http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/432108/10_classic_adlib_and_offscript_movie_moments.html
10 classic ad-lib and off-script movie moments
Karla Healion
Not every moment of movie genius is written down in the script. Take this collection of ad-libs and off-script moments, for instance...
Mar 3, 2010
Sometimes, the genius moments of a film weren't in the script, and happened in an off-the-cuff moment on the shoot itself. Here are 10 examples of when an ad-lib or off-script moment went very, very right...
Taxi Driver: "You talkin' to me?"
(Martin Scorsese, 1976)
Arguably the most famous cinematic quote of all time, "You talkin' to me?" was actually improvised. Even though the film's screenplay was written by the brilliant Paul Schrader (who also wrote the adapted screenplay for Scorsese's Raging Bull), it's this line which has gone down in the annals of pop culture history.
Director Martin Scorsese has always encouraged Robert De Niro's creativity, proving that actors can contribute more than just their performance, and in this instance it paid off.
In the original script Schrader had simply written "Bickle speaks to himself in the mirror." Alone in his grubby apartment, De Niro's loner sociopath character Travis Bickle is planning to shoot a politician. In the mirror he is practising with the sleeve-holster he made for his gun. Catching his reflection, he postures, repeating "You talkin' to me?" before whipping out his gun and taking aim. It is a moment of stunning personal insight into a character as flawed, intriguing and complex as you will ever see on the big screen.
The Shining "Heeeeeere's Johnny!"
(Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
Adapted from the Stephen King novel of the same name, The Shining is one of Kubrick's best known and most commercially successful films. The shoot was a famously difficult one, as Kubrick was notorious for being a controlling, sometimes cruel, filmmaker.
It's common knowledge that the fear displayed by Shelley Duval (playing Wendy Torrance) in the film was genuine. Kubrick would scream and shout at her, and allegedly even slapped her across the face during one take. So the spooky, tense and horrifying atmosphere we see on screen is often authentic, and perhaps inspired Jack Nicholson to ad-lib one of his most famous lines.
Jack Torrance (Nicholson's character) slowly loses his mind when stationed to mind a remote hotel with his wife and little boy. At a pinnacle stage in the narrative, he chases his wife (Duval) through the hotel with an axe. She locks herself in a bathroom, and when Torrance chops through the door, he pokes his demented face through the hole and wails, "Heeeeeere's Johnny!"
Nicholson was mimicking the catchphrase used by Ed McMahon to introduce Johnny Carson on The Johnny Carson Show (a hugely popular show at the time). It is this juxtaposition, in terms of connotation and context, that gives it such a magnificently dark, creepy, yet disturbingly humorous, effect.
Despite the screenplay being adapted from a book by one of the best horror novelists of all time, "Heeeeeere's Johnny!" is certainly the most easily remembered line from this uber-stylish classic.
Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark: Jones shoots the swordsman
(Steven Spielberg, 1981)
The story behind this scene is almost as famous as the scene itself. Harrison Ford, playing our protagonist explorer Indie Jones, got a bad case of food poisoning and dysentery. He was due to shoot a big fight scene with a skilled swordsman the next day. Not able to take on the action, Ford suggested to Spielberg that he simply shoot the over-zealous antagonist, in a quip that sums up the ethos and feel of Jones' character perfectly.
So, following an arduous journey through the streets of Egypt, the crowd parts to reveal a sinister, threatening swordsman dressed in black. He faces Jones, but straight after he cuts some impressive pre-fight moves in an attempt to intimidate his opponent, Jones draws and shoots him down in one. And off-script movie magic is made.
Blade Runner: Roy Batty's final soliloquy
(Ridley Scott, 1982)
With Harrison Ford in the lead again (this time as Rick Deckard) we come to Ridley Scott's revered sci-fi epic Blade Runner. The screenplay was based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?.
Hollywood legend has it that Martin Scorsese was originally interested in the adaptation but never optioned it. That would have been interesting. But we all love Scott's dark, moody, original and highly influential shoot which launched a thousand mimics. And we especially love the Aryan, cold, violent Roy Batty, the perfect replicant (android).
