by Gwen Lee
LEE: There seems to be that each translator over the years would find it real hard not to elaborate.
DICK: Well, everything we read from those times is technically translation, of course.
LEE: Right. That’s what I mean. So each translator maybe added a little bit here and there. A little more polish. Make it a little more interesting.
DICK: No, I am learning Greek. See, I’m going to go back to the original Greek. It’s—it’s real slow but I’m learning Greek to read the Bible. And I remember one day I was sitting here and I says, I remember in John, chapter three, it says, “God is love.” And the Britannica mentions that, you know. It says in definitions of God that in later Judaism and in Christianity the nature of God is said to be love, not power or wisdom but love. So I thought, I can read that in the original Greek. And, I’ll see if it’s eros or agape or what, which, and I read it and it said agape. And I thought, I’m reading in the original Greek, I’m not reading a translation. I am reading what that man wrote in his language, the three words—”God is love”—although it was not in that sentence order. I know which is theos, you know, for God, and agape is love, so I know how to get to “is” and I thought, almost 2,000 years is eradicated. And that’s what it says, too. And it doesn’t say “God is loving,” you know, so that it is an attribute of God, it says he is love. That’s different.
LEE: I’ve often been intrigued by the people who promote the idea that God is in you, therefore you are God, uh, I know it’s kind of dumb but it’s never been real clear—(phone rings)
(tape ends)
BLADE RUNNER
Part 2
January 15, 1982
LEE: Are we back on?
DICK: She’s got a tremendous collection of books.
LEE: But he’s just a little kid. You know, it just amazes me.
DICK: Yeah. My therapist says a whole new generation, you know, is now growing up on The Doors.
LEE: It is? That’s neat.
DICK: He laughed, you know, when I mentioned that I liked The Doors so much, he wanted me to explain to him—well, of course, what amazes me in a way is Mick Jagger. I mean, he was so great at that concert at Paramount.
LEE: Did you go? I didn’t—
DICK: We didn’t go—we’d just see it on TV.
LEE: Oh, I see.
DICK: Yeah, and uh, it cost so much to go down there.
LEE: He looks a lot better than he ever did before.
DICK: Yeah.
LEE: Got off the junk and stuff—
DICK: Yeah, isn’t it remarkable?
LEE: Been working out—
DICK: Yeah, jogs and stuff—
LEE: Yeah.
DICK: He’s forty years old. I mean, God, that was a great concert. And the next night I turned on Meat Loaf, who I really like. I think he’s so good—
LEE: Oh! (laughs)
DICK: I really like him.
LEE: No, he’s grody—he’s disgusting.
DICK: I know he is, man. Poor old Meat Loaf—you know when he’s not singing he looks like some jive turkey sittin’ on the back step, you know, at Bohunk Corners, Macon—
LEE: And he plays those dippy little—you know, the nighttime stuff, you know, uh, oh, what do they call—well, we have on our cable, Night Flight and stuff, and I’ve caught him on there but he plays those dippy little half-hour programs on the top forty country songs and the top forty pop songs—
DICK: I know. I like the guy, I think—
LEE: Everybody needs somebody, you know. Meat Loaf needs you.
DICK: I remember one time I had the uh—
LEE: He got—he’s got this certain thing, this stage presence—he, um, intrigued me and almost as equally repulsed me.
DICK: Well—
LEE: Which is a strange combination.
DICK: OK, I watched the guy first with the sound off. And I thought, if he’s as bad audibly as he is visually— he is so bad that nothing like this has ever existed. OK.
LEE: (laughs) That’s pretty bad. But he does have a strange—
DICK: I turned it on, you know, I turned the sound on, and I thought it was pretty good. Because I started out from looking at it, you know. But—
LEE: You were intrigued enough to turn on the sound— I mean, you know, he grabbed you just like that.
DICK: I mean it’s—
LEE: Basically, TVs are better if they’re off.
DICK: This is good wine. What year did you say it is? It looks like a cabernet—
LEE: It’s 1982 here, you know. We can’t afford the vintage stuff.
