The making of the original Blade Runner (1982). Go behind the scenes to see Ridley Scott's meticulous nature, Harrison Ford's experience on set, and more from the cast and crew!
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00:00I always remember the first day was not good because I'd gone in there and the columns
00:13were upside down.
00:16All the columns.
00:17And I'd seen it, I'd even drawn it for him, saying, like this, and I'd put the weight
00:22at the top.
00:23He basically said, well, the only thing I'd like to do is turn the columns upside down.
00:30And I looked at him incredulously, like, what do you mean, turn them upside down?
00:35And he said, just that.
00:37Put that down here.
00:39I said, okay.
00:42And the columns are not supporting a ceiling, but they're just big bastards.
00:45I said, look, without damaging the floor, how long to cover the floor without scratching
00:50it, turn each column over.
00:52He said, you know, we should do it at 12 o'clock.
00:55I went to the first AD, told them, this is at 7 in the morning, come back at 2 o'clock
01:01and we'll be ready to shoot.
01:03The director wants a change.
01:05Sure made hell for the construction crew, you know, because they had to come in here
01:09and, you know, this is all block and fall stuff.
01:11Turn them around, boom, like that.
01:14And then the floor, God, the amount of time they spent polishing this floor and just wax,
01:20and they could not get the really high gloss and then they'd pull it out.
01:24And so each square was like two by two and they were polishing those things.
01:29At 2 o'clock in the afternoon when everybody came back from lunch, Ridley was a happy camper.
01:34The columns were upside down.
01:36Everything else was in place and they shot.
01:37It was worth turning the columns over, because otherwise all that stuff would have been at
01:41the top of the shot.
01:44Those eyes are one of a kind.
01:46It's like Rutger's character.
01:48It's like, if you could see what I could see with my eyes, you know, that's Ridley Scott.
01:53And Ridley was very demanding.
01:54I mean, from the point of view of the lighting and the acting and the design, and I remember
02:03him saying, put more stuff on her lips, put more stuff on her lips, keep putting that
02:08stuff on her lips, no, no, no, more.
02:10I'd heard later that Ridley wanted me to stay in my little cubicle dressing room because
02:15he didn't want me to have too much interaction with everyone.
02:19So I mean, that could have been part of the manipulation.
02:25Ridley, who also came from a lot of commercial background, was constantly trying to add a
02:30kind of scintillating visual stimulation to scenes.
02:35A good example would be in Terrell's office and we're sitting there in this big set and
02:40we're struggling with our part of it, which is the front projection out the windows.
02:44The live-action guys are struggling with the weird lighting stuff and Ridley's saying,
02:47well, I want this light to be like, whoosh, up against the wall, and we're saying, well,
02:52what's motivating that?
02:53Is it raining?
02:54Is the floor wet?
02:55And he says, no, it's just gotta, you know, it's just gotta happen.
02:59And so I thought, well, if that's what Ridley wants, that's what he should have.
03:03And when you look at the movie, you do have to ask, well, what's all that about?
03:07Is that something coming in the window from some atmospheric thing going on inside?
03:11You don't need to explain it, but Ridley had this, has always had this incredible sensitivity
03:17to all kinds of ways to create visual stimulation.
03:21After the first day of shooting, Doc Erickson came to me and said, we're now five days behind,
03:29which was not what I wanted to hear, but I mean, Ridley was dealing with the smoke and
03:34the mirrors and the this and that and columns and so on and so forth.
03:37In the meantime, Harrison's just sitting there waiting to act and getting pissed off because
03:43he's not being called to the set to act in the scene.
03:47The reason I was so thrilled about having Ridley is he's got the very best eye in the
03:51business, and that comes with a price, which is the time and the effort that he has to
03:57put into it.
03:58So he'd often be sitting up in the sky on a crane doing the last book on the table position
04:04when Harrison was sort of seething and not being told what to do, and Ridley didn't think
04:10it was necessary to tell him what to do.
04:14Harrison always, up to this point, had been dealing with directors, for instance, like
04:19Francis Ford Coppola, working with Steven Spielberg, and working with George Lucas.