Played fantastically by Rutger Hauer, Batty is LAPD Officer Deckard's nemesis. In the end Batty's life is drawing to a close, and like so much in the film, it makes a social comment on all kinds of issues.
So, sitting on a rooftop in the pouring rain Hauer takes the first few lines from David Peoples' script and adds a couple of very memorable closing lines as his character's last words. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time. Like tears in the rain. Time to die."
Mad to think Bladerunner is set in 2019. Doubt we'll have such perfect androids in only ten years' time.
The Third Man: Lime's cuckoo clock maxim
(Carol Reed, 1949)
Carol Reed's The Third Man is a film that constantly appears on 'best film' lists. It's a beautifully shot and scripted testament to the art of film noir, starring notorious movie heavyweight Orson Welles. It also has one of the most ferociously famous theme tunes in film history (even if it doesn't come to mind right now, you do know it).
One of its most memorable moments comes when Harry Lime (Welles) is trying to convince his old friend Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) to join him in some dubious dealings. He's explaining that to make omelettes you need to break eggs.
Illustrating Welles' absolute cinematic brilliance, he includes the cuckoo line. It was not part of the original screenplay, adapted from a novel by reputable writer Graham Greene, but is perhaps the best known quote of the film: "In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
Midnight Cowboy: "I'm walkin' here!"
(John Schlesinger, 1969)
Okay, it's been disputed as to whether this was off-script or not. But it's not past the methodical Dustin Hoffman to ad-lib such a brilliant line.
Midnight Cowboy won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (John Schlesinger) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Waldo Salt). It's the only X-rated film to have won any Oscars, and the only other X-rated nomination in history was Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971).
There is a scene in which Hoffman's unforgettable 'Ratso' Rizzo is walking our midnight cowboy Joe Buck (played by a young Jon Voight) through the streets of New York. He's coaching him about becoming a successful stud and gigolo, and while crossing a street nearly gets hit by a yellow cab. Hoffman beats the hood with his fist and shouts, "I'm walkin' here!" in his unique New York parlance, yhen quickly retorts to Voight, "Actually, that ain't a bad way to pick up insurance y'know."
"I'm walkin' here." is often cited as one of the world's best movie quotes. It's usually thought of as an improvised line, which Hoffman has claimed. And he is certainly more than capable of this kind of fleshed-out character portrayal. But producer Jermoe Hellman has always maintained that it was in the script. The romantic film buff in me likes to believe the former, but I guess we may never really know.
Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb: Dr. Strangelove's sporadic involuntary Nazi salute
(Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
Apparently, so many of Sellers' lines in Dr. Strangelove were improvised that he is often cited as an uncredited co-writer. And it is considered a study of retro-scripting, ie. when ad-libbed lines are later written into the final script. So, it's difficult to know which one to pick, but perhaps the most ingenious and intuitive is when his title character performs sudden involuntary Nazi salutes in the company of the US military (Sellers plays three characters in total).
Dr. Strangelove is a wheelchair-bound German nuclear weapons expert, who has a past association with the Nazis. In one of the best comedic performances of all time, Sellers' Dr. Strangelove sometimes accidentally refers to the US President as 'Mein Fuhrer', and strangles himself with his out-of-control right arm. This is as well as having to use his left arm to push down the Nazi salutes his right arm frequently and uncontrollably lapses into.
This was entirely Sellers' creation. So much so, in fact, that the novel from which the film was adapted (Red Alert by Peter George) didn't even have the character Dr. Strangelove at all. The word genius does get thrown around but, good lord, Peter Sellers really deserves the moniker.
Goodfellas: "Funny how?"
(Martin Scorsese, 1990)
Adapted from the Nicholas Pileggi book Wiseguys, the Goodfellas screenplay is not without its share of memorable moments. It is one of the best loved films of all time, and displays a darkly humorous side to the Italio-American gangster genre, largely absent in Coppola's The Godfather series.
