Thursday, June 3, 2010

Dangerous Days - The Making of Blade Runner

If, like me, you're a sad Blade Runner fanboy you'll be fascinated by the three hour doc Dangerous Days by Charles de Lauzirika which the mysterious SME1984 has uploaded onto YouTube. It explains pretty much everything you've ever wondered about: the fate of the fifth replicant, the unicorn, who invented city speak, who wrote Roy's last line, the voice over, the endings. It is utterly compelling stuff and seemingly everyone has been generous with their time and thoughts. Near the end of the documentary Guillermo del Toro talks about how he left Blade Runner as a completely different person than when he went in, embracing this vision of the future. I felt the same way except I didn't really see this as vision of the future at all. I saw the movie in an empty cinema in Belfast in 1982. I went home in the rain, past the bomb sites and security check points, as the army APC's and Land Rovers drove past me and the intelligence corps's observation gazelle helicopter hovered continously above at 1000 feet. To me Blade Runner was always more about the now than the future and it seems more nowy than ever.