Blade Runner: The Final Cut [1982] (1 disc)

Random Trivia For This Title:

• Rutger Hauer came up with many inventive ideas for his characterization, like the moment where he grabs and fondles a dove. He also improvised the now-iconic line "All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain". He later chose "All those moments" as the title of his autobiography.
• The final scene was shot literally hours before the producers were due to take creative control away from Ridley Scott.
• Ridley Scott's first cut ran four hours. Most the crew, including the writers and director, admitted that while it looked beautiful, it was mostly incomprehensible, necessitating additional editing and an explanatory voice-over.
• Ridley Scott regards Blade Runner as probably his most personal and complete film.
• Ridley Scott cast Rutger Hauer in the role of Roy Batty without actually meeting the actor. He had watched his performances in Turkish Delight, Katie Tippel and Soldier of Orange and was so impressed, he cast him immediately. However, for their first meeting, Hauer decided to play a joke on Scott and he turned up wearing huge green sunglasses, pink satin pants and a white sweater with an image of a fox on the front. According to production executive ^[?] Katherine Haber, when Scott saw Hauer, he literally turned white.
• The term replicants is used nowhere in Philip K. Dick's writing. The creatures in the source novel are called Androids or Andies. The movie abandoned these terms, fearing they would sound comical spoken on screen. Replicants came from David Webb Peoples' daughter, Risa, who was studying microbiology and biochemistry. She introduced her father to the theory of replication - the process whereby cells are duplicated for cloning purposes.
• Joanna Cassidy (Zhora) was at ease with the snake around her neck because it was her pet, a Burmese python named Darling.
• The novel hints at the "Is Deckard a Replicant?" problem by having Deckard casually mention that one indicator of an android is a lack of sympathy for other androids. His interlocutor then points out that, given his job, this means that Deckard could be one too.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered to play Rick Deckard which went to Harrison Ford. Two years later, Arnold starred in The Terminator by James Cameron who wrote and directed Aliens, the sequel to Alien which was directed by Ridley Scott. Arnold later worked with Ford on The Expendables 3.
• Philip K. Dick's ideal choice for Rachel was ^[?] Victoria Principal. Although almost one hundred actresses auditioned for the role, only three were seriously considered: Sean Young, ^[?] Nina Axelrod and Barbara Hershey, though Grace Jones was also considered. For the auditions, the role of Deckard was played by Morgan Paull, who ultimately went on to play Holden in the film.
• Dustin Hoffman was the original choice to play Deckard, although he wondered why he was asked to play a "macho character". According to Ridley Scott, Hoffman was interested, but wanted to make it a whole different kind of character. According to ^[?] Paul Sammon, apart from Hoffman, other actors considered for the role included Tommy Lee Jones, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Pacino, Burt Reynolds, William Devane, Raul Julia, Scott Glenn, ^[?] Frederic Forrest, Robert Duvall, Judd Hirsch, ^[?] Cliff Gorman, Peter Falk, Nick Nolte and Christopher Walken. Martin Sheen was offered the role, but he turned it down, as he was exhausted, having come off Apocalypse Now.
• After Philip K. Dick saw Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard in the filming set, Dick declared: "He has been more Deckard than I had imagined. It has been incredible. Deckard exists!".
• Daryl Hannah's make up was inspired by the titular character in Nosferatu the Vampyre.
• This is Rutger Hauer's favorite of his own films.
• Philip K. Dick personally approved of Rutger Hauer, describing him as, "the perfect Batty-cold, Aryan, flawless".
• The film suffered at the box office, because it opened at the same time as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The movie The Thing suffered a similar fate due to the same reason. Although there was praise for the visual style, word of mouth about the film's slow pace and bleak themes quickly caused a decrease in attendance ratings. Both movies would later reach cult status and receive critical praise.
• Although Philip K. Dick saw only the opening 20 minutes of footage prior to his death on March 2, 1982, he was extremely impressed, and has been quoted by ^[?] Paul Sammon as saying, "It was my own interior world. They caught it perfectly." However neither Ridley Scott nor screenwriter David Webb Peoples actually read Dick's novel.
• For many aerial shot of the city, all kinds of materials were used to simulate buildings in the city landscape, such as miniature spaceships from other science fiction movies. An upright model of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) can be seen (with some difficulty) to the left of the police building as Deckard and Gaff's spinner is making its descent. When the Asian billboard is showing for the first time, a kitchen sink can be seen masquerading as a building in the far background of the shot. Because some of the miniatures were so high, there was often not enough room between models and ceiling to move the camera over the miniatures. The special effects crew solved this by tilting the sets at an angle.
• When Deckard stops Rachael from leaving his apartment, he pushes her away from him. The expression of pain and shock on her face was real. Sean Young said that Harrison Ford had difficulties playing the scene with her, and had pushed her too hard. However, when he saw how angry she was with him, he affectionately 'mooned' her to break the ice.
• In Philip K. Dick's original novel, animals were virtually extinct, something that the film only addresses in very subtle ways. The most obvious reference is when Deckard asks Zhora if her snake is real and she replies "Do you think I'd be working in a place like this if I could afford one?" There is also a sequence when Deckard first visits Tyrell, where he asks Rachael if their owl is replicated; she responds with "Of course it is". In Dick's novel, the owls were the first creatures to die out.
• Joe Pantoliano was considered for the role of J.F. Sebastian.
• Ridley Scott and ^[?] Jordan Cronenweth achieved the famous 'shining eyes' effect by using a technique invented by ^[?] Fritz Lang known as the 'Schüfftan Process'; light is bounced into the actors' eyes off a piece of half mirrored glass mounted at a forty five degree angle to the camera.
• After Pris (Daryl Hannah) first meets Sebastian (William Sanderson), she runs away from him, skidding into his car and smashing the window with her elbow. This was a genuine mistake caused by Hannah slipping on the wet ground. The glass wasn't breakaway glass, it was real glass, and Hannah chipped her elbow in eight places. She still has the scar from the accident, as can be seen in Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner, the feature-length making-of documentary of the film.