Why is it that boilers only fail in the cold? And why does the 24 hours it you have to wait in your refrigerated home seem to take days? Fortunately the wait passed slightly faster with five lovely disks of Blade Runner to watch.
In November, Warner Bros released the Blade Runner: Ultimate Collector’s Box, five DVDs covering five different versions of Ridley Scott’s cult vision of the future. Also included is an arse-numbing 210 minute documentary on the story behind the movie, which is every bit as engaging as the feature. I’ve been steadily working my way through the documentary, entitled Dangerous Days (after the early script name for the film), which takes you from initial concept through to the heady days of VHS tapes, where the film found a home (and finally made some money).
It amazes me how much trouble the film was. The crew seemed to clash on almost every level; nationalities, work ethics, creative demands, acting, scheduling. And in addition the movie was shot outside and at night, so the whole thing was done in the early hours of the morning. Then of course there is the much documented “studio interference”, the poor test screenings and the final shots hastily borrowed from The Shining outtakes.
And yet out of all of the conflict, pain and overspending came a majestic, visionary tale that stands today as one of the great scifi movies of all time. Without Blade Runner we wouldn’t have seen the rise of cyberpunk; scifi would probably still be like THX 1138 and Harrison Ford wouldn’t have a movie to complain about.
And there’s certainly something to be said about the result of all of that conflict. Certainly in a work environment the most creative situations I have found myself in is where there’s a healthy level of conflict - people that feel that they can disagree and be disagreed with, in a way that builds on ideas to make them better. Those situations come along less often than I’d like… too often is there a sense of false contentment where people don’t feel safe to air their views, and so we miss out on innovative ideas, or being called on things that are just plain stupid.
It seems to me that beauty like Blade Runner is a fine balance between order and chaos, where creativity lives but still has some boundaries, but where the boundaries don’t sanitise the ideas and the passion that comes from doing something new and challenging.
Hmmm perhaps I should watch the movie whilst the boiler is broken… too much comfort and I’ll probably miss the point.
