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
First time filmmaker Noh Young-seok, from Korea, talks to The Hollywood Reporter about the films that inspired him.
THR: What kind of films did you watch growing up?Full article from The Hollywood Reporter:
Noh: I read a lot of Korean comic books when I was in middle school. As I grew older, I turned to Japanese animation, which I thought was Korean at the time, like "Gundam" and "Laputa." Japanese films were banned in Korea. So basically I got these illegal videotapes in the city's black markets. Then I watched "Akira" one day, and I was shocked. Then there are films like "Blade Runner," "Taxi Driver" and "Once Upon a Time in America" that I grew up watching and listening to their great soundtracks, thinking I wanted to make films like those one day.
Sam Grawe (Editor in chief Dwell Magazine and musician in Windsurf and Hatchback): I think Vangelis' Bladerunner soundtrack continues to have a huge influence on me. The synthesizers on that are so on point, and the songs have a really emotive quality. Its pretty much as genius as it comes. You should also check out the Bilitis soundtrack by Francis Lai and La Planete Sauvage by Alain Goraguer.
Alex
Duncan Jones, director of Moon (currently showing at the Tribeca Film Festival)
"It looks like I'm going to be doing another science-fiction film next. I love Blade Runner, it's one of my favorite films, and I've always been really... depressed that there was never - not a sequel, because I don't think it's right to make a sequel about Blade Runner, but no one's really tried to make a film which was set in the same kind of world or had that same kind of field. So that's what I'm doing, a big-city mystery story that takes place in a future Berlin."
http://io9.com/5212617/moon-director-brings-back-the-glorious-days-of- blade-runner
~ Have a better one ~
Nice find wing.....sounds interesting, Duncan Jones is David Bowie's son.
"Lo fa, ne-ko shi-ma, de va-ja blade, Blade Runner."share
... but no one's really tried to make a film which was set in the same kind of world or had that same kind of field.
Dark City?
Alex
I picked up on that comment too Alex. Not sure what he meant by it since BR has been copied many times.
I didn't know Jones was Bowie's son jimmy. Well, he's got a good background for theatrics then...
~ Have a better one ~
I think he's doing a promo campagne for his movie. He's trying to buy the sympathy of the Blade Runner fans. He needs to fill them seats, wing. It happens a lot.
shareThis was/is a fantastic thread.
The other night I was on a date and a serious girl asked me "What's your favorite movie of all time?" So I wanted to give her a serious answer. I thought a long time because I disagree with the notion of a Greatest Film of All Time, because of the genres being so divergent. I told her " I think Blade Runner might be the best made film of all time. "
It most completely succeeds and then excells at everything it is trying to do, imo.
I don't have any quotes. I think you all must have listed them all!
This was/is a fantastic thread.
Glad you like it nbubacz. Alex gets the credit here - this thread is his creation but I'm fond of it too.
~ Have a better one ~
More on Duncan Jones and his upcoming sci-fi pic Moon:
"I had three people I wanted to watch it: Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam and Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman and Terry Gilliam have both watched it and loved it, so now I'm just waiting for Ridley Scott, which is the big one for me."
http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/04/14/duncan-jones-wants-to-make-a-bl ade-runner-like-sci-fi-mystery-next/
I must say, after reading this article, I'm a little more pumped to see Moon.
Alex
Even more Duncan Jones:
Question: I know you showed the film to Terry Gilliam and Neil Gaiman, but did Ridley Scott ever get back to you?
Duncan Jones: Yes he did, he finally did, he watched the film. I managed to catch up with at something called the BFI, they did a testimonial for him, where they were just sort of talking about what an amazing career he has. Then afterwards he basically, there was a VIP lounge and I was able to get in there and say hello to him. I got like thirty seconds of his time, and I said “so did you get to see Moon?” (laughs), and he had seen it, and he said he really liked it a lot and I asked him if it was OK if I kept ripping him off and he said “yeah that’s fine”, he keeps ripping other people off (laughs).
http://thefilmstage.com/2009/05/06/exclusive-interview-duncan-jones-ta lks-his-blade-runner-esque-film-moon-dvdblu-ray-release-ridley-scott-m ansells-score/
Alex
[deleted]
Andrew Orloff (Creative Director and Visual Effects Supervisor): "The kind of visual effects that I like ... I mean I grew up in kind of the golden age of visual effects. I saw Star Wars in the movie theater and I have to say that, you know, Blade Runner with all the model work and brilliant matte paintings ... just the tone of it was something that really spoke to me and kind of got me very interested in doing this. I think we kind of recaptured that in Children of Men, I mean as far as ... in a more modern setting. As you can see I kind of gravitate towards these films that create a very highly realistic world of fantasy that you feel you could really sit in that really has an internal logic to it that kinds of…the visual effects kind of bring you into the film than just being something that’s cool to look at."
