Steven Spielberg: "I thought Ridley [Scott, director of Blade Runner] painted a very bleak but brilliant vision of life on earth in a few years. It's kind of acid rain and sushi. In fact, it's coming true faster than most science fiction films come true. Blade Runner is almost upon us. It was ultranoir."
http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/spielberg_pr.html
Alex
From an interview with Donald Moore and David Eick, producers of Battlestar Gallactica:
Deven Desai: To loop back to some of the things we said earlier, you pointed out [one of] the liberating aspects of having Cylons is that you can explore things that [become a little more touchy] in other contexts [such as when just humans are involved.] In some ways it reminds me of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream Electronic Sheep? and then the Blade Runner adaptation, where you seem to be playing with these ideas of implanted memories in Boomer, reminding me a little bit of Rachel [the Blade Runner replicant character]. The whole question out there is whether Decker is a replicant or not. At one level, it seems that you’re also looking at this question of what is it to be human. How do we treat those whom we see as different? Is that part of the lens that you’re playing with?
Moore (jokingly): First of all, what’s Blade Runner? It figured into our discussions from Day 1. Very influential.
Eick: And yes, Deckard is a replicant, for the record.
Yeah, that was not a secret, Desai! Edward James Olmos has been like a walking advertisement for that film.
shareGood to see this thread is still here after four years, and still going strong. Just finished saving it all as PNG files... just in case.
EDSKRPHW
Just finished saving it all as PNG files... just in case.
Good idea!
Anthony Ingruber (impressionist and actor): "Unfortunately one of my favorite directors, Stanley Kubrick, passed on and so I’m saddened at the thought that I’ll never have the chance to work with him, but Ridley Scott has always been a favorite of mine too. Blade Runner and Alien are still my 2 favorite sci-fi films ever made and I would jump through a ring of fire just to give him my resume!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2mnYRBu23o
Alex
Not sure if this one has been included already:
William Gibson (novelist): "About ten minutes into Blade Runner, I reeled out of the theater in complete despair over its visual brilliance and its similarity to the "look" of Neuromancer, my [then] largely unwritten first novel. Not only had I been beaten to the semiotic punch, but this damned movie looked better than the images in my head! With time, as I got over that, I started to take a certain delight in the way the film began to affect the way the world looked. Club fashions, at first, then rock videos, finally even architecture. Amazing! A science fiction movie affecting reality!"
"Years later, I was having lunch with Ridley, and when the conversation turned to inspiration, we were both very clear about our debt to the Metal Hurlant [the original Heavy Metal magazine] school of the '70s--Moebius and the others. But it was also obvious that Scott understood the importance of information density to perceptual overload. When Blade Runner works best, it induces a lyrical sort of information sickness, that quintessentially postmodern cocktail of ecstasy and dread. It was what cyberpunk was supposed to be all about."
Alex
It's funny how many MTV videos copied the rooftop scene from BR. The "smoke machine, windmill turbine, dove" motif got abused to the point BR looks "dated" to some when it was the precursor.
"That's impossible there's no such thing as trolls."
"How do you explain the dead unicorns?"
[deleted]
It's awesome many directors adore this masterpiece
"You killed Captain Clown, YOU KILLED CAPTAIN CLOWN"-The Joker on Batman TAS
And yet, Blade Runner didn't make the BFI Greatest Movies Top 50 list.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-time
Alex
3DTotal: Your personal projects feature several cityscapes and a retro looking detective. Are there any Blade Runner references in there at all?
Stuart Jennet (Concept artist): "Oh definitely, that was kind of the brief: Blade Runner without the product placement. This was for a writer friend of mine who was playing around with a real hard-core, future-noir piece. I only spent a day or so on this stuff but it was kind of fun... Thing is, you can’t even go near that subject without referencing Blade Runner - it’s too seminal."
3DTotal: Which other films do you regard as being benchmarks in shaping a creative style that has been widely referenced?
Stuart Jennet: "Star Wars of course; it changed everything in the 70’s, but in some ways though I felt it ended up referencing itself in the new trilogy through most of the other sci-fi genres it generated. Lord Of The Rings has, for now, at least defined the quintessential medieval fantasy look and I’m sure will influence many films for decades to come. It’s a strange one though as the sci-fi movie landscape as it exists today is still quite recent; I can already see Minority Report starting to influence nearly everything - it’ll be looked back on as being as influential as Blade Runner, decades down the line. The biggest influence aesthetically on the games industry though HAS to be Aliens, that movie especially has been riffed more than any other. Where would modern sci-fi games be without marines, dropships, bevelled rusted panels with sunken screws and, of course, the obligatory chevrons?"
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/interviews/Stuart_Jennett/Stuart_Jennett_0 1.php
Alex
The song “Nookie Wood” has an interesting air about it. What do you think of when you listen to it?
John Cale (musician, composer, singer-songwriter, record producer and founding member of the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground): "The movie Blade Runner. I didn’t realize it at the time I wrote the song. I saw the original director’s cut again [recently] and I was startled by how many of the noises and ideas the sound design in “Nookie Wood” have a lot to do with Blade Runner. Foreign languages being spoken a little bit, a Vietnamese girl making an announcement repeatedly. The atmosphere is very claustrophobic, and when I saw Blade Runner, I forgot how masterful the sound design was."
http://www.mtvhive.com/2012/10/08/john-cale-interview/
Alex
Com Truise (Seth Haley, music composer, producer, designer): "I’ve been a huge sci-fi fan forever. I think I might have been born somehow preconditioned to liking everything sci-fi. But somehow I spent the majority of my life not having seen Blade Runner. About two years ago, I bought the first version that came out on DVD. I was completely blown away — I wanted to punch myself for waiting so long to watch it. I think it took me two days to go out and buy the collector’s edition in the plastic briefcase with all the stuff in it.
