For those who have endless amounts of free time and have already cruised through all 4 versions of the commentary offered on the DVD set, god bless you. I've been relegated to catching up on the collection during my free time on the weekends, so I'm still a little behind. So far I've only listened to Ridley Scott's commentary (historic, amazing - there it is, at last!), and am halfway thru the Deeley/Haber/Fancher/Peoples section.
Not to suggest that either Hampton Fancher or David Peoples could line up a shot through a camera lens with one-tenth of the amount of Ridley Scott's cinematic brilliance...but as far as the commentary goes, although it was terrific to hear Scott dish out his thoughts about the movie, so far I'm honestly more entertained by the Fancher and Peoples interplay. Those guys are totally hilarious together, it's awesome to hear them give each other sh*t (affectionately, of course) and rib each other ferociously. I know they've probably vowed to never work together (not that Fancher's infamously tender ego could ever withstand such a thing), but it's a shame, I bet they could write a hell of a terrific comedic screenplay if they ever put their minds to it...
There are some really amazing recollections, too, like People's divulging (finally) that it was Ridley Scott who asked him to include the Blake quote that Roy drops in Chew's eye laboratory. All these years, nobody knew who the hell was responsible for getting that quote into the movie (unless if I'm mistaken and Sammon had already caught that detail, like so many others, in Future Noir)...at any rate, awesome stuff.
Some favorite moments:
Introduction - "Hi, I'm David Peoples, and I was brought in to clean up the mess that Hampton Fancher made."
(this is my best recollection from memory)
Peoples: So, I was brought in when they were talking to Dustin Hoffman, and -
Fancher: Whoa, whoa, hold on, you were brought in when they were talking to Hoffman?
Peoples: Yeah.
Fancher: You mean you were already working on the screenplay that early in the game, and I didn't know about it?
Peoples: Yeah, I was.
Fancher: Oh, it just gets worse all the time!!
Some people have mentioned that they're a little irritated by Deeley's English accent, but the man has some incredible insights. I think it's fascinating to hear his estimate on overall inflation in the movie business, basically amounting to a 2.5% increase with each passing year. Incredible, when you consider that digital filmmaking potentially had the capacity to help reduce the bugets of movies, but they're actually more expensive to make than ever before. But as far as I'm concerned, the truth of the matter is that without a supremely visionary directorial talent (like, for example, Peter Jackson's with the LOTR trilogy), no amount of money that movie studios throw at their digital-effects departments is going to come close to achieving the visual magnificence of the painstakingly hand-crafted work that went into BR's production design and visual effects.
Can't wait to finish checking out the rest of the BR commentaries over the next several weeks!