Alex
Jack Reher: What’s your favorite science fiction film of all time?
Gary Lockwood (actor 2001): "That's a split decision, "2001" and "Blade Runner" are my runaway favorites."
Alex
Gary Lockwood (actor 2001): The only way we may ever see again really great science fiction is if a real talented, well-connected individual gets into a position where he makes something that works financially. I feel that what science fiction filmmakers are doing now is nice technically, but storywise, it's kind of lame.
You couldn't make 2001 today unless you were Kubrick or maybe Ridley Scott, who made BLADE RUNNER, that was totally brilliant but fell on its ass financially and he couldn't get a job for awhile. There isn't anybody out there right now that's as good as them. I mean, I hear about these hot directors like David Lynch and I go see their movies and they only go so far. If ERASERHEAD is brilliant, you guys are on to something that I don't get.
Alex
These are some of the best quotes you will ever hear about Blade Runner.
Philip K. Dick:
"All I can say is that the world in BLADE RUNNER is where I really live. That is where I think I am anyway. This world will now be a world that every member of the audience will inhabit. It will not be my private world. It is now a world where anyone who will go into the theatre and sit down and watch the film will be caught up and the world is so overpowering, it is so profoundly overpowering that it is going to be very hard for people to come out of it and adjust to what we normally encounter.
"Once the film begins, you are taken from this world into that world and you really are in that world. And I think the most exciting thing is that it is a lived-in world. A world where people actually live. It is not a hygienically pristine space colony which looks like a model seen at the Smithsonian Institute. No, this is a world where people live. And the cars use gas and are dirty and there is kind of a gritty rain falling and its smoggy. Its just terribly convincing when you see it."
"Everbody seems to have some kind of business that he is engaged in. Everybody is involved in some kind of thing. Which is what you really do see in a big metropolis. You always wonder, who are these people? Where are they going? What are they doing? What kind of lives are they leading? You become endlessly curious about this amazing complex life of the metropolis. What exists behind those closed doors? What is going on behind those lighted windows? You get a glimpse but you never get the full story.
Alex
Fecal Face Dot Com: Name drop list, what is tickling your fancy right now?
Michael T. Rea: Fergie, MIA, Folkert de Jung, Ben Stone, No Country For Old Men, Soft Pretzels, Peroni, Jens Lekman, Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Cloverfield, Jaws, Lolita, the 27th directors cut of Blade Runner, thongs, Alex Katz, Robert Morris, Hey Willpower, Paris Hilton, Klarbrunn water, Paul McCarthy, Grind House (in the theater).
Homepage of Mike Rea:
http://www.mikerea.com/flash.html
Alex
CNET News: What do you think of the Internet, digital music, and all this futuristic stuff we're seeing?
Kate Perry (I Kissed A Girl): "It's so Blade Runner. I love living in the future, but I don't know why we don't have hovercrafts yet."
Now look at the first second of Kate Perry's video 'Waking Up In Vegas', freeze frame it and tell me of whom she reminds you of.
http://tr.truveo.com/kate-perry-waking-up-in-vegas/id/2472192727
Alex
Richard Starkings (creator of the award winning Hip Flask and Elephantmen series): I think comparisons to BLADE RUNNER originally had more to do with the style of Ladrönn's art in the HIP FLASK series that spawned ELEPHANTMEN, but as a matter of course themes such as the matter of what it means to be human - when you're not - naturally emerged from my story and characters and I can't deny that these are the same themes that drive BLADE RUNNER, which also happens to be my favourite movie. Ironically, I'm now lettering the comic book adaptation of DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? So I guess I'm the BLADE RUNNER guy now - serves me right for using the quote "BLADE RUNNER meets TAXI DRIVER!" on the first ELEPHANTMEN collection, I guess. Oh, and naming it after a track on the soundtrack - "Wounded Animals."
Alex
ARGNet: What is your favorite movie?
Brian Clark: My favorite movie? Probably my favorite movie of all time would be Blade Runner.
The director’s cut or the original version?
Brian Clark: Oh, definitely the director’s cut. No narration, no Mickey Spillane voice-over with the extra wrinkle that the Blade Runner’s a replicant (Oh, no, spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! I spoiled the movie!)