As far as my favorite version, I love the remastered director’s cut the most. It still looks a bit wonky, nice grain, the lighting, sound quality…so good. It’s the first, maybe only movie I felt that I could really relate to the character, that feeling of being alone, in a hot and cold place, and the uncertainty. They just released it on Blu-Ray. I’ll never stop watching it. I want a framed Laserdisc! And don’t get me started on the soundtrack."
http://www.emusic.com/listen/#/music-news/interview/who-is/who-is-com- truise-2/
thats why he is my choice to do the soundtrack for http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1856101/board/threads/
here is a video of him saying it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=8n8s86-TV 5A#t=270s
"i wish someone would remake Hollywood" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdTmT3wVBxM
The New York Times posted about what fashion designers are saying about the costumes in 'The Hunger Games', and it looks like not many of them are impressed. There are a lot of expert opinions mentioned in the article, so we thought we would share a few with you.
Olivier Van Doorne, the head of SelectNY, a fashion advertising firm that makes commercials for brands like Emporio Armani and Tommy Hilfiger, agreed. While he liked the film, he said he found the outfits “ridiculous.” “ ‘Blade Runner’ gave a vision of the future you’d never seen before,” he said. “With this, there’s nothing new. It looks like a lot of recycling stuff Jean Paul Gaultier had done before.”
Comparisons to “Blade Runner” were brought up repeatedly. Released in 1982, Ridley Scott’s adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” took a similarly bleak view of the future, suggesting that technology and government would metastasize into something uncontrollable. With its sheer plastic raincoats, metallic dog collars and ’80s power suits with Grace Jones-like shoulder padding, the movie became a reference point for designers the world over.
Judging by reactions from the fashion set, “The Hunger Games” won’t have the same stylistic influence. Sally Hershberger, the celebrity hairstylist and frequent collaborator with the photographer Annie Leibovitz, also invoked the 1982 sci-fi epic as the yardstick against which the newer sci-fi film had failed.
As she saw it, the on-screen outfits looked “clownish,” like things you would see at a “costume party in Venice.” “It’s not a ‘Blade Runner’ moment,” Ms. Hershberger said. “This is not a fashion film. It looks too cheap.”
http://hungergamesfandom.net/2012/04/07/designers-weigh-in-on-fashion- in-the-hunger-games/
Alex
Robert Place Napton (Comic books, anime, ): "Yes, the period for Lucas I’m speaking of was Star Wars, Empire, Raiders, when he basically seemed like he could do no wrong. Another huge influence at that time was Blade Runner. Honestly, if you put a gun to my head so to speak, I could safely say it’s my favorite film of all time. I was there for the original, for the Criterion laserdisc, the workprint, director’s cut re-release, the Final Cut, blu-rays. I think I’ve bought every version of the film. It’s so layered and novelistic, asks the big questions in a way that doesn’t make it easy for the audience. Anyway, tangential, but thinking about that period reminded me how much that film clobbered me as a young man."
Q: What are your thoughts on the proposed Blade Runner continuation? Might some works, such as the very profound Blade Runner, suffer from over-marketing like that? Granted, it was adapted from a novel to begin with, but is there ever a point where some things should remain untouchable from further exploration, further scrutiny, or is everything up for interpretation? This obviously doesn’t include your more recent work for Dynamite, which I think is more about keeping these legacies alive, but we’ll get to that shortly. But do we risk lessening the weight of our icons from over-exposure?
Robert Place Napton: "That's a great question. The fascinating thing about Blade Runner is the original film itself was its OWN sequel. What I mean by that is it came in 1982 and fell flat except for a few of us. Then it slowly gained a life on home video and became a cult classic. The accidental discovery of the workprint in the 90s led to a re-release at a few art houses and then the Director’s cut bigger re-release and then the Final Cut. At each of those steps it was about bringing the film closer in line with Ridley Scott’s original vision, so it was really about TIME catching up with the film and the film getting discovered. The thing I like about Blade Runner was that it was just one film. It’s interesting with books, if Hemingway were alive would he be trying to write an OLD MAN AND THE SEA 2? I doubt it. But with movies, the obvious tendency is to go with pre-branded material, so studios can offset their risk, hence comic book movies are the rage and something with a marquee value like Blade Runner makes sense to people. I just hope the BR sequel is the GODFATHER 2 and not the million other negative examples we can point to of sequels that don’t measure up to the original."
http://thelotteryparty.com/interviews-robert-place-napton/
Alex
Etienne de Swardt (Creative director and President of Etat Libre D'Orange Parfums): "I am not as hands on as some other Niche perfume creative directors. Most of the time, I give true freedom to the perfumers who create our fragrances; because I believe that they understand the individual story I am trying to tell with each perfume. It's based on the project. It’s the way they talk about the idea and the theme we pick up. For Jasmine et Cigarette, I asked Antoine Maisondieu about his vision of femininity. For him, it was jasmine twisted with tobacco. I asked if he could illustrate – he said, “Do you remember that film Blade Runner by Ridley Scott? We talked about the film and ideas, and then it was in his hands."
http://www.cafleurebon.com/cafleurebon-creative-directors-in-perfumery -etienne-de-swardt-of-etat-libre-dorange-seduce-and-provoke-draw/
Looking at the Hoodwink trailer, it’s clear that you’re a fan of Blade Runner. Can the Blade Runner influence be seen throughout the series?