04:23There was a commonality among all three of them, which was all three of them very much
04:27pulled Harrison into the creative process of building that character.
04:33Ridley felt that Harrison was perfectly capable of doing everything he had to do and knew
04:36how to do it, and Ridley, meanwhile, was composing the picture.
04:41There's a part of you that wants to be totally in sync with the director's ambition, and
04:47then there's a perverse part of you that says, you know what, it doesn't really matter.
04:53What matters is being there, and participating truthfully in whatever the relationships and
05:03the scenes are, and fuck it, it's just a movie, let him worry about it.
05:11Maybe Ridley was giving me more attention than he was giving Harrison because he was
05:15making the assumption that he didn't need that.
05:18Harry was never happy on that show, he never was, not really.
05:23The only time he was happy was if it was going to be close to wrapped, you know, then he was happy.
05:33In the case of the first property master who departed, it was over the mug on the desk
05:40in the Holden interview.
05:42The prop guy brought in two or three pens, and maybe three or four mugs, and Ridley wanted
05:49to see more, and he couldn't figure out, well, why would you want to see more?
05:52It's like only a mug, and it's only a pen.
05:55I took the prop guy aside and said, go buy like a hundred mugs, go buy like a hundred pens.
06:02What do you care?
06:03Just go buy, don't you see what's going on here?
06:05Because I could see what was going on.
06:07He wanted to see every mug ever made before he chose that mug.
06:15We had our man of Havana, so to speak, there on the set every day and watching it, and
06:23we saw some of the rushes.
06:24Bud was more involved, but Ridley's a perfectionist, and Ridley came from the world of commercial,
06:31doing commercials from England, and he was very, very successful.
06:35He's very meticulous, that's what his genius is, and I don't take anything away from him,
06:40but it starts to slow down when you start to take many, many takes of certain scenes,
06:46and we did.
06:48We started out, we were a few weeks behind, within a few weeks, so I thought things could
06:57start to take off.
06:59Presumed behind closed doors, he started getting twitchy, like after the first week of shooting,
07:02when we were like two or three days behind, and then after the first couple of weeks shooting
07:06Terrell's room, suddenly we went back and started reshooting them, and I would have
07:09thought he went apoplectic, because, you know, they had put an X amount of money, and they
07:14were guaranteeing completion.
07:15You know, Jesus, I mean, I would imagine him getting pretty irate.
07:20I remember Ridley heard that they were upset at the number of takes he's done once, when
07:25they were watching dailies, and Ridley got very angry, and in retrospect, I think Ridley
07:30was sending a message back to them, in his own way.
07:34He was having a tantrum and stuff, and I think he was letting them know, don't fuck with
07:39me.
07:40What I saw, I liked.
07:42I did think, you know, when I told this to Ridley, I thought he'd printed way too many
07:48takes in those days, and shot too many takes, I didn't think he needed, I thought, now obviously
07:55he was looking for something in every one, and he and I sat, actually a couple of times,
08:00and I said, explain to me, because I don't quite understand it, tell me why this 16th
08:05take was the best one out of this whole group, and he would, in his own way, he would explain
08:12why he wanted it, and there was a lot of film that was used.
08:18Yeah, there'd be irritation.
08:19I'd do seven takes, and why is he doing seven takes?
08:22I know people who do 40 takes, but seven takes in those days was not inordinate at all.
08:27I was definitely very different, that's why I'd been very successful as a commercial maker,
08:33everyone would look at things in a different light, and put things in a different way,
08:36so they hadn't seen that before, that's why you're hiring me, and I think that went on,
08:41definitely, and that's, you know, hypnosure.
08:44Ridley's a very strong-minded, knows what he wants, knows the look, and when you're
08:48trying to do a project that's this different, and you've got the studio, Laddie on the one
08:53side, and then Ridley, and nothing ever gets made without having its difficulties.
09:01All I remember in Ridley's making, Blade Runner, anger, anger at people not understanding
09:07his process or how he worked.
09:08A lot of people don't bother to understand what is it that he's trying to do, and I think
09:14that's what happened at the time.
09:15There was a lot of nervousness, you know, and there was a lot of competition within
09:19themselves, and I think people made a lot of it in the beginning.
