot of rights.

In fact, it gave them many rights more

than we would have given...

...if we'd had more time to negotiate it,

which we didn't. We had two weeks.

I was worried about going over

because I'd done Alien with Ridley...

...and he shot a lot of film on that.

It was such a brand-new way

of trying...

...to do all the things that they were

going to do on this picture.

Special effects and so forth.

Everyone was worried about

how many months will it take...

...or how many years to make it.

As we were trying

to put together the budget...

...I was talking continuously

with Hampton Fancher...

...so our evolution of the world

was growing.

And we'd work all day,

every day, I think.

I don't know how long,

but it felt like weeks.

I was constantly saying.

"That won't work. It's not commercial.

It's too vague. It's not cinematic."

So I was really being the hard man

to Hampton's romantic.

I liked Hampton's script a lot.

I loved the way he worked and wrote.

I loved his wit. His gritty

way of seeing things and his wit.

Ridley started asking questions,

you know, of the script with Hampton...

...and started to say, well, you know.

"What is the world that we're in?"

"What's outside the window?"

You know.

I said. "What do you mean?"

"But there's a world."

"F*** the world. No, this is in here."

You know, and I'd argue or whatever.

The hunter falls in love

with the hunted...

...except they never move

outside the apartment. It's very interior.

I wanna take them

outside the door.

Once we go outside the door,

this world...

...has to support the thesis

that she's android, humanoid, robot.

By the way, that's another word

I don't wanna use...

...because it's abused and overused.

We'll find a new word for that soon...

...which we found the word replicant.

Next day, he brought in

a Heavy Metal comic book.

"Oh, yeah!"

I was very much engaged

by the Heavy Metal comics...

...and was looking very closely

at people like Jean Giraud "Moebius"...

...who I still regard as probably

the father of it all and one of the best.

There was some kind of great

graphic short story in there...

...which was about

a detective in a modern world.

And I know that

that seeded something in Ridley's mind...

...for the future.

You know, for Blade Runner.

Because I know some of his drawings...

If you look at some of his storyboards...

...I mean, they are sort of...

Not to take any visual imagination

from Ridley, but he just... He saw it.

One of the things I think is interesting

about sort of the crossover...

...from Heavy Metal writers like

Dan O'Bannon or artists like Moebius...

...artists like Bilal...

God, there's so many that had this

really interesting vision of the future...

...that I think that, you know,

to Ridley's credit...

...again, being sort of a person

that would be interested...

...and absorb so many influences

to sort of broaden his scope...

...broaden his storytelling abilities

and his vision...

...which, you know. I mean, every artist

thrives for that next inspiration...

...that next vision that's gonna take

them to another place or another level.

Nothing's in straight lines.

I don't think in straight lines.

I put...

I still put things on a blanket...

...and flip it,

and see which way it lands, right?

That's the only way you find out.

And then suddenly,

you start to formulate logic.

He says. "What about snow?"

"Snow? Yes, snow. Yeah."

He'll write snow, you know.

"What about it's a train? What about

it's a desert? What it's...? Oh, heated."

You know, all the...

It just kept going.

When he finally...

When the sh*t hit the fan the first time...

...and he said, "Hampton.

I have to be frank with you."

You know. "You've taking a lo..."

They used to call me "Happen Faster."

I mean. Ridley's

a gold mine to work with.

I mean,

he's just got beautiful notions.

And you have to be discreet as a writer,

or else he'll go off...

...and, you know,

he'll write an encyclopedia.

He wanted to introduce the character

in a really spectacular way...

...but he wanted to do it

in a way that visually got across...

...the idea of this very, very strange

future world...

...that he was starting

to put together in his own mind.

He's gotta go retire

an earlier version.

And he said. "I see, like,

a cabin. you know.

"On the stove, there's, like, a pot...

...and there's soup boiling in the pot."

I went:

You know, that was it, man.

I loved it. Soup boiling in the pot.

And I just went home

and I just started writing.

The original idea was to have

Deckard sit in the kitchen, and as...

Through the windows, you saw that

the day was getting darker and darker.

And then it was supposed

to be late afternoon.

A strange vehicle pulls up.

A guy in farmer overalls comes out,

goes into the house...

...sees Deckard sitting there,

ignores him...

...walks into the kitchen,

starts stirring a big pot of soup.

Says. "Do you want your soup?"

Deckard doesn't say anything.

He says. "Who are you with anyway?"

This guy's stirring.

Deckard gets up, says.

"I'm Deckard. Blade Runner."

He kills this guy.

For no reason. Just shoots him.

You go. "What is going on?" And then

as the guy slumps against this wall...

...falls to the floor.

Deckard reaches into his head...

...and pulls his lower jaw out.

And you see it's an aluminum construct

with an ID number stamped on it.

You realized. "Oh, it's not a person,

it's a robot."

And then Deckard takes this...

...puts it into his trench coat

that he was wearing at this point...

...walks out of the farmhouse,

across the field...

...a little dog shows up,

starts yapping at his feet...

...and is barking

as Deckard takes off.

We're in preproduction,

and it's a big table now.

Huge. Many people.

And they're saying.

"What about the love scene?"

I said. "Well, the love scene's there.

It's not explicit."

"What about getting explicit?"

"That's bullshit. No way."

I do remember one difference

that Hampton and I had...

...which goes straight back

to the issue of commerciality.

I wanted to have

a much more visible sex scene.

They're cool. They're gentlemen.

You know, I'm, like,

walking around the table fuming:

"What is it you want, man?

What do you want?"

Hampton felt that was

in rather bad taste at the very least...

...and he demonstrated it to me...

...in a way he thought would convince

me that it would be in bad taste.

He may have probably kissed me

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