Amir Irwan (Managing Director of E1 Studio) "Blade Runner belongs to a well respected pool of media that pioneered many modern themes that we now see as popular in today’s arts, when they were groundbreaking back in the 80s. William Gibson, Snow Crash, Robocop; it will be hard to pin down exact influences. They all formed a collective understanding of the world we are in, and asks us if we should be happy with what we are becoming. Hoodwink aspires to do the same, through the vehicle of comedy."
http://www.mweb.co.za/games/ViewNewsArticle/tabid/2549/Article/4523/ho odwink-an-adventure-in-a-world-gone-mad.aspx
Dan Glass (Senior visual effects supervisor Dan Glass, Cloud Atlas): "The three Method facilities played a major role in creating Neo Seoul, a futuristic flooded Seoul that is central to the movie's fifth story. "It's a world that doesn't exist as well as technology that needed to be created from scratch," says Glass. "We looked a lot at Blade Runner as an influence, so there's a certain dank, dark, not very optimistic look to it. It's an authoritarian regime, which is a key part of the story, so the look fits into that idea." Method LA's 203 effects included a gun ship, flying police vehicles ("skiffs"), a prison truck, digi-doubles and numerous environments."
Matt Dessero (Visual Effects Supervisor, Cloud Atlas): "Dan [Glass] wanted the world to look futuristic, not contemporary," says Dessero, who said that the walled city of Kowloon in China was one reference. "Yet there are a couple of buildings to remind you of the past, such as the 1930s Swansea building. We imagined a futuristic RV park where people can dock their homes on a tree base, so we ended up with these very organic shapes and floating houses, with cables hooking them up. They wanted an even more futuristic look than Blade Runner while keeping the grittiness of that movie."
http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/cloud-atlas
Alex
RPS: Homeworld has a very earthy, primitive tone in stark contrast to, say, 70s and 80s sci-fi which is much more aurally bombastic. How did you craft and create the sound? What were the influences?
Paul Ruskay (composer): "During that period everything was instinctual. There was no internet, really, no reference points. The thing with Homeworld, my big influence was, obviously, the Blade Runner score and I was also a huge fan of Brian Eno. There was just something about that form of composition. There’s that moment in Blade Runner where he’s walking up the stairwell and there’s that Arabic singing in it… and the other thing is the art director, Rob Cunningham, had spent some time growing up in India and he turned me onto DJ Cheb i Sabbah – that was the biggest influence, DJ Cheb. He was just doing this kind of DJ’ing but with traditional Indian instruments. You mix DJ Cheb with Vangelis and with Eno and those are the main forces. On Blade Runner there was this synth-sound with world music instruments, that guy just got it right, we all sit under different schools but that combination of sound palette with the visuals – for me that’s what sci-fi is."
What was your favorite project to work on this year?
Godmachine (Illustrator, designer and artist): "Blade Runner poster. One of my all time favorite films and was a real pleasure doing it. I think I don’t usually boast or feel like I should boast about most things I do, but thats like a childhood dream come true. That and anytime I get to do a skateboard… seriously, all those years drooling over boards and now I’m actually doing them myself."
See poster here
http://www.revolution-daily.com/interview-with-godmachine/
Alex
Jason Reitman (Director of Juno, Up In The Air, Thank You For Smoking): "Here’s a fun fact… you know what Alien, Blade Runner, Close Encounters and The Matrix have in common? I mean, outside of being timeless groundbreaking movies that changed the way we watch cinema. None of these films were acknowledged for their screenplays — which makes me wonder, is it just because they have flying cars and hyperbaric sleep chambers and creatures with acid in their blood? Perhaps we’re so thoroughly engrossed that we dismiss how these films triumph in their examination of complicated ideas. Or maybe, as writers, we have some sort of prejudice against futuristic costume and production design.
If you break it down, at the center of these great science fiction movies are traditional writerly themes: mid-life crisis, motherhood, gender equality, and the fragility of human experience. Alien asked ground breaking questions about eco-politics and female empowerment. The Matrix delved deeper into the concept of perception versus reality than perhaps any other film I know. But for some reason, we tend not to remember the significance of their writing."
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/12/20/consider-this-jason-reitman-loop er/
Alex
Jack Wolf (author): If I were a film character, who would I be? I’d be JF Sebastian from Ridley Scott’s dystopian sci-fi vision of the future, Blade Runner. I first saw this film when I was a teenager, and the question that runs through it – ‘what is real?’ is one that has excited me creatively and philosophically ever since.
JF Sebastian is a hopeless loner, like me. He is socially awkward, like me, and again like me he prefers the company of those friends he has made for himself. Of course, my friends, in that sense, are characters in my novels rather than genetically engineered creatures, but I think my point still stands. Who’s to say that in some different universe I am not a genetic engineer doing exactly that?
In this world, however, I am a writer. And because I am a writer, and my creations cannot physically exist in this world with me, I have one great advantage over JF Sebastian. My characters cannot blame me for what befalls them. Unfortunately for JF Sebastian, however, his creations are alive; and his greatest creation, Roy, comes back to kill him –by killing his creator acting out a metaphor for the inexcusable human hubris of ‘killing God’. But was JF Sebastian ever truly God? Clearly not, although, certainly in Roy’s eyes, he obviously seemed to have usurped the divine power of creation.
