June 25th, 1982. Summer vacation had just begun and my friend Greg borrowed his mother's car and we attended the very first show on the very first day of release. What a way to kick off the summer! I liked it, but, didn't love it. It was just too dense to wade through on one sitting.
February 1983. SF/8. Some guy named Brian Bartoo or something books it at the Boston Sci-Fi marathon with the tagline, "Yeah, we know you saw it, but, see it with the RIGHT crowd!" (During Bartoo's reign it was NOT common to show recent movies at the 'thon) The name may have been Bruce. Can't recall.
Anyway, my appreciation of BLADE RUNNER really grew deeper upon seeing it again - with the right people!
Over the next few years, I saw BLADE RUNNER several times including at the Drive-In (!) and on TV and eventually, it was my first VHS tape purchase (used, I wasn't paying $40 for it!).
1990-1991. The BLADE RUNNER universe explodes when it is revealed that a 70mm print of the legendary Workprint Cut 'accidentally' gets shown at an early weekend morning screening at the now shuttered Fairfax Cinema (about 2 miles from where I was living at the time! But, I was too damn lazy to get up and attend!
) A few months later, that same 70mm print plays as part of UCLA's Los Angeles Perspectives Multimedia Festival at the Motion Picture Academy's huge theater. I buy tickets as soon as they are on sale. It sells out that same day. On the day of the show, there are DOZENS of people begging to buy tickets. One guy was holding a sign, "I'll pay anything! I GOTTA SEE THIS!" Ridley Scott doesn't attend, but, sends a letter in which he says "I'm glad an audience can finally see the movie as I intended with the Unicorn dream scene." But, the scene ISN'T in the Workprint Cut.
It is there and then that I decide that the Workprint Cut is my favorite version of BLADE RUNNER. I still feel that way: Minimal narration. Better pacing. NO Unicorn (Deckard
isn't a replicant except in Scott's head and his tinkered subsequent versions).