Ridley Scott Has A Message For Blade Runner Critics: 'Go F*** Yourself'
You can always count on Ridley Scott to speak his mind, with results that vary from amusingly curmudgeonly to cringe-inducing. With his latest directorial effort, "Napoleon," arriving next month, that means the time has come for yet another round of Scott being completely out of f**ks to give while touring the press circuit. It's almost become an annual tradition thanks to his relentless work ethic, as the director has continued to release a new film every 12 to 18 months since turning 80 back in 2017. Yet, even after such a prolific career, there are few of his films that Scott maintains strong feelings about quite like the ones he has for "Blade Runner."
There's nary a film buff who doesn't know "Blade Runner" was a flop upon its release in 1982, only to evolve into one of the most influential sci-fi films ever made over the subsequent decades. The process of adapting Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" into a film was as arduous as it was unusual, as Scott recalled during an interview for the latest issue of Total Film Magazine. Declaring it "a monumental, five-month, day-by-day evolution," the director talked about his experience developing the script with Hampton Fancher (whom he dubbed a "very special writer"):
"He had this peculiar cadence with the rhythm of his style, which I loved. But I brought the world to it because he'd written a play that was set in an apartment, where the hunter has kept his quarry, and fallen in love with her. I said, 'But what's going on in the world outside?' So it evolved from that moment on."
If you harbored any doubts Scott is proud of the film, his other comments will quickly put those out to pasture.
'I knew I was making something very, very special'
Perhaps the only thing as famous as "Blade Runner" itself is how much Scott and the movie's star, Harrison Ford, hated working on it. Ford, who is one of Scott's biggest competitors for the title of "Straightest Shooter in Hollywood," has never refrained to complain about his experience during production or the various gripes he had with the film throughout post-production. The shoot wasn't exactly a pleasure cruise for Scott, either:
"[The shoot] was a very bad experience for me. I had horrendous partners. Financial guys, who were killing me every day. I'd been very successful in the running of a company, and I knew I was making something very, very special. So I would never take no for an answer. But they didn't understand what they had. You shoot it, and you edit it, and you mix it. And by the time you're halfway through, everyone's saying it's too slow. You've got to learn, as a director, you can't listen to anybody. I knew I was making something very, very special. And now it's one of the most important science-fiction films ever made which everybody feeds off. Every bloody film."
Scott's lack of humility is certainly — for lack of a better way of phrasing it — on-brand for him, but that's one of the perks that comes with directing a genuinely landmark sci-fi film. Even to this day, Scott can't resist taking a dig at the critics who dismissed "Blade Runner":
"I hadn't seen 'Blade Runner' for 20 years. Really. But I just watched it. And it's not slow. The information coming at you is so original and interesting, talking about biological creations, and mining off-world, which, in those days, they said was silly. I say, 'Go f**k yourself.'"
An, er, love letter from Pauline Kael
"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" is advice Scott has apparently taken very literally. In a separate section of his interview with Total Film, the director discussed his 2013 offering "The Counselor," another film he nurses a soft spot for despite its own rocky critical reception and commercial failure. By the time he made it, though, it appears Scott hadn't forgotten the lessons he learned from "Blade Runner" — lessons that renowned critic Pauline Kael had helped drill into his head decades earlier:
"You know, 42 years ago, Pauline Kael saw 'Blade Runner,' and the article begins with: 'Oh, baby, let it rain.' Which is a serious case of sarcasm. She destroyed the film in four pages. I was so crushed. I had a hard time making it, and yet I thought I delivered something special. And then to have it killed ... It actually affected the release of the movie. I took the four pages and I framed them on the wall of my office. They're still there today because there's a lesson in that, which is: 'When you think you've got it, you don't know s**t.'"
Mind you, Scott isn't telling the late Kael to go f**k herself (though I wouldn't put it above him to do that). Still, there's more than one lesson to take away from his comments here. One is that, as Scott observed, just because you think you've got something great on your hands, that doesn't mean the rest of the world will agree. The other? You never know what tomorrow will bring. Your failure today might just look like a big ol' win in the future.
"Napoleon" hits theaters November 22, 2023. Its director's cut will stream on Apple TV+ some time after.