People always remember the crazy Joe Pesci character, Tommy DeVito, who defined and inspired a million mafia-esque archetypes. Such is the unstable and changeable world of mafia relationships that in one scene DeVito is sitting with our protagonist Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), sharing a drink and having a laugh. When Hill comments, "You're a funny guy," DeVito's face turns stone cold and he replies, "What do you mean I'm a funny guy. Funny how? Funny like I'm here to amuse you?'" The entire room stops dead. A couple of wiseguys mumble, "Hey, Tommy, calm down," as Hill looks worried and tries to explain himself.
The tension is just about to turn into what we think will be bullets, when DeVito cracks and says, "I'm just fucking with you," and everyone laughs. With relief, might I add.
It exemplifies beautifully how crazy Pesci's character is. His friends believe he may turn that easily, and also how volatile and suddenly hostile their world can be. It's thought that Pesci ad-libbed quite a lot for this role and that lines such as this were often retro-scripted into the final draft of the screenplay.
Silence Of The Lambs: Hannibal's hissing
(Johnathan Demme, 1992)
Playing one of the most iconic cinema villains ever, Sir Anthony Hopkins immortalised the cannibalistic Dr. Hannibal Lecter in this classic performance. Although he only has under twenty-five minutes of screen time, Hopkins won an Oscar for Best Actor. Jodie Foster also won for Best Actress, and the film won Best Director, Best Screenplay (Ted Tally) and Best Picture too. Not bad.
The American Film Institute named Lecter the number three screen villain ever in their top 100 in 2003, next to Norman Bates, with Darth Vader in the top spot.
Lecter is an incarcerated serial killer cannibal whom Foster's character, FBI agent Clarice Starling, interviews to help find another murdering cannibal, still at large. All in a day's work.
At one point Lecter tells of an unsavoury incident, describing a now-famous meal: "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti." He then hisses and sucks at Starling in a truly revolting and disturbing manner, forever putting an entire generation off that particular varietal of wine.
Hollywood rumour says that this hissing was just a joke thrown in by Hopkins. He never intended it to be so frightening, not to mention appearing in the final cut and becoming so utterly conspicuous.
Casablanca: "Here's looking at you, kid."
(Michael Curtiz, 1942)
Ah, Casablanca. What can we say? If it's not your favourite oldie, and the final scene doesn't make you cry, then I'm sure you don't have a reflection in a mirror. But more than the emotion of the story, the coolness of Bogie and the beauty of Ingrid Bergman, it is a technically superb and incredibly entertaining film.
Regarding the script, the famous line, "Play it again, Sam", is not actually in the film and is probably the world's biggest cinematic misquote. Then, to our ad-libbed moment.
During the last scene and their final interaction, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) is doing the right thing and letting Ilsa (Bergman) go. Crying, she tries to convince him to let her stay. He refuses but consoles her, saying, "Here's looking at you, kid." And there isn't a dry eye in the house.
The American Film Institute often calls it one of the most memorable lines in film. It is often quoted and parodied. Yet, legend has it that this is something Bogart used to say to Bergman as he taught her to play poker in between takes on set. It was never in the original script at all.
Showing posts with label Ridley Scott. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ridley Scott. Show all posts
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
A Developer’s Unusual Plan for Bright Lights
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/arts/design/21blad.html
May 21, 2008
A Developer’s Unusual Plan for Bright Lights, Inspired by a Dark Film
By REBECCA CATHCART
LOS ANGELES — The year is 2019. The illuminated windows of the city’s densely packed towers sparkle like stars in the night, and their facades are covered with bright, animated billboards. A flying car glides past the enormous eye of a smiling geisha hundreds of stories above the wet urban streets.
That is the world of “Blade Runner,” Ridley Scott’s 1982 film set in a futuristic dystopia. It is also an obsession of a real estate developer, Sonny Astani, who hopes to evoke those atmospherics by affixing rows of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, to the facades of his two newest condominium towers in downtown Los Angeles.
“That movie really hit a chord with me,” Mr. Astani, 55, said with a broad smile. “It was beautiful.”
On a recent afternoon in his Beverly Hills office, he held up digital renderings of the two buildings, the geisha’s face from “Blade Runner” superimposed on their facades.