DICK: OK, well, see, that’s the trouble. I’m so rich that I think everybody gets the—
LEE: We don’t have a wine cellar. I haven’t done that yet.
DICK: What’s that?
LEE: I said I haven’t learned to be a wine snob. I’m working on it.
DICK: Hey, it’s not worth it, there’s always somebody better than you that’s worked longer at it.
LEE: Yeah, but I always wondered if they are really sincere or if they just, you know—
DICK: Well, a friend of mine got me for Christmas a 1974 Louis Martini reserved stock zinfandel. And I took it over to Juan and Sue’s as a—oh, it was so good. OK. We just sipped it. Little tiny, tiny sips until the whole bottle was gone. And it was just like we had drunk, you know, like cough syrup or something. I go in to buy some more. They don’t have the ’74, they have the ’78. Buy it, and bring it home, it’s no good at all. Turned out the ’74 had cost a lot more money—that was a very good year, they said, for the zinfandel. ’78 was not. So everything was the same label, same grapes, and one was real good and one was not. So maybe there is something to that, you know?
LEE: Probably so, but I just wonder if the person who is affecting the wine taste—
DICK: Oh, I see what you mean. Oh, I pulled something like that on a guy one time. I had bought a bottle of Rémy-Martin cognac. I called this friend and mentioned that I had it and he said, “I’m going to come over and have some, I really love it.” So he’s on the way over, and I had this bottle of $3.95 joke Armagnac—it wasn’t even a cognac, it was Armagnac. Just the worst Armagnac in the world. So I switched bottles. So he comes over and he pours this joke Armagnac, which isn’t a cognac, into the brandy snifter and says, yes, I can always tell the taste of Remy-Martin. So he got to drink all that he wanted because my bottle of Rémy-Martin was back in the pantry. With the, you know, and he, you know, it wasn’t even a cognac, it was, uh, Armagnac, which is—
LEE: And he actually—
DICK: Oh, he not only thought it was a cognac but he thought it was Rémy-Martin. And he said, “I can always tell the taste of Rémy-Martin.”
LEE: How adorable! Well, that’s what I thought.
DICK: Hey, do you know that all the time I had a friend who was music critic for the New York Times. And one time he came by and he had this album of a Haydn quartet played by the Hungarian Quartet. It had just come out. And he said, “Hungarian Quartet is the best quartet group in the world.” So he puts the record on and he has to go to the bathroom so he takes off. Now, I had this recording called “Great Performances” and it was anonymous, orchestras and chamber groups. You know them, their arrangement—they were literally anonymous, you know. So I take off the one with the Hungarian Quartet and put on this one and this one is a real cheap label and the side’s real noisy, you can hardly hear the players and he listens and he says, “Yes, the Hungarian Quartet definitely is the finest string quartet playing in the world today.” And I showed him what he was listening to. It’s another group entirely. They’re not even identified. And it’s an old recording, and the fidelity is terrible, this—the only thing that is the same is that when he went out of the room that particular quartet was playing and when he came back in the same piece of music was playing, but outside of that, in other words, there was nothing in common.
Another time, a guy was saying to me, and he says, when we had 78 [rpm] records, he says, �
�I really like Mahler a lot. Mahler is my favorite composer.” And I had a stack of Mahler symphonies, 78s, a whole stack of them. So he goes out of the room and I whip the stack off and put a Sibelius side on and it’s a Sibelius symphony, so it drops next. You know, so it goes from a Mahler symphony to a Sibelius symphony. He says, “Yes, this is indeed one of my favorite parts of Mahler—” (laughs) It’s not even Mahler.
LEE: You’re mean. You’ve got a real ornery streak, don’t you!
DICK: Well I, yeah, I guess you’re right. But I—I mean, it’s so funny, ’cause—
LEE: I know, they set themselves up for it, too—
DICK: They do, ’cause I’ll say, you know, frankly, you know, I understand everything there is to know about this stuff.
