From: jaime@tcville.edsg.hac.com (Jaime Villacorte)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies,rec.arts.sf.movies,alt.cult-movies,rec.video.releases
Subject: LA Magazine article on Blade Runner Director's cut
Date: 13 Sep 92 22:41:36 GMT
Reply-To: jaime@tcville.UUCP (Jaime Villacorte)
Organization: Hughes Aircraft Co., El Segundo, CA


	For those interested in the history of the newly revived
director's cut of Blade Runner, the Los Angeles Times Magazine (included
with the 13-Sep-92 Sunday Times) has a front cover article, titled
"Blade Runner II:  How Ridley Scott Beat the Odds in Hollywood and
Resurrected His Classic L.A. Film."

	Written by the LA Times critic, Kenneth Turan, it's a good article
on both the troubled development of Blade Runner (including descriptions
of Ridley Scott's fanaticism to detail), as well as the history behind
it's recent revival.

	Here's a clip from the article describing the origin of the
recently released director's cut. I encourage others pick up the original
article and read it in full - it's well worth reading:
	
	Yet if anyone thought about Scott's original cut of "Blade Runner"
	while all this was going on (and some people did), the accepted
	wisdom was that it no longer existed. That's what Michael Arick
	thought when he took over as Warner Bros. director of asset
	management in 1989, in charge of recovering and restoring
	material on the studio's films. Then, in October of that year, 
	there occurred the first of a series of fluky events that would
	rearrange fate.
	
	"I was in the vault at Todd-AO's screening room, looking for
	footage from 'Gypsy', when I stumbled on a 70-millimeter print
	of 'Blade Runner,'" Arick remembers. "What had probably happened
	was that no one had remembered to have it picked up after
	a screening. In order to save it from the collectors, I hid it
	on the lot."
	
	Several months later, the management at the Cineplex Odeon Fairfax
	theater was in the midst of a classic-film festival featuring
	70-millimeter prints. Having heard through the print grapevine
	that a 70-millimeter version of "Blade Runner" had been spotted,
	the Fairfax asked for it from Warner Bros. Arick, a supporter
	of revival theaters, agreed. But neither the Fairfax nor Arick
	(who had never screened the print in its entirety) knew what they
	had on their hands.
	
	All this changed dramatically one morning in May. "Anyone who gets
	up for a 10 a.m. Sunday screening of 'Blade Runner' really knows
	the film," Arick says, "and everyone knew immediately what they
	were watching. The audience was very rapt from the beginning;
	the atmosphere was incredible." The print, almost devoid of
	the voice-over and lacking the tacked-on ending, was closer to Scott's
	original original version than anyone ever thought they'd see
	again.
	
	Though there was an immediate stir in the film-buff community,
	Warner Bros. wasn't sure what to do with this new-old version. Scott
	came over to see it and told Arick that it was in fact not his
	final cut: The unicorn scene that he had come to love was
	still missing, and the music over the climactic fight scene was
	not film composer Vangelis' work but temporary music lifted from
	Jerry Goldsmith's score for "Plante of the Apes." The two talked
	about the possibility of adding the unicorn footage, technically
	known as a "trim," which was languishing in a film-storage facility
	in London.
	
	What happened instead was that Arick and Warner Bros. parted company
	(although he continued to advise Scott), and the studio contacted
	Gary Meyer, executive vice president of the Landmark theater
	chain, which had earlier expressed interest in "Blade Runner," and
	asked if he still wanted to show it. Meyer was enthusiastic;
	15 theaters nationwide were booked, including the Nuart in West
	Los Angeles, and without knowing it wasn't quite true, Warner Bros.
	created a campaign advertising "The Original Director's Version
	of the Movie That Was Light Years Ahead of Its Time."
	
	Scott was not pleased. "As I understand it, he said, 'This is not
	my version,' which left Warner Bros. in a real dilemma," reports
	Meyer. "My intuition is that the studio, which might want to hire
	him in the future, didn't want to alienate him over some two-week
	repertory booking." so a compromise was reached. The newly discovered
	version of "Blade Runner" would play in the Nuart and at the
	Castro in San Francisco, but nowhere else.
	
	With little publicity, "Blade Runner" opened at the Nuart last
	September, and immediately attendance went through the roof. The first
	week set a house record and the second week bettered the first. When
	Hampton Fancher, whose screenplay had started it all, tried to get in,
	he even showed his passport at the box office to prove who he
	was. But there was absolutely no room at the inn.
	
	The same pattern of success repeated at the Castro, where its
	$94,000-plus box office take in one week made it the top-grossing
	theater in the country. Encouraged by this, and by lucrative showings
	of the old voice-over version of "Blade Runner" in Houston and
	Washington, Warner Bros. agreed to pay for the technicians and
	editing rooms so that Scott could put the film back just the
	way he wanted it. Which is why, on a weak telephone connection from
	London a few months ago, there was quiet satisfaction in the
	director's voice when he said, "I finally got my unicorn scene.
	Ten years later, but I got it."
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