“I saw ‘Blade Runner’ at a time when L.A. was feeling like that,” he said. “I was feeling like that.”
In 1982 Mr. Astani was a struggling real estate broker here. He had come to Los Angeles from Tehran six years earlier to study engineering at the University of Southern California, with plans to return home after graduation. The Iranian revolution changed that. He never went back.
The dark mood of “Blade Runner” matched his own melancholy at the time, Mr. Astani said, and he was gripped by the notion of looming skyscrapers covered with moving images and graphics, and the layering of old and new structures. Today Mr. Astani is a successful businessman, with two million square feet of downtown real estate built or in development, including six tall residential buildings. His projects are part of a wave of development in the area that began around 2001 and gained momentum in 2003, when Los Angeles expanded adaptive reuse policies similar to those of New York.
“Everyone wants downtown to happen,” he said. “This could create some excitement and conversation,” he said of his “Blade Runner”-inspired facades.
His 30-story residential towers, scheduled to be completed in 2009, sit at the north end of an evolving entertainment district anchored by the Stapes Center and L.A. Live, a sports and entertainment complex sometimes described as Times Square West.
The area already has plenty of loud billboards and klieg lights that have drawn complaints from some neighborhood groups, so the city is concerned about anything billboardesque. Mr. Astani’s application to build the LED panels is undergoing an environmental review by city planning officials.
He has taken pains to distinguish his project from typical LED billboards with bright, fast-paced graphics. His panels would shine with one-sixth the intensity of ordinary models; adjust their brightness at different times of the day; and project slower-moving images, according to the ordinance application. They would cover about 10 stories on just one side of each building.
The panels would appear solid from a distance, although they consist of horizontal blades spaced six inches apart, like large blinds. Only a half-inch thick and three inches wide, each one carries a single row of diodes.
The blades were designed by Frederic Opsomer, who is also known for creating spectacular video, light and stage designs for pop-music acts. The only other building clad in similar LED blades is the T-Mobile headquarters in Bonn, Mr. Astani said. The screens would feature mostly paid advertisements but would include work by local artists and ads for nonprofit groups 20 percent of the time. The technology and content have sowed some confusion among the city officials weighing Mr. Astani’s application.
“The issue of it potentially being viewed as art has complicated it,” said Patricia Diefenderfer, of the Los Angeles Planning Department.
“We’re treating it like a sign,” she said. “Signs are a stimulus. They clutter our environment and can assault us, in a sense. This is something very large. What is the impact? What does that mean?”
Yet Eric Lynxwiler, a downtown resident and author who leads nighttime tours of the city’s neon signs for the Museum of Neon Art, favors the project.
“I think he scared far too many people when he compared it to ‘Blade Runner,’ ” Mr. Lynxwiler said of Mr. Astani. “But I remember L.A. as it was — dark, more like ‘Blade Runner’ before the development,” he said, describing streets that were mostly empty after 6 p.m. “I think downtown definitely has the vibe to support something that large, that new and that bold and daring.”
Syd Mead, a visual-effects artist who worked on “Blade Runner,” said that the city’s once-haunted look is what inspired Mr. Scott to film there. The director was also taken with the eclectic downtown mix of newer structures and historic buildings, he said.
That the movie could inspire innovation is not a surprise, Mr. Mead said, adding, “I’ve called science fiction ‘reality ahead of schedule.’ ”
May 21, 2008
A Developer’s Unusual Plan for Bright Lights, Inspired by a Dark Film
By REBECCA CATHCART
LOS ANGELES — The year is 2019. The illuminated windows of the city’s densely packed towers sparkle like stars in the night, and their facades are covered with bright, animated billboards. A flying car glides past the enormous eye of a smiling geisha hundreds of stories above the wet urban streets.
That is the world of “Blade Runner,” Ridley Scott’s 1982 film set in a futuristic dystopia. It is also an obsession of a real estate developer, Sonny Astani, who hopes to evoke those atmospherics by affixing rows of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, to the facades of his two newest condominium towers in downtown Los Angeles.
