Ridley Scott's final retake on Blade Runner, the influential 1982 film adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", will be released to select theaters in October followed by a DVD in December. The 1992 "director's cut," was a triumph of future noir, a film that stands the test of time more than almost any other science fiction movie. In the new issue of Wired, Ted Greenwald interviews Scott about this rev, titled Blade Runner: The Final Cut. Wired.com posted the interview that ran in the magazine, along with the full transcript and the audio of the original conversation. From the interview:
Wired: How did you decide to tell a 21st-century story in a 1940s style?
Scott: Well, people want a comfortable preconception about what they're seeing. It's a bit like 20 years of Westerns and, now, 45 years of cop movies. People are comfortable with the roles. Even though every nook and cranny has been explored, they'll still sit through endless variations on cops and bad guys, right? In this instance, I was doing a cop and a different bad guy. And to justify the creation of the bad guy, i.e., replication, it had to be in the future….It's the same as trying to do a monster movie. You know, Alien is a C film elevated to an A film, honestly, by a great monster. In this instance, my special effect was the world. That's why I put together people like [industrial designer] Syd Mead who were actually serious futurists. The big test is saying, Draw me a car in 30 years' time, without it looking like bad science fiction. Or, Draw me an electric iron that will be pressing shirts in 20 years without it looking silly. I wanted the world to be futuristic and yet feel – not familiar, because it won't be – but feel authentic. One of the hardest sets to design was the kitchen. It's easy to fantasize about Tyrell's giant neo-Egyptianesque boardroom, but imagining a bathroom and kitchen in those times, that's tricky. Nevertheless, fascinating. I love the problem.
