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On the Edge of 'Blade Runner'
2000 · Film · documentary · 52 min
Directed by Andrew Abbott
This is the rare UK Channel 4 documentary about Blade Runner, giving insights into it's history with interviews of Ridley Scott, the writers and nearly all the cast. Interviews with production staff, including Ridley, give details into the creative process and turmoil during preproduction. Stories from Paul M. Sammon and Fancher provide insight into Philip K. Dick and the origins of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Interweaved are cast interviews with the notable exceptions of Harrison Ford and Sean Young. Through these interviews we get a sense of how difficult and frustrating the film was to make as a result of an exacting director without allies and hot, wet, smoggy conditions; which added to the high pressure atmosphere everyone increasingly felt as the film went over budget. There is also a tour of some locations, most notably the Bradbury Building and the Warner Brothers backlot that was the LA 2019 streets, which look very different from Ridley's dark version.
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"He gets a gun put to his head and then he fucks a dishwasher." - Rutger Hauer in mark kermodes excellent documentary On the edge of blade runner
https://youtu.be/g3mq-1jcFzk
As pointed out, Scott has said before e.g. in a documentary written and hosted by film critic Mark Kermode called On the Edge of Blade Runner that he meant for Deckard to be a replicant. Harrison Ford never believed he was a replicant, and Rutger Hauer claimed the debate came up after the fact. However, Mark Kermode recently revealed a debate between Scott and the director of the new film, Denis Villeneuve, where Scott repeated this claim, saying that if Deckard wasn't an android, the film wouldn't make any sense: the unicorn, the dream - the central twist is that Deckard doesn't realise that he is a replicant, and that he is chasing himself. Villeneuve however, disputed this, and said that it's not as clear cut as Scott makes out, and that the film is much more ambivalent than that.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/markkermode/entries/7070baee-ad33-4024-868e-019939dd2c9b