“That movie really hit a chord with me,” Mr. Astani, 55, said with a broad smile. “It was beautiful.”
On a recent afternoon in his Beverly Hills office, he held up digital renderings of the two buildings, the geisha’s face from “Blade Runner” superimposed on their facades.
“I saw ‘Blade Runner’ at a time when L.A. was feeling like that,” he said. “I was feeling like that.”
In 1982 Mr. Astani was a struggling real estate broker here. He had come to Los Angeles from Tehran six years earlier to study engineering at the University of Southern California, with plans to return home after graduation. The Iranian revolution changed that. He never went back.
The dark mood of “Blade Runner” matched his own melancholy at the time, Mr. Astani said, and he was gripped by the notion of looming skyscrapers covered with moving images and graphics, and the layering of old and new structures. Today Mr. Astani is a successful businessman, with two million square feet of downtown real estate built or in development, including six tall residential buildings. His projects are part of a wave of development in the area that began around 2001 and gained momentum in 2003, when Los Angeles expanded adaptive reuse policies similar to those of New York.
“Everyone wants downtown to happen,” he said. “This could create some excitement and conversation,” he said of his “Blade Runner”-inspired facades.
His 30-story residential towers, scheduled to be completed in 2009, sit at the north end of an evolving entertainment district anchored by the Stapes Center and L.A. Live, a sports and entertainment complex sometimes described as Times Square West.
The area already has plenty of loud billboards and klieg lights that have drawn complaints from some neighborhood groups, so the city is concerned about anything billboardesque. Mr. Astani’s application to build the LED panels is undergoing an environmental review by city planning officials.
He has taken pains to distinguish his project from typical LED billboards with bright, fast-paced graphics. His panels would shine with one-sixth the intensity of ordinary models; adjust their brightness at different times of the day; and project slower-moving images, according to the ordinance application. They would cover about 10 stories on just one side of each building.
The panels would appear solid from a distance, although they consist of horizontal blades spaced six inches apart, like large blinds. Only a half-inch thick and three inches wide, each one carries a single row of diodes.
The blades were designed by Frederic Opsomer, who is also known for creating spectacular video, light and stage designs for pop-music acts. The only other building clad in similar LED blades is the T-Mobile headquarters in Bonn, Mr. Astani said. The screens would feature mostly paid advertisements but would include work by local artists and ads for nonprofit groups 20 percent of the time. The technology and content have sowed some confusion among the city officials weighing Mr. Astani’s application.
“The issue of it potentially being viewed as art has complicated it,” said Patricia Diefenderfer, of the Los Angeles Planning Department.
“We’re treating it like a sign,” she said. “Signs are a stimulus. They clutter our environment and can assault us, in a sense. This is something very large. What is the impact? What does that mean?”
Yet Eric Lynxwiler, a downtown resident and author who leads nighttime tours of the city’s neon signs for the Museum of Neon Art, favors the project.
“I think he scared far too many people when he compared it to ‘Blade Runner,’ ” Mr. Lynxwiler said of Mr. Astani. “But I remember L.A. as it was — dark, more like ‘Blade Runner’ before the development,” he said, describing streets that were mostly empty after 6 p.m. “I think downtown definitely has the vibe to support something that large, that new and that bold and daring.”
Syd Mead, a visual-effects artist who worked on “Blade Runner,” said that the city’s once-haunted look is what inspired Mr. Scott to film there. The director was also taken with the eclectic downtown mix of newer structures and historic buildings, he said.
That the movie could inspire innovation is not a surprise, Mr. Mead said, adding, “I’ve called science fiction ‘reality ahead of schedule.’ ”
Friday, November 16, 2007
Blade Runner: The Final Cut
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071103/REVIEWS08/71103001/1004
Great Movies
Blade Runner: The Final CutGreat Scott
Release Date: 1982
Nov 3, 2007
By Roger Ebert
In an earlier review of "Blade Runner," I wrote; "It looks fabulous, it uses special effects to create a new world of its own, but it is thin in its human story." This seems a strange complaint, given that so much of the movie concerns who is, and is not, human, and what it means to be human anyway. Even one character we can safely assume is human, the reptilian Tyrell, czar of the corporation which manufactures replicants, strikes me as a possible replicant. And of the hero, Deckard (Harrison Ford), all we can say for sure is that director Ridley Scott has left clues in various versions of his film that can be used to prove that Deckard is a human -- or a replicant.