LEE: Yeah, what I don’t know I usually try to just keep my mouth shut. ’Cause I figure, well, you know, if don’t say anything I won’t appear that fucked. That’s why I won’t comment on something, you know, and try to bluff my way—that’s too, I know there’s too good of a chance that you can blow it.
DICK: I’ve caught myself agreeing that I’ve read a certain book that I hadn’t and I realized that sooner or later, you know, I’m going to make some ghastly mistake, that somebody’s gonna make up a book title or something like that.
LEE: I usually say, “It sounds familiar.”
DICK: Yeah, well, you can’t fault that.
LEE: I like to be real vague on those sorts of things.
DICK: (regarding plastic Yoda) This is so cute, isn’t it?
LEE: You know, I like the way he talks on the bottom too. I didn’t realize that it was the old-fashioned eight-ball stuck in there.
DICK: That’s what it is, yeah.
LEE: What does it say now? “Reckless are you, no.”
DICK: He sure talks funny.
LEE: (laughs) He sure does. What the hell does he mean? I’ll have to ask the kids—they’d know.
DICK: God, this Blade Runner thing is so—
LEE: Are you going to have toys and stuff?
DICK: Yeah, they’re going to send me action figures. Oh, we’re going to have sleepwear, we’re going to have coloring books, we’re going to have comic books. We’re going to have everything. I mean, I forget. I heard the list.
LEE: Can I get some for Willie’s little brother and sister?
DICK: Sure.
LEE: They’re at that age where, you know, especially his little brother—he’s got for Christmas, he got, oh, the shield and oh, everything from Clash of the Titans. Plus, you know, a bunch of stuff from Star Wars, too. He’s just crazy for that kind of, you know, his mom buys him the pajamas and everything.
DICK: That’s the thing that I have, that’s a big part of the movie, that kind. And that’s the thing that kind of gets me. Well I have—OK, one time my agent called up and said, you know, are you interested in 10 percent of the rights of the returns of the comic book version of your novel? And I said, “Comic book version of my novel?” I says, “Yes, I’ll give you 100 percent of the suppository rights!” I mean, “comic book version of my novel?” It’s like telling Tolstoy about War and Peace. “Mr. Tolstoy? Would you like me to tell you about the comic book version of your—”
LEE: I know that hurts. That hurts.
DICK: Yeah, I’m afraid it does. It’s kinda fun. I mean, my agent said he doesn’t know when he gets these lists of things like that if he should send it to me or not. You know, he said, “I got a poster for the novel; it’s three by five feet, you want to see it?” I said, “Yeah. OK, send me the poster,” you know, and he said, “I can’t find anything to put it—we don’t have an envelope that’s three by five feet—but it’s gonna be funny.” He says, you’re gonna be up in L.A., he says, and a bus is gonna go by, and on the back of the bus it’s gonna advertise the movie and your book—it’ll say “And read the Ballantine novel” and you’re gonna turn to the person next to you and say, “That’s my book,” and they won’t believe you.
Mary [Wilson, an acquaintance of Phil’s] and I’ll be out of town for a […]. She’s so wonderful. You know, we went out to the studio and,—I’ve talked to you about it, haven’t I? Going up to Doug Trumball’s studio? Oh—It was really great. We were like little kids. They showed us how they did some of the special effects, you know, and we talked to different technicians. It was really beautiful, I mean, the paintings and the stuff. And they showed, they had—there was one painting of the opening. What they did, now, this contains—did I show you this? In another article—the opening shot of the movie is contained in this other article. It’s not mentioned in the article, but this is the opening of Blade Runner. Of course, now, without him standing behind— that’s Doug Trumball. But there you see it’s actually two-dimensional—one is horizontal and the back ones are two 400-story pyramid buildings sticking up. Well, he built the model and he also did the painting. And the painting crew was pitted against the model building crew to see who could do the best. So, when they had it all finished, they had their choice of doing it with that model or the choice of going with the painting and they chose to go with the model. But I looked at the painting and I swore to God it was three-dimensional. It was painted in such a way—
LEE: Who did it?