Poor JF Sebastian. Perhaps he did not truly understand the implications of the work he was doing for the Tyrell Corporation. But when do any of us really get the chance to comprehend the full significance of the things that we create? If we could see that, perhaps we would be – almost – godlike. But would we ever choose to create anything?
Or perhaps JF Sebastian did know, and knew better than anyone else in the film (he is supposed to be a genius, after all) – and chose creation anyway. Publish and be damned, they used to say in the book trade. In his case, perhaps it was always going to be a case of publish and be killed – but to die at the hands of his greatest triumph was perhaps not so bad an exit.
http://www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk/features/2013/01/08/jack-wolf-i s-blade-runners-jf-sebastian/
Paul J. Salamoff (writer/producer): I am a lifelong fan of genre films and have very eclectic tastes. Blade Runner is by far my favorite movie of all time. I love the themes it explores and from a visual aspect, I can't think of any other films that match it. I know this is controversial, but I prefer the "Theatrical Cut" of the movie because I'm a fan of the voiceover. (Yes, I will concede that Harrison Ford phoned it in, but I still like the text of the voiceover). I also like the fact that Deckard is 100% human in this version. All the other versions suggest that Deckard may be a Replicant himself, which to me ruins an important theme of the film: The fact that you have these "robots" acting human and a human acting like a "robot". That's very powerful and it's what made me fall in love with the film in the first place.
http://blogs.coventrytelegraph.net/thegeekfiles/2011/03/screenwriter-p aul-j-salamoff-g.html
Paul J. Salamoff: As I grew older I discovered Blade Runner and to this day it is my favorite film of all-time. I find that I am driven as a writer by themes (as opposed to plots) and here was a movie bursting at the seams with them. Ideas about what it really means to be human.
http://comicattack.net/2011/07/ttcsalamoff/
Alex
Scott Z. Burns (screenwriter): "I talked to Ridley about it at one point as a part of a larger conversation about us trying to find something to do together because I have such admiration for him. I’m as huge a fan of that movie as anybody else who would be reading this or watching it, so what I said to him was, 'Let’s not do that unless we have something amazing to do or to say, because I don’t want to touch that idea unless I really feel like I have something amazing to contribute and right now I don’t know what that is.'
"I think he and I will probably talk again about [Blade Runner], but again it’s less about that specifically and more about he and I wanting to make a science fiction movie together. So I hope that that happens, to me I’m not particularly attached to it being Blade Runner. I suspect by the time we would come up with something it would be its own thing and not attached to that franchise necessarily, because it is a franchise, it’s a great piece of work."
http://collider.com/scott-z-burns-blade-runner-ridley-scott/
What is your favorite science fiction movie?
Michelle Rodriguez (actress): Dude, you can’t do that to me. Are you kidding me right now? Well, here is the thing. I can say something like Avatar, but that’s the commercial me speaking. I just love the fact that love was translated into a universal language. The snobby me would be like, “That’s so commercial, give me a break! Why don’t you say something cool like Blade Runner?” I would say Blade Runner if that’s the case. That was awesome. Not too many people like that movie, but I thought it was so great. I don’t know what it is about that movie, but it just really captivated me in such an original way. I like so many different things about so many sci-fi movies, I can’t really choose. But I’d definitely say Blade Runner if I had to pick one.
http://www.boxofficeprophets.com/column/index.cfm?columnID=13755&c min=10&columnpage=1
Alex
Paul W.S. Anderson: Well, he (Richard Yuricich) is like a legend of visuals effects, the first movie he ever worked on was 2001, he also did Blade Runner and Close Encounters, amazing landmark sci-fi movies. And this guy never talks to the press and I think the only interview he’s ever done was a short one for the book “The Making of Blade Runner”. He just doesn’t like talking about his work and I finally persuaded him to do a commentary for Resident Evil. So he came in and we did the commentary together but when there wasn’t any visual effect shots on the screen, I wound up pumping him for info on all the other amazing movies he’s made like Blade Runner and Close Encounters.
I’m just a real fanboy when it comes this stuff so THAT’S gonna be a really fantastic commentary because it's not only going to be about Resident Evil, it's also going to be about this man’s amazing career as well. He knows so many super cool things about Close Encounters, all this *beep* he’s never told anyone ever before. That commentary was done recently so it’s not on the DVD available now but it will be on the next edition.
http://www.joblo.com/arrow/interview62.htm
Alex
i like rodriguez
"i wish someone would remake Hollywood" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdTmT3wVBxM
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Too bad such great pages are deleted by administrators. It's happening all over IMDb, to various, seemingly targeted, posters!
Time for revolution.
---->
Impossible is illogical.
Lack of evidence is not proof.
+ = !
