It seems inconceivable today, but yes, there was a time when no one knew Harrison Ford. Not even after the first ‘Star Wars’, where he gave life to one of the franchise’s most legendary characters, Han Solo. When it came time to cast for ‘blade runner‘, Ridley Scott chose him, but the producers were not so convinced: Although he had already played Indiana Jones in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, Spielberg’s film had not yet been released.
The British director tells it in an interview with GQ: “Harrison Ford wasn’t a star yet. He had just finished piloting the Millennium Falcon in ‘Star Wars’. I remember my producers saying, ‘Who the hell is Harrison Ford?’ And I told them: ‘You’re going to find out.’ Harry became my protagonist.” In fact, Spielberg himself recommended Scott hire the actor for his adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel.
Perhaps the film’s producers were partly right, because the film It did not find its audience when it was released, resulting in a box office failure.. Only years later the film was hailed as a visionary epic and today, in times of the advent of artificial intelligence, it continues to appeal to current concerns. In the interview, Scott remembers how prestigious critics such as Pauline Kael in ‘The New Yorker’ destroyed the film.
In the interview, Scott reveals many other curiosities about the film, such as his interest in a previous play, more faithful to Dick’s book but very different from what the film ended up being: “I spent five months working with a very good writer , Hampton Fancher, who had written a play adapting ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ I read the book and thought there were 90 stories in the first 20 pages and that it was too complex. Hampton had written a beautiful set story. in an apartment. I loved the dialogue, but I wanted to see what would happen if we walked out the door.”
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