The mystery of Rachel's photograph text-- solved

[doc3d]

I've started making a few motion lenticular photos of Rachel and her mom-- the one that comes to life briefly-- and I noticed the stuff written on the back. It was fairly easy to track through the web and also look at the standard print on my computer screen to figure it out. The only thing that's English is "68W Thika Blvd". The rest is gibberish, or some clown on the production trying to get a friend's name up on the screen for laughs. That sort of thing happens all the time.

But the really interesting thing is... why is there text there? You'll find the answer in the July 24, 1980 screenplay by Hampton Fancher. E.g. possibly the last really good Blade Runner script before David Peoples gutted a lot of the movie. What was supposed to be on the back of the photo of Rachel, her mom (and in the early version, also her dad was part of the family unit), was her phone number! Here's how it reads (this takes place right after Deckard freaks out and pulls a gun on Rachel as he enters his apartment).

Rachel: "That's my number. If you need me."

She goes to the door, opens it but hesitates before going through.

Rachel: "You ought to get better locks-- if you want to keep me out."

She looks back at him and smiles-- the smile says she's talking about all kinds of locks. Deckard looks like he might ask her to stay, but...

Rachel: "Good night."

And she's gone.

Deckard: "Right."

He looks down at the number. It's the back side of a snapshot. He turns it over. The picture of a man and a woman. The little girl between them looks like a six-year old Rachel.

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So the big mystery is simply a continuity fumble from the transition between Fancher and Peoples. It also explains why Deckard could walk up to a pay phone, and just ring Rachel up. Yeah, he could have learned it at Tyrell Corp, but you generally don't retire a replicant by telephone, so he really wouldn't have had any big reason to memorize it until he fixated on Rachel's photo-- at least as thing's were originally scripted. Fancher had all the original ideas, and Peoples klutzed together a Hollywoodie screen play. I remember reading his first draft after Fancher was canned, and it had all these cues like BIG MUSIC!!! Sheesh...

The film was originally REALLY noir. In the July 24 script, Taffey Lewis has a thirteen year old girl installed in his apartment on drugs and head wires so he can screw her at his convenience.

And if you can read between the lines, the Fancher version of Rachel was centered and gutsy, not a wimp. I know, she shot Leon. That's kind of on a level of blowing up a Boy Scout with a Cobra Gunship... Leon was too busy killing a man to be aware of his surroundings, so it was kind of like the lawmen of the US frontier. They just stepped out of an alley behind you and blew off your head with a shotgun. None of that quick draw crap. I don't really credit Rachel as played with the kill. But in that apartment she was willing to brace Deckard unarmed in the real script by Fancher.

doc

[LA2019]

Wow... Really good work or as one usually say

"You've done a mans job, sir"

Those earlier drafts seem to be interesting to say the least !!
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Nicklas Ingels / Los Angeles, 2019 Webmaster

[Nexus6]

A lot of members (me included) had made the assumption that the first line of text was a phone number. I believe Andy even mentioned the script you are referring to HERE.


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[doc3d]

Well, I guess I should also tell you how the film really ends, as Fancher wrote it. It's magnificent.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EXT. WOODS (MONTAGE) - DAY (scene 123)

Deckard and Rachel walking. The land lays white and hushed before them.

Down an aisle of maples and beeches. The frosty light
slanting through the clean, hard limbs.

The crisp, blue-white snow underfoot melted through in
spots exposing soggy patches of rich brown earth.

Rachel stops and faces him. Her lips are parted, her
warm breath turning the cold air to vapor. Looking
lithe and fragile by these barren-rooted trees, she
stands in the crisp white snow looking at Deckard.
Nothing in her retreats, even now her eyes insist on
knowing.

EXT. WOODS - DAY (scene 124)

Deckard walking over the snow. Alone. He walks slowly,
mechanically through the cold, unaffected by it. His
gaunt face, empty of expression except for the tears
running down his pale cheeks.

But for the SQUEAK of his wet shoes over the crusted
snow, there is no sound. And Deckard recedes into the
silence of the freezing white landscape.

EXT. HIGHWAY - NIGHT (scene 125)

Deckard's car, solid, THROBBING, GUNNING along like
some metal animal. Headlights piercing the dark of the
long, flat road. WHISTLING speed of air and tires spin-
ning THRUM. And then silence. And the silence
astounded by the CRACK OF A GUN.

INT. CAR - NIGHT (scene 126)

Deckard is behind the wheel, face in shadow, eyes star-
ing straight ahead.

