The egg hatched... and a hundred baby spiders came out

Ridley Scott will direct a Blade Runner sequel. For me this is like hearing Stanley Kubrick has only been playing dead. Intrigued as I am by the Prometheus / Alien rerun, Blade Runner is the world I'd really like him to take a second run at: the one I want to see again.

Before he died in 1982 Philip K. Dick saw the movie that would bring his writing to the mainstream:

"All I can say is that the world in BLADE RUNNER is where I really live. That is where I think I am anyway. This world will now be a world that every member of the audience will inhabit... Once the film begins, you are taken from this world into that world and you really are in that world. And I think the most exciting thing is that it is a lived-in world. A world where people actually live. It is not a hygienically pristine space colony which looks like a model seen at the Smithsonian Institute. No, this is a world where people live. And the cars use gas and are dirty and there is kind of a gritty rain falling and its smoggy. It's just terribly convincing when you see it.

"Seeing Rutger Hauer as Batty just scared me to death, because it was exactly as I had pictured Batty, but more so. I could have picked Sean Young out of a hundred different women as Rachael. She has that look.

"Of course Harrison Ford is more like Rick Deckard than I could have even imagined. I mean it is just incredible. It was simply eerie when I first saw the stills of Harrison Ford. I was looking at some stills from the movie and I thought, this character, Deckard, really exists. There was a time that he did not exist, now he actually exists. But he is not the result of any one individual's conception or effort. He is to a very large extent, Harrison Ford's efforts. And there is actually, in some eerie way, a genuine, real, authentic Deckard now."

When the third version of the film was released in 2007 Ridley Scott talked to Wired about creating the future:

The future that I had seen portrayed to that particular point — without being specific or mentioning names, because that means I'm getting really critical — all of the urban films until that moment had been pretty ordinary to not very good. So, it was a challenge to say — it's the same as trying to do a monster movie it's, like, Aliens is a monster movie. Alien is a C film elevated to an A film, honestly, by it being well done and a great monster. If it hadn't had that great monster, even with a wonderful cast, it wouldn't have been as good, I don't think. So, in this instance, my special effect, behind it all, would be the world. That's why I put together [industrial designer] Syd Mead and people like that who were actually serious futurists, great speculators, great imagination, looking to the future, where the big test is saying, draw me a car in 30 years' time without it looking like bad science fiction. Or draw me an electric iron that will still be pressing shirts in 20 years' time without it looking silly. That's the stretch, that was the target: that I wanted the world to be futuristic and yet felt — not familiar, because it won't be — but feel authentic. I could buy it. One of the hardest sets to design was his kitchen. It's not Tyrell's room, which is easy because we fantasize about a giant super-Egyptianesque, neo-Egyptianesque boardroom. But the idea of saying, what is his bathroom and kitchen like in those particular times — that's tricky.

I interviewed Syd Mead when he came to New Zealand, I think late '80s. Of course I don't have a copy of it now: it's on paper in a stack of publications somewhere.*

The script for Blade Runner was written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Fancher started it:

I guess I was approaching it on my own obscure level, thinking that I was making something commercial. 'This is science fiction--people will flock to see this.' Of course, I had themes I was working with that I loved and I was intrigued with. But still I thought of it as a commercial venture... They hustled my script, my fifth or sixth draft, out to all the studios in Hollywood. And so everybody read it. I mean, important people read it, in terms of studio honchos... I was flavor of the month for about two years.

David Peoples (who also wrote Unforgiven) was bought in without Fancher's consent:

I didn't know about it. That was a secret, because I wasn't cooperating with Ridley... I came back at the end, because they called me. They needed something for the rooftop scene. They just had a couple days to shoot and they wanted me to look at rushes. I came back and I wrote some stuff for them. I hated the dailies. They sold this film down the tubes. It's not gonna work. It's not anything like I wanted.

In 1992 Peoples told the LA Times:

Hampton Fancher was the key writer. He optioned the book and made it happen. Though I like the current director's cut a lot better than the original, I have no proprietary sense about the movie. In fact, I get lost trying to figure out where I am in it.

*UPDATE: Found it! The December 1987 version of my interview with Syd Mead is here.

It took me years to write, will you take a look?

Darragh McManus dusted off his old copy of Shirker for the Guardian's 2011 Halloween Reading List:

Set in New Zealand, this tale of one man cheating death is one of the best crime novels I've ever read. Beautiful artful prose, a great, twisting noir story, and a seriously spooky, sexy atmosphere. You'll feel all sorts of chills running along your spine.

Respect. The news went out on Quote Unquote, Crime Watch and Beattie's Book Blog – hat-tip to Stephen, Craig & Graham and big ups to Darragh. My thanks.

(I remember when I was small listening to the Beatles' 'Paperback Writer' and thinking, what other sort is there?)

Bad writing

Friends from both sides of the Atlantic had been on to me about Breaking Bad. I resisted because I was already following Ronald D Moore's BSG remake, Mad Men and the first three seasons of Burn Notice, which could have been and still might be the new Rockford Files, and three TV series in your life is already too many.

Breaking Bad came out around the same time as another what-would-you-do series, Hung which tailed off (sic) in the first season and I imagined Bad would go the same way. The premise seemed obvious, and cancer storylines are depressing. (1970s TV characters were usually felled by a heart attack which finished things quickly.)