09:24Everybody already anticipated before shooting, oh, he's not gonna like us, he's gonna be
09:27unhappy with us, because he thinks American crews are not good.
09:29I don't think he really sat there and said, I don't think American crews are not good.
09:32He wanted everyone to be at their best.
09:35I realized I couldn't bring in the people I'm used to, because of the union.
09:40So I'm not locking the union, that's the way it goes.
09:42And so, being new on the block here, I had to learn the process of, I couldn't use this,
09:47couldn't use that.
09:48You know, I didn't want, I'm used to being my own operator.
09:53There's nothing worse when you've done two and a half thousand commercials, and I know
09:57I've got a very good eye, in three seconds I can give you a set-up of having walked in
10:01a room without you even seeing it before.
10:03So I don't like discussion, I know exactly what I want, I want to walk in and say, do
10:08it.
10:09That's the director's job.
10:10The director's not meant to stand there and consult with half a dozen people in the room.
10:15The term director means direct, mate, do the job.
10:21Tell me, Mark.
10:26Hello.
10:27Action.
10:28Action.
10:29And, what can he do for you?
10:32Can the maker repair what he makes?
10:35My first day was the scene where I had to strangle my father, or whatever I did to my
10:42father-maker.
10:44And, I'd never been on a production like this, you know, 250 people, had no idea who everybody
10:53was.
10:54You know, got there at six in the morning, and seeing this develop so slowly, and start
11:00to shoot a scene one day, and end up with the scene being shot three days later, not
11:05knowing where you started again.
11:07It was a shock, but the great part about the shock was that, you know, there were some
11:12brilliant people at work.
11:14The DOP was wonderful to see him, how he would just paint, you know, with his light.
11:21And, it took him hours sometimes.
11:24Jordan came with his team, which I thought was fine, because he's a great cameraman.
11:28And, he came with two really good operators.
11:31And, so I thought, well, I can't operate.
11:34I would line up as much as possible.
11:36I like to line up like that.
11:38That's what I do.
11:39That's what I normally do.
11:40It's more efficient, and it's faster.
11:42On any film, people get frustrated.
11:45And, you have an artistic director that sees it his own way.
11:52And, he's definitely the one driving the show.
11:58Jordan wasn't in the best of health.
12:01So, it was frustrating for him, because he couldn't jump up and be with Ridley.
12:07He just wasn't physically able.
12:09For a number of years, my father had suffered from a disease that we eventually found out was Parkinson's.
12:16That progressively, through the course of the movie, it took its toll.
12:21And, for the last month or so of the movie, he was in a wheelchair.
12:25Ridley, to his credit, saw past the illness, and made a very bold choice in going with Jordan.
12:40Intense.
12:41That's the best way to describe it.
12:42We had our scenes together.
12:44You have Lucifer, very, very long life.
12:46I want more life.
12:48He's very intense.
12:50Looked him right in the eye.
12:51He looked me in the eye.
12:52We went at it, and it was great.
12:53Rooker's naturally theatrical.
12:55I mean, in a good way.
12:57He understands the theater of it all.
12:59Take five.
13:05I want more life.
13:10The facts of life.
13:12Then the whole kill, that was a major sort of a deal.
13:16Because they had made an extra sort of head.
13:19I think it was a $20,000 head of Terrell.
13:23That was one of the prosthetics that was made.
13:25And it was made so that it could be crunched.
13:28They never used it.
13:30What we did is I ran some tubes up behind the ear.
13:34And when they did this...
13:37Primitive, about as primitive as you can get.
13:40You know, a bulb and a tube and some blood.
13:43And the blood squirted.
13:45Tyrone was a replicant as well.
13:48When he got his eyes squeezed out and his head squeezed out.
13:54Nuts, bolts, springs.
13:56And that was the idea that he was another front.
13:59And another form of Nexus 6, I guess.
14:03And that would trigger me to go to the next floor.
14:08And in the next floor in the pyramid of glass would be...
14:12Mr. Maker himself, dead for four years.
14:16And so I designed this sarcophagus.
14:20And Barry was supposed to be there looking at his Maker.
