Bits of Books - Books by Title
Blade Runners
My Life In Cult Movies
Michael Deeley
More books on Books
UL that Academy Awards voters choose on 4 criteria: the first is for any picture with which he is is any way, no matter how remote, connected. If none, then will vote to spoil the chances of any enemies he might have. The third is to vote for any friend. Only then, if none of the first three apply, will he vote based on his judgement of the quality of the movie.
Deeley has produced a number of films which weren't instant smash hits, but which became cult classics - The Man Who Fell To Earth (mainly bc David Bowie), The Italian Job and Blade Runner.
Every year 200 or so Minis make the trip from London to Turin, the birthplace of TIJ. The movie is probably held in much higher regard, particularly in Britain, than The Deer Hunter, for which he won an Academy Award.
Opening scene of TIJ opens with a Lambo Muira winding through the Alps then being dumped over the edge. Obviously cdn't afford to dump a real Lambo, so found a wrecked body that was good on one side. It didn't even have an engine. Same with Aston Martin DB4, which also was a wrecker. Another car was accidentally destroyed, and had to be replaced by a Lancia at the last minute, so if you look closely at the scene where the Mafia destroy three sports cars you'll see that an Aston suddenly becomes a Lancia just as it goes over.
They needed a Daimler limosine, and fortunately, one was booked in for a service at the garage of the car suppliers. It turned out to be owned by the Pakistan ambassador to Britain, which they found hilarious and wrote into the movie.
Turin had never experienced a disruptive movie shoot before, so they were able to get away with murder. The script writer had envisaged the central city traffic jam would be faked. But they simply 'broke down' vehicles in the three exits to the square. Everyone was trying to go home for lunch, and the noise was unbelievable. Nobody realized it was deliberately staged; they simply assumed it was normal traffic foul up.
Ever since the movie came out, people have claimed to have a Mini from the movie. Deeley syays that by the end of the film there was not one roadworthy Mini left, and if there had been one, he wd have nabbed it for himself.
Quincy Jones' score, partic the "Self Preservation Society", has become as iconic as the movie. It came out of a dinner where Michael Caine regaled them with a number of cockney songs like My Old Man's A Dustman.
Blade Runner originally started out as Dangerous Days, but someone suggested a little-known Willaim Burroughs' story Blade Runner: A Movie, and they were able to buy rights to the title.
Tyrell is Joseph Turkell, the supernatural bartender in The Shining.
Books by Title
Books by Author
Books by Topic
Bits of Books To Impress
|