C. Robert Cargill (writer upcoming cyberpunk movie Deus Ex: Human Revolution): “That dark, wet, tech-noir look of a movie, and that kind of feel of a movie, it’s just dominated cinema for thirty years. It’s dominated sci-fi cinema. ‘Alien’ and ‘Blade Runner,’ together, really changed everything. Smoke and rain and fog and darkness… it’s noir. And ‘Looper’ and [District 9] went ahead and just got rid of that idea, and said let’s take a different aesthetic. And that aesthetic was, both in the aesthetic of the storytelling and the visuals, was ‘Let’s make it very realistic, and let’s start where some of these movies end, and let’s have different kinds of problems.’ “
http://screenrant.com/deus-ex-human-revolution-movie-update/
Scott Derrickson (director, writer, producer): Yeah, cyberpunk is difficult. There’s a reason we haven’t had a great cyberpunk movie yet. There’s a reason why a sci-fi movie as great as Neuromancer has never made it to the screen. I do think there’s a new wave coming, and not just because the technology and the effects are up to speed, but I think that there’s a sensibility to cyberpunk that the movies are catching up with. That’s kind of how we feel. We feel like the science fiction, the reason why we reference Inception, Looper and District 9 was that they were all movies that took certain familiar science fiction methodologies and turned them upside-down and brought a grounded realism to them. Time travel, aliens arriving on Earth, going into the dream world… Those are all things that you’ve seen a dozen bad versions of, and it dozen decent versions of that. But no one, until those three films, no one had gone into filmmaking from a grounded, realistic point of view and made something with a fresh aesthetic. And I think that there was a little bit of the Blade Runner curse, a little bit of the Matrix curse, where you’ve got these movies that touch on cyberpunk elements that aren’t really cyberpunk films but they are so iconic, and so insurmountable. They’re perfect films in their own ways, [but] no one has been able to break free of that, or no one has broken free of that, and tried to go at it completely fresh. I think that we’re going to see a wave of them, I predict. I think that cyberpunk is going to break out. There’s going to be a new kind of science fiction film, and it will be cyberpunk, and it will be amazing.
http://www.craveonline.com/film/interviews/205309-it-will-be-cyberpunk -scott-derrickson-a-c-robert-cargill-on-deus-ex
loving the looper mentions - best film of last year
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdTmT3wVBxM "someone should remake hollywood"
Kazuo Ishiguro (novelist): "A lot of the greatest movies in cinema history are sci-fi – from Metropolis to 2001 to Solaris to Blade Runner."
Ishiguro is one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in the English-speaking world, having received four Man Booker Prize nominations, and winning the 1989 award for his novel The Remains of the Day. In 2008, The Times ranked Ishiguro 32nd on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
http://www.theoohtray.com/2011/06/27/interview-kazuo-ishiguro/
Alex
Christopher Nolan: I think anytime you look at science fiction in movies, there are key touchstones. Metropolis. Blade Runner. 2001. Whenever you’re talking about getting off the planet, 2001 is somewhat unavoidable. But there is only one 2001. So you don’t want to get too near to that.
Read this interesting article about Kubrick:
http://popwatch.ew.com/2013/04/06/room-237-stanley-kubrick-shining-inf luence/
Joseph Kosinski, director (Tron: Legacy, Oblivion) interviewed by /film:
/Film: I had a lot of fun with Oblivion and watching it, I couldn’t help think of all of the sci-fi of the past. There are so many things in there.
Joseph Kosinski: Yep.
/Film: There’s The Matrix, 2001… there are things that I don’t want to spoil from other movies. Now when you were making the movie, were those connections in your head or were they sort of subconscious?
Joseph Kosinski: I think they were subconscious. I mean I wrote the story about eight years ago, so I was thinking about the seventies films I grew up with, everything from 2001, Planet of the Apes, Omega Man, Silent Running, Blade Runner, Star Wars. Those were the films that I remember seeing as a kid and the illustrations of guys like Chris Foss and Peter Elson, I don’t know if you are familiar with their illustrations, but I had books of theirs. These kind of beautiful colored maker watercolor images from the seventies that are just wild. I mean you see the images now and… Sci-Fi was in a whole other world in the seventies, pre-Star Wars, pre-Alien, and it kind of changed then and went into the darkness of deep space.
http://www.slashfilm.com/film-interview-oblivion-director-joseph-kosin ski/
Another interview but basically the same thing:
Joseph Kosinski:"I always think of the old 'Twilight Zone' television show," he said. "That was really, I would say, the heart of it. You know, Richard Matheson was a writer for that show -- he wrote 'I Am Legend, which was made into 'Omega Man' in the 1970s, and then remade again obviously later (in 2007) with Will Smith. 'Silent Running,' 'Logan's Run,' 'Planet of the Apes,' 'Blade Runner,' 'Star Wars' -- I grew up as a kid watching movies in the late '70s and '80s and I love those kind of '70s science-fiction films."
http://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2013/04/oblivion_director_joseph_ kosin.html
Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention.
he says it's name - thats hardly talking about it - but thanks for the link - i've forwarded it to chris foss's daughter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdTmT3wVBxM "someone should remake hollywood"
Why do your movies keep being remade? I feel the "Total Recall" remake only really succeeded in making people re-watch your version. No one really saw the new one.
Paul Verhoeven:I saw it.
What did you think?
Paul Verhoeven: I thought it didn't work.
Why?
Paul Verhoeven: It's too serious. They took themselves very seriously and didn't realize that the big story is also strange. And impossible, of course.
But you did it.
Paul Verhoeven: But, I felt that it was strange. I felt the movie, in some way, should not take itself too seriously. In fact, ultimately, the casting of Arnold -- he was already cast before I was there. So I had to take Arnold. I liked the script already, but Arnold was playing the main part. So, take it or leave it. I said I wanted to do it with Harrison Ford, like in "Blade Runner." But I might have made a mistake because "Blade Runner" is also very serious. And because Arnold was there, that changed everything. Arnold being there made it really necessary to flip it a little bit. And I think, in retrospect, it was a gift. Arnold was supposed to be an accountant in the original story and it was still in the script. And I'm like, "Arnold an accountant? That's ridiculous." So I proposed, "Let's have him do something physical." What are those things he's using?