14:23And I had him standing off to the right of the little painting I did.
14:27With this sort of Mayan kind of capsule that he'd come out of.
14:31The entrance to the crypt.
14:34That was never filmed, either.
14:43Harrison was supposed to be having this on-screen love affair with Rachel.
14:49And Sean Young was very young and extremely inexperienced.
14:53And Ridley, I think, was more or less talking Sean through her performance to a certain extent.
15:00And Sean and Harrison just did not click on any level.
15:09Any time you're doing a love scene, it's tricky.
15:12First of all, I feel for the actors having to do it.
15:14It's really uncomfortable.
15:17And you can't really let go.
15:20Because that's not what you're doing. It's not very professional.
15:24So it's a waltz.
15:26It's actually a delicate waltz to find out what should it be.
15:29How far should it go.
15:31And where's enough enough.
15:33We scrapped an idea, Ridley did, where they put a piece of tape around my legs.
15:39And they greased up my legs.
15:41And then it got all over the costumes.
15:43And then it didn't work.
15:44And they're trying to grab my legs.
15:45And the whole grabbing leg thing.
15:47And pulling my skirt up.
15:48And getting it all over the costumes.
15:49People just complained.
15:50And it just didn't work.
15:51So we scrapped it.
15:52So they cleaned my legs up.
15:53And then we did something else.
15:54But then Ridley told him to push me.
15:58And I remember being really surprised about that.
16:01And I also remember Harrison being, I think I was crying afterwards too.
16:06And I remember Harry going to the side.
16:10Like I was sitting on that ledge where the blinds were behind me.
16:13And we did the scene.
16:14And he went over to the corner there.
16:16And he turned away from me.
16:17And he took his pants.
16:18And he mooned me.
16:19Because he was trying to make me laugh.
16:21Because I was going.
16:23And I looked up and he was mooning me.
16:25And I think I started laughing.
16:27And I think what he was trying to say was, hey, it's not that bad, kid.
16:31Sean had a very interesting part to play.
16:36Maybe one of the most interesting parts in the movie.
16:39She understood what was going on.
16:42She did, I think, a good job.
16:44Harrison was always the great technician.
16:48I mean, no, kid, you have to sit here.
16:50Your face has to be here.
16:51You have to be here.
16:52You have to move over that way.
16:53Back up.
16:54Come here.
16:55He always knew exactly what to do.
16:56And very much a technician in terms of lighting and talking.
17:01I remember we had a metronome that was supposed to sort of create a rhythm.
17:05And we had this metronome going.
17:07And he went over it.
17:08And he went like that.
17:09And he stopped it.
17:10I said, why did you do that?
17:11And he says, well, I don't feel like looping it, kid.
17:14And I was like, what's looping?
17:16I had no idea of anything.
17:18So he was very much kind of teaching me the, well, making fun of me more.
17:23But, you know, pointing out my errors.
17:28Harrison never left his dressing room unless he was shooting.
17:30So there wasn't a whole lot of interaction with any of us in Harrison and or Ridley in Harrison.
17:35And it did seem to, when Harrison came, he came prepared to work and that there wasn't a lot of dialogue.
17:40I think that's fair to say between the two.
17:42Maybe all of that unhappiness actually helped him, you know,
17:46to at least subliminally convey, you know, Deckard's own desperation and his own unhappiness with his own lot in life.
17:53Because Blade Runner, for better or worse, is one of Harrison Ford's signature performances.
17:59I think it's one of his best performances.
18:05Harrison Ford is probably one of the smartest actors I've ever worked with.
18:09Top of the line, A, for what they can do, but B, they're able to do it because they're smart.
18:15It's not just intuition, they work it out, you know.
18:18Sometimes they don't comprehend what I do for a living on a big movie.
18:22My performance is as important as any other performance of any person in that film, particularly the star.
18:27My film, the film that I make at the end of the day is my movie.
18:31It may be a team thing as well, but I'm taking the knocks, I'm taking the bashes.
18:36And probably I've developed it, etc., etc., so yes, it's my movie.
18:39And I'm inviting people to come in and do it, and that's what a director is.
