Digest: He hated the first screenplay he saw, but loved the second one – and the pre-release screening he saw.

December 2025 – the lost post

Sadly, my original post was somehow deleted from my blog in November 2025, presumably by me by mistake. By the time I realised, the trash had been emptied – and WordPress.com doesn’t do back-up (at least not on my budget ‘plan’).

After I’d finished weeping and wailing, I found an as-viewed version dating from December 2024, fortunately archived by the wonderful Wayback Machine. There’s a link to it below.

Theres no way I can redo this as a proper post, and no way I can remember and redo the many edits and additions I made between December 2024 and November 2025. They’re lost, like tears in rain. (Too much?)

One thing: I’d like to take back everything I say in my post about BR 2049. I just watched it again and realised – it’s really good! Clearly, I didn’t watch it properly the first time – I must have been too stoned. Sorry, Dennis. Sorry, Hampton. Sorry, Ryan.

Another thing: just before I realised the post was lost, I was about to add something about Hampton Fancher’s screenplays and whether Ridley Scott read the book.

I’d come across a fascinating 1981 interview* in which co-writer David Peoples said Scott was very interested in the book’s animal theme but they hadn’t been able to use that. Apparently Scott got that interest not from reading Dick’s book – he started and found it ‘too difficult’ – but from Fancher’s screenplay(s).

*Interview in Starlog #85, May 1982: Blade Runner: Screenwriters Fancher & Peoples Clear The Air by film historian and author James Van Hise.

So maybe Fancher was more sympathic to the book than I’d realised. Maybe my post misrepresents the Dick-Fancher conflict.

In 1981 Dick said of his 1975 association with Fancher: ‘We had a lot of fun together. I became real good friends with him.’ But he dismissed Fancher’s script as a ‘destruction of the novel’ and ‘Philip Marlowe meets The Stepford Wives‘.

Perhaps that’s why Fancher gainsaid Dick’s recollection of fun and friendship, dismissively saying (in 2017) that although Dick was a genius he was ‘crazy’ and ‘took all the oxygen’.

Perhaps Fancher, apparently the only person involved with the film who actually read the book, deeply resented Dick’s criticism.

Dick then saw a later script, which he understood to be a rewrite by Peoples, the experienced writer brought in by Scott. Peoples has said that on Scott’s advice, he also didn’t read the book. But Dick, thinking Peoples must have read his book, praised the new script as a miraculous transformation of Fancher’s script based on Peoples’ reading of the book. He said:

[Peoples] took a good book and made a good screenplay … They’re beautifully symmetrical, a real miracle.

Peoples demurred, saying there may have been sections by both writers in both the scripts Dick saw. He said when he was brought in he couldn’t improve on Fancher’s script, which he said was ‘terrific’, ‘brilliant’, ‘fantastic’, ‘awesome’ and even, in parts, ‘exquisite’.

That’s high praise from the award-winning Peoples. And it’s clear that only Fancher read the book. So… maybe Fancher’s not so bad. 😳

Anyway, this is the archived, as-viewed, December 2024 version of my lost post:

What did Philip K Dick think of Blade Runner?

This archived post includes links to my other posts as available at that time – but please don’t link to them there. All my posts are available up-to-date from the menu at the top of the page here. Thanks.

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