The Cast of The Original BLADE RUNNER Film Sat in Confused Silence After Watching It
I was a teenager when I first saw Blade Runner, and I was completely blown away by it. I freakin' loved that film! However, when the cast of the 1982 sci-fi noir film first watched the film, they sat in a confused silence.
During an interview with THR, actor M. Emmet Walsh, who played LAPD captain Bryant in the story, talked about his experience after the first viewing of the film. After the movie ended, the cast didn't really know what to say. He described it as a "Homer audience". Apparently, director Ridley Scott was the only person who got it. This is what Walsh said while laughing:
"We all sat there and it ended. And nothing. We didn't know what to say or to think or do! We didn't know what in the hell we had done! The only one who seemed to get it was Ridley."
He went on to share part of his experience shooting the movie saying:
"We shot down in [Los Angeles] Union Station. They set it all up in a little office over in a corner, and we had to be out by five in the morning because commuters where coming in for the train. I don't know if I really understood what in the hell it was all about."
He then shares a fun story of how Scott asked him to smoke in the film even though he isn't a smoker. It eventually caused him to get sick, and it ended up costing him another job because he was pissed off about it. Here's his story:
"We were on the set for my office and at one point, Ridley says 'Can you smoke? And I told him I am not really a smoker, but he wanted me to try it. So I smoked. Now, Ridley shot a lot back then. We did a lot of takes. And I kept getting sicker and sicker and sicker, and at one point, I said 'Ridley should be hung by his balls off the ceiling,' and one of the people there was [former 20th Century Fox president and producer] Alan Ladd Jr. I didn't know. I had been hired to be in another Michel Keaton movie where I was going to play his father-in-law or something and Alan took offense to my behavior and had me pulled off of that film."
Damn! That just sounds like an all around sucky situation to be in. The actor is then asked what he thought about the new trailer for Blade Runner 2049 and this was his response:
"I thought the trailer looked interesting. If you look at the original Blade Runner, it is considerably slower than that trailer. I thought Harrison looked good in the shots I saw of him. I don't know who the kid [Ryan Gosling] is. If someone sends me a free ticket, I would probably go see it, but I don't know if I would spend eleven dollars or whatever it is to see it."
Interesting.