Tom Benn (author The Doll Princess): Roy Batty is my favourite sympathetic villain. He’s vicious, noble and fashion-conscious (the very foundations of cyberpunk were built upon his coat collar). He also has an extremely flexible girlfriend.
Roy, a replicant (an artificial human being), has come to Earth to try and force a meeting with his maker, in the hope he will be able to extend his life beyond its programmed four years. Our gumshoe hero, Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, must ‘retire’ Roy and the rest of his gang.
I’ve always felt for Roy. Most of us are full of questions, frightened of death, and at some point in our lives, want someone to blame for our design flaws. We’d probably be better off accepting what we can change about ourselves, and what we can’t. God is the ultimate absent dad. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t come sooner,’ Dr Tyrell, Roy’s maker, tells him. It’s very satisfying watching Roy beat him in a game of chess.
Rutger Hauer is otherworldly: his platinum hair and permanent sweat-glaze make him a lizard in the neon jungle of future LA. I watched the final cut of Blade Runner recently, and while the visuals are gorgeous, the dialogue is still one part stoic, two parts characters explaining things they’d already know. But Hauer delivers even the most wooden line with a regal menace.
Roy isn’t just a badass; he’s the most fiercely human character in a film where potentially no one is. I may not be as stylish or murderous as Roy, but he still speaks to me, and I always root for him over Deckard.
And although Roy doesn’t find the answers he needs to be able to cheat death, he does discover what it means to be human.
http://www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk/features/2012/01/27/1553/
Everett Burrell (special makeup artist - visual effects supervisor - worked on Prometheus, Battle Los Angeles, The Mist, Pan's Labyrint, Sin City, ...): A science fiction tale which did make it to the big screen was Prometheus (2012). That was an amazing experience because of Ridley [Scott]. I was working for Weta at the time and I got on-set,” states Everett Burrell. “They said, ‘Don’t talk to Ridley. You’re not allowed to talk to him.’ I was sitting outside the video village one day and he waved me in. I went in, and he showed me stuff and said, ‘You’re always welcomed in my trailer or tent.’ I saw Blade Runner [1982] about 50 times at the theatre. That was a lot of fun. Visually I loved making that movie. I don’t think the movie makes a lick of sense but it looks great.”
http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2013/06/image-conscious-conversation-wit h.html
I don't know what Everett meant by "Visually I loved making that movie". He would've loved working on Blade Runner? Or he loved making Prometheus? Which movie makes the least sense? The latter, I'm sure.
Alex
Recently I interviewed Javier Cabrera, of the Cabrera Brothers. Their latest game, Cypher, was one of few commercial text adventure releases in the last several years. Cypher is a cyberpunk adventure that will appeal to any fan of the Blade Runner or stories set in similarly futuristic urban environments.
Cypher is constructed in Unity 3D and has a distinct graphical element that also separates it from most text adventures of today.
GS: Was choosing to make Cypher a text adventure partially due to nostalgia? The game does have a certain Blade Runner quality in tone and theme, and text adventures are considered a tiny bit old fashioned.
Javier Cabrera (Game developer): You got it: it was mainly because of nostalgia. We wanted to bring something we used to love and couldn't find on the shelves back into our lives. You can’t fight time no matter how hard you try. Kids growing up today with Gears of War and The Last of Us will know this fact somewhere down the line tomorrow when they are 45. They will have PlayStation16 and XBOX 3000 in their living rooms and the games will be something strange for them again. They won't get as excited as they used to. They will look back and remember how cool the games they played in their youth used to be. How great those series and movies used to feel. There’s only so little we can do about it when we grow up; one solution is making our own games and movies. Since making movies is almost impossible, we went for games. That’s why you’ll see a Blade Runner / Akira vibe on Cypher; our own little time machine.
http://www.gameskinny.com/hsiv5/interview-with-a-developer-javier-cabr era-of-cabrera-brothers-creators-of-cypher
Alex
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYO77zNhWl4 - "The video itself is stunning, bringing Casshern, Blade Runner, and The Fifth Element to mind. It’s a Sci-Fi-meets-film noir-meets-J-horror mini-flick"
not sure if this counts in this thread but i came across it earlier - i'm sure there is probably an interview out there where he says it - but this image makes it a tad obvious - http://i.imgur.com/zxq3cZ4.png
"I'm not a fool
I just love that you're dead inside (that you're dead inside)
I'm not a fool, I'm just lifeless too"
relatable chorus lyric too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdTmT3wVBxM "someone should remake hollywood"
Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium): I’m not even sure I’m a director, to be honest. I am a visual artist, though. I like mixing visual arts with sound and motion, and by doing that, creating an atmosphere and place for the audience to go to. All my favorite films are the ones that are classic cinema that transport an audience, like, Blade Runner‘s Los Angeles.
http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/elysium-director-neill-blomk amp-im-not-even-sure-im-a-director.php
Alex
Author William Gibson in an interview for Paris Review:
INTERVIEWER: There’s a famous story about your being unable to sit through Blade Runner while writing Neuromancer.
GIBSON: I was afraid to watch Blade Runner in the theater because I was afraid the movie would be better than what I myself had been able to imagine. In a way, I was right to be afraid, because even the first few minutes were better. Later, I noticed that it was a total box-office flop, in first theatrical release. That worried me, too. I thought, Uh-oh. He got it right and nobody cares! Over a few years, though, I started to see that in some weird way it was the most influential film of my lifetime, up to that point. It affected the way people dressed, it affected the way people decorated nightclubs. Architects started building office buildings that you could tell they had seen in Blade Runner. It had had an astonishingly broad aesthetic impact on the world.