Now study that paragraph again and notice I have committed a journalistic misdemeanor. I have referred to replicants without ever establishing what a replicant is. It is a tribute to the influence and reach of "Blade Runner" that 25 years after its release virtually everyone reading this knows about replicants. Reviews of "The Wizard of Oz" never define Munchkins, do they? This is a seminal film, building on older classics like "Metropolis" or "Things to Come," but establishing a pervasive view of the future that has influenced science fiction films ever since. Its key legacies are: Giant global corporations, environmental decay, overcrowding, technological progress at the top, poverty or slavery at the bottom -- and, curiously, almost always a film noir vision. Look at "Dark City," "Total Recall," "Brazil," "12 Monkeys" or "Gattaca" and you will see its progeny.
I have never quite embraced "Blade Runner," admiring it at arm's length, but now it is time to cave in and admit it to the canon. Ridley Scott has released a "definitive version" subtitled "Blade Runner: The Final Cut," which will go first to theaters and then be released Dec.18 in three DVD editions, including a "Five-Disc Ultimate Collector's Edition" that includes, according to a press release, "All 4 Previous Cuts, Including the Ultra-Rare 'Workprint' Version!" plus the usual deleted scenes, documentaries, bells and whistles.
The biggest change Scott made in earlier versions was to drop the voice-over narration from the 1982 original. Spoken by Ford, channeling Philip Marlowe, it explained things on behalf of a studio nervous that we wouldn't understand the film. Since much of the interest in the film has been generated by what we weren't sure we understood, that turned out to be no problem. The ending has been tweaked from bleak to romantic to existential to an assortment of the above, and shots have come and gone, but for me the most important change in the 2007 version is in the print itself.
Scott has resisted the temptation to go back and replace analog special effects with new GCI work (which disturbed many fans of George Lucas' "Star Wars") and has kept Douglas Turnbull's virtuoso original special effects, while enhancing, restoring, cleaning and scrubbing both visuals and sound so the film reflects a higher technical standard than ever before. It looks so great, you're tempted to say the hell with the story, let's just watch it.
But the story benefits, too, by seeming more to inhabit its world than be laid on top of it. The action follows Deckard, a "blade runner" who is assigned to track down and kill six rebel replicants who have returned illegally from off-worlds to earth, and are thought to be in Los Angeles. (The movie never actually deals with more than five replicants, however, unless, as the critic Tim Dirks speculates, Deckard might be the sixth). Replicants, as you know, are androids who are "more human than human," manufactured to perform skilled slave labor on earth colonies. They are born fully formed, supplied with artificial memories of their "pasts," and set to break down after four years, because after that point they are so smart they have a tendency to develop human emotions and feelings and have the audacity to think of themselves as human. Next thing you know, they'll want the vote, and civil rights. Much of this comes from the original Philip K. Dick story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Since replicants in general do not know they are replicants, there can be real poignancy in their lives. We feel sympathy for one in particular, Rachael (Sean Young), who finds herself involved in romance with Deckard. He loves her even though he has reason to believe she is a replicant, but a very good one, almost impossible to detect.
What I have always wondered is why the Tyrell Corporation made their androids so lifelike. Why not give them four arms and settle the matter, and get more work out of them? Is there a buried possibility that Tyrell's long-range plan is to replace humans altogether? Is the whole blade-running caper simply a cover for his scheme? But never mind. What matters to the viewer is that the ground rules seem to be in place, and apply in one of the most extraordinary worlds ever created in a film.
