Future Noir

Earlier this week I finally finished reading Paul Sammon's Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner after fits and starts. It's great reading for film geeks like myself and especially those who are fanatics of the film the likes of which debate for hours as to whether Deckard is a replicant or not. Also just like me. Sammon spent almost 15 years on this labor of love and it shows in the remarkable detail of the book.

Based on Philip K. Dick's great novel from 1968, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Blade Runner was a critical and commercial flop upon its release in 1982 but would prove to be one of the most important and influential sci-fi flicks ever. The film's look is now the gold standard for dystopian futures and it helped kick off the director's cut craze in the early 1990s. I recall very well studying the film here at the UW, mainly for it's post-modern look.

Sammon chronicles every step along the way from book to film. He begins with a brief bio of Dick and a look at his novel before noting that none other than Martin Scorcese showed interested in filming it in 1969. It wasn't until 1974, however, that the book was optioned to Hollywood. But this was only the beginning of the drama as the first studio to show interest, Filmways Pictures, eventually dropped out of the race. Director Ridley Scott, fresh off his success with Alien, initially turned the project down only to reexamine it and accept the job. We also learn that, at one point, Dustin Hoffman was approached for the role of Deckard! Sammon tells us about the early scripts and, over the course of the book, the reader can understand how the plot of the film evolved over time and with the replacement of Hampton Fancher, the initial screenwriter, by David Peoples. One of the book's great strengths is that it looks at every step along the way whereas most making of documents tend to stick to what happens on the set during shooting, special effects, and the like. Sammon does a great job of explaining how Hollywood operates as a business that is always in tension with creativity/art.

Once the project has gotten the green light, the story shifts to pre-production including a wonderful chapter on how "visual futurist" Syd Mead and the art department came up with the look of Los Angeles in 2019. Following this is the book's most lengthy chapter, "The Shoot". It gives detailed examinations of every scene in the film and explains how they were constructed. This includes stuff like improvised dialogue, how scenes were lit, special effects, set dressing, anecdotes from the shoot, and much more. The chapter entitled "Friction on the Set" explains how Harrison Ford and Sean Young did not get along and that, curiously enough, producer Michael Deeley and Scott were both "fired" at one point when the film went over budget. Further chapters elucidate on the post-production: special effects, editing, and Vangelis' fantastic score. It is here that we learn about the introduction of the infamous voice-over narrative, that the unicorn shot in the director's cut was, in fact, not a leftover from Scott's next film, Legend, and how that cheesy happy ending got there.

The 1993 director's cut owes its existence to many factors not the least of which is the film's cult following which began shortly after its release in 1982 thanks in large part to the nascent VHS and laserdisc markets. Sammon notes that the first Blade Runner fanzine, called "Cityspeak", debuted in December 1982 and was published by a woman named Sara Campbell. And from where did she hail? None other than right here in Madison, Wisconsin. Unfortunately, Campbell died in 1985 after she'd published only three issues.

The latter chapters cover the story of another figure whose work led to the director's cut. His name is Michael Arick and he was a film preservationist looking through the Warner Brothers film vaults for a 70mm print of Gypsy, a Natalie Wood musical, in 1989 when he happened upon a print of Blade Runner. He neglected to screen it and set it aside for preservation. In early 1990, the Los Angeles Fairfax Theater was planning a series of 70mm only screenings and requested Blade Runner. Arick shipped the print he'd discovered to the theater. When the projector started, the audience found that this was not the Blade Runner they remembered. Instead what was shown was a workprint – the film in a relatively rough, unfinished state. It proved immensely popular and Sammon explains how this discovery led to the director's cut that is on the shelf of your video store today.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner and a "final cut" of the film is supposed to be released theatrically along with a comprehensive DVD set. This final cut would be the version envisioned by Ridley Scott but which he was unable to assemble back in 1992 for various reasons that Sammon explains in the book. Presumably the scene where Deckard visits Holden in the hospital will be included as well as various bits of violence that were omitted from the US release of the film but included elsewhere.

The amount of detail poured into Future Noir is amazing and it provides a rare look at every aspect behind the scenes of the making of a Hollywood film. About 300 pages were dropped from the book, including whole chapters, and you can read one of the "orphan chapters", as Sammon calls them, here.

If you are a Blade Runner fan, this is your bible.

Here's is the deleted scene where Deckard visits Holden in the hospital.