18:44I found it really easy and very encouraging to do what you feel, go ahead.
18:49And then if he liked it, he'd just smile and be very happy.
18:53And maybe then, if he liked it, he'd even ask you to do something else, you know.
18:57Because that was fun, let's do something further, you know.
19:00I can't imagine an actor not liking it.
19:04Deckard, it's good to see you, old buddy.
19:14Downtown L.A. in front of the Bradbury Building.
19:17In the middle of the night, usually our call pretty much always was at sunset.
19:22We were vampire hours, you know.
19:25I was, you know, kind of buried in a pile of trash, much like the screen test.
19:30And kind of met J.F. Sebastian the first time.
19:35And also there was, of course, lots of rain.
19:39And so one time when I was kind of running away from J.F. Sebastian, I ran and hit the van.
19:46And my arm went through the window, and it wasn't breakaway glass, so I still have a scar.
19:53It's a little bit keloided, so you can see it.
19:56But I had like eight chips or nine chips taken out of there.
20:00And there's still some more floating around in there, I think.
20:03Which didn't help doing the back walkovers and things on the chipped elbow.
20:11I had filmed in the Bradbury Building before, which is very pristine, very clean.
20:18An amazing place.
20:20Great ironwork and so forth that visually just is fabulous.
20:25And lit it for a set, you know, a lot of backlight.
20:29Again, had the xenons passing through and smoke.
20:32It was eerie.
20:34But the amazing part about it is, I don't really think that the Bradbury people understood how Ridley wanted to do it.
20:42Because it was a total mess.
20:46In the interior, we had a 65-foot truck filled with debris.
20:51And we had, of course, rain inside the building.
20:54We had rain everywhere.
20:56And what we would have to do, because the building was occupied at the time,
21:00we could get it at 6 o'clock at night.
21:02And at 6 o'clock in the morning, we had to be out of there and it had to be clean.
21:07So because it looks like it's decrepit and filthy, we couldn't figure out a way at first.
21:13But then we came up with the idea if we took cork and crumbled up cork,
21:18because it has the same texture and color as mud and dirt.
21:21So we'd throw cork all over the floors and the rain would absorb it.
21:26So the next morning when you swept everything up, it was clean and didn't have to be scrubbed with soap and water.
21:32Because we probably had no more than an hour to get out of the building every day.
21:39When I first came onto the set, I walked down a lot through this maze and saw these signs and buildings and whatnot.
21:47And I said to myself, wow, this is astronomical.
21:51It's going to take forever to do this film if it hasn't already.
21:55I thought I was going to go to the studio and see a so-called refrigerated lab.
22:02They shot it in a real fridge, basically, a monster fridge, let's say.
22:06And so it was frosty.
22:10That was cold in that meat locker, boy.
22:12And I don't know how long it took before the cameras would freeze,
22:15but you had to really be in and out after maybe 20 minutes, half an hour or something like that.
22:19The oil would all freeze up and the damn things.
22:21In a way, it was kind of strange why they did that because the conditions were almost uncontrollable.
22:27They could not set the temperature of that freezer to where they could just get the cold and see the breath coming out.
22:35And everything looks frozen.
22:38We started off with a couple of arcs in the freezer.
22:42Well, they're carbon arcs.
22:45They're actually burning coal.
22:47And after about an hour, people were sniffing around.
22:53And about another hour, people were starting to get ill
22:59because we were, number one, taking the oxygen out of the air.
23:04And the carbon, the smoke from the carbon, people were getting sick.
23:10We had to shut down the arcs and literally,
23:14open up the freezer, get all the air out, had fans going.
23:18The lights were not working.
23:20And people were yelling what they're going to do and bring the lights out and the camera.
23:25And the producer was on to Ridley.
23:28That's good enough. That's good enough or whatever.
23:31Like I said, I wouldn't want to work in that atmosphere again.
23:34It's just too much.
23:36Too much was at stake at too short a time.
23:40Probably one of the most unique experiences on a backlot, for sure, that I've ever seen.
23:45All of the night scenes on Blade Runner, which were long,
23:49there were approximately 33 days of night.
23:52The night scenes were all shot on what's called the New York street set.