I met Ridley Scott years later, maybe a decade or more after Blade Runner was released. I told him what Neuromancer was made of, and he had basically the same list of ingredients for Blade Runner. One of the most powerful ingredients was French adult comic books and their particular brand of Orientalia—the sort of thing that Heavy Metal magazine began translating in the United States.
But the simplest and most radical thing that Ridley Scott did in Blade Runner was to put urban archaeology in every frame. It hadn’t been obvious to mainstream American science fiction that cities are like compost heaps—just layers and layers of stuff. In cities, the past and the present and the future can all be totally adjacent. In Europe, that’s just life—it’s not science fiction, it’s not fantasy. But in American science fiction, the city in the future was always brand-new, every square inch of it.
http://io9.com/how-did-william-gibson-really-feel-about-blade-runner-8 96472321
Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention.
Great quote, wing.
shareStephan Franck (Animator, director, ...): “On the other end of the spectrum, that last scene between Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer at the end of Blade Runner [1982] is one that stuck with me forever. I have a whole theory about that scene. I’ll have to blog about it somewhere.”
http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2013/10/head-start-stephan-franck-talks- about.html
Why not take a step back and simply write a history of the label and detail the philosophies, principles and process of discovery? You could avoid the deeply personal stuff and still create an interesting book.
William Ackerman (founder Windham Hill, guitarist, producer, ...): "I have a horror scenario like that scene in Blade Runner in which Harrison Ford is confronting Sean Young with her being a replicant and forcing her to recognize that the memories she was supplied in her memory banks are nothing but that. I find that scene shocking because I have no more faith in my own memory than she had at that moment. Memory is such a flighty thing to me. I couldn’t write an accurate book about the history of Windham Hill. I would be able to write about my memory of the history of Windham Hill, but it would require me to feel comfortable about it and include a tremendous amount of input from a lot of other sources to keep me from creating an entire fiction—not purposefully, but I fear that’s what it would become. The idea of being the editor and moderator of the book and saying "Well, here is my memory of it, does it jive with yours?" could be fun to do when I have the time to do it properly."
Alex
Augustine Kofie (painter, urban artist, ...): "I owned and played with the Light Cycle toy that Mattel made for Tron back in ’82. My favorite movie is Blade Runner. Syd Mead was the futurist designer responsible for the aesthetic look of both films. I was subconsciously inspired by his work and didn’t know it until the early 2000′s."
http://graffuturism.com/2013/11/07/augustine-kofie-interviewed-by-carl os-mare-for-three-the-hard-way-group-exhibition/
J.H. Wyman (Screenwriter, director and producer of Almost Human, Fringe, ...) - In my mind, you can't touch something in this wheelhouse, or in science fiction, without owing a huge debt to Blade Runner. It's definitely one of my favorite films. It has so much to look at. It was just so amazing and instructive as a young person watching that movie on how not just what's happening in the scene, but what's happening ten layers behind the scene, what's going on in the street behind it, and then what's going on in the building behind that? ... creating was a real lesson for me.
http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwtv/article/BWW-Interviews-JJ-Abrams-JH -Wyman-Talk-New-FOX-Series-ALMOST-HUMAN-20131111-page2
John Higgins (comic book artist and writer): Definitely SF more than any other genre, or maybe SF with added horror. I do seem to have been put into a horror fantasy bracket as an artist which I am very happy about. The books I first remember reading were the classics of SF: Heinlein, Asimov, Eric Frank Russell, and once I discovered Harry Harrison there was no going back. I liked the idea of being part of a cult minority as it was then. In the 70s most SF movies were very limited in the scope of their special effects, imagination and in most cases they just could not interpret the imagination or imagery of the book. Some notable exceptions came along before digital fx made SF movies imaginably real: 2001 A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Alien and my number one movie of any period or genre Blade Runner.
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2013/10/words-and-pictures-an-intervi ew-with-john-higgins/
Alex
Wayne Simmons (novelist, reviewer):"When it all boils down, the most perfect example of dystopia, for me, is not to be found in literature, it’s to be found in film. One particular film, in fact: Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner."
Wayne Simmons: "For my own take on dystopia, latest novel Plastic Jesus, it’s the smoke and cityscape and synth that I want. Essentially, this is a tech noir novel; the blending of low-life and high-tech; my love letter to Ridley Scott for Blade Runner, but also William Gibson for Neuromancer as well as a host of noir and neo-noir writers through the ages."
