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Finally, Blade Runner
December 11, 2007

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner finally arrives on DVD from Warner next week in a zillion different configurations and formats. Alright, eight different configurations and formats, but you know what I mean,. It looks outstanding, of course, and it’s packaged competently and slickly. (You gotta imagine, though, that the folks at Warner are a little tweaked that Time-Life’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E. set beat them to the punch

with their own briefcase-style packaging. Not that Blade Runner’s “Deckard Briefcase” doesn’t look cool—particularly the lenticular film clip on the inside!)

 

Filmmaker commentaries, extended scenes, improved effects and remixed audio tracks aside, the single finest supplement to accompany the movie proper (or five different movies proper, if you’re the proud owner of the five-disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition) is Charles De Lauzirika’s documentary Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner, which, at 3 ½ hours, is a visionary epic in its own right. De Lauzirika has been working on the film for years (indeed, when I spoke with several years back on his making of the DVD for Scott’s Black Hawk Down, he described his work on the Blade Runner disc as “an ongoing process”) and managed to wrangle interviews with virtually every major living player involved in the production. Though I’m always leery of a documentary on a film that has a longer running time than the film it is documentary, Dangerous Days is an outstanding examination of Scott’s flawed masterpiece, and it offers many magnificent moments and revelatory sequences. One of my favorites is a Harrison Ford interview snippet wherein he reveals his attitude towards filmmaking, particularly in a case where he’s dealing with filmmaker who has a very, very distinct and personal vision on his creation.

 

“There’s a part of you that wants to be totally in sync with the director’s ambition, but then there’s a perverse part of you that says, ‘You know what? It doesn’t really matter,’” Ford says. “What matters is being there and participating truthfully in whatever the relationships in the scenes are. And, fuck it, it’s just a movie. Let him worry about it.”

 

Fascinating stuff, hmmm? Then maybe you’ll enjoy leading lady Sean Young’s take on what she saw as Ford’s lack of interest or enjoyment with the film:

 

“Maybe Ridley was giving me more attention that he was giving Harrison because he was making the assumption that he didn’t need that. Harry was never happy on that show--he never was. Not really. The only time he was happy was when it was close to wrap--then he was happy.”

 

Posted by Laurence Lerman on December 11, 2007 | Comments (0)