23:56And this, of course, is where the Maltese Falcon had been filmed by Werner Bernstein.
24:00And this is where the Maltese Falcon had been filmed.
24:03were all shot on what's called the New York street set.
24:06And this, of course, is where the Maltese Falcon had been filmed by Werner Brothers in the 1940s.
24:10And it was just their standing urban New York type of look.
24:15To shoot a studio street on Blade Runner, you know, on the Warner's lot, would look crap.
24:21If you look at all the TV series and things and see where they've shot on the studio street,
24:25and it all just looks like a studio street.
24:27So wetting it down and having things in heavy rain, you know,
24:31certainly started to bring it to life.
24:33The reason why I could not have done those sets in daylight,
24:36they wouldn't have looked good.
24:38They would have looked pretty bad, and we would have had to spend more money.
24:41So by shooting at night, you save money, and it looks better.
24:45And it's always raining, it looks better. That's what it's about.
24:48And why is there always smoke? Because I haven't got enough money, it looks better.
24:52So those three elements are always my armory. Night, wet, smoke.
25:02Blade Runner
25:08Someone on the crew once said that if you walked on the Blade Runner set,
25:11you felt like you were at a Pennsylvania coal mine.
25:13And that's very true, because the crew had all these white painter's masks on,
25:17and they had soot all over their face, and they had the little painter's goggles on.
25:20And everyone was tired, and it stank, and it was mildewed, and it was wet.
25:25The smoke, ugh. They had beehive smoke.
25:29Basically, you're looking for an urban area in 2020 that is just,
25:34the sun never shines, perpetual fog and drizzle.
25:38Blade Runner had tons of atmospherics.
25:41A lot of it was at night, smoke and all of it.
25:43And the crew would be walking around with gas masks on,
25:46because they'd been breathing this stuff 20 hours a day, you know,
25:49for weeks and weeks and weeks.
25:51I was outside a stage. It was full of smoke, too.
25:54Ridley came out to smoke his cigar or something, and I looked at him,
25:57I said, Ridley, do you have smoke in your house?
26:00He laughed. He said, no, not really.
26:03But, you know, it was a very good effect.
26:07I thought the art direction was brilliant,
26:09and the world that was created was very dense and interesting.
26:14Part of the look of the film had to do with the fact that it was shot outside at night.
26:21But it was a bitch working every night and all night long, often in the rain.
26:30So it wasn't the most pleasant shoot.
26:33Action, please. Action, everybody.
26:37Anybody that watches the picture knows that we were doused with water day in and day out.
26:42And that meant we had to have twice as many costumes,
26:46because every time they got soaked, you had to reshoot the damn scene again.
26:51You had to put on another costume. You couldn't wait to dry up.
26:54There was always dialogue that we were behind schedule.
26:57I think it all culminated when we were shooting on the back lot at night with the street exteriors.
27:03Never less than 13, 14 hours.
27:06We would shoot all night.
27:08Kind of the joke was, keep your eyes in the east,
27:11because as soon as you see that glow, you know we've got only about another hour.
27:16Some days we never shot.
27:18And then some days we made two shots a day.
27:22One was on meal penalty, and one was at sunrise.
27:26And that happened more than once.
27:29What he did, which was the first time I had been allowed to experience it,
27:34was that he ran, he had huge voices of theaters, speakers, on top of the buildings.
27:41And so when he would start the scene and get the understanding of what the reality of that moment was,
27:48he'd play the sound score.
27:50Evangelis had already given him some temp stuff,
27:54and he'd blast it into the street,
27:58so that you were working inside of a full, ongoing environment of sound and special effects.
28:05The spinners were coming up and down,
28:07and they had the cranes working, and all the smoke, and all the water.
28:12And that backlog came alive.
28:18What he was trying to do was just incredible.
28:20And I remember we would sit for eight hours trying to do one setup.
28:23And you would do it, right?
28:25And you could pretty much, what you're seeing in your eyes, what you're going to see,
28:28it's really pretty much that.
28:30But then I remember going to Daly's,
28:32and it's the one film to this day where I went to Daly's and I went,
28:37we shot that?
28:39I was shocked.