Did you see the narrated version first?
Brian Clark: Yes.
Do you think that made you appreciate the second one better?
Brian Clark: No. I think once they took the voice-over out, it left more to speculation. Peoples’ motivations and machines’ motivations became less clear. We didn’t need to have Harrison Ford tell us about Rutger Hauer dying. We could just watch that scene and not have to say, “Maybe in the end he valued any life, even his own.” I think that the film company underestimated the intelligence of the film-going public.
I read somewhere that Harrison Ford said he did the narration badly deliberately so they’d have to cut it.
Brian Clark: Really? That’s a great detail - a little sabotage.
True, but I don’t know whether it’s an urban myth or not.
Brian Clark: Yeah, but it’s interesting.
Editor’s note: For those of you who played Art of the Heist last year, or who are currently enjoying Who Is Benjamin Stove?, you might already know about GMD Studios, the driving force behind some of the biggest Alternate Reality Games to date. Brian Clark, who co-founded the company in 1995, has become a valuable and active member of the ARG community. His energy and creativity have helped in taking the genre to new heights, and Dee Cook was lucky enough to sit down with Brian during the SXSW Interactive festival for a few words.
p2pnet: What’s your favourite movie?
Bram Cohen (the mastermind behind BitTorrent): "Someone asked me what my favorite movie was a few years ago, and I said Blade Runner, and she said Everybody says Blade Runner, and asked for a different movie, so I guess the right answer is Amadeus."
Alex
Do you feel that Blade Runner’s an overrated text as far as architectural criticism is concerned? It always gets name checked, but one thing I feel it missed was the ‘invisibility’ of new technology. It’s probably the last of the old-school dystopian sci fi films, where the city itself was a major character, imposing and present…
Geoff Manaugh: As an architectural film, yes: I do think Blade Runner is over-rated. Even as a film about urban design or the urban future. But as a film about the overwhelming sadness of being alone in the world – in that regard I think it’s unbelievable, and deserves its reputation. The self-distrusting madness of thought, doubting your own reality, your own solidity, whether or not what you did yesterday was real: all obvious questions, of course, and all themes already done by the Existentialists, the Romantics, even The Matrix – but what I mean is that, in a world where it’s possible to work and grow old and be completely alone for the whole thing, self-disappearance is an interestingly under-explored phenomenon. And I think Blade Runner really tackles that. It’s a sad movie. It can sometimes be almost unbearable to watch.
Geoff Manaugh is a writer and essayist whose work has appeared in Contemporary, Space & Culture, Blend, Lumpen, Inhabitat, WorldChanging, the Oyster Boy Review, the Urban Design Review, Subtopia, Vector, things magazine, and The Allen Ginsberg Audio Collection (a short essay in the CD liner notes). He’s also a contributing editor at Archinect, and Senior Editor for David Haskell’s Urban Design Review. And he’s the main man behind BLDGBLOG, a blog devoted to ‘architectural conjecture, urban speculation and landscape futures’.
Alex
Who's he, what the hell is an "Alternate Reality Game" and what the fook is Benjamin Stove?
$ sudo make CHEEZEBURGER --mayo -off
system made you CHEEZEBURGER but ated it :-(
Now look at the first second of Kate Perry's video 'Waking Up In Vegas', freeze frame it and tell me of whom she reminds you of.
Gary Lockwood (actor 2001): "That's a split decision, "2001" and "Blade Runner" are my runaway favorites."
BS: Are you influenced by world events? Have any specific events struck a cord in you, so to speak?
Janet Biggs: There are certain films where I can completely loose myself ... totally buy into the Hollywood dream machine. Blade Runner is one of those films. I have always been a fan of cyperpunk and science fiction. Philip K. Dick and Ridley Scott hit on themes that interest me ... what makes us human such as empathy, relationships to animals, constructed memories, as well as hybridization, globalization, our role in climate change and genetic engineered, drug enhanced identity.
Wikipedia: Janet Biggs (born 1959) is an American video artist, photographer and performance artist living in New York City. Her work is in the permanent collections of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, The Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, and The New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut.
Alex
Alex Proyas (Director of The Crow, Dark City, I, Robot, Knowing): "Well, you know, it's interesting because my favorite films are ones that I keep watching. I just don't think there have been many great science fiction films made. I mean, 2001 is genius, there's no question it's a masterpiece, but I've already picked a Kubrick film. I find Dr. Strangelove a more user-friendly and enjoyable film to look at and watch repeatedly. I can watch it endlessly. Blade Runner is a masterpiece, but I don't know that I would put it in my top 5 at this stage. Maybe at some other point in my life, I would've."