DECKARD (V.0.)

"I told myself over and over again,
if I hadn't done it, they would
have.

"I didn't go back to the city, not
that city, I didn't want the job.

"She said the great advantage of
being alive was to have a choice.
And she chose. And a part of me
was almost glad. Not because she
was gone but because this way they
could never touch her.

"As for Tyrell-- he was murdered,
but he wasn't dead. For a long
time I wanted to kill him. But
what was the point? There were too
many Tyrells. But only one Rachel.
Maybe real and unreal could never be
separated. The secret never
found. But I got as close with
her as I'd ever come to it. She'd
stay with me a long time. I guess
we made each other real."

And the ruby lights of Deckard's car disappear into
the darkness.

The End

-------------------------------------------------

Do you see the incredible economy of Fancher's writing? In a few sentences (the apartment/photo scene) we learn Rachel is a person to be reconed with, not a fatal attraction wimp. In less than five seconds of screen time we learn that Taffey Lewis is saturated with pure, undiluted evil, and with one image of an enslaved little girl no one even has to utter a line to do it. Which leaves Fancher the luxury of having screen time to properly end the film.

Kind of grabbed you, didn't it?

BTW, this also sets aside that nonsense that the Voice Over was tacked on. It was there from the earliest scripts.

Lastly, the bit about Tyrell being murdered but not dead... As I recall he had a platoon of clones ready to thaw out, mentioned in one or more of the many scripts. Can't remember where and I don't have the time to reread the entire batch of screenplays at the moment.

Have a better one.

Doc

[joberg]

Ah Hampton...the poetic. You see by reading him that the most important words are the silences between the lines.

[superjedi]

There was some discussion a while back about the text on the back of this photo. This is the thread:

http://propsummit.com/viewtopic.php?t=557
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I find your lack of faith disturbing. . .

[doc3d]

Dang. I thought I'd been the first to prove it was a phone number, or at least a phone number was planned. R. Scott says in interviews that there was actually motion footage shot of this scene-- many folks seem convinced it was just an fx over a still shot. (Anyone who knows anything about photography would know it was real film, or hideously expensive computer fx-- and since this shoot was in serious financial trouble, why would they waste the bucks on fx which is usually done in post?)

See? This is what happens when you go bowling and drinking with dwarves on a mountain top and wake up after fifty years.

Doc

[Nexus6]

[andy]

Good memories to all of you, I forgot all about that thread.

I would recommend everybody reading both of those Scripts. They give a lot of insight into a lot of what is often considered a mystery. That is how I knew about Sebastian's Security cards before the Final Cut SE set was released.

I like the Fancher Script a lot too. It is very gritty and raw. Would be very hard to sell though. Both scripts would probably be NC-17 now. Many of my favorite parts of the film were written by Peoples though, and I slightly favor his script. I do think I remember that Rachael dies in both versions of the script too. Either by Deckard's hand or her own. I much prefer the ambiguous ending.

One of my most prized scripts I have seen sold as a screen used one on screenused.com, and it doesn't list an author. Supposedly Ridley and Micheal Deely cut and pasted a bunch of stuff together from both scriptwriters, and themselves to make something much closer to what the final shooting script was.

The script included in the old Special Edition box set with the posters is supposedly the shooting script, and though it seems to contain stuff not in the film, much of it seems to be a transcript after the film was released. Even more of an "after the fact" is the version in the Blade Runner Illustrated book.

Andy

[superjedi]

Indeed! I didn't even check your link.

[Mr Webber]

Do the different scripts or previous threads give any indication as to how Batty knew Deckards name and how he would know enough
about him to describe him as "the good man"?
I always thought Deckard and Batty came from the same "mold" so to speak but now im thinking more that Gaff was helping Roy in some way.
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Formerly offworld66

[andy]

I seem to recall that Batty had figured how to tap into the police database through the vidphon, but I can not remember which script or where I read it.

Andy

[The Loyalizer]

In that one script that's included in the boxed set they released years ago, there's a big chunk of dialog from Gaff, about how Deckard was well known down in the fourth sector as the Boogeyman or some such. Its also possible that they just ran an internet search on blade runners. After all they've been on planet for two weeks before Deckard gets brought in on the case.
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"We began to recognize in them a strange obsession..."

http://fcomin.cgsociety.org/gallery/

[Mr Webber]

Thanks guys, shifty Gaff must be in the mix somewhere
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Formerly offworld66