From 'Blade Runner: Misery-fest or Masterpiece':
http://www.litro.co.uk/2013/11/blade-runner-misery-fest-or-masterpiece /
Alex
Henry Adebonojo (Photographer/Cinematographer/Filmmaker): "My career as a cinematographer evolved out of my developing love of photography. As a kid I went to the movies virtually every weekend and I suppose that was in my blood. When I embraced photography as an adult it seemed natural to become curious about cinematography. At college I saw three films that would change my life in that regard. I could no longer overlook the emotional connection between the moving image and the spoken word. Those films were: Apocalypse Now, Kagemusha, and Blade Runner. Upon my return to New York, just out of curiosity and driven by impulse, I made inquiries about the film industry and how to get into it. About nine months later, I worked on my first production as a production assistant and haven't looked back since. I began working as a cinematographer in 1993 and continue to do so today."
http://www.thisisafrica.me/downloads/detail/20027/one-to-watch-the-qui etly-unassuming-photographer-and-cinematographer-henry-adebonojo
Anel Zilic [cinematographer): "What really inspired me, was probably one of my favorite movies of all time, Blade Runner. When I saw Blade Runner for the first time, I couldn't believe how much you could do with lighting. The cinematography is just amazing in this film. I really recommend for anybody who wants to do cinematography, to watch Blade Runner."
http://www.examiner.com/article/anel-zilic-taking-cinematography-to-a- whole-new-level
Peter Brewis (Deputy editor of Mondo Arc Magazine): "In our own industry, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (or perhaps more specifically the cinematography of Jordan Cronenweth) is constantly cited by lighting designers as a master class in the use of light and shade, and a handful will readily admit that this has fed into and informed their work over the years."
http://www.mondoarc.com/comment/editor/2040397/pete_brewis_editorial_c omment.html
Dan Glass (Visual Effects for Batman Begins, The Matrix Reloaded, Cloud Atlas, The Master, and many more): "There are many films that come to mind, but Blade Runner and Brazil made the strongest impression on me. I've seen Blade Runner about eight or ten times and its opening scene is just fantastic – the way it spans the expanse of that city and integrates all this feeling and patience into aspects of this very credible future. As [a VFX artist] you aspire to that; to finding ways to bring pieces of reality, more organic elements sometimes, into things. Sadly, although they're fantastic and there are directors like Chris Nolan who always want to use them, I think the future for miniatures is very limited and they suffer from their own limitations, too. They have to be put together meticulously and shot very smartly to really make them work, and they frequently require digital enhancement as well. Blade Runner was very, very early days but you still get this variety and naturalness that would take a lot of work to create digitally. Am I a director's cut guy? Absolutely, yeah!"
http://www.empireonline.com/features/cinemas-greatest-vfx-shots/p6
Alex
Q: You’ve often said that your favorite film is Blade Runner. What special significance does it hold for you?
Christopher Nolan: "As a kid watching films, you go through a gradual realization of what’s behind them. You start off like everyone else, thinking that actors make up the words and create the film themselves. So when I was young and looking at Alien and Blade Runner, I was going, OK, they’re different stories, different settings, really different actors, everything’s different—but there’s a very strong connection between those two films, and that is the director, Ridley Scott. I remember being struck by that, and thinking that’s the job I want.
The atmosphere of Blade Runner was also important, that feeling that there was this whole world outside the frame of the scene. You really felt there were things going on outside of those rooms where you’ve seen the film take place. That’s something I’ve always tried to carry with me. Every film should have its own world, a logic and feel to it that expands beyond the exact image that the audience is seeing."
http://www.dga.org/craft/dgaq/all-articles/1202-spring-2012/dga-interv iew-christopher-nolan.aspx
Not sure if this was already posted but I don't feel like checking the whole thread.
Alex
BR: When hiring architects, what are the traits you look for? The sensibilities you want? The personalities you’re looking for?
Vito Hannibal Acconci (is an American designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist): One kind of trait we look for a lot is someone who is totally interested in architecture, but at the same time, is just as interested in music, in movies, in theater, in physics, in biology. Multi-disciplinarity is really important.
When we’re designing something, yes we’re channeling ourselves into doing architecture, but it’s got to be an architecture that’s affected by the other things in the world. Blade Runner is probably just as big an influence on architects as a lot of architecture. But you know Blade Runner came at such an interesting, Post-Modern time, and came out of that, but it was a very different version of Post-Modernism than a lot of architects were doing at the time. It was Post-Modernism because it was desperate, because you were building on the ruins of the old—which Rome has done for a long time.
BR: Do you think you were influenced by Blade Runner?
VA: Yup, yup, yup, very much. For me, it was, wow, for me it was, this is the alternative to 2001. In 2001, the future is all white, it’s built as if there was nothing there. Blade Runner kinds of shrugs its shoulders and says, well, you can’t get rid of everything, so let’s build on it. Blade Runner, I don’t know if it introduced me to [the concept], but I started to think of architecture as a parasite. There were all these empty facades in New York, and we built stuff on them.
http://archrecord.construction.com/features/interviews/0718acconci/071 8acconci-4.asp
Hideo Kojima (Game designer Metal Gear Solid, Snatcher, ... Director of Kojima Productions): 5. I have to say Blade Runner by Ridley Scott. Blade Runner creates a unique world where all cultures comes together and it doesn't result in decadence. It doesn't create something apocalyptic but rather something 'full of life'. To see how all these cultures were mixed was a shock to me. The film is not an action film, it talks a lot about philosophy. It's a very artistic film which had a huge impact on me. It's a film that I really like.
Kojima's 5 favorites movies are:
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Taxi Driver
3. Heaven And Hell
4. Mad max: The Road Warrior
5. Blade Runner
QUESTION: Has there ever been a movie that obsessed you because you couldn't figure it out?
CHRISTOPHER NOLAN: The film that really struck me was Ridley Scott's 'Blade Runner.' That was a film I watched many, many times and found endlessly fascinating in its density. But I think the density of that film is primarily visual density and atmospheric and sound density, more so than narrative density. But, yeah, I think for a lot of filmmakers particularly, there will be a film like that in their past that they've really become a little obsessed with and seen too many times, or more times than seems healthy.
http://www.writingstudio.co.za/page1433.html
Alex