And the 5 favorite films of Alex Proyas are:
- Dr. Strangelove
- Stalker
- The Exorcist
- Psycho
- The Godfather
Alex
We've had several quotes from Duncan Jones in this thread. Here's a new one. This time it's Jones talking about his upcoming project Mute.
On how he was inspired by Blade Runner:More on his upcoming film here ==> http://screenrant.com/duncan-jones-follows-moon-with-blade-runner-insp ired-mute-robf-12754/
"The only reason that I mention Blade Runner is because there’s something about that particular film, where they really created a believable and realistic living breathing futuristic world. For all of the other films that have tried to do that I don’t think anything has come as close the way Blade Runner has to creating something believable. Something that feels real and organic. It’s like going to a real city and shooting a film there. You just get a sense that this place exists. [In] most of the science fiction films, it always feels a bit fake and a bit flat, but Blade Runner really didn’t. That’s the aspect of Blade Runner I’m hoping to capture."
Danny Boyle:"I am actually of an age where I remember when Blade Runner came out.I remember how vilified it was at the time.I was young then and didn't have that arrogance to reject all the criticism of it,to be defiant.I couldn't quite understand the hatred and I thought 'Am I wrong? This is absolutely amazing'The creation of that world you can lose yourself in a couple of hours-it's staggering.I still don't understand why it got such a negative reaction."
Quentin Tarrantino and Brian Helgeland (screenplay writer for L.A. Confidential and Ridley Scott's upcoming Robin Hood) are exchanging their favorite screenplays.
Favorite Screenplays: A Rapid-Fire Exchange:
Helgeland: Moonstruck, by John Patrick Shanley; Cool Hand Luke and Dog Day Afternoon, by Frank Pierson (Those Pierson scripts made me want to write screenplays).
Tarantino: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, by Sergio Leone and Luciano Vincenzoni; His Girl Friday, adapted by Charles Lederer from the play The Front Page (Not only the greatest dialogue in the history of cinema, but it's a genre that doesn't exist anymore: the newspaper comedy. And it's a blistering social satire); Unfaithfully Yours, by Preston Sturges (I don't love Preston Sturges the way other people love him, but his dialogue is fantastic).
Helgeland: The Poseidon Adventure, by Stirling Silliphant and Wendell Mayes (The characters are introduced perfectly -- you know everything about them almost instantly); The Outlaw Josey Wales, by Philip Kaufman and Sonia Chernus; Horton Foote's adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird (It's just a great adaptation).
Tarantino: Rio Bravo, by Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman (It works as a crackerjack story, and it's just fun. It's the ultimate hang-out movie); What's Up, Doc? by Robert Benton, David Newman and Buck Henry; Hero, by David Webb Peoples (This stands alone as a great script that a great movie didn't make).
Helgeland: Heaven Can Wait, by Elaine May and Warren Beatty (A great ending and one of the all-time best remakes); Slap Shot, by Nancy Dowd (One of the best profane scripts of all time); The Big Lebowski, by Joel and Ethan Coen (Because they so convincingly make their own world); Klute, by Andy and Dave Lewis (Jane Fonda's character talks all the time, and you don't know anything about her. Donald Sutherland's character doesn't say a word, and you know everything about him).
Tarantino: Shampoo, by Robert Towne and Warren Beatty (It's just brilliant); The Great Escape, adapted by James Clavell and W. R. Burnett (The shortest three-hour movie ever made in the history of time); Switchblade Sisters, by F. X. Maier and John Prizer (The dialogue is so wonderful that half the people watching it would think that it's bad dialogue -- the script is ingenious).
Brian Helgeland: Rocky, by Sylvester Stallone; Blade Runner, by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples (It wasn't all art direction -- the dialogue was terrific in that movie); Unforgiven, by David Peoples (The best script in my lifetime).
Tarantino: Out of the Past, by Daniel Mainwaring (Maybe the best dialogue in a dialogue-heavy genre, the noir movie); Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! by Russ Meyer and Jack Moran (The funniest, most quotable dialogue); Scarface, by Oliver Stone (Extremely memorable -- nearly every line of the movie is worth repeating).
http://www.tarantino.info/wiki/index.php/QT_Talks_to_Brian_Helgeland
Alex