The skies are always dark with airborne filth in this Los Angeles of the future. It usually rains. The infrastructure looks a lot like now, except older and more crowded, and with the addition of vast floating zeppelins, individual flying cars, and towering buildings of unimaginable size. When I first saw the film I was impressed by the giant billboards with moving, speaking faces on them, touting Coca-Cola and other products. Now I walk over to Millennium Park and see giant faces looming above me, smiling, winking, and periodically spitting (but not Coke). As for the flying cars, these have been a staple of sci-fi magazine covers for decades, but remain wildly impractical and dangerous, unless locked into a control grid.
The "human story," as I think of it, involves practical tests to determine if an individual is a replicant or not, and impractical tests (such as love) to determine how much that matters to (a) people, if they are in love with a replicant, and (b) replicants, if they know they are replicants. This has always been a contrived problem, easily avoidable in practical ways, unless (as I suspect) the Tyrell Corporation has more up its sleeves than arms. But to stumble on plot logic seems absurd in a film that is more about vision. And I continue to find it fascinating how film noir, a genre born in the 1940s, has such a hammerlock on the future (look at "Dark City" again). I suspect film noir is so fruitful and suggestive that if you bring it on board, half your set and costume decisions have been made for you, and you know what your tone will be.
Ridley Scott is a considerable director who makes no small plans. His credits include "Alien," "Legend," the inexplicable "1492," "Gladiator," "Black Hawk Down" and the brilliant "Matchstick Men," and his "American Gangster" opened Friday in theaters. He has the gift of making action on a vast scale seem comprehensible. I have been assured that my problems in the past with "Blade Runner" represent a failure of my own taste and imagination, but if the film was perfect, why has Sir Ridley continued to tinker with it, and now released his fifth version? I guess he's only... human.
Ridley Scott's "Alien" is also included in the Great Movies Collection.
Cast & Credits
Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Starring: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Joanna Cassidy, Daryl Hannah and Edward James Olmos.
Running time: 117 minutes. Rated R (for violence and brief nudity.) A restored 35mm print of the "Blade Runner: The Final Cut" is playing at the Music Box Theatre and AMC Barrington.
Great Movies
Blade Runner: The Final CutGreat Scott
Release Date: 1982
Nov 3, 2007
By Roger Ebert
In an earlier review of "Blade Runner," I wrote; "It looks fabulous, it uses special effects to create a new world of its own, but it is thin in its human story." This seems a strange complaint, given that so much of the movie concerns who is, and is not, human, and what it means to be human anyway. Even one character we can safely assume is human, the reptilian Tyrell, czar of the corporation which manufactures replicants, strikes me as a possible replicant. And of the hero, Deckard (Harrison Ford), all we can say for sure is that director Ridley Scott has left clues in various versions of his film that can be used to prove that Deckard is a human -- or a replicant.
Now study that paragraph again and notice I have committed a journalistic misdemeanor. I have referred to replicants without ever establishing what a replicant is. It is a tribute to the influence and reach of "Blade Runner" that 25 years after its release virtually everyone reading this knows about replicants. Reviews of "The Wizard of Oz" never define Munchkins, do they? This is a seminal film, building on older classics like "Metropolis" or "Things to Come," but establishing a pervasive view of the future that has influenced science fiction films ever since. Its key legacies are: Giant global corporations, environmental decay, overcrowding, technological progress at the top, poverty or slavery at the bottom -- and, curiously, almost always a film noir vision. Look at "Dark City," "Total Recall," "Brazil," "12 Monkeys" or "Gattaca" and you will see its progeny.
I have never quite embraced "Blade Runner," admiring it at arm's length, but now it is time to cave in and admit it to the canon. Ridley Scott has released a "definitive version" subtitled "Blade Runner: The Final Cut," which will go first to theaters and then be released Dec.18 in three DVD editions, including a "Five-Disc Ultimate Collector's Edition" that includes, according to a press release, "All 4 Previous Cuts, Including the Ultra-Rare 'Workprint' Version!" plus the usual deleted scenes, documentaries, bells and whistles.
The biggest change Scott made in earlier versions was to drop the voice-over narration from the 1982 original. Spoken by Ford, channeling Philip Marlowe, it explained things on behalf of a studio nervous that we wouldn't understand the film. Since much of the interest in the film has been generated by what we weren't sure we understood, that turned out to be no problem. The ending has been tweaked from bleak to romantic to existential to an assortment of the above, and shots have come and gone, but for me the most important change in the 2007 version is in the print itself.