DICK: I don’t know, some guy on the staff. And I looked at it and even though I could see it was a painting, it looked like it was real. It was like perspectives that I had never seen before. And this is what I heard from a producer from another studio that had seen the opening. He said there are angles that have never been seen by a camera before. That’s what he actually said. Never been seen by a camera before. And then I saw the opening. I couldn’t believe—I’d never seen anything like it. They’re doing things that have never been done.
LEE: And then when is it going to be [released]?
DICK: June. June. Yeah.
LEE: It’s going to be something to look forward to. Are they going to throw a sneak preview?
DICK: Oh, well, sure—they are going to try it out in the theaters. I guess it’s OK for me to say this. It may not be OK for me to say this. I can’t say it. But it’s something I saw but it’s really exciting. They’re going to try it out on an audience I’m sure and see what the audience’s reaction to it. All they’ve done—they’ve done these incredible things, I mean they really have, they’ve really done incredible things. Uh, they’ve brought in art people who have skills that— each member is himself a craftsman in whichever subcompartment of the video—you know, visuals thing—he is. It’s just person after person after person. There was a fashion magazine named Preview mentioned in the article. Some of the different technicians that have been brought in. I mean, it’s just incredible. It’s like in the Middle Ages, making cathedrals. You know, having every different craft represented. And it was so funny. There was this one great big picture and all it showed was three or four very small neon signs they’d have in the background. Did I tell you about this?
LEE: Yeah, those with the—
DICK: Yeah, with the guy’s—with the crew’s name on them.
LEE: Yes, you did.
DICK: That was incredible. It’s, it’s just, just—it’s like they’re creating a world, they’re creating a world for that film. The actual—it was, uh, that you could hold in your hand and you’d look at that and you’d say that is so crude that that’s not a very good child’s toy. In other words, it’s too crude to be a good child’s toy, you see what I mean? And then you’d see on the screen where they filmed it, and it would fill the sky and it would glow. And it had this giant—I can’t explain it—this is what I’m not supposed to blab about—I’m sorry. I have to stop. But it was just incredible. I mean, you know—
LEE: But this is just the special effects that are going to be really—
DICK: Well, they’re not even using special effects as they’ve ever been used before. They’re creating an actual world. It’s a world that people actually live in. Uh, there’ll be dents on the cars, they’ll be scraped paint her
e and there on the cars. A guy walks by a newsstand. Every newspaper has a complete article, a title, the names of the staff writer quoted—
LEE: They’re made up? Special?
DICK: Yeah, but they’re full articles written out on pages even though the viewer will never see it. He’ll never see it.
LEE: Oh, yes, you were going into that. Yeah—something. The characters get right into the actual world that they will be participating in.
DICK: Yeah.
LEE: Will you be able to be on any of the sets to watch it being filmed?
DICK: Uh—
LEE: I bet that it would be exciting.
DICK: It’s all filmed.
LEE: Oh, it is.
DICK: I was invited up, but I didn’t have a chance to go because I was working on my Bishop Timothy Archer novel, and when I finished the Bishop Timothy Archer novel the next day I called and they had finished filming that Thursday. This is a couple of days before I called them Monday evening.
LEE: It would have been really exciting to be able to see the actors actually participating in it.
DICK: Well, they’ve done all that. And I lost a close friend because I was so dumb I wouldn’t go up. She tried to convince me to go up and I said, you know, “I’m busy and I’m working” and she said, “This is something that in your entire life,” she said, “few people ever see—”
LEE: That’s true.
DICK: “—do something like this.” And I just kept on working. And then, finally it was too late. But, uh, I saw— some footage on TV where they had made a film of one scene being filmed, so that you were actually seeing another camera filming. And then, after a couple of takes Harrison Ford came down and he talked to the audience. (pause; says the next lines in a funny voice) He said—wow—he said—well, I’ll tell you what Harrison Ford said. You wanna know what Harrison Ford said? I’ll tell you what Harrison Ford said. No. Harrison said (laughs)—he said—