When I finally caved I discovered what I liked most about Breaking Bad was that the premise was obvious. The second thing I loved was the scripts. Series creator Vince Gilligan discussed the writers' approach to the show to Robin Kelly:

"I look for good visual storytelling. We take pride in our dialogue, but TV and movies, this is visual storytelling. It's the difference between a play and a screenplay. A stage play is all about the dialogue, and I've seen and read some wonderful ones, but that's not what we're doing here. We're telling a story through the images. I specifically look for visual writing, which is to say not the dialogue on the page, but the action lines, the scene description. How much is the writer getting across through a look, through a bit of body language, the omission of an action or the action itself? Versus a writer who gets everything across verbally. Because in real life, very often we don't say what we mean; very often we say the opposite, or we don't say anything at all."

Series DOP Michael Slovis talks about the arc to the LA Times' Josh Gajewski:

"The other thing that 'Breaking Bad' has in its favor, which is very interesting to me, is time... There is no need to rush anything in 'Breaking Bad' because it's an ongoing story, so you don't really have to re-explain things visually or storytelling wise, so we have time to actually let people move through spaces, down halls, into homes, in a very sort of European storytelling way."

In an interview with J.C. Freñán for Slant Gilligan talked about the difference between writing for movies and TV:

Slant: You've worked in both television and feature films. Do you have a preference for either one?

Vince Gilligan: I would have to say television, because once you are on a writing staff, or once you create a television show, for as long as that show exists you know that you're writing, you know that your work will get produced. The same can't be said for writing for features, unfortunately. Write a movie script, you can put your heart and soul into it for months, for years, and peddle it around Hollywood and ultimately it may well go nowhere. I've experienced more heartbreak in the movie business than in the TV business.

Slant: Is there anything about the format of serial television itself that influences the way you write, that you have a preference for? Is it easier to write a one-off film than it is to sustain a season at a time?

VG: They're both hard, but I suppose that the saving grace about writing a television show is that you don't have to wrap up everything plot-wise at the end of every episode, and you can leave certain questions unanswered. You can leave certain emotional issues not quite completely tied up. In a movie, on the other hand, you have to tie up every loose end that you have set for yourself, and you have to wrap things up emotionally in a very satisfactory manner, and you have to complete the plot in that two-hour segment of time that you're allotted. Endings are just very tough for a writer, at least speaking personally.

In 2010 Gilligan talked to Slate's Noel Murray about ending season three:

My writers and I sit around and dream this stuff up and then we see it executed a week or even days later, and it's a wonderful feeling and it's magical. Especially in moments like that one, which was a great example, because I had high hopes for that scene and then seeing what Adam Bernstein the director did with ['Half Measures']... He exceeded my expectations. That moment was thrilling to watch in the editing room for me. I've never had children but it must be akin to the pride you feel watching your children grow or be born or something. I don't know. I don't have that background in my real life. But it's an intense pride. And it's not a pride of "I did this," it's a pride of "we did this," because it really is a group effort. There's no one person doing it all in television or in the movies. It's always a collaborative effort and anyone who tells you otherwise is awfully pumped about their own contributions to the endeavor. But it's a great feeling, a great collaborative feeling, and it's wonderful.

Lock the parents out, cut a rug, twist and shout

Whenever I hear the song 'Santa Baby' I always think 'spider baby,' like that head in John Carpenter's The Thing, i.e.

Spider Baby, slip a sable under the tree for me
Been an awful good girl, Spider Baby
So hurry down the chimney tonight...

And so on, until the authorities are called in with their flame-throwers.

There was a trailer for the Thing remake in the movie theater last night: the kids in the audience kept talking over it and didn't notice. But when Paranormal Activity 3 started they went quiet – no texting – and then they all screamed, a lot. The movie includes one gag specifically from Halloween and some tricks Carpenter employed very effectively in Prince of Darkness (still one of his scariest). The pan-and-scan sequences put me in mind of the long, unblinking cabin shots in Friday the 13th, and there is a nice pay off that improves on The Blair Witch Project, a movie which is now so old that many in the audience would have only seen it on the small screen. It made no difference: the kids were shitting themselves. Paranormal Activity 3 is scary but above all harrowing. Despite the faux-casualness – handheld is the new sprezzatura – it makes you sit and watch. Loved it.

Amy Winehouse died from drinking too much. This is old news but still depressing. Some editorials are trying to paint her music as part of her suffering but it wasn't, which only makes it the more tragic. She didn't suicide: she just didn't cope. Being so physically small can't have helped.

I'm forcing my way through Stieg – a better translation this time, but his obsession with detail undermines his own plot. In contrast to the oddly entertaining details about sponge cakes, sandwiches and coffee – Blomkvist is a man who always knows where the next snack is coming from – it drives me crazy that in twenty years, nobody thought of trying a Bible code. A row of numbers, anywhere, anytime, that's the first thing anyone reaches for either in the real world or fiction. On the other hand the Hedestad sequence with the photos is great – Antonioni's Blow Up via De Palma's rock-and-roll editing suite sequence in Blow Out. Salander is not Pippi, she's Hannibal: the NeXT Lecter. Anyway, I'm making myself finish it this time so I can be up with what the young people are skimming.

Just one last thing

Television, I dare you.

Auckland on air

This Sunday France Culture will broadcast a documentary about Auckland featuring in situ readings from my novels Departure Lounge, Shirker, Electric and The Church of John Coltrane along with interviews with Auckland artists, musicians and general creative types. You can read about the broadcast and the podcast at the France Culture site.

Bedside reading