Scott has resisted the temptation to go back and replace analog special effects with new GCI work (which disturbed many fans of George Lucas' "Star Wars") and has kept Douglas Turnbull's virtuoso original special effects, while enhancing, restoring, cleaning and scrubbing both visuals and sound so the film reflects a higher technical standard than ever before. It looks so great, you're tempted to say the hell with the story, let's just watch it.
But the story benefits, too, by seeming more to inhabit its world than be laid on top of it. The action follows Deckard, a "blade runner" who is assigned to track down and kill six rebel replicants who have returned illegally from off-worlds to earth, and are thought to be in Los Angeles. (The movie never actually deals with more than five replicants, however, unless, as the critic Tim Dirks speculates, Deckard might be the sixth). Replicants, as you know, are androids who are "more human than human," manufactured to perform skilled slave labor on earth colonies. They are born fully formed, supplied with artificial memories of their "pasts," and set to break down after four years, because after that point they are so smart they have a tendency to develop human emotions and feelings and have the audacity to think of themselves as human. Next thing you know, they'll want the vote, and civil rights. Much of this comes from the original Philip K. Dick story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Since replicants in general do not know they are replicants, there can be real poignancy in their lives. We feel sympathy for one in particular, Rachael (Sean Young), who finds herself involved in romance with Deckard. He loves her even though he has reason to believe she is a replicant, but a very good one, almost impossible to detect.
What I have always wondered is why the Tyrell Corporation made their androids so lifelike. Why not give them four arms and settle the matter, and get more work out of them? Is there a buried possibility that Tyrell's long-range plan is to replace humans altogether? Is the whole blade-running caper simply a cover for his scheme? But never mind. What matters to the viewer is that the ground rules seem to be in place, and apply in one of the most extraordinary worlds ever created in a film.
The skies are always dark with airborne filth in this Los Angeles of the future. It usually rains. The infrastructure looks a lot like now, except older and more crowded, and with the addition of vast floating zeppelins, individual flying cars, and towering buildings of unimaginable size. When I first saw the film I was impressed by the giant billboards with moving, speaking faces on them, touting Coca-Cola and other products. Now I walk over to Millennium Park and see giant faces looming above me, smiling, winking, and periodically spitting (but not Coke). As for the flying cars, these have been a staple of sci-fi magazine covers for decades, but remain wildly impractical and dangerous, unless locked into a control grid.
The "human story," as I think of it, involves practical tests to determine if an individual is a replicant or not, and impractical tests (such as love) to determine how much that matters to (a) people, if they are in love with a replicant, and (b) replicants, if they know they are replicants. This has always been a contrived problem, easily avoidable in practical ways, unless (as I suspect) the Tyrell Corporation has more up its sleeves than arms. But to stumble on plot logic seems absurd in a film that is more about vision. And I continue to find it fascinating how film noir, a genre born in the 1940s, has such a hammerlock on the future (look at "Dark City" again). I suspect film noir is so fruitful and suggestive that if you bring it on board, half your set and costume decisions have been made for you, and you know what your tone will be.
Ridley Scott is a considerable director who makes no small plans. His credits include "Alien," "Legend," the inexplicable "1492," "Gladiator," "Black Hawk Down" and the brilliant "Matchstick Men," and his "American Gangster" opened Friday in theaters. He has the gift of making action on a vast scale seem comprehensible. I have been assured that my problems in the past with "Blade Runner" represent a failure of my own taste and imagination, but if the film was perfect, why has Sir Ridley continued to tinker with it, and now released his fifth version? I guess he's only... human.
Ridley Scott's "Alien" is also included in the Great Movies Collection.
Cast & Credits
Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Starring: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Joanna Cassidy, Daryl Hannah and Edward James Olmos.
Running time: 117 minutes. Rated R (for violence and brief nudity.) A restored 35mm print of the "Blade Runner: The Final Cut" is playing at the Music Box Theatre and AMC Barrington.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
