Future Noir set a high standard for non-fiction books on film productions in its account of the Sci-Fi touchstone Blade Runner. Author Paul M. Sammon was often on set during the shoot and was familiar with all the principals involved. The book is divided into sections: the first part covers the genesis of the film adapted from Phillip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, then an account of the hectic production, and lastly on the film's influence and afterlife.
While Phillip K. Dick (PKD as fans refer to him) wasn't well known outside Science Fiction circles in the 1970s, his work was starting to gain mainstream attention. Dick's recurring themes of surveillance, corporate power, technology, drugs and reality distortion became more and more prophetic in the decades following his death in 1982. Hampton Fancher was a struggling screenwriter who bought the rights to Electric Sheep and wrote the first scripts. The story followed "Blade Runner" Rick Deckard who hunts down renegade replicants in a dystopian L.A. reeling from nuclear wars and environmental collapse.
Fancher's screenplay went through many drafts and eventually another writer (David Peoples) was brought in to add further revisions. Authorship is a recurring theme in the making of Blade Runner, because the journey from book to screen was so complicated. Sammon gives an intricate account of the power struggles that went into the final creative decisions in which the screenwriters, director, and cast all had input.
Ridley Scott was hired to direct Blade Runner (titled Dangerous Days during pre-production) coming off his 1979 Sci-Fi hit Alien. Scott had directed hundreds of commercials for the BBC, his background in graphic design and painting gave his early films a distinct style. A common argument among film buffs is whether movie directors' matter, whether the autuer theory carries any weight. Those discussions often get tedious, and I would suggest reading Future Noir (or any good book documenting a production) to understand the actual role of a director.
Scott was demanding and involved himself in all aspects of the production. He worked closely with the screenwriters to improve the script, he preferred the hardboiled detective aspects of the story and wanted the setting to be a futuristic megalopolis, as if Los Angeles and San Francisco had merged into one city. With his background in design, he worked closely with technicians to develop the visual style. It was common for many directors to focus only on working with the cast and outsourcing the technical aspects, but Scott was part of a new generation of directors like Coppola and Spielberg who were involved in the technical and artistic aspects of filmmaking.
Sammon provides a scene-by-scene summary of the arduous process of the production. Scott initially wanted to film at night in gritty parts of New York City, but it was logistically impossible. Instead, the L.A. of 2019 was filmed in a studio backlot which became known as "Ridleyville." Designed by Syd Mead, the neon cityscape became its own ecosystem, the set started to smell and sound like an urban wasteland. The all-night shoots took a toll on cast and crew, Scott's commanding personality bred resentments with many. The post-production process was just as complicated with all the effects work and yet more changes to the script, such as the last-minute decision to include narration, much to the chagrin of Harrison Ford.
Released in June of 1982, Blade Runner struggled at the Box Office despite a lucrative marketing campaign. Audiences found it alienating, fans of Ford were not happy to see him playing a morally compromised protagonist. The market was overloaded with Sci-Fi in the summer of '82, as has been written about at length. But the film would find its audience on the home video boom of the 1980s. In the early 1990s a new cut of the film was released on Laserdisc, just as its influence on the Sci-Fi genre was apparent with films like Strange Days, Dark City, and The Matrix all owed much to Blade Runner.
Future Noir provides a detailed and probing chronicle of how films were made during the 1980s. Revealing interviews with the cast are included in the appendix.
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